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LinkedIn now has over 675 million members and is growing rapidly. And, recent changes to the platform (status updates capabilities, more robust capabilities for connecting to other platforms) make it a much more dynamic platform to promote your event. Most importantly, this community can drive high quality traffic and registration for any event. Integrating linkedin with your conference app will expose your event with professionals who are highly targeted for any event, if your marketing is done properly.
Setup a company page that is informative (About Section, Products/Services, Careers). You can now add “status updates” to LinkedIn Company pages and you have to enable (authenticate) a staff member. Once this is done you can enable status updates to this page.
LinkedIn suggest that you use status updates for news and job postings, which are good to do. But, you can also use status updates to promote your event – don’t overdo this, post no more than 2-3 times a week and make sure you have other status updates that have good content that will inform your followers and connections.
Make sure all of your staff are connected to your company page on LinkedIn and ask them to promote your event via their individual pages – the more activity the better; again, assuming your staff are updating their personal pages on a regular basis with quality content. Event planning app can help you coordinate these activities in most efficient way.
Think of the new company page as an additional social network that allows and enables you to build connections and followers, which in turn help you to promote your company and events. Use LinkedIn’s Advanced search to follow companies in your market space, that are located geographically near you, companies you do business with and even competitors. You’ll build connections over time via LinkedIn and this will help you to promote your events and drive market awareness.
There are several hundred thousand Groups that you can connect with via LinkedIn, although you are limited to approximately fifty groups that you can belong to at present. You want to join Groups within LinkedIn for event marketing purposes that comprise individuals who are part of your target market demographics.
These Groups are dynamic with a “water cooler” conversation component – don’t over promote yourself or your event. We’d suggest posting once a week to promote an event and start about two months ahead of your event and link to the registration page and use a URL shortener like Bit.Ly that will let you track clickthrough traffic via specific Groups – enabling you to understand which Group drove the most traffic. Use your event app sharing option for ease of use.
As your event gets close (say two weeks ahead of the event) you can post more frequently to your Groups – but don’t overwhelm the Group with posts. Also, message the Group Administrator and you might want to offer a free pass to your event to the Admin in exchange for their featuring your Event via posts to the group with a recommendation.
Use a Short and Compelling Title for your Event Promotion on LinkedIn that stands out – get creative with your Title and put a “what’s in it for me” component in the Title. Keep your Event post via Groups short and compelling – use capital letters for key words and make your post short and powerful. Use the best event app features and link all you emails with your linkedin ID.
To summarize: setup a Company Page that is complete and compelling (should resonate with your target market). Use LinkedIn Groups to generate visibility for your Business Page and to “gently” promote your Event. Make sure you do frequent status updates (2-3 every day) via your Company page – these should be informative and educational and resonate with individuals in your market. A white label event app is the best way to enhance you event promotion initives in the most efficient way.