'LinkedIn Marketing' Session Recap from #Pubcon

I have the privilege this week of both attending and presenting at Pubcon Las Vegas. This is my second year joining Pubcon and there are so many speakers and so much information at this conference that sometimes it can be overwhelming to choose where to focus your time - a good problem to have in my mind.  

I sat in on a session with Sean Jackson and Jabez LeBret this morning. Sean Jackson is the Cofounder of Rainmaker Digital and also hosts a weekly podcast on LinkedIn called The Missing Link. He was scheduled to speak on LinkedIn today at Pubcon along with Scott Statson, who, unfortunately, wasn’t able to make the event. In Scott’s place, Jabez LeBret, CMO of GNGF, joined Sean to present some of his own marketing hacks.

Sean Jackson’s LinkedIn Marketing Presentation

Sean started off confessing that LinkedIn is often seen as the uncool uncle who shows up at the content marketing family picnic. But he’s actually your awesome, crazy uncle. A common misconception is that Linkedin is only for B2B marketing. But everything you think about LinkedIn as the old stodgy platform is completely off.

3 Tips that Will Turbocharge Your LinkedIn Marketing

1. LinkedIn has a lot of untapped potential. There are 380 million users on LinkedIn. Twitter is actually smaller than LinkedIn with 316 million users. The thing is, LinkedIn is not for posting silly cat pictures. It’s where you go when you are serious about targeting people who are ready to click on your CTA.
2. LinkedIn is the #1 referral source to businesses. It’s more natural for consumers to go from a business social media site to your website than from a place where their intention is to engage with family and friends.
3. LinkedIn has a 20% organic follower reach. This is contrasted to Facebook which gives a 3-5% organic reach. And if you post more than 20 times a month you will hit more than 60% of your follower count.

Sean's 3 Ps for LinkedIn Success

P1 - Profile

Make sure your profile is optimized.

• Picture: Use an exceptionally high-quality picture that is primarily your face. Invest in a corporate headshot if possible.
• Authority: Make sure your title snippet is authoritative. This is the viewers’ first impression of you and should be your best sales point (highlight if you are a speaker, a book writer, or something else impressive - use your most authoritative titles).
• Depth: You can drag around the profile sections to highlight the most import features of your background. By adjusting the spacing, you can show off what you know at the top.
• Why You?: Optimize the summary section of your profile with your name and relevant keywords to improve your SEO ranking for your own name and field.

P2 - Publish

Publish and publish often to LinkedIn.

• It’s ok to take the content from your blog and publish it into Pulse. Publishing on LinkedIn does not create duplicate content.
• Connect your Twitter account to your LinkedIn so it will auto post to both networks. This costs you nothing and amplifies the reach.
• LinkedIn allows you to upload quality photos. This can be very powerful for Infographics. Note that it will cut down your character space so headlines are even more important.
• There is a trick for communicating directly to the editorial team, but you have to listen to the third publishing episode of Sean's podcast to find out what it is.

Other Factors to Consider When Publishing:

• Images matter
• Write strong headlines
• Optimize keywords (same as SEO 101)
• Utilize tags
• Include a CTA (95% of everyone who posts on Pulse leaves out the call to action!)

P3 - Participate

Sean has a few hacks for optimizing your participation on LinkedIn.

• Group stats hack - Plug the URL into analytics for any group ID to analyze it so that you can determine if the group is worth your time to participate it.
• Content hack for membership databases - You can send messages to any member of a group by clicking on the settings icon in the top right-hand corner of the group page, and the members list will appear.
• Email blast hack - Your goal should not only be to participate in a group but to eventually take it over. That way you can send an email to your members once a week and you don’t have to pay for it.

Jabez LaBret’s LinkedIn Marketing Presentation

We were treated to a last-minute two-for-one this morning at Pubcon and heard from Jabez LeBret in addition to Sean Jackson.

Jabez’s Last-Minute LinkedIn Hacks

1. Once you come across a discussion that is already trending, become the owner of that discussion. However, instead of jumping in and selling, use the inbound method. Provide useful information that assists your viewers. This will put you in the position of a thought-leader for the group. I.E. “Here are five questions that you should ask for when you are looking for an agency.”
2. Make sure you get your profile right. If your LinkedIn profile is 75% complete, viewers that look at your page will think you only care 75% of the time.
3. Discussions in groups are dwindling so be sure you are balancing your activity on Pulse as well. Another way to get views is by adding organizations under your experience. People will congratulate and message you as well - thus replacing all of that discussion juice.
4. Blend in the re-published content on Pulse with unique content.

Bottom line, both presenters emphasized the need to make sure your LinkedIn profile is ready to convert and then be active enough to get people there. There is a ton of potential with LinkedIn that is often overlooked. I know I went in and made some changes to my profile after hearing from these two gurus.

By the way, have you connected with Inturact on LinkedIn?