February 15, 2021 | 10 min read
When it comes to marketing and event promotions, LinkedIn is a smart and efficient tool to use. As of 2021, LinkedIn has over 756 million members, 675 million monthly users, of which 40% make use of LinkedIn daily.
With these statistics, you can imagine why LinkedIn is one the best platforms for content distribution and, therefore, the best way to promote your event. Just imagine how wide a reach you can have if you use LinkedIn to your advantage.
If you want to know how to promote your event on LinkedIn in the right way, we have 7 tips to help you with that.
Why is LinkedIn a Good Fit for Promoting Business Events?
LinkedIn is a professional networking platform created to assist people in making business connections and finding jobs. It also enables businesses to market themselves and promote their events.
Did you know that studies 80% of B2B leads from social media come from LinkedIn? This means that if you are interested in growing your business and promoting your events, you cannot neglect LinkedIn as a platform.
The purpose of LinkedIn is to elevate businesses and professionals through networking. The algorithm on LinkedIn is straightforward and less complicated than other social media platforms. For this reason, you can have more reach to your online community.
LinkedIn is still quite untouched with regards to the business world compared to other platforms such as Facebook. Facebook has over 2.7 billion monthly active users while LinkedIn has 722 million users.
This shows that not many businesses focus on LinkedIn as a primarily social platform, which means your business gets to explore relatively uncharted territory that is not saturated with an information overload.
If you are active on your account, you have a higher chance of standing out from any of your competitors. Thus, you have a higher chance of reaching a wider audience and successfully promoting your business event.
Webinars
Webinars are generally short, lasting anywhere from half an hour up to a couple of hours, and relatively smaller in size, with up to around 200 participants.
Webinars are generally not very interactive. Participants generally view and listen to a single expert speaker or sometimes a panel of speakers. They might ask questions for the speaker to answer, but attendees don't expect to communicate with each other or even be able to see who else is attending.
Follow These 7 Tips to Promote Your Event on LinkedIn
Now that you know why you should use LinkedIn to promote your event, here's how you can do it.
Direct messages
The great thing about LinkedIn is that everyone is (usually) more than happy to help someone reach their career or business goals. So this would be the perfect time to make use of the networks you created.
You need to use your network to interest and encourage people to come to your event. Just ask any of your connections on your LinkedIn to help promote your event through direct messaging.
If the event is relevant and applicable to them and their career goals, they will be more likely to promote this event and pitch up to your event with a few friends on the same career path.
The great thing about LinkedIn is that everyone is (usually) more than happy to help someone reach their career or business goals. So this would be the perfect time to make use of the networks you created.
If you message your connection in a friendly way, they will feel valued and more likely to help you promote your event. With LinkedIn, you can directly message up to 50 of your first-tier connections at once.
Getting the premium account would be extremely helpful in this situation as you can send direct messages to people you are not even connected to. This can be especially helpful to reach a wider audience.
Just remember to untick the box that says "show all email addresses" to avoid awkward situations or a breach of privacy.
When thinking about direct messaging your connections, especially because you are looking for a wider reach, it is important that you place a priority on those who have a good and large following and those who will undoubtedly support your event.
Use LinkedIn groups
You can also make use of existing business groups. This is a perfect way of tapping into a community that is already there. Use the search bar to locate groups that are appropriate and applicable to your event.
It is, however, important to note before commenting on any posts that groups on LinkedIn are primarily for discussions and not for self-promotion. Be sure to read the group's house rules, which are usually listed on the right-hand side.
If, after reading the existing discussions and posts, you believe that the group is relevant and applicable to your event, it would be a good idea to speak to the group admin. When speaking to the admin and asking them to mention your event, make sure you justify why you believe your event would be helpful to the group members.
This seems like a tedious process, but just keep in mind that an admin's reach will be greater than yours had you done it without them.
Create a LinkedIn group for your event
If there is no existing group for your particular niche, you can create one for your event. Once your group has been created, you can invite people to join, including your speakers or sponsors.
Having this group is an excellent way for people who are attending your event to associate with each other before the event. This is also a perfect way for potential people who are attending to see everyone who is signed up to come to your event.
You can get the conversation started ahead of time by starting discussion threads. This is a perfect way of seeing what topics your attendees are more interested in. By doing this, you can include these topics in your presentations and programming to ensure your event always has conversations of interest to your attendees.
If the event is a success and your patrons were always engaged, this will be good press for your next event. In turn, your network will grow from people being interested in your business.
LinkedIn sponsored content
It is essential that you get your updates and content in front of more peoples' eyes.
You can do this through LinkedIn's sponsored content feature. This is a paid service that permits you to aim your status updates to a particular target market by using filters such as industry, interests, location, and job title.
Have you ever been scrolling on your feed on a social media platform and seen random posts pop up with the small written 'sponsored' near it? Have you ever wondered where it is from and why it is showing up on your feed?
Well, this is what a sponsored ad looks like. It is a very effective tool as it enables you to deliver content to people above and beyond your current page followers and network.
It comes in three different formats: single image ads, video ads, and carousel ads. By using this feature, you can reach a highly engaged group of people by interacting with a professional feed.
The sponsored ads will show up in the homepage feeds of your target audience so that you can make more people aware of your event and therefore increase attendance.
Use your network
Perhaps your business network, or even a conference you previously attended, had a guest speaker. You should approach them and ask and encourage them to share the post or to talk about your event on their LinkedIn account to their network.
This will work especially well if your speaker has the "influencer" designation given by LinkedIn. When they have that 'influencer' in their profile, their posts will reach everyone on the network.
You should try your best to ease your burden of promoting this event by using other people who can help you with promoting. Even a simple act like a reshared post can make a big difference!
If your event has an entertainer, a sponsor, or even a media partner, it would be worthwhile to bring them into the marketing by asking them to post about your event on their LinkedIn network.
Or, if your event is happening at a venue you should encourage anyone involved to post about your event to reach a wider audience.
Using your network is a great way to promote your event with the resources you already have at hand. In addition, it's an inexpensive way to interact with an audience beyond your network.
Post a message using your company page
It would be a great idea to compose and post a slightly lengthy message (about 200-500 words) about your event on your LinkedIn company page. In this message, you must describe your event in great detail.
This will be a great way to show people what they can expect when attending your event. If your event has been running for a couple of years, this would also be the best time to include testimonials from people who have attended previously and what they enjoyed about the previous event.
It would be great to show that you, as the event organizer, enjoyed your event too. A lot of the time, people want to see that you went to the event to also have fun and socialize - not just as an event organizer.
Your audience wants to get the feel of the event's ambiance and what they can expect from it. This could be a significant deciding factor on whether they should attend or not.
Tips on How to Compose the Message
When composing the message, remember to be subtle but also informative and entertaining. This will give your post a greater chance of being
ed in one of LinkedIn's Channels.
Before you start composing the message, be sure to do some research on the topics of your event and find a way to include these topics engagingly and topically. If you share this post on your personal feed, it can boost engagement for your event.
Be sure to include a ticket link if that is applicable. A great tip is to add an eye-catching picture related to your event to grab more attention. It would be even better if the image were from previous events.
This message could be a make or break with regards to the interest created around your event. If the message is invigorating, engaging, informative, and eye-catching, then you can be sure that more people will be interested in attending.
Once people are interested in your event and feel connected to your event, they will also be more likely to talk about it on their network, invite people, and promote your event for you.
Boost your engagement rate
Engagement is the most important part of social media. High engagement rates mean higher numbers being drawn to your profile and, thus, a higher number of people knowing about your event.
Be sure to engage with anyone and everyone who likes, comments, or shares your event after being exposed to your sponsored content, messages, and adverts.
The more you engage, the more you show that you care about the opinions of those who are already attending. Once this happens, more people will start sharing your content. Therefore, you will see an increase in the reach of your event promotion.
Engaging with your attendees will also show that you care about fostering relationships and building connections. Doing this works in your favor as people who feel cared for on a slightly personal level will most likely be more invested in your event and will want to see your event be successful.
So, they may want to share your business event posts and updates and talk about your business event on their own accord. They will especially talk about the friendly host who responds to their comments and engages in conversations. It's good publicity and even better promotion for your event!
Final Thoughts
Now you know how to start promoting your business event on LinkedIn. We hope to have shown you that promotion does not need to be expensive and tedious. In fact, once you have good connections and a good network, the bulk of the work need no longer fall on your shoulders!