Yesterday, I had written about New Statistics for Company Pages rolled out by LinkedIn. LinkedIn has taken another huge step forward by introducing the concept of 'Targeted Status Updates'. This content originally posted at Convonix.com takes a look at what this is all about and how we as marketers can benefit from this.
Previously, if you had 'N' number of followers for your company page and wanted to share something to specific people - in specific geographies or with specific job functions, you had no option but to rely on advertising solutions provided by LinkedIn. But now, thanks to yet another new feature rolled out by LinkedIn, you can achieve the same with company status updates. Let's take a look.
- As you come on the overview tab of your company page, you will see an option of 'Share an Update'. As shown below, you now have the option of sharing company updates with either 'All Followers' or 'Targeted Audience'.
- Let's take a look at the targeting options available.
The most amazing thing is the ability to target the same maximum number of Industries and Job Functions as in the self advertising program.
- There are a couple more targeting options which give the page admin greater control.
Again, the maximum number of geographies you can select are 10, same as the self advertising program offered by LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn seems to have missed out on the following target options within 'Seniority'.
- Partner
- Entry
- Unpaid/Students
Also, the following filters that are there in the self-advertising program have not yet been incorporated.
- School
- Skills
- Group
- Gender
- Age
- The most powerful feature incorporated by LinkedIn in my opinion is the ability to target Non-Employees only. However, there isn't an option to target only employees.
- What more can LinkedIn do? - As a social media marketer, I would love to see all the targeting features of the self-advertising platform being incorporated in 'Targeted Status Updates'. For SME's, incorporating a 'Target by Company' feature would do wonders. This would give them the ability to target users who are following the company page of a particular competitor of theirs. Also, for targeted status updates to work, you need to target at least 100 people - this means that the more targeting filters you use, the risk of your reach going below 100 increases. LinkedIn might consider removing this requirement depending on the kind of response this program gets. For large enterprises, especially those that have several employees across varied geographies, it would make sense to have 'Target only Employees' feature to communicate certain details exclusively to employees.
- Conclusion - Who will benefit? Let's be honest about this. If you have been using LinkedIn and have been developing the follower base of your company page, you stand to gain a lot. Big brands with a large following might even cut on their ad spends as they can now 'organically promote' and sell, up-sell or cross-sell to their existing/potential customers. Company page admins now also have the ability to target 'Potential customers' and 'Potential employees' separately with the advanced target filters. You could now do a 'work for us' post and select people from the same industry as yours while ensuring that the post is seen by non-employees only. This will guarantee that only your 'target group' sees the post.
If you do not have a large follower base on LinkedIn, now is the time you should increase it because you never know what more awesome features LinkedIn might have up their sleeves!