Finding Events
Using LinkedIn for event promotion starts with engaging with this social media tool daily. Professionals who get the most out of LinkedIn recommend logging in and updating your status once a day. You should also review your LinkedIn home page two times a day to learn the latest about your connections.
If you don’t get around to logging in that frequently, you still may have the LinkedIn updates emailed to you once a week. At the bottom of those updates, it shows what events your connections are attending. Even easier is to go to the bottom right hand column of your LinkedIn homepage and click the link.
See events your connections are attending
If for any reason you don’t have the LinkedIn Event application on your profile, it can be found and added under the Applications Folder. This Applications Directory can be found under the More Tab at the top right.
The LinkedIn Event feature makes it easy for individuals to let their network know which events they are attending. I have often found new events to attend just by seeing what my connections are attending. In this application, you can also go to the Find Events Tab you can search events by keyword, timeframe, and location.
Promoting Your Event
To add and promote your event on LinkedIn, go to the Events section at the bottom right and click on: Browse events for you.
- Click on the tab Add an Event. Enter the event information and click the Publish button. Be sure to add important, searchable keywords in the keywords section to help with the Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Also important is to add your registration link to the website section.
- Invite up to 50 connections in your network that are in the target audience. The connections can be filtered by location and industry. Invite them to join you at the event and ask them to forward the information to others who may be interested. The SirLinkedAlot Blog suggests that you share and recommend the event on your status page once a day
- Encourage those who cannot attend to click on the Interested button to keep the event in the front of their network. Everyone can see the RSVPs!
- If the budget allows for it, consider doing a targeted LinkedIn ad campaign to promote the event
- Create a LinkedIn Group for your event, invite members and post the latest status for the event, industry news and discussions, as well as encourage members to post their own news and discussions to keep the group dynamic and interactive
- Post discussions related to your event to other Linkedin Groups with related interests
- Blog about the event and use the WordPress or Blog Link application to have blog posts show up in your Linkedin Profile
- Add a SlideShare application to your profile and create a SlideShare presentation about the benefits of attending the event
- If you have video clips from past events, upload them to YouTube and then add that YouTube video to your LinkedIn profile through the Google Presentation application.
- Feed occasional key event-related tweets from your Twitter account to your LinkedIn status. Just be careful not to feed tweets too frequently to LinkedIn, as it will overcrowd the status updates for your connections
Please share your favorite ways that you have used LinkedIn for event promotion.
Beth McCullough 