One of the most important things you should remember when preparing for a virtual event or a webinar is to promote it as much as possible whether online or offline. A way to promote your event online is to use social media and professional network platforms such as LinkedIn.
What Is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional online network. Anyone can use LinkedIn to find a job or internship that best suits him/her according to his/her work experiences, location, industry, etc.
You can use it to connect and strengthen your relationships with professionals and also learn skills that you can use in your career.
LinkedIn can also be used to join interest groups, write articles, and post photos and videos.
One great way to make the most out of LinkedIn is to use it to organize your event, let people know about it, and get more people to register. With the 675 million monthly LinkedIn users, it has become a must-have for businesses and employees.
Here are some important 2020 LinkedIn business statistics from Hootsuite:
- There are 30 million companies are on LinkedIn
- An ad on LinkedIn can reach 12% of the world’s population
- Sponsored InMail has a 52% open rate, on average
Ways to Use LinkedIn to Promote Your Virtual Event
Here are the top 6 ways that you can make the most out of LinkedIn to market your virtual event.
1. Status Updates
The most basic and obvious way to communicate an idea, job opening, etc. on LinkedIn is to post an update to your connections. This can be done on your personal account or company page or both.
Post several times sharing about your event’s topic, description, photos, videos, speakers, venue, etc. Include a link and several hashtags of your website and registration page.
Since there is a lot of noise on LinkedIn now compared to before, make sure that your post’s caption and photo will be eye catching. Also remember to post during the best times to post on LinkedIn. Most people will be active on LinkedIn during those times and will most likely be able to see your post.
According to Gray Group International, in a 2019 study, Sprout Social said that the best day to post on LinkedIn is Wednesday. And the peak times are on the same day during 9-10am and noon.
From Tuesday-Friday from 8am-2pm, you can find the best and consistent engagement in LinkedIn. The lowest engagement of users is on Sunday. The worst time to post is from 9pm-3am on any day of the week.
2. Direct Messaging
Promoting an event online takes a lot of time and courage. You can send personal messages to your LinkedIn connections who could possibly be interested in your event.
If they’re not interested, you could ask your LinkedIn connections to promote your event for you to people who they think could be interested. Be personal and polite when you send each message.
If you have a premium account, using direct messages to promote your event will be made easier. LinkedIn Sponsored InMail can be sent to anyone whether you’re connected or not. It helps marketers deliver personalized messages in the uncluttered LinkedIn inbox.
3. Email
If you are connected to someone, you will be able to view their email addresses in the contact information section in their profile.
You can download all your first tier connection info which includes their email addresses. This will all be downloaded onto a spreadsheet.
You have to be careful in sending emails to people in your email list because people may be sensitive about receiving event emails.
Be clear about where you got their email addresses. Tell them you won’t spam them with many emails in the future.
4. LinkedIn Groups
Joining LinkedIn Groups is a good way to find a community related to your business’ industry with a common interest. From the search bar, select Groups, then type the keyword that you want to find existing groups for. As you type the keywords, LinkedIn will suggest groups that fit the keyword you put.
Scroll down through the different groups to see which would most likely be fit for your event. See what they usually post and talk about. After joining the group and before posting about your event, check out the rules of the group. The rules are posted on the right sidebar of the group.
Take note that LinkedIn Groups are groups created for people with the same interests. It would be inappropriate if you would promote your event on the page without having any connections or permission.
Contact the admin of the LinkedIn Group and kindly ask them to share your event’s post or LinkedIn page within the group.
Introduce yourself first, give information about your event, why you think the members of the LinkedIn group need to hear about and attend your event, and request them to promote your event by sharing your post on the group.
Their posts have a much larger reach and will be a really effective way to spread information about your event to most of or all of the LinkedIn Group members.
5. Speaker’s or Partner’s LinkedIn Posts
If you will be having partners or speakers for your event, kindly ask them to write a short description with calls to action about what their talk will cover or what they will do in your event.
You can also have them share your personal or company’s LinkedIn page posts about your event.
This is going to be effective especially if your partner or speaker is known in your industry and has a lot of LinkedIn connections.
6. LinkedIn Advertisements
Status updates and LinkedIn posts can be sponsored.
You can post paid advertisements on LinkedIn such as a text ad which will appear at the right-hand side of every user’s newsfeed. This will drive the right traffic to you, generate quality leads, and make you pay for only the ads that work - per click or per impression.
Another effective method is to use Sponsored Content ads that will display your ad within your newsfeed. According to Eventbrite, sponsored ads are more likely to be seen than a standard ad. In addition, sponsored updates can be seen on both mobile and desktop.
Sponsored Content ads come in different formats:
- Single image ads which drive traffic to your website with a great visual
- Video ads which build brand awareness
- Carousel ads which engage professionals through an interactive experience.
Promoting your event this way will allow you to target anyone on LinkedIn according to their location, job title, industry, etc). You can advertise to professionals, exceed your job objectives, and target the professionals you want. This is way better compared to just sharing your posts to your connections.
Giving Value to Attendees in Your LinkedIn Posts
LinkedIn is all about building connections within and even out of the industry you work in. You can use it to promote your event for free or pay for your LinkedIn ads and InMail.
Each of these methods will make a significant impact on people’s awareness of your event and the number of attendees. I suggest that you aim to do all methods, so that you will have maximum awareness of your brand and your virtual event.
Apart from knowing the ways on how to promote your event, also keep in mind to create posts that are valuable, meaningful, and engaging. People don’t put too much importance on what your products and services are and come from, but on what they can benefit from them.
Hopefully this article was helpful and that it can guide you in preparing for your next virtual event.