SOCIAL
LinkedIn Announces Merger of Elevate Functionality with Company Pages
LinkedIn has announced that it’s merging the functionality of its Elevate employee advocacy platform into its company pages tools, providing more ways for LinkedIn page managers to engage their employees in order to amplify relevant updates and build reputation online.
As explained by LinkedIn:
“LinkedIn Pages and Elevate have enabled organizations to interact at scale with the people who matter most to their business, and tell their brand stories in ways not possible anywhere else. Over the last four years, hundreds of our customers have used Elevate to help their employees be brand advocates. At the same time, these customers – and over 50 million more organizations – have worked to build their LinkedIn Page so they can engage their most important audiences.”
LinkedIn’s Elevate platform, which enables businesses to curate content for their team members to share, and provides metrics on the resulting performance, has been growing in usage over the last few years, with a range of top businesses now tapping into the program to maximize their employee advocacy process.
Last August, LinkedIn integrated Elevate functionality into Sales Navigator, enabling Sales Navigator users to get alerts from Elevate within their Navigator dashboard, where they can action them directly.
That’s obviously resulted in more usage, as LinkedIn now appears set to expand the same functionality into its native company page tools, which could provide a big boost for organizations looking to tap into their employees, and their extended networks, to broaden their presence.
“This combination will help companies better engage their employees, and build stronger communities in a safe and trusted environment. In fact, when an admin posts on their Page, 30% of the engagement comes from their employees, who are 14X more likely to share that content vs. other content types. And the best part for our Elevate customers is that this functionality will be free of cost.“
That last part is important – at present, Elevate is a paid tool, with pricing tiers based on the number of your staff who require access to the platform. Now, LinkedIn’s looking to remove those subscriber thresholds, which will make it easier to reach more of your employees with your content prompts, while also likely leading to more sharing and engagement on the platform more broadly.
At this stage, it appears that Elevate will remain a paid add-on for company pages, though you’d also imagine that the pricing structure will change.
For LinkedIn, tapping into the rising interest in employee advocacy makes sense. According to LinkedIn data, content that’s shared by employees – as opposed to coming from the brand itself – sees 2x higher engagement, on average, while salespeople who regularly share business-related content on the platform are 45% more likely to exceed quota.
Last October, LinkedIn also added employee notifications for company page admins, a new way to let your employees on the platform know about important business updates or posts, and prompt them to share with their own networks.
Really, that was the first move towards this expanded integration – and given the stats, it may well prove to be a significant update for LinkedIn company page admins moving forward.
LinkedIn says that it will share more information on the transition “over the coming months”.