LinkedIn reactions have landed. LinkedIn managers indicated that they took time developing these icons because they wanted to learn what users want. The new icons are the ones deemed to be most valuable to the types of conversations LinkedIn members have. Three years after Facebook launched an expanded set of reactions, LinkedIn finally has its own. In addition to Like, LinkedIn users can now react to posts using four more icons:
Love
Expresses that a post resonates with you and gives you an overall sense of love, gratitude or happiness.
Celebrate
Expresses celebration for an accomplishment, announcement or milestone.
Curious
Expresses your interest in learning more about an intriguing perspective or question.
Insightful
Expresses your thoughts on a post that shared great insights or advice.
Using the reactions to boost your marketing
For now, the reactions can only be added to posts. However, that doesn’t mean you cannot start using them to boost your marketing.
These icons can provide a quick way to understand the needs of your audience without subjecting them to typing. Here’s how you can start using the icons.
- Use the reactions to get easy answers on how your audience perceives your posts. For example, a post that gets a lot of curious icons can be used to plan future follow-up content.
- Create informal polls using the icons. The reactions can be a simple starting point for user feedback and discovering your customers’ hidden outlooks.
- Discover new content, products or services that customers want but are not yet getting from you. Have a choice of possible future content or products and let your audience vote for what they want using the icons.
Measuring your success with reactions
No marketing strategy is complete without a measure of how well you are doing. On a simple level, tracking your reaction activity numbers can help you see how your content resonates with your audience.
Unfortunately, just knowing these numbers is not very helpful on its own. It’s just a guessing game. You may have more likes just because your audience cannot be bothered to use the other icons. Several survey platforms allow you to see why specific content gets a certain reaction type.
The survey platforms help you automate user research and gather quality user feedback. More importantly, they provide detailed sentiment analysis. These platforms can break down the factors that cause your audience to react using a certain icon.
You can even getpsychographic data that gives insight into interests and viewpoints (which is great for job applications according to websites like SDF Work Force Development). This information can then be used to shape future marketing campaigns.
Why LinkedIn?
You may be wondering if these new LinkedIn reactions are even worth your time. Many marketers are quick to dismiss LinkedIn. But by doing this, you are disadvantaging your marketing strategy substantially.
LinkedIn is growing. It has less clutter and a lot of largely untapped potential compared to other platforms.
Not convinced? Here are some numbers to illustrate why LinkedIn should be on your list of marketing platforms.
- LinkedIn has over half a billion members
LinkedIn surpassed the 500 million members mark in 2017 and it now has 610 million users. Of this number, over 260 million are active monthly users and 40% of monthly users are daily users. This means you have the potential to target over 100 million users on a daily basis.
- Over 40% of all millennials are on LinkedIn
Millennials are shaping many brands’ futures. Of particular interest, is the influence millennials have in the finance and tech sectors. You will definitely be wanting to include the large chunk of LinkedIn millennials in your marketing plan.
- The LinkedIn feed gets 9 billion content impressions weekly
Content on LinkedIn’s feed gets 9 billion impressions every week. That’s about 468 billion impressions per year. LinkedIn provides a big opportunity to get lots of engagement if you share content consistently. Furthermore, there are software solutions that automate actions on LinkedIn, such as sending connection requests, messages, posting, and many more. Using these smart options provided by several companies that you can find on websites like IncrediTools could help you save time and engage with people more effectively than if you did it manually.
Automation on LinkedIn saves you time and is often more effective than doing it manually.
- LinkedIn is 277% more effective in getting conversions
One of the ultimate goals of marketing is getting conversions. You are 3x more likely to get conversions on LinkedIn compared to Twitter and Facebook. How’s that for some marketing motivation?
Which sectors do well on LinkedIn?
The top six industries on LinkedIn right now are:
- Information Technology and Services
- Hospital and healthcare
- Construction
- Education management
- Retail
- Financial services
It is clear why LinkedIn is great for tech and financial marketing. Financial and tech brands are still a bit underrepresented on platforms like Instagram that requires visual content and Twitter with its small character limit. LinkedIn provides more marketing flexibility and the chance to go into detail about select topics.
Which content gets the most interaction on LinkedIn?
In 2018, OkDork’s Paul Shapiro analysed 3,000 of the most successful posts on LinkedIn to get some insight into what made them successful. The following were some of the key findings.
- Long-form content gets the most shares
Long-form content that is not too long-form performs best on LinkedIn. The ‘perfect’ length is 1,900 words but content that falls between 1,700 and 2,000 words will still boost your engagement.
- How-to posts get the most engagement
Tutorial posts get about 2x more views than question posts. For the best content marketing on LinkedIn, you should focus on list style and how-to posts and go light on question posts.
- Titles with 40-49 characters perform best
40 is the target number for the best results. 30-50 characters are ideal but sticking to 40-49 characters will maximise post performance.
- Posts with 5,7, or 9 headings get the best interaction
Whether it’s because of the long-standing belief that consumers prefer odd numbers or not, content split into 5, 7, or 9 headings gets the most engagement. Use these numbers for any of your content types including lists.
- Posts with limited videos do well
93% of marketers are using video in their campaigns. With that being said, on LinkedIn, posts without video perform better than those with video. While one video will work, performance declines as more video content is added.
My view? I think reactions are great for better gaging the reaction of your audience. The strange clipart style that Linkedin has opted for does slightly grate on me. Of course in terms of functionality they do perform the same way but I feel I’ve ventured back to the 90s. Interested in knowing more about how you can use LinkedIn to create some of your best marketing campaigns to date? Speak to me about social media marketing strategies that are tailored to your needs. Get Socially Sorted today!