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Can LinkedIn Skyrocket You To The Top?

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linkedin-What do you think of LinkedIn?

Are LinkedIn users ‘buyers’?

Can I build my List with LinkedIn?

Should I be using LinkedIn?

What do I have to do?

What does it cost?

For those of you that don’t use LinkedIn, or not familiar with it, let me first bring everyone up to speed on our topic for this week that was requested by a regular reader.

Way back in 2003 LinkedIn launched itself as the working professional’s response to Facebook. At that time Facebook was the leading social networking platform being consumed almost entirely by a young demographic. It grew rapidly, expanded its services in an effort to attract all age groups, but was seen by most professionals as a youthful network for entertainment.

Online business owners saw Facebook as a large data base with very specific user information. When opening an account, users gave their age, gender, hobbies, geographic residence, AND offered their friends and families names to be solicited by Facebook to also become users. This specific and personal information had not before been available to businesses. Now they had personal data that allowed them to market their products and services with pin-point accuracy in specific niches.

Internet savvy professionals wanted a digital network that was professional in appearance and offered a simple and clean layout for networking with other similar thinking professionals.  They wanted an area for posting resumes, and multimedia for potential employers to view and scan the ranks for qualified professionals seeking employment.

That became LinkedIn’s niche to stardom.

The real value of LinkedIn was the exclusivity of their network. It was like having a membership to a private club of upwardly mobile professionals. LinkedIn’s popularity was overwhelming. User’s signed up by the thousands, becoming a tight-knit professional audience, all sharing ideas, thoughts, and opinions; while offering their resumes for review.

First, came the recent college grads looking for their first job, then working professionals seeking better positions, higher wages, or career changes, then those They talked, they shared information, and they networked like crazy. LinkedIn was the popular place to be seen.

Very quickly companies seeking such professionals began to visit LinkedIn’s ever expanding database of professionals on a regular basis. So regular and so successful were these searches that LinkedIn began to charge companies and HR agencies thousands of dollars for the privilege of reviewing their database.

That was early 2000’s.

Let’s talk…

In just the last six months LinkedIn has made a host of product enhancements and additions. New ad formats for companies to advertise, SlideShare Content Ads that allow advertisers to deliver SlideShare presentations in the banner spaces on site.

Companies are even allowed to have their own APIs so they can manage their ads without even having to log in to LinkedIn’s platform.

Businesses (large and small) are allowed to send product info and updates to LinkedIn users based upon their profiles.

Users are able to load copy, vids, and advertisements for themselves and/or their companies and forward to any one or everyone that has ‘connected’ with them (similar to being ‘liked’).

So…should you include LinkedIn in your marketing plan for 2013?

I would say yes!

LinkedIn has a database of over 200 million users, and currently growing. Professionals, most with jobs, making professional incomes, with credit cards!

LinkedIn is a customer powerhouse. They have names, ages, gender, pics, city of residence, place of business, hobbies, skills, education, work history, family info, friends and associates, etc.  Their data base is priceless.

Any business large or small would love to have access to the names and email addresses of these potential buyers?

LinkedIn has made a small fortune soliciting its user’s personal info to business willing to pay their fees.

They’re able to direct marketing ads with laser accuracy to every category and niche within the data base.

Additionally, LinkedIn users talk to one another….very often!

Imagine the conversation amongst a specific group of professionals about a product or service they’ve purchased. As well, many of these professionals are company owners, CEOs, i.e. decision makers; that could facilitate commercial purchases from vendors they like or have been referred by other LinkedIn associates.

But…

With LinkedIn’s meteoroidal growth and success have come increasing ad prices.     Shop early!

And, LinkedIn has publicly stated that it wants to become a premier publishing platform and not a social networking site for professionals any longer:

In April 2013 LinkedIn acquired ‘PULSE’, a mobile news app. In a blog post on the acquisition, Deep Nishar, SVP of products and user experience at LinkedIn, wrote, “We believe LinkedIn can be the definitive professional publishing platform – where all professionals come to consume content and where publishers come to share their content.”

Josh Krafchin, founder of Clever Zebo, a group of online marketing strategy experts specializing in SEM, SEO, and conversion funnel optimization, says, “What works well with LinkedIn is using it to create content, especially webinars, whitepapers, and other free content, and getting them in the hands of the right kinds of people. You get decent click-through rates and decent sign-ups.”

Meera Bhatia, head of product management for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. “We’re working pretty aggressively to make them (user names and emails) available to companies on LinkedIn…and using more traditional ad placement to distribute that rich content.”

Much like our online businesses, success is in the LIST.  LinkedIn must continue to attract more and more users to their database. They must continue to keep these users interested by adding more and more ‘Facebook-like’ features. They must continue to convince their users that they are part of an exclusive professional network and not just another huge customer list ripe for spam from any business that is willing to pay the price.

I think LinkedIn will face a strong challenge to retain their reputation as a quality database of ‘professionals’ particularly with their decision to become a content publishing platform.

Will this change in venue for LinkedIn destroy its value as a marketing tool? Will professionals continue to enroll? Will their database increase or deteriorate as their publishing platform develops? Will users refrain from enrolling for fear of mass marketing (spam)? (Here’s an article ref. Verizon you might find interesting). Will LinkedIn become just another Facebook?

As with any marketing plan…”don’t put all your chickens in one basket.”

Just my opinion

 

Talk soon,
-Jonathan


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