use it for recruiting, targeted marketing and to control their online presence. .... Display Ads (earning a CTR of up to
LinkedIn Whitepaper
May 2011
Executive Summary: When it comes to networking, LinkedIn is the largest and most respected place to find professionals, companies, businesses, and groups of your interest in all areas. In this paper, we review some basic and advanced features, as well as industry success cases, so you can make the most out of its features to help your business, company or career grow.
Table of Contents: 1. What is LinkedIn? 2. The basics 3. Advanced features 4. Tips 5. What can LinkedIn do for your company? 6. Our Experience with LinkedIn 7. LinkedIn Premium
1. What is LinkedIn? LinkedIn is the world’s largest social network for professionals and companies, with over 100 million users in over 200 countries. In the 8 years since its foundation in 2003, LinkedIn has become a highly valuable tool for professionals, business people and company executives of almost every industry. LinkedIn is based on the concept of ‘degrees of separation’, allowing a person to access public information about people that are indirectly connected to you. As of 2011, LinkedIn has major executives from every single Fortune 500 company using their network and over 2 million companies who actively use their LinkedIn profiles. Proving its truly global nature, more than half of all LinkedIn users are outside the US. LinkedIn has also become the first social network to issue for an IPO in May 2011. The company offered close to 8 million shares, valuing the company at roughly $7 billion. LinkedIn is now a major resource for professionals looking for employment, as well as companies who use it for recruiting, targeted marketing and to control their online presence.
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Some famous people on LinkedIn – How close are you to them?
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mdell http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama http://www.linkedin.com/pub/donald‐j‐trump/25/842/992
2. The basics Profiles – Your profile will allow you to connect with millions of industry professionals. The information you provide and how you present yourself on your profile are key to getting a positive feedback when a company or user first sees your profile. Use the different fields to highlight your professional qualities. Company Pages – For users, a Company Page is a great way to find out more and to connect with a specific company. For companies, Company Pages give them a great way to showcase their products and © 2011 InStyle! Digital Marketing Phone: 1‐888‐880‐8620 • www.instyledm.com
services, as well as the human side of the company. LinkedIn has many tools available for Company Pages, including analytics, “Products & Services” and “Careers” Tabs, multiple advertising and marketing options and more. Groups – Make new business contacts by joining or creating industry or shared interests groups. Active participation in these groups may be a good way to get other industry people in your field to know and interact with you, but be warned: as many people that post messages are just promoting themselves (instead of offering value to the community, and thus becoming a valuable resource), groups have mostly become a tool for meeting people directly – and for group creators.
3. Advanced features Ads & Marketing – LinkedIn Ads allow you to “Connect with the world's largest audience of active, influential professionals.” Your Ads can be precisely targeted thanks to filtering options such as “By job title and function”, “By industry and company size”, “By LinkedIn Groups”. LinkedIn also has other custom marketing options like “Product Spotlight”, “Qualified Recommendations” and more. Cost per click is relatively steep; starting at $2/click and until recently was only available for English ads. Apps – LinkedIn’s application platform has a variety of Applications from several developers that will allow you to collaborate on projects with other users in a secure invite‐only environment, improve your profile visibility and performance, manage files and documents online, showcase your work, and stay updated with the latest relevant information. These are a few of the useful Apps LinkedIn offers: Slideshare – “SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations.” The App allows users to share their ideas and presentations in a variety of ways, market their companies in the community, while interacting with others and exchanging leads and concepts. http://www.linkedin.com/company/slideshare TripIt – “TripIt helps people organize their online travel plans—flights, hotels, rental cars, trains, car services, cruises, restaurants, events and meetings—no matter where they booked.”
http://www.linkedin.com/company/tripit Behance – Behance allows users to “showcase your creative work on your LinkedIn profile” http://learn.linkedin.com/apps/behance/ © 2011 InStyle! Digital Marketing Phone: 1‐888‐880‐8620 • www.instyledm.com
4. Tips Xobni‐ This is a highly valuable tool for those Outlook or Blackberry users who want to grow their network or are tired of wasting precious time looking through hundreds of email for a piece of information or attachment. It creates rich profiles for every contact, organizing and giving users easy access to stats, contact info, conversations, attachments as well as LinkedIn and Facebook‐based information. http://www.xobni.com Save PDF contact – Don’t have a pro‐account? You can still download a PDF of the profile of people you’re interested in networking (or meeting with) with and save in your PC. Create your own folder structure and you have your very own networking or lead‐generation system! Twitter ‐ LinkedIn and Twitter have partnered to allow two‐way synchronization between your accounts in both networks. Now you can broaden the reach of your presence in these networks by interacting freely with customizable update publishing settings and more.
5. What can LinkedIn do for your company? Every day more and more companies are using LinkedIn to target a highly qualified professional audience as well as expand and complement their marketing efforts. LinkedIn has evolved during its 8 years to adapt and attend to the needs of its clients, offering a variety of tools and options that companies can use to their advantage. These are a few of the success stories of companies who’ve enhanced their online community and solidified their online image by using a combination of several LinkedIn tools: Qwest Business Quest Business specializes in networking communication solutions for government agencies, Fortune 500 Companies and institutions. When they needed to target IT specialists in Small and Medium‐Sized Businesses (SMB), they turned to LinkedIn, where they had access to a large, active IT and SMB audience, which they reached through a combination o Custom Groups, Display Ads, and subject‐specific content sharing. Qwest Business begun by creating a LinkedIn Group called “SMB IT Connection” for IT and business professionals could engage in thought‐leadership and IT solutions debates, as well as learn from and comment on educational and interactive content offered by the company and Group members alike. A combination LinkedIn’s Display Ads (earning a CTR of up to 3%) combined with email invites and polls allowed Qwest to precisely target their audience by region, company size and are of expertise. © 2011 InStyle! Digital Marketing Phone: 1‐888‐880‐8620 • www.instyledm.com
The result was a thriving community of over 1,400 IT Professionals who constantly interacted and exchanged concepts and ideas with the company, giving it highly valuable professional insight and a new audience. The campaign also earned Qwest Business an IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Award for “Best B2B Campaign”. For more on Qwest Business’ campaign, visit: http://marketing.linkedin.com/sites/default/files/LinkedIn_QwestCaseStudy2011.pdf
6. Our Experience with LinkedIn At InStyle Digital Marketing, we’ve been using LinkedIn for our own company communication and networking for years, but we’re also helping our clients take advantage of it. One of the most recent examples is the work we’re doing for one of the top Mortgage Service Providers in the State of Missouri, USA Mortgage Kayser Branch, for whom we set up their online presence from the ground up. We started by setting up accounts for the company itself, and also for several of their Mortgage Specialists, whom we also trained for the productive use of their accounts.
© 2011 InStyle! Digital Marketing Phone: 1‐888‐880‐8620 • www.instyledm.com
We also presented the USA Mortgage team into the community through specialized industry groups, where they could exchange information, and debate on meaningful subjects while meeting and connecting with fellow mortgage professionals all over the world.
The result was a new way of communicating with perspective and current clients, as well as industry professionals and experts, but also a channel where they could offer their services and build a brand image according to the current trends and market needs.
7. LinkedIn Premium On top of their Free Standard service, LinkedIn also offer Premium Accounts which offers several useful advantages which include: Improved search options and results – A Premium account offers precise search options as well as more search results inMail – This options allows you to send direct private messages without having to be accepted by the user. © 2011 InStyle! Digital Marketing Phone: 1‐888‐880‐8620 • www.instyledm.com
Detailed info on who has viewed your profile – the Standard account only lets you know how many people have viewed your profile, but with the upgrade you can view the details on who has viewd it. Profile Organizer – This option allows you to follow, save, group, and add comment on profiles of your interest. LinkedIn has cemented its status as the largest network of its kind, by virtue of knowing what professionals using the service want and always staying at the forefront of tools and application implementation. If you’re already part of the LinkedIn community, maybe you’ve gathered some new tips which can improve your experience, and if you’re not, you might want to join in and take full advantage of this highly valuable tool.
© 2011 InStyle! Digital Marketing Phone: 1‐888‐880‐8620 • www.instyledm.com
