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Social Media Marketing Talk Show
LinkedIn Updates: Boosted Profile Posts, Creative Trend Data, and More
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- [00:01]
Social Media Marketing World Promo
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Jerry Potter
Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Talk.
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Judy Fox
Show, your guide to the ever changing world of social media.
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Jerry Potter
On today's show, we are going to explore some important LinkedIn updates, including the content that's working best on LinkedIn as we enter 2025. Also, some lessons from the paid ad side that we can totally use, not only with paid ads, but also in organic posting. Some really interesting stuff. And is there going to be finally a way to run PA campaigns without a LinkedIn company page? Yeah, kind of. At least the most clear way we've ever had. We'll update you on all of that right now. My name is Jerry Potter, host of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a Social Media examiner production where we break down all the latest social media news and what it means for marketers like you. Today I'm joined by Judy fox. Judy's a LinkedIn strategist and her course is called the LinkedIn Business Accelerator. Judy, welcome to the show.
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Judy Fox
Excited to be here.
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Jerry Potter
So LinkedIn has their cover image on profiles. It's always been there and it's always kind of been small and awkwardly sized compared to, let's say a Facebook cover photo. But now they're unrolling a new feature with multiple cover images. So talk to us about that.
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Judy Fox
Yeah. So at the top of your profile, it is a banner, a cover image. I like to call it the billboard on the Internet highway. People are driving past your profile and that is the first above the fold thing that people see. And now by being able to upload several pictures, I think you can get up to five in there right now. It will auto scroll and it'll be something that is a moving something that can catch people's eyes. Again, if you had a choice between a static billboard on a highway versus a moving image, rotating image type of feature that is going to catch people's eyes and you can share more information in a visual storytelling way by using a billboard that is dynamic like that.
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Jerry Potter
And this is for LinkedIn Premium subscribers. Have you thought about, like, ways that like, you might use it or how you might recommend your clients use it?
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Judy Fox
Yes. So I Will give give an example of someone. Michaela Alexis is using it and she has several up there that scroll through information about her business. I will also say I've noticed and I'm planning on doing one that is only two to scroll because I've noticed a few people when they scroll so fast, you can't read everything that's on each one. But if you're only rotating between two, it actually allows the consumer to kind of process, oh, this one, this one. And that is already a lot of information you can put now on two banners versus trying to get us to consume five in a row.
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Jerry Potter
So are there no manual controls right now? Like it just scrolls. You can't go back and forth or pause or anything?
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Judy Fox
There is manual controls, but I would say it's not as maybe intuitive for somebody who isn't spending a lot of time on the platform. And it auto scrolls whether you are thinking about wanting to pause it or not. It's just going to kind of do it and it is a little bit quick. So I would say if you're thinking, you know, for your business, you're trying to communicate something that does catch people's eyes. Trying to create five might be a lot of assets you're trying to build, whereas you could just upload two and have. And take advantage of that feature. I think that is the best choice. If you had a choice between trying to do five and two. Two looks amazing. I've seen people upload it and it is a really nice consumer experience because you don't feel like you missed information on that middle slide or that it scrolled too fast. It doesn't feel like it scrolls as fast.
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Jerry Potter
Okay, I'll have to do some stalking of some profiles and see, see how this looks. Because my first thought was I used to do web design when I worked at an agency and you know, the client always wanted these beautiful big, you know, the hero slide, they call it the big picture at the top. And you scroll through and it's like, nobody's gonna scroll through those. Like, it's just. It's just not gonna happen. The user behavior's not there. I thought of as kind of as a potential throwaway. But then I thought, do you think it could work if you had almost designed essentially carousels, like a LinkedIn carousel where you took people through. So it was like three reasons why this is such and such. And then you had the three reasons that would shift the beliefs for your potential clients or customers?
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Judy Fox
Yes, I think using it as a carousel, using it to show don't tell who you are and what you do for, especially in that middle slide. If you do upload three or if you have five, maybe there's no text on a few of them and you're doing more visual before and after storytelling. Maybe you're a interior designer and you want to show a before and after. Those are great slide visual storytelling. So, yes, anything you can do in that type of format and make it visual, that would be perfect. If you have a team image, maybe you don't want to promote that on the first one, but put it in the middle and you have your whole team in a picture. Picture.
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Jerry Potter
Okay. But not a bunch of text is.
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Judy Fox
What I'm hearing you say it's really hard to read. And to know that you can pause, there's not really an intuitive feeling. You might think, oh, I need to press my finger or my mouse on it. But it doesn't feel like there's interaction for you to pause it. It doesn't give that feeling.
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Jerry Potter
Okay. And marketers will figure out new ways to use it, I'm sure, as we go along. But that'll be cool to check out. All right. And you know, we always want to know what the content that's working best on LinkedIn and now another signal directly from LinkedIn them themselves that people are consuming video on LinkedIn. Can you tell us about this update?
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Judy Fox
Yes. A direct quote from LinkedIn is that video is a central part of LinkedIn. They're. It's like they're saying it as truth or they want it to come true. Either way, it doesn't matter. They are telling you and they're doing it not just in their talk, but in their action by uploading and creating a new video experience. So I don't know if you spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and you've seen a change to just opening up the app that you're able to see a video that shows up without that kind of post text that we're used to seeing above a piece of content. It's now just showing up as a. Just a bold video right at the top of your newsfeed. And they've also even created like a video scrollable experience that might still be in beta, but it's on your cell phone that you can just scroll. Very similar to Instagram Reels or TikTok or YouTube shorts.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing about this was, you know, they added that video tab. I feel like I was the last one in the world to get it, even though I'm sure I wasn't. But now it is just in the regular feed. And so you don't even have to think to go to that tab. They're, they're drawing more people in in the same way that Facebook and Instagram did by just adding it to the regular feed. And once you're locked into that full screen video experience, it can be hard to jump back out of it.
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Judy Fox
I mean, I'm also going to share the video experience because they want it to. Like I said, they want to LinkedIn video a central part of the experience of getting on LinkedIn. So they're pushing a lot of views, they're prioritizing it, they're making it important in their algorithms. So even if you say to yourself, you know, I've uploaded video in the past and hasn't really worked or it hasn't tipped over, I, I would say still keep going. There's people I've heard have tipped over to hundreds of thousands of views and even in the last couple weeks. Okay, so it's something that you may say, well, it hasn't worked in the past. Well, LinkedIn's saying we're going to start pushing that experience harder and harder.
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Jerry Potter
Yes.
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Judy Fox
So it's win for you and then win for LinkedIn.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah, we've, and we've got this report on stuff that's working in paid ads that you can use for organic as well. And some of that's about video that we'll get into here in just a second. And as you just pointed out, things are always changing. Right. Last year brought enormous change for us as marketers. AI is completely altering the way that we do our jobs. If you are looking for a place where you can talk about all these changes with fellow marketers, we've built such a place. It's called Social Media Marketing world. Coming up March 30th through April 1st. It's so soon now. Attendee Suni O'Malley said, I went to Social Media Marketing World with an open mind, not knowing what to expect other than other attendees saying it was the best experience ever. It was that and so much more. Judy's going to be there giving a Talk called combining AI and LinkedIn to improve your B2B marketing success. You can join us as well. Get your all access ticket today. Just go to socialmediamarketing world again, social mediamarketing. So LinkedIn did a what they call a creative trends analysis. I like the name. About exactly what worked in 2024 and this was some really interesting stuff. So tell us about your Favorite parts of this report, Judy?
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Judy Fox
Well, as an engineer, I absolutely love the numbers. Chemical engineering is my background, so I did write down some numbers. So if I look at my notes, that's what I'm looking at. But I love that they leveraged AI to help understand a big set of data that LinkedIn has on all of the content results from 2024. So my maybe most exciting one that I really enjoyed was that you are going to convert more if you use and lean into benefits advertising, if you're focused on the impact that your company makes, the positive outcomes that your clients are going to get, not just the features or the tools or the maybe pain points that people do like to say. But LinkedIn has confirmed it's a 740, 38% increase when you do benefits advertising. Wow, that is a huge number. And I loved that. I was like, that is music to my fox ears. I have been speaking that so much and I'm so excited. The data backs that up well.
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Jerry Potter
And some of the phrases they used like future proofing, I mean that's just a good piece of copy because as humans we're much more worried about what we might lose as opposed to what we might gain. And so future proofing is kind of like, hey, your business is going to fall apart if you don't do this stuff. But yeah, almost 800% is just a crazy number for anything.
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Judy Fox
I love that. And then I also really enjoyed hearing that you get a four times increase in brand equity by evoking an emotion. And I think we think to we hear, okay, I need emotion. I need storytelling. It can be as simple as letting your audience know what emotion you wish they were having. And just use that word. I woke up concerned today that's just sharing. Hey, here's where I'm landing. And this post will have this emotion and that clarity is what converts. It tells people immediately the story will be leaning in on this emotion.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah, that's great. They did some interesting stuff about color and contrast as well. So what did you see with that?
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Judy Fox
Well, I also really liked hearing that jewelry or any kind of personal touches like ears. That's why I leaned harder. I was like, I'm, they're telling me it's going to increase my watch views and and view through rates to 53%. So yes, I'm going to lean into the data as an engineer. Yeah, I wear fox ears, but it's for fun. And it's also for conversion. Casual clothing, an increase in 37% of people to watch the whole video when they feel like they can relate to somebody who is showing up as a peer, not somebody who's dressed in a way that they can't relate to or don't normally interact with and even content with multiple people. Hi, Jerry. We are here together.
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Jerry Potter
Hello.
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Judy Fox
We're getting an increase of 14%. I love all these numbers.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah. On the casual clothing thing, do you think that is. Is that a reflection of casual overall? Because when you said a peer, when you're talking to a peer, they're not being filmed from three angles. There's not music playing in the background. Like, do you think that kind of is part of that same type of thing? We're looking for that authenticity.
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Judy Fox
Yes. The final thing that they were linking to and yeah, I'll talk about color, but it goes into a B2B. Audience wants to connect to the full spectrum of emotions and work life experiences. And that shows up more when you are casual, when you are real, when you have relatable things in your background of your video or you are wearing relatable clothing or just things we would want to go have a beer with somebody after work or go out to lunch with your co worker and have these kinds of off the cuff moments of connection just create so much more trust and experience. And you can reflect that through casual clothing, jewelry, relatable items that we can all have in common and have a conversation about. Even having things like books in your background allow people to look at the background and go, oh, I've read that book. And that creates a thread of connection.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah. And then they talked a little bit about color and contrast. And I know you and I both got excited about this one.
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Judy Fox
Yes. So we do use a lot of blue. I'm wearing a blue. You've got a lot of blue. It's a very. Color theory is very strong. But they did say having even pops of pink, which is interesting. I naturally have some pops of pink in my background. Like I have a candle that's pink back there. I'm not saying that's the end all be all, but it is more visually engaging to see color versus a maybe overall washed out imagery or a too neutral or blank of a space.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah. And pink they specifically cited when I worked at the agency years ago, we used to ab test all the time. And when Facebook is not that blue anymore, even though that's their color, it's on most visuals it's just kind of that the logo is about it. But back then it was very blue. And so we would do anytime with clients, we would do red or oranges or pink, it would just everything would always perform better.
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Judy Fox
I did upload a video a year or so ago that I was wearing just a really pink outfit. I didn't think about it. I didn't have this AI data, creative insights, but I did remember that video did so well. But I also received so many comments about the pink shirt and I thought that was really interesting. So even after that, I, at Social Media Marketing World on purpose wore a really bright pink shirt one year to try to see did I get a different reaction. You know, we're just drawn to energy and energy comes out through our attitude and our personality. But we can be linked to energy because of color and our clothing and how we express ourselves.
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Jerry Potter
So one of the limitations on LinkedIn has always been you've kind of had to have a company page to run any paid ads. They introduced these thought leader ads where a company could promote the post of a profile. But now they are introducing boosting for LinkedIn personal profile posts. So what do we know about this so far?
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Judy Fox
Well, I always want to start out by saying they are testing this. So if you don't have access to it, it is as of January 2025. This is very much in beta, beta testing. And what it sounds like from the research and seeing some examples is that you can make a beta personal post on your personal profile and boost it to a target audience and kind of leverage some of the ad campaign data that is available to company pages but do it now on a personal profile. So that is huge to do it directly from say for example, the CEO of your company or AC suite, or you ask yourself if you could get that message out from that person, would you boost that information and make sure that post is going out to the target audience you want to be seen by.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah, I love this. And what I always said about boosting with people on Facebook because they sort of popularize that term, right? If your content's not doing well organically, like getting it in front of more people is usually not going to do anything. And so I always refer to it as ego boosting. Boosting, like your ego will be boosted because you go, look at all these likes. And then a week later you go, I got, I got nothing else from that. So. But yeah, LinkedIn saying increase your visibility, follower count, website traffic, all by boosting selected posts. So it'll be interesting to see how this rolls out.
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Judy Fox
I think what you just shared is also important because it could be a really great strategy. It is a great strategy. Not could Be it is a great strategy, what you just shared, which is maybe consider what has performed well for you in the past organically, and make sure to be ready to upload that to then boost something that you've already done that maybe is a year old, but you know it converted, you know it worked and you just didn't get the reaction. Or you did get a great reaction a year ago, you just know you could do even better now.
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Jerry Potter
Have you seen anything about whether or not people will be able to boost older content?
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Judy Fox
I just was considering uploading something that is older. I mean, if I uploaded something from a couple years ago, not everybody saw it and I chose to boost it. Now, even if it did well, you would want to pick something that maybe did well in 2022 or 2023, resurface it, reformat it a little bit to be relevant to today. But if it did well in the past, leverage that data you already have.
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Jerry Potter
I mean, I would love to be able to take an older post that did well, keep the social proof that's already on it, and then put money behind it, assuming it's relevant. Right. As soon as it's not like, yeah, we're all wearing masks now and it's 2020 or whatever, that would be great.
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Judy Fox
I don't know if that's possible, but that would be great. But if it did well in the past, I would assume it could also do well if you resurface it again.
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Jerry Potter
Yeah. Another thing to kind of one know when we actually get access to this is on most advertising platforms, when you turn anything to an ad, the date is removed, so people wouldn't know it was old. But obviously you wouldn't want to be putting money behind something that clearly said 2017 at the top or anything like that.
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Judy Fox
Yeah.
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Jerry Potter
So, all right. And speaking of ads, the LinkedIn advertising platform, the overall one, has some updates. So for those that run paid ads, run us through some of these updates, please.
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Judy Fox
Well, I'm going to first shout out AJ Wilcox when it comes to ads, as who I get any of my ad information from. And he'll be at Social Media Marketing World. Correct. And the quick rundown is again, I'm going to lean into AI and data. Is this perfect marriage of being able to give us more insights in especially a dashboard type of way. So they're calling maybe instead of company engagement reports, they're just going to call it like an engagement hub or a company hub. I don't know how to say it, but it's going to give you some levels Like a low, medium, high, very high engagement insight, which is really cool to get, like I said, a dashboard for your data. There's going to be deep engagement insights. They have a lot of filler words here and effective targeting. I do really like if you are getting in front of the right people, you're going to maximize your return on investment of your advertising and of course being able to have really great reporting at the other end to share with who your stakeholders are, who your team is so they can know where they want to spend their money in the future.
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Jerry Potter
I think you nailed, you know, the, the best use of AI is and, and I think especially in this year, I mean obviously there's more, more to come that we don't even, you know, that I can't even fathom right now. But it is not just asking it for information but getting it to make these judgment calls or, or make these, you know, recommendations based on it. And you know, one of the things they talked about with, with engaging these engagement levels, you can now take these reports and then save those as targetable audiences where you can really see a lot more about what touch points are making the biggest impact, you know, throughout your whole sales process. So it's really interesting to see where it's all going.
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Judy Fox
Yeah, as you said, the ability to merge AI and data can give you insights but also distill those insights. Of course I'm going to read any kind of key benefits because hello, Benefits are the 800% increase in selling me on what LinkedIn LinkedIn's doing. So good job LinkedIn. But you know, hearing things like all this, qualified lead optimization, it's going to give me higher quality leads. I'm going to boost conversion rates with a better lead optimizing tool and dashboard. So and of course at the end of the day we want better ROI of our time and our money. So if you can get in front of the right people, that's going to always be good data and money well spent.
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Jerry Potter
And unlike the boosting on personal profiles we just talked about, companies Hub is supposed to be available worldwide to all campaign manager customers. So this should all be available to you now if you are running paid ads. So there's going to be lots of Great talks about LinkedIn and AI of course at Social Media Marketing World. Quick reminder to learn more about your all access ticket, virtual ticket or an all new AI ticket for Social Media Marketing World. Just go to SocialMediaMarketing World again at Social MediaMarketing World. Judy, where is the best place to.
- [21:27]
Judy Fox
Discover more about you I am@judx.com and I'm also on LinkedIn. The best way to is connect. Follow me. Let me know you listen to today's episode and I would love to connect with you.
- [21:41]
Jerry Potter
Awesome. And if you want to add another podcast to your listening lineup, couple for you to check out the AI Explored podcast as well as the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Get them wherever you get your podcasts. And until next time, may you be wise with your marketing decisions. Thanks everyone. Bye.
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Judy Fox
The Social Media Marketing Talk show is a Social Media examiner production.
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Jerry Potter
For more social media Insight, visit social.
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Social Media Marketing World Promo
Mediaexaminer.Com Make 2025 your best year ever. Grab your discount tickets to Social Media Marketing World right now by visiting social mediamarketingworld.info.