5 Reasons to Add LinkedIn to Your Daily Social Mix

This won’t be the first time, or the last, that you’ll hear this – you need to be on LinkedIn.

However, in the past the focus has always been on using LinkedIn as your online resume and job-hunting platform. This view saw LinkedIn build a solid user base of more than 500 million but it never really allowed the platform to become part our daily social media habit.

Well that’s changing fast. With a strong existing user base and some clever updates, LinkedIn has become a powerful space for marketing and business development.

The opportunities that LinkedIn holds for business are unmatched by any other social media channel – but if you’re not convinced, let’s take a look at five reasons why you need to be logging on every day –

1. You can (finally) upload video to LinkedIn natively.

Sharing videos on LinkedIn has always meant sharing links to other platforms, such as Youtube, which never allowed you to watch videos shared in your feed. But LinkedIn have realised the power of video and finally rolled out their native video feature.

What does that mean? Simply, that you can upload and share videos directly from your computer or mobile (which surprisingly you couldn’t do before) and watch native videos in your news feed (just like Facebook).

There are plenty of reasons to use video for marketing. But why should you care about video on LinkedIn? Simply put, video is a major asset to anyone working on expanding their reach and authority – whether that be for personal or business development. And as LinkedIn is purely for business, it’s the perfect place to share video content for this purpose.

So if you’re representing a brand or looking to build your business profile – video content on LinkedIn is better suited to reach a B2B audience than Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram.

2. An improved user experience.

LinkedIn got a makeover, with a lot of changes improving the usability of the platform. Overall, the new design is cleaner and feels a lot more like hanging out on Facebook – which is helping bring more people onto the platform regularly. Here are some of the highlights:

• Homepage redesign – the new look homepage on desktop reflects the simplicity of the well received mobile app. Clean and simple, it encourages users to share content, scroll through their newsfeed and engage more with what’s going on in their network.

Credit: SalesForLife

• Notification center – notifications are now more frequent and visible. This helps it feel a lot more like you’re actually part of an active community and encourages you to get involved.
• Contact info more accessible – one of the biggest reasons people are drawn to the platform is for the prospecting opportunities, so making contact info more easily available is a smart move.
• My network section more accessible – they’ve made it a lot easier to find connections, contacts, people you know and alumni by placing it all in one convenient spot.

3. Smarter messaging system that helps people connect.

People love Facebook Messenger – and for good reason. It’s attractive, simple to navigate and easy to get to. LinkedIn took note, and have altered their messaging system to mirror its competitor, also making it smart enough to cotton on to the types of people you want to contact.

In recent times, Messaging on LinkedIn has seen a 40% increase in engagement, growing to over 60 million interactions per week. Over 50% of active LinkedIn members used the feature per week, even before it was improved.

Video by LinkedIn about the new messaging feature:

With the changes, you can now send a message from any page, with your inbox popping up as a small window in the bottom right of the page (just like Facebook messenger). All you have to do is click on the window and you can have an instant convo.

It’s also started showing when users are active on LinkedIn (in other words, when they are available for messaging on the mobile app). This makes it a lot easier to pick the right time to reach out to a connection and start a conversation.

Credit: LinkedIn Blog

4. A fine tuned feed with LinkedIn Pulse.

Pulse, which is LinkedIn’s own publishing platform, may not be as new as the features named above. But, it’s most definitely an underrated platform for sharing content. With the new changes, it’s likely going to become a powerful tool for generating traffic and building a following through content creation.

Straight from LinkedIn themselves – ‘with a combination of algorithms and human editors working together, we’ve fine tuned your Feed to surface the most relevant content from people and publishers you care most about.’

The major reasons to use Pulse are –

• As organic reach declines on Facebook, Pulse allows you to reach targeted audiences with organic content
• Content on Pulse is not restricted to LinkedIn users, you can also have your articles indexed by Google
• You have the chance to get featured – if you do, you’ll gain a lot of traction
• Pulse gives you an authority as a professional in your field, as it allows you to publish full-length articles to be seen by other professionals.

5. See exactly who’s viewing your content.

As we touched on above, LinkedIn is improving insights on content – allowing users a more detailed look into who’s viewing their profile and content.

Credit: SalesForLife

LinkedIn said, ‘you can now see who’s reading and engaging with the content you share, including the company, job title and location of the people who are interested in your updates.’

Credit: Viveka Von Rosen

Your profile is also said to improve, with LinkedIn providing hints and tips into what changes you should make based on job requirements, recruiters’ needs and so forth.

So if you haven’t already, download the LinkedIn app and start getting involved. You’d be amazed at the opportunities that can come from speaking directly to an audience that’s ready to talk business.