Introduction
In the world of virtual networking and events, LinkedIn Live is gaining popularity among professionals looking to engage with their audience in real time. LinkedIn Live is changing the game when it comes to live broadcasting on social media platforms.
LinkedIn creators are starting to leverage on lives to take their personal brands further on the platform. Let's take a closer look at what LinkedIn Live offers and how it can enhance your personal branding efforts.
Key Takeaways
LinkedIn Live is a LinkedIn feature that's slightly different from LinkedIn Audio Event. LinkedIn Live enables you to stream your video and present your slides to offer real-time interaction with your audience.
The feature helps in scaling personal brands as it's a more personal and exclusive approach to interact with your community, helping you to: (a) boost awareness (b) boost engagement (c) understand your audience (d) generate leads (e) establish thought leadership
There's a set of framework to start hosting a seamless LinkedIn event. You'd need to plan and prepare the action items for pre-event, during event and post-event.
Dissecting LinkedIn Live
LinkedIn Live Features
LinkedIn Live allows real-time interaction with your audience. Unlike pre-recorded videos, the live enables you to engage with your viewers by answering questions, responding to comments, and fostering meaningful interactions.
During the live session there's likely to be moments where you'd speak up to:
Showcase your expertise
Share what you can add value to your audience
Position yourself as the industry thought leader.
LinkedIn Live vs. LinkedIn Audio Event
LinkedIn Live is often compared to LinkedIn Audio Event, a feature that allows you to host a live audio-only event. Both differ in some of the specific features:
| LinkedIn Live | LinkedIn Audio Event |
Can you stream video? | Yes. You'd need third-party live streaming tools like Streamyard. | No |
Can you present slides? | Yes. You'd need third-party live streaming tools like Streamyard. | No |
Can the audience speak? | No | Yes. You can spotlight one of the attendees and bring them on stage, so they can speak directly to you during the event. |
Can the audience comment to interact with you? | Yes. Your audience can share their thoughts in the comments section to interact with you. | Commenting can only happen on the audio event page. |
Can the audience react during event? | Yes. There's a few reactions/emojis for your audience to click on for interaction. | Yes. There's a few reactions/emojis for your audience to click on for interaction. |
LinkedIn Live is a strategic move for personal brands
Business leaders are starting to adopt personal branding to humanise their brands. Why? Buyers now are not only interested in products/services, but also in the people behind them.
The decision-making to purchase something is more so driven by emotions. That said, buyers tend to be more convinced by why you sell > what you sell. They want to understand the person behind a company brand, assess if the person is reliable enough in the industry, and decide if they want to keep listening to the person (ultimately, make a purchase).
LinkedIn becomes a useful channel to answer what buyers need and are looking for as LinkedIn enables business leaders to showcase their expertise, share their side of the story and build lasting relationships with key stakeholders for their business. And now LinkedIn Live takes it further - It provides a more interactive and exclusive touchpoint for audience to learn more from a particular person.
How LinkedIn Live adds value to your brand
1. Increase brand awareness
Every LinkedIn Live you host is an opportunity to scale your brand presence. You're able to invite your community and new connections to the event. On one end, your Live event may be up on the events recommendation section for LinkedIn users to consider attending.
When someone lands on the event page, usually they'd be able to see who's hosting and click onto the person's LinkedIn profile.
For every click onto your profile, that's considered one profile view that can help with your online visibility. After the LinkedIn Live, if the attendees find your sharing helpful and useful, this gives them a compelling reason to start following you and seeing more of your content on that platform. All these together would help boost brand awareness, making more and more people in the LinkedIn community to notice you.
2. Boost engagement with your audience
LinkedIn Live events are more interactive and engaging than pre-recorded videos or static content. It's real-time nature encourages people to participate and interact through discussions, so that you'd have better interaction and engagement with your attendees.
Usually after a LinkedIn Live event, your audience would get quite warm to you for a short period of time. That's a good timing to keep building relationships with them through value-driven content, or even personalised LinkedIn DMs.
3. Understand your audience
Through the interactions with your audience during the event, it's likely you may receive feedback and insights on how they respond to the topic of interest. It's also a direct opportunity to understand their preferences and pain-points.
Once you've gather those info, you may put them into your LinkedIn content. So the next time your audience reads them, they perceive as a person who truly understands what they're looking for. Over time it's likely that they'd build trust with you.
Some content formats can look like:
Educating them about the problem they face
Highlighting pain-points
Offering your solution to the problem
4. Generate leads
Among the ones who attend the LinkedIn Live, there might be a few who's interested in you and your business. Those are likely to be your leads. So if you're able to identify them, you can explore opportunities or collaboration with them (or they might choose to take up your offer).
One of the ways to assess if they're a potential lead is through post-event engagement. You may send over personalised messages to them post-event, and assess them from their replies (e.g., they downloaded your resources, they said they're interested to chat more with you, they asked you questions)
E.g., To send personalised messages to your attendees post-event, the messages may include:
A thank you message
A lead magnet (A free resources/document that you'd want to offer to them)
A follow-up question (e.g., Ask for feedback, ask for suggestions, etc.)
A call-to-action (e.g., Have a coffee chat, Subscribe to newsletter, etc.)
5. Establish thought leadership
Apart from leveraging on content marketing to showcase your industry expertise, LinkedIn Lives are a more exclusive and human platform for your audience to listen to what you have to say. Having your face appearing on the screen and slides to support your talking points are likely to make you seem more credible and reliable.
Creating a seamless LinkedIn Live - A checklist
In order to create a successful LinkedIn Live event, there are several key steps to take before, during, and after the event to ensure a seamless and engaging experience for attendees.
Pre-event planning
☑️ Determine the topic and goals for the event
☑️ Promote the event with pre-event content
☑️ Invite connections to attend the event
☑️ Plan for the event (e.g., equipments, guests, recording, slides, third-party live streaming tool)
☑️ Rehearse prior to the event
During the event
☑️ Start the event on the event page
☑️ Get your live-streaming tool ready
☑️ Deliver your value-driven content
☑️ Encourage interactions with attendees through the comment section, live polls, QnA sessions
☑️ Have a person-in-charge to help moderate the comment section
☑️ Respond promptly to the questions and comments
☑️ Provide clear call-to-action at the end of the event
Post-event follow-up
☑️ Send personalised messages to attendees to thank them
☑️ Offer lead magnet or freebies (if applicable)
☑️ Repurpose your sharing from the event into your LinkedIn content
☑️ Send DMs to attendees to answer any unanswered questions
☑️ Keep conversations going to build relationships
Measuring Success
☑️ Identify key metrics
☑️ Review your goals
☑️ Analyse event data
☑️ Write a report and discuss with your team
Final Thoughts
Having LinkedIn Live as part of your LinkedIn strategy would add value to your personal brand by boosting your online presence and engagement with your community on the platform.
As LinkedIn continues to refine and release its varied features, it's crucial to experiment with the LinkedIn Live events you host and analyse the performance. That way you'd know what works (and what's not) for your audience.
About us
We're a team of content marketing strategists and social sales specialists supporting business leaders in growing their personal brands on LinkedIn.
Our core focus is on creating targeted and value-packed content with real stories/ideas to help achieve your goals on social media.
Learn more about scaling your personal brand on LinkedIn here.