LinkedIn Events & LinkedIn Live

In the age of social distancing, hosting events remotely is a must for many small businesses. There are many benefits to consider with virtual events: increased flexibility, decreased expenses, wider reach, and the ability to wear yoga pants. While many of these online event platforms existed, their visibility has risen since the start of the pandemic. Facebook has had Facebook Live for some time, and last year began putting an emphasis on their events feature. Other social media platforms, like LinkedIn, are coming to the rescue with new enhanced features to ease the process of hosting remote events as well. 

LinkedIn Events 

So, here’s what’s new on LinkedIn. They revamped their LinkedIn Events feature. Now you can create remote events for your business, such as online workshops, seminars, and virtual networking. With the events, you have an option to make it public or private. Some of the updates affect both organic and paid content and are meant to help grow your audience and increase exposure. 

Organic Updates 

You can now use registration forms to control who attends your event. These forms also provide you with attendee names and emails. Hint: use this for an email list with a drip campaign to continue your messaging and increase your visibility. Make the email campaign full of rich content and not salesy.  

New discovery features were added to increase the organic growth of your audience. These features provide attendees with personalized event recommendations, and event organizers with improved sharing options. 

Paid Updates 

LinkedIn Events now allows you to use Single Image Ads to promote your event. You can also target registrants of your previous events to assist with retaining your audience.  

Enhanced Events with LinkedIn Live 

LinkedIn Live allows you to enhance any event when Events and Live are used in tandem. Broadcasting live content to your LinkedIn Event enables you to connect with your attendees in real time. In fact, this strategy is one of the reasons L’Oréal’s annual Brandstorm competition hit record attendance numbers despite it being entirely online for the first time. The combination of LinkedIn Event’s promotional features and LinkedIn Live’s ability to stream the live event was crucial to its success. 

Keep in mind, to become a LinkedIn Live Broadcaster, you must submit an application. We recommend that you do that months before you begin planning your event. You can learn more about that application process on LinkedIn’s Getting Started Guide.  

With these additional tools at your fingertips, you are in better shape to host your online workshop, begin virtual networking, or conduct any other remote event you find necessary. Watch out Zoom – LinkedIn is catching up!