In the world of social media marketing, Facebook is king. We all know that. Even heavyweight competitors like Twitter don’t quite measure up to the behemoth headquartered out of Menlo Park, California.
But the days in which everything was Facebook or bust are long gone. Now, there’s one platform that businesses can’t ignore lest they fall behind and miss out on opportunities to reach their audiences – LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has a reputation for being the grown-up version of Facebook – a platform that was always dressed in a suit and tie, that was business first and focused primarily on the adult enterprises of recruiting, job-searching, and networking.
Lately, though, the platform has undergone a transformation that has taken it from a haven for professionals looking for business connections to a place where thought leaders and visionaries could make their presence known. There, these professionals can not only share knowledge but also engage with millions of other professionals across the world.
Now, in terms of engagement – of actually getting people to interact with each other – LinkedIn is quietly, but steadily, sneaking up on the other bigwig platforms in the social media marketing world.
The Beginning of the Engagement Era: LinkedIn Pulse
The seeds for change were always there. LinkedIn helped popularize the idea that people would voluntarily congregate in groups and share information with each other. LinkedIn Groups were (and still are) a success, helping people go beyond the “add me to your network” aspect of the platform.
The real shift to an engagement-focused platform came with the launch of LinkedIn Pulse, an initiative that shares insights in the form of blog posts and articles from a wide variety of well-known business leaders – known in the LinkedIn world as “Influencers” – to everyday business professionals like you and me.
As a content-publishing platform, Pulse is unique in the social media world. Other social media sites do the same – Medium comes to mind – but these are content platforms first, and social media networks second. LinkedIn is the opposite. It’s a social network that has dived headfirst into the content game. LinkedIn has used Pulse to become the leading name in business-related content.
In the future, LinkedIn will expand Pulse by syndicating content produced by its Influencers to websites outside of the platform. For now, over a million members use Pulse on a daily basis to not only share their insights, but to get news from the business world delivered to their inbox.
LinkedIn Today and Moving Forward
With over 380 million members – plus over a million using Pulse and the content publishing platform – LinkedIn is growing quickly and is poised to offer tremendous value to those looking for an edge in social media marketing.
If you’re a business-to-business (B2B) company, it’s hard to see how you can’t get value out of LinkedIn. We’ve worked with clients who have gotten business directly from us posting on their behalf on LInkedIn, both in relevant groups and with business status updates, so we know it works.
Contact Uptick Marketing today for social media marketing advice to help you make the most of LinkedIn and other key platforms in your marketing campaign.
