Corporate marketing doesn't give LI enough love - here are some tips to up your game

LinkedIn says 2020 is the year recruiting completely changes. New skills, new tools, new approaches to recruiting. So... you mean like employer branding?

LinkedIn looked at its own user data and discovered some trends for 2020 and beyond. The most interesting? They think that data and analytics have reached a kind of "inflection point" at which is it no longer a "one day" thing but more of a "we're falling behind" thing. Also, they are seeing trends that their next new hire is likely to be found internally than in recent years.

Welp. LinkedIn, the pinstriped social media platform, is taking cues from the cool kids like Snapchat and Instagram and developing a "stories" function on their platform. I look forward to more CEOs dancing in their offices to Carly Rae Jepsen and corporate mandates Ice Bucket Challenges...

So I was deeply impressed when LinkedIn (and I don’t often use the words “impressed” and “LinkedIn” together) posted a directory of their own alumni who were recently let go. We’re in a world where leaving is no longer the stigma it once was, but it’s rare that companies actively support their alumni. The obvious outcomes of this kind of project is that it makes LinkedIn look good, but it creates an army of people connecting with all new networks who now have very positive brand associates with LI.

Sally Bolig (hi Sally!) took recent LinkedIn data and did a better job of pulling out the insights than LinkedIn did. Of note: Companies are posting more in 2020 than before, posts about Covid seem to be plateauing as a messaging focus, and more companies are using LI to post about hiring. (This is good stuff if you want to convince marketing to let you have a seat at the LI table). Also note how quickly we all went from “don’t talk about race and politics on your corporate site” to “well, we have to say something about BLM…” in a matter of a few weeks.

Need to get an edge on your LinkedIn content? Probably. On LI’s platform, we’re all begging for attention and the rules on how to get that attention aren’t obvious. So here’s the research that makes the LI black box a little more transparent. Memorize it to give your posts the maximum opportunity to be seen by the most people.

Anyone else all-in on LinkedIn Stories?!?! Yeah, me neither. Consider me skeptical in any content marketing strategy LinkedIn attempts as their success is more about brute-force audience than smart strategy or well-considered implementation. Anyway, if you’re curious (and please share your results!), here’s a great write-up on how to approach them for recruiting.