Up to about three months ago, many B2B marketers relied on in-person events. They were a great way to gather audiences in one place, keep their attention for hours, build buzz, and seamlessly make the transition from sharing thought-leadership to starting sales conversations. Yet, even with lockdowns easing in some countries, it’s difficult to imagine such events taking place again anytime soon. As marketers, that leaves us looking for alternatives to energise our most important audiences – while showing that we care about their safety. Organic marketing tactics on LinkedIn provide many of the materials for filling the gap virtually.
How marketers are taking events virtual on LinkedIn
We’ve seen more professionals attracted to live video as a content format amid lockdowns. They’ve been spending more time consuming it – and more time creating it. Marketers are responding by creating live broadcasts: they’re sharing thought-provoking interviews, raising and answering questions in panel discussions, hosting tutorials, and running demonstrations with product walk-throughs.
More and more of these experiences are taking place through LinkedIn Live, which enables brands to stream video content from their LinkedIn Page. LinkedIn Live is currently in beta and you can apply for access to start using it here. It currently generates 6x more reactions and 23x more comments per post than standard organic video.
At the same time, marketers have been using another tool, LinkedIn Events, to build awareness of upcoming webinars and online workshops. LinkedIn Events is a bespoke home for your virtual events, enabling you to deliver tailored communication and reminder notifications to those who register to attend, through LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events both deliver important aspects of a virtual event experience. However, we quickly realised that they could do even more together. To help with the rapid pivot from in-person events to virtual ones, we’ve brought forward our plans to integrate the two solutions. You can now use them together to create an end-to-end virtual event experience for your chosen audience.
What’s changed with LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events?
The two solutions both work in the same way as they did before – only now you choose whether you want to stream your LinkedIn Live broadcast to all of your LinkedIn Page followers, or stream it as an event for a specific audience, in the same way as you would a webinar. This gives you powerful options for how you invite people to your live video event, issue notifications and curate an experience. When you turn LinkedIn Live broadcasts into LinkedIn Events you get control over who attends and how you communicate with them.
Business Cloud provider Domo used LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events to host its showpiece Domopalooza event. In doing so, it not only curated a more complete attendee experience, it also transformed the scope and scale of what Domopalooza could achieve. “The typical Domopalooza event draws a couple of thousand customers,” says Chief Strategy Officer, John Mellor. “We opened up the virtual event and saw 9,000 pre-registrations and more than 12,000 people watching the event, which was four of five times what we would have had in person.”
By using LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events together, you’ll be able to design the right event experience from your first buzz-building announcement, right through to welcoming attendees and keeping the conversation going after your sessions come to an end:
- Create a LinkedIn Event page for your LinkedIn Live broadcast
Your event page acts as a bespoke environment for your live stream, which audiences actively choose to be a part of. It means you can engage the specific people your event is relevant for. You can host private events, where you manually approve attendees before they join, or public events where anyone is welcome.
- Attract the right professional audiences in the right way
When you organise an event, you’ll be able to invite your first-degree connections to the event directly. You can also share the event page URL with your LinkedIn Page followers as an update, or with a wider target audience via Sponsored Content or Message Ads.
- Use reminders and updates to keep attendees engaged
Anyone that you invite directly will get automatic reminders to tune into your event, seven days, three days and 15 minutes ahead of time. If you’re sharing your event more widely as a link, it’s a good idea to build buzz by posting more updates as the time draws near.
- Host your live video event from LinkedIn Live
You must use a broadcast tool to stream video on LinkedIn. We partner with a wide range of live-streaming platforms, including Restream, Wirecast, Streamyard, and Socialive. Look out for more platforms becoming available over the next few months.
- Keep the engagement going with on-demand video content
The end of your live video event isn’t the end of the road for your LinkedIn Live video content. You can use the Video tab within your LinkedIn Page as a dedicated hub for on-demand video. Sharing your LinkedIn Live video here will help to maximise ongoing engagement for your event.
For B2B marketers, any LinkedIn Live broadcast is an event worth celebrating – and worth promoting. Use LinkedIn Live with LinkedIn Events, and you’ll find a powerful range of new options for doing so.
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