How to Use LinkedIn for Event Marketing

You may be using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to promote your events but are you using LinkedIn? If you are planning a business or education-related conference, meeting or event, LinkedIn is a very good platform to use for event promotion. Not convinced? Check out these stats.

Recent studies report that LinkedIn has 303 million users, 177 million of them in the United States. 61 million of these users are the senior-level company or industry influencers and 40 million are in decision making positions. More than 50% of all social media traffic to B2B websites and blogs comes from LinkedIn. Most importantly, LinkedIn is the top channel used by B2B marketers to distribute content.

In other words, if you need to build buzz for your event in a business community, LinkedIn is the best digital channel to use. But how should you do it? There are several highly effective strategies to leverage LinkedIn for event marketing.

Company Pages

The simplest way to promote your event is to post frequent status updates. Use a status update to announce important dates such as ticket sale launch, the Early Bird deadline, or agenda updates. Always include a strong call-to-action and relevant hashtags in each update. Post the link to your ticket sales site to make it very easy for readers to register. Status updates also allow you to post videos and photos which make your posts more engaging and impactful. Also, make sure to post links to any media coverage you earn for your event.

Invite Connections to Attend

Send a personal invitation via direct message to any connections that might be interested in your event. Offer a ticket discount or other incentive to attend the event. Don’t be too pushy. One message per event is enough.

Write an Article

LinkedIn allows you to publish articles on LinkedIn. These articles are served in your connections’ newsfeed just like your posts. This is a great way to promote your speakers and the content you will be providing at your event. Write an article that highlights an industry topic or answers a common question. Summarize a speaker’s abstract to provide a sneak peek of that event session. Make sure to include pertinent hashtags and a call-to-action at the end of your article.

SlideShare

You can also upload a slide presentation to your LinkedIn account via their SlideShare app. These can be PDFs, Word documents, or PowerPoint presentations. Promote your event sessions by uploading your agenda or session presentations. You could also create an event “trailer” that promotes your event with highlights and photos from past events.

Leverage Partners

Ask your speakers, vendors, sponsors and other partners to post updates or write articles about your event via their own company pages or individual profiles. Make sure that they tag your company account every time they post so that readers can find your page. Comment on their posts with your call-to-action and a link to your ticket sales site.

Advertising

LinkedIn offers three options for advertising on the platform. These include sponsored content, sponsored in Mail and text ads. Sponsored content is native advertising that appears directly in the newsfeed of professionals your target. Sponsored InMail allows you to send personalized event content through Messenger. Text Ads are pay-per-click or cost-per-impression ads delivered in the right rail of a newsfeed.

All formats are relatively easy to set up, monitor, adjust and cancel as you need it. The audience targeting is available for all formats as well. If you haven’t used this advertising method before, start with a small budget and test a few different campaigns and formats to see what is the most impactful. It should be noted that LinkedIn is rolling out an Events feature to a limited amount of users as we speak. It is assumed that it will be available to everyone soon. This just reinforces the view that LinkedIn is not just for job searching and business networking. It has become an impactful B2B sales tool as well as a business content platform. The time is now to leverage this powerful social media site