Apr 21, 2020
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Transcript:
LinkedIn Pages are inextricably connected to LinkedIn Ads. And we're talking to the head of Pages today about the newest features, and you're not gonna want to miss it.
0:14
Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox.
0:23
Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics. On this episode, I interview Ting
Ba, LinkedIn's Head of their Pages product. I've been excited about
this one for a while. Since pages are so crucial to advertising, I
thought you'd love to hear the most recent updates on the product.
First off, I have to apologize for the sound quality on this
interview. Ting is amazing. And she's also incredibly busy. And we
couldn't make this happen while I was there in person. So as soon
as I found out that she could do it over zoom without good audio
equipment. I said screw it, I'm happy to record however we could
make this happen.
0:56
So let's hit it. Hi, everyone. I'm super excited to introduce you
to Ting Ba. She is the group Product Marketing Manager at LinkedIn
over Pages. Ting, first of all, welcome. Thanks for coming on. And
we'd love to hear about you tell us about you personally at work,
anything you'd want to share.
1:13
Thanks, AJ so much for having me happy to introduce myself. So like
he says, I'm a group Product Marketing Manager for LinkedIn Pages.
I've been with LinkedIn for actually just over a year. It's crazy
how time flies by. And in my role, I lead Product Marketing for
LinkedIn Pages, and reallyall the different kind of organic
opportunities a business could take advantage of on our platform.
And I have to say, I truly, genuinely love my job. I get to really
help businesses of all sizes all over the world find success on our
platform, which is really very gratifying for me, because I come
from a background of, you know,family that's largely small business
owners and so very personally gratifying. Just in terms of me,
personally, you know a bit about me, I live in the California Bay
Area, in Paul Alto, with my husband, and we've got two little
girls, Audrey and Sophie. Audrey is one, Sophie is four. And yeah,
just very blessed to be able to, you know, do a job I love and have
a family that I get to hang out with after work.
2:09
That's awesome. And you're in the right place because you are
leading a product that we all use. And I'm sure love. And so
thanks, first of all, for all your hard work on your product. As
many of you may know, LinkedIn Pages are inextricably linked to
advertising. So that's my interest in having Ting come on and talk
about this. But there was also a recent quarterly update that went
out. And so stay tuned here at the end, we'll get to talk a little
bit more about that. I think foundationally we really have to start
with what our LinkedIn Pages give us the very basics of how we
should understand how this fits into our roles to our companies to
our marketing mix.
2:47
Yeah, AJ, that's such a great question. I think it's really
important to start with something foundational like that, which is
essentially what is the LinkedIn Page? So really, quite simply, a
LinkedIn Page is what I would consider to be a business's most
Important online asset. It's essentially your foundation in the
world's professional community. It's a place where businesses of
all sizes really all over the world can share their mission, their
vision, their values, and also promote their products and services
with a professional community. It's actually the first place that
LinkedIn members go so they can learn more about your brand, what
you stand for, and why they should do business with you or work for
you, for that matter. So I would say actually, in the same way that
a LinkedIn profile offers this unique value to members to grow
themselves. A LinkedIn Page offers this unique value to
organizations.
3:35
And you did mention in there about kind of these employment
opportunities as well as promoting the company. Can you share a
little bit about how how companies can go about buoying up your
page to help it look better for recruiting versus trying to look
good as a company and maybe trying to get business out of that?
3:54
Yeah, it's a great question is, you know, kind of the way that you
would strategize corporate branding versus talent branding. It's a
great question. If you're really focused on talent branding, there
are things you can just do completely for free, without spending
any dollars on our platform to help showcase your talent brand.
Some things I've seen some brands do a good job of is they
spotlight their current employees and really showcase, you know,
what their passions are for working for the company, but also by
their passions outside of work, I think spotlighting employees is a
really great way to humanize your brand and show your true talent
potential. But in terms of corporate brand, there's a whole bunch
of things that you can do with your page to really showcase what
your company is all about. There's some of the features that I'll
definitely talk to you as we talk about what recently launched, but
some ideas that I have are off the top of my bat is just you know,
leveraging video, right, or potentially leveraging document uploads
to showcase the best of your brand. With document uploads. You can
upload PDFs, PowerPoints, and Word docs to showcase perhaps your
menu of services or customer testimonials. With video, video is
just really taken off in our platform. You know, it's actually the
fastest growing content type, completely free to use, and members
really engage with it. So those are just some ways of how you can
use some of our features to really better promote your corporate
brand.
5:08
That's fantastic. So let's say there's someone out there who does
not currently have a a business's company page, or sorry, I keep
calling a company page, we should call them organizational pages.
What would you tell someone? Why should someone go obviously, who
isn't an advertiser? Why should someone go and set up a page on
LinkedIn? And how should they think about filling it out and making
the most of it?
5:31
That's a really common question that I get AJ. Oftentimes, people
ask like, well, that's great you're sharing all this with me, but
why should I care? Like, why should I actually put the time and
effort into creating a LinkedIn Page? So, I can answer this
question by just kind of taking a step back and sharing with you
more about the LinkedIn platform.
5:49
So as you know, LinkedIn is a professional community. And generally
speaking, we've seen some incredibly strong growth when it comes to
the number of members that are actually joining our platform. In
fact, as of today, we have over 645 million professionals that are
actually on our platform. And I also want to mention that for the
third year in a row, LinkedIn has been votedas the most trusted
social media platform, which I think is really important in this
day and age. Lastly, I want to also share that last year, an
independent research agency actually put together this report,
pretty cool, to understand the different mindsets that consumers
have when they log into different social media platforms. And what
the research showed is thatwhen people log into LinkedIn, they
actually log inwith an intent and a mindset to learn and to
actually look for opportunities versus when they're on other
platforms, they're actually really more focused on passive
entertainment. And I think it's actually really important to note
that because what this means is that this is an incredibly unique
and powerful opportunity for businesses of all sizes, to really get
in front of a growing professional audience that's actually paying
attention and engaged from the moment they login. And considering
that the LinkedIn Page is really the first place people will look
when they want to learn more about you want to perform means that
you should really invest the effort upfront to set it up and keep
it maintained.
7:06
That's perfect. I love it. What would you say to someone who is,
let's say, marketing manager, they know they have five different
channels that they need to manage? Why should they come to their
LinkedIn page and share content specifically?
7:21
Yeah, it's a great question because we all know that people
nowadays, especially in marketing are very time strapped, right,
they're getting pulled in different directions. And people's
attention spans are generally pretty short. And so if you do spend
your valuable time on another platform, it really has to be worth
your time and attention. And so in order to really influence people
that LinkedIn is really a platform or the best again, I kind of go
back to those stats around how we have over 645 million
professionals on our platform, and that is the most trusted
platform actually, of all the social media platforms. I think that
trust actually is what really makes it go a long way. I think when
you have trust, that means that the messages that you're hearing
are actually landing with you, and actually leaving an impression
on you much more so and much more long lasting than if you want a
platform where you really can't trust all the advertisements and
all the direct messages you're hearing. I think trust is inherent
to building relationships and so of our platform has it, it's
definitely a place you want to be investing your time in.
8:15
I agree. I love when I go and check out a company. And I see that
they've shared something today or they shared something yesterday.
It shows the lights are on em someone's home and I tend to trust
that brand quite a bit more.
8:26
Yes, exactly. And it's the trust is definitely a key component. And
another thing that I think a lot of brands will immediately
recognize once you start investing is that the engagement quality
is especially high. You're not just getting reactions or kind of
like you know, your affinity metrics of like impressions and likes,
you are actually getting a quality comments from people. Because,
as you know, on LinkedIn, you're not anonymous. Everything's tied
back to professional profile. People go on not only to learn, but
they also want to demonstrate that they're thought leaders are that
they're experts in their professional field. And so you oftentimes
can have these really great, engaging quality conversations around
topics that people care about. And I think that's very rewarding, I
would think, as a marketing manager, right, to be able to actually
engage and build a relationship with the community. I think that's
that that kind of people will engagement is what really we should
all be aiming for in marketing.
9:14
I agree, it's not just an asset you set up once and tick the box.
And it's done. It's a place to actually spend time and a place to
really provide value, I think.
9:22
Yeah, I think it's really all about the long term value. And I
think when you have these kind of quality relationships and
conversations being built, that's where you really have like, I
think the framework for a long term, long term success.
9:33
So I remember the days of old where the company page, you really
had four things, you could put a logo on it, you could write a
paragraph, fill out a few fields, and that was kind of it. Those
days are gone. Your LinkedIn page really does more now, what are
the types of things that you can now do with with an organization's
page?
9:51
Yes, you've been there on the journey with us from the beginning
and things I've really uh, there's things have really evolved since
then. And so I would love to share with you what you can do with
it. Did pagers actually so much. And just to kind of make it a
little bit easier to kind of understand the different
opportunities, I'll bring it up into things you can do organically,
as well as things you can do through paid solutions. And so in
terms of what you can do organically, I'm really proud to share
that actually, you can get great organic reach on LinkedIn, which
is not super common lately, right? There's actually no cap to the
amount of organic reach you can get. And in fact, we've created
features to help you maximize your organic reach. And so a couple
things I want to highlight that are my favorite features.
10:28
One of them is communities hashtags, which we introduced a couple
of months ago. And so with this feature, what you can do is
associate your page with up to three different hashtags around
topics that you care about. And you can also see real time how many
members are following these hashtags. Now, the beauty of this
feature is you can actually click into the hashtag conversation
feed and kind of just see what people are talking about, see what
kind of posts are trending within this hashtag. And you can
actually click into the conversation to actually talk to people
from the perspective of your organization. Now that to me is one of
the most authentic and best organic ways to grow your brand's
awareness is by actually having conversations with people who care
about the same topics, but just maybe haven't heard of your brand.
Like, that's pretty cool.
11:12
And it's not just the followers that you get to to have. It's not
you're now getting your brand in front of people who are having
real active conversations. That's a big deal.
11:22
Yeah, exactly. It's not just your followers is way more broad than
that. And you're still talking to people who care about the same
topic because it's all around a topical hashtag. So completely
true.
11:31
Another thing I would highlight as something you really effective
you can do organically to increase your reach is a video. I
mentioned it earlier, but I'll say it again, you know, video, it's,
you know, organic video is free use on our platform. And it's such
a fast growing content type. It's actually five times more likely
to generate engagement than just a standard post. And very
recently, we also introduced LinkedIn Live, which is essentially
live video streaming on our platform. And this has just really
taken off on the platform. It actually drives, even compared to
regular video, 24 times more engagement, and brands are just really
loving all of the engagement that they're seeing. And so that's
another thing I'd highly recommend is something you can do right
now today organically on your page. Now, once you start to really,
you know, invest organically in your page to really make sure
you're taking full advantage of all the learnings, what we
recommend is that you actually check out your LinkedIn Page
analytics, because there's a robust set of information you can find
there. And you'll really be able to get a sense of who's visiting
your page and have deeper insights into their role, their function,
level of seniority, and also what kind of content resonates most
with them. And once you get a sense of this target, demographic
profile, and like what kind of content you should be sharing, this
is where the paid solutions can really come into play and impactful
role. We actually have a really strong portfolio of paid solutions
that can amplify all of your organic efforts. I'll just quickly
highlight some examples. Sponsored content is a really great
example of a paid solution. These are essentially apps that live in
our LinkedIn feed. And they include static image, video, and
carousel ads. And we actually combined a sponsored content campaign
in parallel with a sponsored inmail campaign, which are basically
targeted messages you can send to members, you can actually see a
two x lift and your overall conversion rate.
13:16
I love those stats of how each of the ad formats really works
together to help your overall goal. And that's something that we
can't see from our side. That's like, you guys can see it on your
side. And so we love it when you share that. Thanks so much.
13:30
Yeah, for sure.
13:32
So you just recently released a new update. This came out on
October 14, I believe it was a Tuesday. Oh, 15th. So it was the
quarterly update for pages. Can you tell us about what you
announced and maybe the effects how we as LinkedIn members, how we
should use it, what we should be excited about?
13:53
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that because we did make a pretty big
announcement. We're super excited about it. I'm happy to talk about
you know, what we what we talked about. So, at a high level, what
we launched are a series of features that will actually make it
easier for organizations to build meaningful professional
communities with members. And the first feature that we launched is
something called employee notifications. Now, this feature is
really exciting. It's one of its kind. And what it does is it
enables brands to transform their employees into brand advocates.
And I think this is really important because employees are
oftentimes every brands best advocate, right? They work for you.
They're proud to work for you. And they do want to actually talk
about the great work they're doing. But we've found that
historically, it's actually pretty hard for any brand to kind of
scale this. So that's why we introduced this new organic feature to
make it easier for brands to leverage their employees voices to
build meaningful awareness. Now, in terms of like how this should
be used by members. The way this works is, if a brand has an
important message that they want to have their employees share on
their behalf. What they can do is they can actually prompt their
employees through a push notification to reshare, that message, the
employees will actually get a push notification on their mobile
device available on iOS and Android. And they have an opportunity
to consider whether or not they actually want to share that with
their professional network. And we recommend you know that it's
really something you don't do more than say once a week as a brand.
So you don't over notify your employees. We actually have a built
in guardrails for you can't use this feature more than once every
seven days. So that's the first feature.
15:28
I love that one. I have to say, I get asked all the time from those
who are marketers, obviously, on the ad side, but they're saying
organically, we want to do something with our company, page too,
and maybe we don't have that many followers or when we share it
doesn't get all too much engagement or doesn't get more than let's
say if the employees themselves shared it. And yeah, this just
seems like such a great vehicle to leverage the networks and the
networks networks of all of your employees as well as grow your
company page. Following, this just feels like a total home run to
me.
16:02
Yeah. And AJ, I think you made a good point, because I think it all
comes back to what we talked about earlier, which is trust. I think
the reason why a lot of brands want to lean on employees to really
be brand advocates is because employees are, they're humans who are
trusted within their own professional communities. And I think when
you you know, really speak on behalf of a company for the company
speaking itself, it lands so much more, right with like, local
communities. And so I think it is actually a really powerful
feature. And I think I really what I really want to encourage
brands to do is really think about the messages that you're
sharing, make sure that they're ones that you feel are important
and are true to your company's mission versus more short term, you
know, kind of messages really make sure that their core to driving
forward, you know, I think a more long term message, and again, you
can only use this once a week, so make sure whatever message you do
pick that it's something that is a value to a larger community and
is more long term thinking.
16:54
And it seems like something that we as, let's say community
managers inside of companies should probably letting employees
know, like, hey, just a heads up, you're probably going to start
seeing notifications about the stuff that we as a company care
about the most. Do you recommend that kind of a pre messaging
strategy, letting them know, before you start sending push
notifications?
17:14
That's such a, that's such a good insight, actually, that probably
giving a heads up to your internal teams wouldbe helpful. So they
won't be as caught off guard or like they won't find it jarring
when they get a notification. And so I actually think that is a
really good best practice that and this is a feature you plan to
use frequently and right off the bat. But it's actually really
helpful to give people a heads up, so they're not surprised by it
or that they don't just ignore it.
17:36
That feels really good to me. So that was the first part of the
announcement. What were the other two announcements that came
out?
17:44
Yes. So along similar lines, right, you can kind of notice a theme
around you know, kind of leveraging employees. We also introduced
employee kudos and team moments as a way for brands to recognize
their employees and their teams on key milestones such as work
anniversaries, major Project completions or promotions. And
personally, I think that recognizing your teams and your employees,
the people who really do the work is important for all
organizational cultures. And I believe this is actually going to be
key for helping brands, humanize their brands in front of members,
and also better showcase their talent brand. And so we're really
excited about having watched that as well.
18:21
Is that an external thing? Or is it Do you have to be working for
the company in order to see those announcements,
18:26
So anyone can see those announcements. It's going to be broadly
available on your LinkedIn page. And one thing I do want to mention
is that you can only give kudos or share team bonus moments with
people who actually work for your company. Meaning like, you can't
recognize a partner today, or you can't recognize a customer. But I
think those are compelling use cases that we might consider in the
future. And we're always looking for feedback. So if there are, you
know, optimizations people like to see to this feature or anything
I just mentioned, please send them my way because we're always
looking for ways to optimize our product experiences.
18:57
Great, I think this is actually a positive thing that they have to
be associated with the company page to be recognized. Because every
once in a while we'll find an employee of a company who didn't type
the company's name in properly or set up their profile before the
company had a page or something, and they're not associated with
it. This feels like a great way to get your employees all on
associated to the right company page.
19:20
That's a good point, AJ, I did not think about that. That is
really, really good thinking. Yeah, that absolutely is true. It's
like a forcing function.
19:26
Yeah, totally.
19:29
All right. So anything else you want to share about the kudos
feature?
19:33
No, just that we are really excited about it. And definitely, as
you see it, you know, being launched to your page, definitely check
it out. Again, I think it's really key to establishing trust and
really humanizing your brand.
19:46
Great. And now tell us about the third feature announcement, or the
third feature announced?
19:51
Yes, this one I'm really excited about and it really comes I would
say just completely based on feedback we've gotten from our amazing
page admins. They're always giving us feedback. And one of the top
themes I've heard in general is like, you know, like, I get the
importance of a LinkedIn page, you've shared it, I know why you'd
create one, just help me, what are the first few steps? You know, I
mean, and we've created kind of more long form content, or we have
playbooks and videos. But, sometimes you just need something that's
really simple in product that can guide you. So that's exactly what
we launched is essentially a pages completion meter. And this is
essentially going to be your guide for building out your LinkedIn
page. And at LinkedIn, we've done the analysis on the back end to
really understand what are the top actions every page needs to take
to just find like baseline success, and we've broken down those
steps into a simple guided onboarding process. And so every page is
going to have this where they'll show you how far along you are in
the journey, what additional steps you need to take, you'll get
reminders, you'll be linked to best practices. Super excited about
the potential this has for onboarding getting people started in a
successful way.
20:52
Well, I'll tell you I'm super excited about this one, because the
more complete a company's page is, the more effective we are at
advertising to those companies, if you have this forcing function
where you're telling someone not necessarily forcing, but you're
telling someone, "Hey, your page is incomplete because you haven't
included your company size, or your industry" or something along
those lines, I think this can be great for advertisers.
21:15
Yes, I think so. And I think it'll be great for anyone who just
wants to start promoting themselves on LinkedIn, because there's a
lot of information that people don't realize, for example, there
are six required fields that you need to have in order to have a
complete page. And if you're missing even just one field, your page
just will not come up during member search. It's such a light lift
to just, you know, add a logo, add your URL, and so we'll tell you
exactly what you need exactly what you're missing. And just like
that, if you just simply fill out those six fields, complete pages
actually get 30% more pageviews. So you're literally just boosting
your traffic by these several steps, and so really excited for the
potential as well offer to two pages, both new aswell as
existing.
21:57
And to capture that 30% lift you, really, I mean, these aren't hard
questions. It's not like an exam, you just go and fill out the
company's basic information.
22:05
Like it's like your logo, you know, the city in which your business
operates, your URL, your industry, you know, pretty straightforward
things like that. And so all that is not going to be documented in
a very clear way directly within the products.
22:19
I love that. So other than logging in and watching things change as
they do quite rapidly in LinkedIn world. If someone wants to learn
more about pages in general, see the announcements, where do they
go? What resources do you have for them?
22:33
Yes, I have a resource that I love to share. It's our best
practices page. My team keeps it updated in as close to real time
as possible. The short link is lnkd.in/pagesbp. Quite a mouthful so
I'll repeat that again. It's lnkd.in/pagesbp. BP for best
practices. And if you scroll to, I would say the bottom third of
the page, you're gonna find a section that says dive deeper. And
there, we basically house all of our best practice materials,
including playbooks. And we have playbooks for SMBs. For
enterprises. for startups, we also have video tutorials for how to
use all these different features. So definitely check that out.
23:20
Oh, that's a great resource. And don't worry if if you were
exercising or driving in the car, you don't have to write that like
down, don't worry, that'll be in the show notes. So on the employee
push notifications, what should you encourage your employees to do
with that post to create the maximum impact for the company? Is it
a, you know, Hey, everyone, if you would comment and kind of build
this social proof like or is it a, you know, reshare it to your
network? What do you see as the best practice there?
23:49
That's a great question, AJ. I'll start by saying that ultimately,
it's up to each individual employee if they actually want to engage
with and further promote their company's content. And so it's
really something they should think about. forehand if they actually
do want to engage and reshare because it's not required, it's a
decision they can make. But if they do decide that it's something
they want to further promote. What we do recommend is resharing the
post to really help boost that message with their professional
network.
24:13
That's perfect. That comes to the end of our questions. So the
biggest question I want to ask to you is just what are you most
excited about? This can be your professional life, personal life, a
hobby, anything that you're working towards, but let us know what's
most exciting to you right now.
24:28
I love that question. And this is the right time to ask because I'm
all about the holidays. And with Thanksgiving, Halloween and
Christmas coming up. This is like my favorite time of year. And I'm
excited to be taking two weeks off to go to Tokyo and Taipei to
visit my family with my children. So that is what I'm the most
excited about. And I also just got a nice new camera to help
document all the photographs. And so this is something I'm really
looking forward to.
24:52
Oh, that's fantastic. Well, we're gonna be cheering you on in the
holidays. Enjoy that trip to Tokyo. I just want to say thank you so
much for coming on to the podcast and sharing everything about
pages. I think we are much better for understanding this as even
advertisers. And again, thanks for all your hard work on the
product making it so helpful to us.
25:13
Of course, thank you so much for having me. This was such a
pleasure to chat with you.
25:23
Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more?
AJ Wilcox, take it away.
25:33
All right, I hope you really enjoyed that episode, that awesome
interview with Ting, the Pages resource that she mentioned, the
link lnkd.in/pagesbp that link it's actually the full drawn out
link in the show notes down below. So click that to check out the
resource she was pointing you towards. Also anyone who's looking to
get started with LinkedIn Ads, definitely check out the course that
I did with LinkedIn Learning. And of course, if you are listening
to this for the first time, thank you for showing up and on
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