Why LinkedIn is now “In”

First, sorry for the radio silence. 

Not from THP, but from me in particular. Truth be told, I really didn’t have anything I thought was particularly blog-worthy. Until now.

It’s amazing how one move in the social world can turn on a light and become the one thing I seem to be talking about over and over again in just about every meeting I’m in.

That move came in the past few months as LinkedIn announced the creation of “Sponsored Updates.” The ripple effects of this move are just beginning to be felt, but the ultimate repercussions in our world of PR/content creation/lead generation will prove to be pretty big.

What are Sponsored Updates? It’s the ability for anyone or any organization on LinkedIn to “put money behind” a regular status update and reach a large and/or targeted audience outside of those they are connected with or who follow them. Think about it, now you can have anyone or everyone or just the right people see your point of view, product offering or business by posting an update and sponsoring it.

Why is this so important?

• LinkedIn is the B2B platform, so you are reaching a more “qualified” audience especially if you are a B2B business.
• LinkedIn’s ability to allow you to target your audience also is more “qualified” since people include their jobs, titles and positions in their profiles. LinkedIn Sponsored Updates also uses the same advertising criteria that fuels its regular ads, a much better advertising platform than Facebook’s for example.
• It allows you to point people where you want them to be pointed. For example, you can sponsor an update to expose them to your website, your blog or your LinkedIn company page to help build your followers so you can continue to communicate with them directly. This is a much cleaner way to communicate with them than the already-cluttered LinkedIn Groups.
• You also can steer them to landing pages off of LinkedIn for lead-generating opportunities such as white papers or webinars or even, yes, even contests. Here’s a Mashable article on how some brands are already taking advantage of this.

Even though LinkedIn’s motivation behind the growth of Company Pages and this new addition of Sponsored Updates is purely the ability to make more advertising money, the ability for brands (especially B2B brands) to leverage these moves to their benefit is potentially game-changing.

That being said, this is no longer “pure” social media where updates go viral just on the back of quality content. You have to pay for it and account for it in your marketing budget. You will have to decide if a couple of bucks or so per click is worth it to drive your expertise and eventually generate leads. But the argument can be made that LinkedIn leads are better quality and the days of “pure” social media is over any way.

Think about it, growing a targeted business community so you can share your business expertise and offer this community that expertise so you can generate leads for your business?

It’s what just about everyone wants to do for their business.

It’s what Facebook wanted to be three years ago but can’t ever be because of its non-business members.

It’s the social media Wild, Wild West all over again. But now LinkedIn has the six-shooter in its hands.

Do you agree? Would love to hear your comments.