​To say this year has been hard is an understatement. It was unprecedented, uncertain and down right bloody difficult. But one positive thing that you can take with you into #2021, is the growth in digital marketing, and specifically social media channels this past year. Here is our summary of the good, the bad, and the ugly for LinkedIn, and our predictions of what will trend next year.

THE GOOD:

LinkedIn has really rocked this past year. Many people have been complaining of huge drops in algorithmic reach and engagements. At ZoecialMedia we are a bit skeptical about this for a few reasons. 1) Our data tells us differently. Across all our client accounts we see continued YoY growth, even with the difficulty presented by the pandemic.
2) We believe there are just many many more people online, pushing content and consuming content, so your share of visibility just got harder, that is all. But that is why you need to be engaging and engage more to be seen. 

Some of the reasons LinkedIn has really upped its' game are:

- HASHTAGS: #hashtag #hashtag #hashtag - the first 3 you use in every post are the most important ones. In fact when you copy link to post and paste it in WhatsApp or another forum, LinkedIn now includes these hashtags as part of the link. It's how you find interesting people and content, and how you optimize your feed, and how you filter what you see. HASHTAG!!!!
- DOCUMENT UPLOAD: Swipe through carousels  are the bomb! We love them, people love them, and the ROI on visibility and reach is huge!
- PRODUCT PAGES: This feature is still a WIP but we believe these are really going to be a game changer next year and it starts with those companies who are already have them.
- EVENTS: They started out really badly, but now LinkedIn have really invested in the feature, not only do you get real lead generation with them, but some of our clients are reporting 3-5x the event registrations using this feature.
- POLLS: Do it! try one but remember to be engaging. 

We put together a guide for LinkedIn Product pages and one for Polls that will help you be strategic with them next year. Here you go!

THE BAD:

Growing on LinkedIn is HARD. If you want thousands of new followers for your company profile each month on LinkedIn - STOP ... doing this one thing!!
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Expecting to get thousands of new followers on #LinkedIn each month. The harsh reality is that there is no "magic follower pill" you can swallow. It takes:
PERSISTENCE: Regular cadence of good and engaging posts.
DEDICATION: You need dedicated advocates and followers who will engage with your brand and like, share and comment to get you more visibility.
TIME: With more visibility comes more followers. You cannot buy them and if you think you can, you might be in for a shock. We ran a $3K campaign for brand awareness for a client in India, the goal we set was "engagements" which is one of the few LI goals that has a "follower" button on it. Guess how many followers came from that $3K spend?? LESS THAN 500!!!!!?
Change your goals, align your expectations, put in the effort to engage and build a dedicated following and stop expecting it to happen overnight. Unless you are Microsoft or Apple, which you are NOT!


THE UGLY:

STORIES: Our initial few observations about the new #linkedstories feature. after posting consistently for days on end....

1. You still cannot save a story.
2. About 30-35 unique views of each story, but all except one person were in my 1st degree connections, so not really getting outside my existing following.
3. There is still no way for people to like a story.
4. You can still only write a private message to the story author. You can also "unfollow" them
5. The "mention" feature only currently allows mentioning people, NOT COMPANIES.
6. Still only available on mobile, not on desktop.
7. Still no hashtag support on Stories.
8. The stories expire after 24 hours, and no way to see "old stories"
9. Still almost no analytics on story (other than how many people and who viewed it).
10. No live links

For Company Profile Stories:
1. You cannot like a story.
2. The share button allows you to send the story via messenger to people.
3. You cannot save a message
4. You cannot tag another company
5. Also only available on mobile.
6. If you go to the company profile, no way to view their stories (this to me seems the most illogical of all the non-features).

The point is, no need for #FOMO if you don’t have it yet, it needs some work.

NOW, WHAT SHOULD YOU EXPECT IN 2021:

- MORE P2P: People-to-People marketing will be the buzz in 2021. We are already seeing companies, and more importantly C-suite execs buying into the importance of active, engaged and thought-leading LinkedIn accounts this year, and it will only get stronger next year. 

- PROFESSIONAL BRAND MANAGEMENT: With the need for more P2P marketing,  comes the need for professional services to help you do this. We are currently managing 57 LinkedIn stakeholder accounts. From A-Z writing and posting content, engaging daily, strategically growing the network and connecting to new industry and ABM targets.

- LESS AUTOMATION: DON'T BOT!!! The appeal is real, and we understand, you are worried that investing in your employees is a waste of time and money, and they may walk out the door one day. So you set up fake accounts and bots on those accounts, or even WORSE, you run the bots on your employee accounts. But a robot can never properly emulate a thinking human. We are currently dealing with one client who has 6 blocked accounts of senior sales people on LinkedIn because they ran a bot on the accounts. The pain is real, those people can never ever connect to a potential client or person again, without first having to put in the person's email address. 

- MORE VISIBILITY and CREDIBILITY. How? STOP LIKING 
START Commenting!

Don't be a 'like bunny' [Trademark ZoecialMedia], take the extra few seconds to really engage and show people your expertise, compassion, share your knowledge, friendship, support, shared interests, along with some respect.

Why?

Watch those visibility reach numbers climb for:
- more profile views
- more connect requests/follows
- more visibility
- more trust in your personal brand
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- MORE ROI: Use Shield Analytics app. A full 360 degree view of your growth, engagements, reach. Like you have never before been able to get from LinkedIn. The ROI is there!

GOOD luck in 2021 and reach out if you need a hand!

People are often shocked when I advise them NOT to open a new Facebook page or start another LinkedIn Showcase page, stating "one is enough." But really, one is in most cases enough! It is hard enough to grow and get visibility for one page, and unless you have endless time and money, you do not need to have multiple multiple multiple pages for no reason. In this article I will explain why and also what you should be doing on your main company page so that you can optimize your posts to reach the right audiences:

​Why don't you need another company page?
Getting organic growth is actually harder than you think. Even pages with tens of thousands of followers struggle daily to get their content seen. It is no longer a game of "post and they will come." Now you need to stand out, be engaging, be creative. I can guarantee you that if you don't post at all, you are lost to the world. I had a client with over 100,000 followers. Their growth was wild, and viral. Some of their posts had 80,000+ likes and comments on them - I kid you not. They had funding issues at the beginning of this year and let us go, they downsized their teams to just R&D and stopped posting on Facebook altogether. From June to December last year they had 5,168 new followers on their FB page. Since January they have only had 883 new followers. In 2019 in total they had 13,679 new followers, and that was mainly due to the HUGE visibility they got, not from constant posting, but constant viral content! 
So let's for argument's sake say you manage 2 pages. Now you must create twice as much engaging and relevant content. What is your strategy? When you start with ZERO followers how does anyone see anything? If they aren't seeing it, do you have money to pay to play? Let's say you are one of those "Microsoft" brands, who can start a new page and have 10,000 followers in the first month - did you know that most of your posts will only reach a very small portion of your existing following, and ONLY if they engage with it does it get seen by people outside of your following, so now you don't only have to create content for 2 pages, you have to make it really GOOD and engaging content, so that people want to engage with it. NOW say you are neither popular nor do you have a willing gaggle of ready advocates who will all follow and engage with everything you post, do you have enough budget to "boost" or pay for a targeted audience to see your posts? If you answered NO to the above scenarios, read on to find out what you should do instead.

What should you do instead?
As you are able to geo-target by location all content on Facebook and LinkedIn, you are better off investing your time and money in bringing in a good/strong audience to your main profile so that you can simply post to your main page using audience segmentation. On LinkedIn you can even go further and segment by industry, job title, seniority etc... It means you have one really strong brand presence, but only people in that targeted audience will see the content that is relevant to them. NB: You need a minimum 300 people to be able to properly target on Linked in any specific audience, so rather spend your time and efforts bringing new followers to that main profile, so that you can utilize this feature.

Here is a short video I made that shows you how to post to LinkedIn using audience segmentation: 
https://www.loom.com/share/956ef7b072d343a3ae3e610da9fa616d

When DO you need another page or profile?
If you have multiple brands and they aren't all the same target audience, it makes sense to have a MAIN page for your company brand and showcase pages or separate FB pages for your sub-brands. For example you have multiple products, and one is B2B and one is B2C, they need different audiences AND different content. In this instance, be prepared and realistic - you need double the amount of time, effort and budget to make both successful. 

When do you NOT need another page or profile?
As stated above, language or geo-location is not enough of a reason to need a separate page. Use your main page together with audience segmentation. You also 100% DO NOT need a separate page for corporate social responsibility, or careers posts, or employer brand. They are all part of your company DNA, they should be part of your main brand, just use audience segmentation. Consider starting a group or community for employer brand or corporate social responsibility. That is a better place to have it, as you do not face the same growth and algorithmic limitations of a page, it is more interactive AND you can invite people to be members.

What else could you do to be smarter at optimizing your brand visibility?
People relate to people more than to brands. Your CSR, employer brand, careers updates are better spread by employees than just your company page. Onboard and launch an advocacy program and encourage, and incentivize your employees to be your brand ambassadors. I would recommend getting a tool like Sprout Social's Bambu, or Oktopost it allows you to manage your social media, measure success, and run and track results of an advocacy leaderboard. Speak to me and I can make a referral and explain why you need a tool like this.

I hope this article has given you food for thought. I cannot tell you the number of clients who are struggling to strategically grow their social media following and brand presence, and they are maintaining multiple pages at the same time. If it is hard with one, it is even harder with many! Focus on one, produce quality, put some money behind it and I guarantee you will have more bang for your buck and efforts!

Good luck! Reach out if you have any questions.

SRight now, selling is a challenge. We aren’t travelling, we aren’t attending conferences, and we aren’t meeting face-to-face. Building trust and relationships is a challenge in a digital-only world.

Let’s be honest too, no one sees something on social media or online and clicks and buys it immediately. At least, they rarely do. Experts say that it takes 5-7 touch-points for an ecommerce sale to happen. So if someone needs to do research before buying something small like a new TV, maybe shop around for a better price, or check out what people have said about it online, imagine how much more difficult that is when the purchasing decision involves multiple people and a typical 6-12 month sales cycle.

That’s why social selling is one of the most important tools a salesperson can have today.
​Knowing how to:
-          Grow and nurture a strategic connection to the right people
-          Become and remain visible to your pipeline of existing and potential customers
-          Build credibility as a subject matter expert.
-          Stay 1 step ahead of your competitors.
-          Know the etiquette of how and when to do outreach to a potential customer.
-          Understand what tools are on the market and can help you do your job faster/better.
-          Elevate your companies’ brand by helping their visibility.
-          Measuring your ROI so you know that you are doing it right.
The aim is personal brand growth with an end-goal to building visibility and nurturing potential strategic leads. It isn’t a one and done methodology, it does not happen overnight, and it IS an artform.
 
ZoecialMedia manages over 50 LinkedIn accounts for C-Suite execs at companies like Deep Instinct, Amdocs, Plataine and more. We will teach your salespeople how to strategically grow and nurture their sales leads. Fast becoming the most important skill in a salesperson's arsenal.

Read more here: 23 key social selling facts you need to know in 2020.

In many areas of the world, most businesses have closed their doors aside from pharmacies, supermarkets and other essential companies. With the lack of air and road traffic, reduction on factory productivity for lack of workers, canceled events and more, this offers the world what can be seen as probably the only positive side of the Covid-19 pandemic — the impact on carbon emissions.
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It all began with the drastic reduction of gas emissions in our largest industrial country — China. Now, the trend continues throughout other regions as countries one-by-one take action to shut down activity in a panic to stop the spread of the virus. Unfortunately, while the current effect of the virus on our environment offers our atmosphere much-needed relief, history only proves that it will only be a short-term break.

As the owner of a social media agency I spend 15–20 hours a day looking at social media feeds, analyzing data, and making strategic decisions for my clients relating to their brand and social media. We are admins on over 200 social company pages and manage at least 50–60 Linkedin profiles for senior C-suite level executives. And, here is what I am seeing and my advice for what is happening right now on social media, what it means for you and how to continue using it in times of pandemic.

TRENDS
On company profiles: Companies have really pulled back and are either: Trying to post content directly related to COVID-19, tying their products into the pandemic, or only posting educational content. An admirable trend is companies offering their services for free or at huge discount, like this one from NICE, to move contact center agents home within 48 hours and for free:

Voice of the People: Employees and individuals are taking a real stand and shining here, speaking up, having a voice and showing they care. Some are sharing their best practices and tips, many are showing empathy, some are crying out for arms to get large organizations to help financially. Whatever they are doing, it is loud and proud and about time.

Promoted Content: Whereas once my LinkedIn feed was 20 articles/1 promoted item, it is now 5 articles/1 promoted item. I guess all those unspent $$ from loss of travel and ability to attend and market at events has been shifted to promoted content. What this means for you is that you need to speak to an expert about how to maximize the ROI from your paid content. I reached out to Yoel Israel from Wadi Digital and asked him a few poignant questions for you and here’s what he had to say:

1. Before planning and advertising, the most important thing is write out your audience.
2. Then ask yourself, how can I make this audience more narrow?
3. Once you have super-focused your audience, then you need to segment. The best way to segment is by industry or vertical. Have unique targeting, unique ads, unique landing pages or lead generation forms for each industry/vertical. This will greatly help conversion rates.
4. Results to be expected — if you have no data on LinkedIn Ads (meaning you never ran them before), you need to set expectations after you are live. If you optimize for demographics, then you should expect 95%+ of all leads be your targeted persona. Goals for Demo requests should be under $350/lead and gated content at $75/lead
5. ROI cannot be measured at first. LinkedIn is primarily a B2B platform. Our marketing and sales cycles are long. You need to go into LinkedIn knowing that it is the right place to be, then optimize and improve based on which leads and which content lead to opportunities.

​Bottom line is that paid campaigns to get out there and reach audiences you cannot reach because we are all stuck at home will become more and more relevant in the coming months. For businesses, it is smart to get professional about it, for those stuck at home out of work — quickly start self-learning there is a shortage of good PPC and lead-gen workers out there and I am sure agencies will snap you up for remote work. Also for e-commerce as more and more people are trying to sell online today, this is an essential skill to have. You can sit at home and make money on drop-ship, and as an affiliate sales person. Although note that right now even Amazon are cutting back, so don’t expect to be making money right away, rather use this time to become a top digital sales person. Here is a great resource for self-learning PPC: ​https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/how-to-advertise-on-linkedin

Humor: Not everything right now is doom and gloom — many people are effectively using humor to pass through this unprecedented time, you can also do it as a brand. It is OK if done tastefully. Look at this great video posted by Lightricks:

Cadence: There is no need to stop social media, or even necessarily to pull back, rather just make sure that the following rules apply to any piece that is posted:

• NO bragging.
• Any events that are not happening right now are not relevant! If you are trying to promote an event that is happening in the next 50 days, people will just assume you are very far removed from reality, and any events post May/June — optimistic. Whatever it is, no one is going to book travel or commit budgets or thought-space right now to an event so don’t bother. If you want to get your finger on the pulse of how people feel about “virtual events” take a look at this interesting thread from #SXSW veteran Brian Wallace over on his Facebook feed:

• When it comes to employer brand content. Stick to topics that are empathetic of the current situation, (ie: health steps your company is taking, CSR related).
• AVOID! “Selling” or pushing a product on the back of the pandemic. Try to educate, give advice and be helpful! As mentioned above, there are some great companies opening up their technology for free to help people at this time, not trying to make a buck off of it. Microsoft Teams, Zoom, NICE — just a few brands to admire and I am sure there are thousands more.
• Tone: Nothing braggy, no celebrations, no parties, you can reference the times in a sympathetic way. ie: We are all stuck in different stages of lock-down/quarantine, so now’s a good time to catch up on best practices with XXXX. Watch this on-demand webinar and reach out if you have any questions.
• Where possible we advise that company leaders and employees take a stand and speak out on their own LinkedIn. Voice of the People is much more powerful right now than anything a company can say. So use your people to be your voice. See a great example from the CEO of Deep Instinct, Guy Caspi, here:

• Business as usual: There is a fine line between just doing what you have always done, and using social media effectively in these times. Business as usual can be shown in educational content, through voice of the people, if you are still recruiting — nothing sends a more powerful message right now as many many people have found themselves stuck at home with no employment. This is why I say, you don’t need to pull back, you just need to change what you are doing to “fit in” with the trends.

So now you have reached the conclusion, there is one final important thing to say, and you are probably all pondering it anyway. For how much longer? As with any trend, there is always a threshold. For how much longer can we expect that people will WANT to see content relevant to COVID-19, for how much longer will the tolerance level support more calls-to-arms, top tips for working from home, more “in these uncertain times…” blah blahs. It’s impossible to say for sure, but my prediction is that we are only just beginning and at least for the next 2–3 weeks, as more and more countries go on lock-down, and as more and more people learn to adjust to a new reality. Social Media in Times of a Pandemic 101 is here to stay!
Feel free to share your experiences below in the comments or ask me any questions:

Companies keep approaching us to ask how to optimize social media for talent acquisition. They are not talking about those pesky "we are hiring" job posts that you see every day. They are talking about employee brand and brand awareness to make them seem more attractive to potential employees and for the purposes of retaining existing employees. The thing is, there is one very very important thing ALL companies need to be doing to leverage social media for talent acquisition, and most are NOT doing it!

Advocacy!
The most important resources that you have at your disposal for social media are the people who currently work in your company. If you are not leveraging them, not just with introduction bonuses, but through brand awareness and story telling. Then you are missing a very important channel for talent acquisition.
Most companies spend a fortune on 3rd party tools, such as on Linkedin jobs or life pages trying to optimize the visibility of their hiring needs. Not only that, the most active members of staff, on social media, are normally only the HR people. But an HR person, even with the best intentions, can only reach so far into the digital world. Companies forget that the people who work for them are the best brand ambassadors that they have. When a devops team lead shares that the company is looking for new people, he or she is more likely to have a network of relevant connections, than the HR personnel. Especially, if they share more than just a "we are hiring" post and actually leverage social to tell a story about the technological advances of the company or great reasons why it is a good company to work for. Employee pride says a lot more about a company than all the thousands of $$$ spent on paying linkedin to host a JOB or LIFE sections on Linkedin.

We recently helped 2 companies with different talent acquisition "pains" look at how they could optimize social media to tell a better brand story, using their employees. We not only brainstormed the messages that we thought would help them "sell" those open positions better. We looked at who to leverage in the company and how those advocates could help drive better quality and more visibility for their brand and specifically for open positions.

One company with over 20,000 employees, just by recruiting several hundred advocates has managed to drive 20 times more applicants to their jobsite than before. Another company with 6,000+ employees, of which only 1,500 are active advocates, has managed to double all social engagements YoY.
It speaks volumes that the posts that are winning our 20K employee client more engagements and click-throughs than any other posts, are the ones that highlight employee success, showcase reasons why the company is a great place to work, and even show the fun side of the company.

So how can businesses face this challenge? Here are three things we recommend that you can do right now to implement a successful talent brand on social media.
1. Strong Social Media presenceWhy does a strong social media make a difference to potential new employees? It is likely future employees will do online research on your company to view if the company offers work-perks, learning opportunities, benefits, and showcases positive employee-employer relationship.
Being transparent and active on social media shows that the company is advanced and not scared to move towards the future. Showcasing real people and real stories is a great way to leverage your successes and entice new employees. At the same time, involving your existing employees instills a sense of pride in the workplace and the contribution they make, making them more likely to stay the distance.

What to implement: Increase day to day social media posting and story-telling, not only job postings.
2. Showcase Company Perks/BenefitsPotential employees want to see that the company offers above and beyond what other companies in the same field offer. This includes things like training, advancement opportunities and free perks like travel and meals. Some of the things our clients have implemented include once a week sushi lunch for all employees. Career learning and advancement opportunities etc...
3. Positive Employee Advocacy - tell stories through the eyes of your employeesHaving your employees share company posts/news will show that your company is involved with their employees. Shows potential employees that the current employees enjoy working at your company and that they can enjoy it too. The more employees share/like/comment the companies posts on social media, the bigger/wider the reach will be. Use your employees to be the "stars" in your social posts. Highlight their successes and impact on your clients.

What to Implement: Have your employees share on their own social media accounts a positive experience they had with your company. This will show other companies/potential employers a real feel of your company. The employee with the most likes/shares/comments receives a reward.
Summary:The people who work for you are your best path to people you want to have work for you. Telling your brand story on social media and having these people share it opens you up to a much wider audience and will ultimately help you to identify and employ the right people much faster.
Do not be afraid to use social media for this avenue, trust us, you would be surprised if I could show you the actual results of who is looking at your page on social media, what demographics they are in and how they are engaging with your posts. Many of them are potential hiring candidates and NOT the analysts, journalists and business partners you WISH were engaging with your social brand. Although they are there too. But I will leave you with this one thought. If you are pushing a positive employee brand on social, for the purposes of talent acquisition, using the best practices we have mentioned above... and... an analyst or potential customer sees these posts. They won't shy away from your product and not take you seriously, AFAIK, they will probably be more impressed at your pride and transparency and curious to work too with a company that takes such pride in its' people and work. Now that's brand positivity!
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ZoecialMedia is a social media creative agency. We will help you face any challenge on social media and create a strategy and creative plan to leverage your digital channels for more brand visibility and credibility. Speak to us about a no-obligation audit of your social channels. www.zoecialmedia.com