Qué son los influencers en LinkedIn y cómo funcionan | Influencity

Upon hearing the word “Influencer”, the vast majority of us are quick to think of Instagram. But, what about LinkedIn influencers? Doesn’t sound quite so familiar, right?

That’s because influencers are normally associated with B2C (Business to Company) marketing strategies. There are, however, many companies that aren’t trying to reach the end consumer with their communication strategies, but rather other companies and professionals.

LinkedIn is a professional network and therefore perfect for B2B (Business to Business) strategies, meaning there’s absolutely no reason to believe that influencer marketing will not be as effective on LinkedIn as other platforms.

What isn’t particularly clear, however, is exactly how one becomes a LinkedIn influencer or what we need to be looking for when trying to find profiles to collaborate with brands on this social network.

Still having doubts about using LinkedIn for your marketing strategies? In this article, we’re going to show you just how to use this social network to carry out influencer marketing campaigns.

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LinkedIn as a social network for Influencer Marketing

LinkedIn has many features that make it a great choice for launching influencer marketing campaigns, such as the following:

• Alongside Xing, LinkedIn is one of the few social networks where companies that aren’t trying to target the end consumer can reach users who are in charge of making purchasing decisions within companies.
• LinkedIn has also seen enormous growth over recent years and now has 500 million users from all across the world, and networking is, of course, an integral part of this social network’s nature.
• This means that an influential profile’s opinion or stance regarding a certain topic is very likely to have a significant impact on their network of connections.
• Since the concept of authority is directly related to the efficiency of influencer marketing strategies, LinkedIn is the perfect environment to carry out this type of marketing actions.

LinkedIn has 500 million users from all across the world, meaning an influential person’s opinion can have a significant impact

Influencer Marketing on LinkedIn vs Linkedin Ads: which one should you choose?

If you’re thinking about using LinkedIn as a platform to promote your products or services, you may be stuck choosing between these two options. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each method.

Advantages of Linkedin Ads

• Just like with Facebook Ads, using LinkedIn Ads allows a complete segmentation.
• You can work with up to 100 different criterion to make sure ads are seen by the right audience, as well as a range of different formats (text, image, video, etc)
• You have complete control over the budget and can set bids per ad, just like with the Adwords tool, or establish a daily maximum expenditure.

All of these possibilities make LinkedIn Ads an interesting tool.

Benefits of LinkedIn Influencer Marketing

There’s just one problem with LinkedIn Ads; it can be considered intrusive advertising.

That’s where Influencer Marketing is more appealing. LinkedIn influencers who take part in campaigns aren’t necessarily trying to sell anything.

• Despite receiving economic compensation in return for their collaboration, it would be very risky for someone who has worked so hard to create a sterling professional reputation to recommend a product they don’t believe in.
• The users who take these influencers’ opinions into account are aware of this, meaning the message is much more credible and therefore effective.

LinkedIn influencers: what are they and how do they work?

It’s important to distinguish between the different types of influencers on LinkedIn, in particular, those which are “official” and those which are not:

In 2013, LinkedIn launched a programme called “LinkedIn Influencers”, in which a series of important personalities, including some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, were given the opportunity to write publications which were shared directly with LinkedIn users.

These LinkedIn Influencers consisted of world-renowned profiles who are recognised for being referential within their sector, and who could only access the programme via an invitation from the social network.

The opportunity to write posts about any topic related to an area of expertise was later extended to all users. What didn’t change, however, is the way in which certain profiles are selected to join the exclusive LinkedIn Influencers club, which is a privilege that is only granted with a direct invitation from the social network.

LinkedIn Influencers are profiles that regularly post quality content related to current trends and topics, interact with other users and actively participate in groups.

LinkedIn Influencers are profiles that regularly post quality content related to current trends and topics, interact with other users and actively participate in groups.

What characterises an influencer on LinkedIn

In reality, there aren’t any huge differences between what characterises an “official” and an unofficial influencer on LinkedIn, since both profiles are rather similar.

LinkedIn Influencers:

• Regularly update their profiles
• Constantly connect with new users
• Actively participate in or create new groups
• Interact with other LinkedIn users, expressing their opinions regarding their publications
• Create attractive content

To conclude, they’re people who demonstrate a successful professional career through their profile, have credible opinions and use LinkedIn as the central platform for their activity.

For that reason, when selecting profiles for carrying out influencer marketing actions on LinkedIn, you need to evaluate a combination of things, from the influencer’s authority, to their audience and network of connections.

How to launch campaigns with influencers on LinkedIn

The structure of an influencer marketing campaign on LinkedIn will not differ to that of a campaign on any other social network.

• You need to define the objectives
• Select the right influencer
• Create curated content
• Measure the reach and results

Perhaps the greatest difficulty lies in tracking down profiles that are considered to be influential, since the majority of profiles that are considered influencers won’t benefit from the official status granted by LinkedIn.

• Looking for articles with keywords is the first step for detecting profiles which may be interesting.
• As well as reading these articles to evaluate their quality, you’ll need to measure their impact, as well as the author’s connections and the profiles that interact with their publications on a regular basis.

Just like with any other campaign, you need to contact influencers with an attractive proposal and work together in order to create quality content and develop marketing actions throughout the campaign.

Although influencers on LinkedIn don’t have as many visual tools as influencers on Instagram or Youtube, this doesn’t mean that their campaigns are any less effective.

In terms of analysing the results, it’s important to bear in mind an important factor when evaluating the effectiveness of a campaign, which is that B2B products tend to have a longer conversion cycle. Therefore, when analysing metrics, particularly if the campaign is sales-orientated, it will have to be active for at least two months in order to evaluate its impact.

If you want to find out more about what metrics you should be analysing and controlling in your LinkedIn influencer marketing campaigns, download our free ebook.