Why LinkedIn's Makeover Is a Win for B2B Marketers

This week on Extreme Makeover: Social Network Edition, LinkedIn’s company pages get a refreshing overhaul to bring some panache to the drab professional website. And while LinkedIn has been growing as a powerful tool for B2B marketers, they’ve also been working hard to increase its reach and effectiveness for companies.

With that in mind, LinkedIn has rolled out a number of new functionalities that really improve the website’s potential for generating B2B referrals. Read on for 4 of LinkedIn’s changes and how they can help your business get more leads and customer referrals.

1. Enhanced Target Audience Segmentation:

While not necessarily a new feature, LinkedIn’s content targeting feature plays a larger role post-revamp. By clicking the “targeted audience” option when posting an update, you’ll get a pop up with options based on geography, industry, seniority and other specific categories.

This feature allows you to segment your followers and deliver highly relevant content to the right audience. You’ll also be able to see how many followers you are targeting with your post to ensure maximum exposure. Companies can leverage this feature to make conversations more relevant and valuable to their niche. The more valuable the content, the more customers will share it across their networks and the more likely you are to generate new customer referrals.

2. Better Follower and Engagement Metrics:

With an increased emphasis on comprehensive metrics, LinkedIn makes it much easier to track and optimize engagement over time. By analyzing these metrics, you can measure your brand’s influence and social media ROI. More importantly, you’ll see who is sharing/liking your content to better target your updates and, again, increase sharing on other social networks.

3. A Restructured Products & Services Page

The Products & Services page is now featured on the right sidebar of your profile and highlights names, job titles and profile images of users that recommended your brand. Recommendations are easier to see and read, providing social proof to the utility of your product that lends legitimacy and increased engagement to your brand.

4. Mobile Optimized Content

A report put out in August found that LinkedIn receives 23% of its unique visitors via mobile. The company has gotten wind of this trend and now allows users to search company pages on their phones/tablets. This is great news for marketers looking to capitalize on mobile-to-mobile sharing, especially for company news and updates.

So maybe it’s not an extreme makeover, but LinkedIn has certainly made it easier for companies to create a unique page that’s more effective at bringing in new leads. And with the right strategy, you can get the business casual customer referral party started today.

To learn more about why LinkedIn works for getting B2B customer referrals, check out our report.