How to promote content with LinkedIn

In MARKETING
24 February 2022
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The Digital Publisher’s Guide to Social Media

Thanks to social media, delivering content to thousands of people at once is as easy as hitting the “Post” button. But it isn’t always easy to achieve the results you have in mind. That’s why we’re bringing you a new series all about making these channels work for your digital publishing needs. Next up: how to promote content with LinkedIn.

Why use LinkedIn to promote content?

If you think of LinkedIn mostly as a place to look for job openings, think again. Over the past several years, the social network built for professionals has added lots of new features and tools designed for content. Although it’s not the biggest social platform, LinkedIn’s 810 million users represent a particularly valuable audience of executives, entrepreneurs and employees.

As a result, LinkedIn has become a key channel for distributing B2B digital content. In other words, businesses that sell their products or services to other businesses want to be seen in LinkedIn Feeds. In fact, it’s the #1 social media network for B2B marketers with a content strategy. A recent study found that 95% said they published non-sponsored posts on LinkedIn. (More focused on B2C? Keep reading—B2C marketers use the platform, too.)

Since 30 million companies have joined LinkedIn, the importance of B2B influencers has exploded. Also called “thought leaders,” these users can attract big audiences to their reflections on trends, tools and ideas in business. Consider how your digital publications, from brochures to white papers, can help your company join the conversation and reach the right readers. Then, get ready to promote content with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Network icon

Choose the right format

The first choice you’ll need to make when posting your content to LinkedIn is what format to use. Because LinkedIn offers different options than most other social platforms, this can be a little more complicated than usual. For example, personal profiles and business pages don’t have the same posting possibilities.

If you’re posting from a business page to promote content with LinkedIn, you’ll have three main choices. You can create a classic Link post, an Image post or a Document post.

Link post

  • A Link post is great for sharing important sales and lead generation content, like your professional digital publications on Calaméo. Whether embedded on a landing page or ready to browse in our full-screen viewer, your publications can benefit from readers coming from LinkedIn.

Image post

  • An Image post will contain a featured .jpg or .png file, plus your message. To achieve an Image look while still including a link in your update, first enter the post text and link. Then, LinkedIn will pull a selection of images from your link to use in your post. Choose the image you prefer and hit Post!

Document post

  • A Document post allows you to publish an entire PDF file within a LinkedIn update. Readers will be able to view your document without ever leaving their feeds, which means you can share more complex content directly in the Feed.

If you’re posting from a personal profile, you also have access to LinkedIn’s Articles feature. The Articles format is similar to a blog post: longer than the messages that accompany Link, Image and Document posts, but more limited in scope than a digital publication.

In short, the post format that works best for you will depend on why you want to promote content with LinkedIn. For instance, Articles and Image posts might help you find new followers and build an audience on the platform. However, Link posts to your digital publications may be most effective for nurturing prospects and gaining customers.

LinkedIn Learning icon

Optimize your message

In addition to its professional user base, marketers love LinkedIn for its generally high engagement rates for organic posts. You should expect to see 1-2% of the people who see your update to comment, click, react or share. Meanwhile, engagement rates on Facebook and Twitter are only about half of that: 0.50% to 1%.

What’s more, LinkedIn has been open about the factors that make a post likely to get better reach. Above all, engagement matters. Getting your followers—and their followers!—to respond to your posts is the key factor to effectively promote content with LinkedIn.

So what can you do in concrete terms to encourage engagement? There are lots of ideas out there, but the most common advice is to focus on your post text. For every type of post format, you’ll be able to include a message of up to 700 characters. Use that space to speak to your audience! Explain why they should click, ask what they think, tell them a story about your content. To finish, add a few well-chosen hashtags to make your post easier to discover.

LinkedIn Messages icon

Watch for conversions

Once you’ve started sharing on LinkedIn, you can begin to evaluate the kinds of content that you’d most like to emphasize. For many B2B oriented companies, online content marketing with guides, case studies, white papers and more has become an important way to find new customers. And you’ll want to know how well these digital publications are performing.

LinkedIn provides a number of useful statistics about your updates, which are visible to company Page Administrators in their Analytics tab. Besides gaining valuable insights into your audience, you can check the reach, clicks and overall engagement rate of your posts. Unfortunately, there are no more specific details available about the digital publications that you’ve shared. In other words, even Document posts won’t have data about publication views.

Therefore, you can get the best out of both worlds when you promote content with LinkedIn that is part of your sales and marketing strategy. Create a post about a digital publication embedded on your website, where a pop-up form can generate leads. Or enrich your business’s catalogue with Shopping links, then share to support sales. Your digital publications on Calaméo come with advanced statistics that help you dig deeper into audience engagement.   

Ready to start?

Now that you’ve got all the details about how to promote content with LinkedIn, it’s time to turn your online documents into great digital publications. Sign up for your free Calaméo account today and explore what digital publishing can do for you!

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Thanks to digital marketing, getting the word out about your business has never been easier. However, it often takes time for a potential customer to go from visiting your website to buying your product. A strategy to generate leads can help make sure that you identify interested users. Then, follow up and make the sale!

In this article, we will reveal simple ways to put your digital publications to work as lead generation tools.

The pop-up contact form is a classic method to generate leads online that we have mentioned before here on the blog.

While pop-up forms are a great choice, especially if you are producing exclusive content, they can be time-consuming to manage. Consider an even more streamlined, user-friendly approach: a smart Contact button.

Why does a Contact button help generate leads?

No matter what kind of content you are publishing digitally, you’ll want readers to be able to contact you as easily as possible. Our Editor lets you add links inside your publication for users to email or call your business.

Creating a Contact button makes an easy path from browsing your content to getting in touch. As a result, users benefit and you capture high-quality leads. In fact, this simple tool saves readers from having to:

  • return to your site
  • hunt for contact info
  • open their inbox
  • enter your email address

That’s a lot of work just to ask a question! Instead, potential customers are free to check out your publication, click your contact link and call or email you instantly.

How to add a Contact button to your publications

Once you have decided where your contact links will appear in your publication, all you need to do is open it with the Calaméo Editor.

Next, select the External Link icon and draw a link in the place you’ve picked for a contact link.

Add external link in Calaméo Editor

To create an email message from your contact link, enter “mailto:” followed by your business’s email address in the External link field. If a reader clicks this link, her computer’s email client will open a new message to the chosen address.

Example email contact link

To add a telephone link, enter “tel:” followed by your business’s phone number in the External link field. Your readers can place a call directly from your publication just by clicking the link!

Example telephone contact link

💡 TIP: Note that telephone contact links are only authorized for devices with native telephone capabilities, such as tablets and smartphones. Email contact links work on any device.

How to add a Contact button to the viewer

By investing a little extra time, you can also make use of contact links in our publication viewer to generate leads. We recommend creating a custom Skin to include a Contact button. Here’s an example in the toolbar of our Default:

Example contact link in viewer toolbar

You can learn more about how to design your own Skin on our Developers page or in our illustrated, step-by-step tutorial. Plus, making changes is easier than ever with our Elements feature, which lets you edit your publication’s viewer Skin right in your Calaméo account. 

Whether you prefer a Contact button on the page or in the viewer, it’s a must-have for generating leads from your online content. And with Calaméo, you never have to sacrifice the immersive experience offered by digital publications for seamless customer contact.

In short, contact links are one more way that interactive digital publishing on Calaméo helps your business go beyond the PDF!

To try out these ideas to generate leads with digital publishing, request your 14-day PLATINUM Demo. You’ll enjoy access to all the great features of our professional plan, no credit card required.

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MARKETING

Sharing smarter documents: How filesharing services fall short

In MARKETING
9 November 2018

Filesharing tools have become an important part of modern digital life. Services like Dropbox store files on the cloud and synchronize them on different devices so that users can share and collaborate. However, they aren’t always the best option for distributing your documents online.

In this article, we will explain five ways that these services can fall short. Plus, learn why digital publishing can offer a great alternative to filesharing.

Lacks polish

Most popular filesharing services began as a tool that allowed users to work on a single file across multiple computers. For teamwork and individual use alike, filesharing is strongly associated with drafts and projects in progress. This can make it a poor choice for sharing finished work. We recommend publishing your reports, presentations and newsletters digitally for professional results.

Statistics not included

Whether you’re sharing sales material with a potential customer, circulating a memo to your team or publishing a magazine, you want information about how it is being viewed. Filesharing services generally do not provide readership statistics, so you won’t know if your audience has opened your document a dozen times or not at all. As an alternative to filesharing, opt for creating a digital publication on Calaméo. You’ll get insights on views and a full range of advanced statistics.

Limited enrichment

Although some filesharing services let users add external links and images to their documents, the possibilities for creating interactive publications are limited. With the Calaméo Editor, you can add links, video, audio and more to your publications in just a few clicks. Then all you have to do is share!

Privacy headaches

Filesharing services often require users to choose between making their documents available to everyone and approving viewers for private documents one-by-one. Want a single, private link to send to your whole mailing list? It’s easy with Calaméo. Just select “Allow access with a private URL” in your publication’s Properties. If you need more security, set up password protection for your documents with our Subscribers feature.

One look fits all

Since filesharing solutions focus on drafting, editing and modifying documents, they offer few options for tailoring your publication’s final appearance to your needs. Digitally published documents benefit from a dedicated viewer and on Calaméo, it’s fully customizable. You can add a logo, change the colors and even add your own buttons so that your publication matches your brand perfectly.

While filesharing services can be great for collaboration, digital publishing is a better fit for sharing professional, interactive documents with your audience. You’ll enjoy publications that look polished, smart privacy controls and advanced readership statistics. And the best part? Publishing on Calaméo is a breeze.

Sign up for free and start sharing smarter documents today!

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