Do you need to launch a book or promote an event on LinkedIn? A great way to do this successfully is to collaborate with influencers.

This week I chat with Gordon Glenister about his new book “Influencer Marketing Strategy’.

There has also been plenty going on with LinkedIn since the last LinkedInformed!…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Linkedin launches its new learning hub. This is an LXP (learning experience platform) and is set to be a strong competitor to the likes of EdCast and Degreed. It will combine internal and external training resources, including LinkedIn learning of course but also includes a clever link to LinkedIn’s own Skills directory. More information about this from LinkedIn here or you can read a more independent view from Josh Bersin here.

LinkedIn launches a new TV ad campaign including a giveaway prize draw! The main message is that tending to your LinkedIn community little and often, just like watering your plant, can provide new opportunities and growth! As we’ve adjusted to new work environments over the various lockdowns, many of us have improved our at-home workspaces by adding a plant or two. Not only do plants stimulate productivity and creativity, but they also help reduce stress.

As part of the campaign, LinkedIn have teamed up with Patch Plants to giveaway 250 potted plants. To enter the giveaway, members simply need to:

• Share a picture of their current desk plant buddy on either LinkedIn or Instagram
• Tag @LinkedIn / @LinkedInUK
• Include #KeepGrowingI will certainly be entering although my desk plant needs very little attention…it’s plastic!

LinkedIn publishes their top 25 companies to work for 2021 lists. You can check out the UK one here which also includes links to all the other countries.

The list seems to be dominated by huge financial brands which did come as a bit of a surprise to me until I saw the following notification!

LinkedIn go into some detail about the methodology they use to decide on the top 25, all native data including ‘Skills growth’ (get your employees to add a load of random skills to their profile and you might get in the list!) and something called ‘External opportunity’ which looks at Recruiter outreach across employees at the company, signaling demand for workers coming from these companies - very interesting, but maybe another interpretation of Recruiter outreach is that they know employees of such companies are usually easy targets…which would signal the complete opposite of being a good employer!

Microsoft quarterly results show that LinkedIn have recovered well from the pandemic growing revenue by 25% and session growing by 29%.

How to write better InMails. This is a really good article from LinkedIn using their extensive data they have been able to show what structure and types of InMail work best. Much of this will also be applicable to direct messaging. No surprises as such (keep them short!) but good to see what we know confirmed in the data.

Dan Roth has launched a new Creator Weekly Newsletter. This is all part of LinkedIn’s push to support content creators more. It looks decent to me, well worth subscribing (click on the image below to do so).

How to Launch a book (or anything else) collaborating with Influencers on LinkedIn

I really enjoyed chatting with Gordon Glenister about how he successfully launched his new book ‘Influencer Marketing Strategy: How to Create Successful Influencer Marketing’. I haven’t known Gordon for very long but it doesn’t feel that way, he has a very warm, engaging style - a good skill to have when working with Influencers!

Below is a summary of my observations from our chat but I strongly advise you to listen to the full chat on the podcast to understand all the nuances of Gordons story.

Part of the strategy for writing and promoting the book was to get many contributors involved (75). Gordon wouldn’t normally tag so many people in a post but they were all people who contributed to his book so it seemed appropriate and it certainly didn’t appear to do harm as you can see by the number of reactions and comments it attracted!

Gordon also sent several direct messages to good friends when he posted this asking them to comment, like, etc. In addition, he is also a part of a small mastermind group of professionals who help each other by engaging with each others content. This is what a pod should be! (see episode 217)

Most of Gordons content around the book launch had a very ‘personal’ touch to it from images of him with his book to an unboxing video which is the sort of content that appeals much more than a polished corporate-style marketing campaign.

It’s pretty impressive to get 75 influential people to not only contribute to the book but also help promote the launch! Gordon has done this by spending the time and energy in developing relationships with the right people over many years. He uses LinkedIn to connect with speakers he meets at conferences and when he approaches them he is careful to offer them help rather than ask anything of them - having empathy and a positive, warm communication style is key to building these relationships. 65% of influencers fail to respond when approached via cold outreach emails and direct messages.

Gordon takes a very different approach and makes sure they are not made to feel like they are just a ‘media asset’. He has been nurturing these relationships for years and it paid off eventually but working with influencers is not an overnight success type strategy.

Gordon recommends forming groups of like-minded professionals who are all aiming to become more influential. Whilst you won’t always hit it off with everyone, you will find, over time that this group becomes a hugely valuable resource to every member.

You could do this by creating an exclusive, closed group on LinkedIn and focus your attention on finding members who at a similar stage in their career, want to become more influential and demonstrate a collaborative approach to their work. Why not start this strategy today, it may well become one of the best things you ever do on LinkedIn!

If you want to find out more about influencer marketing you can also listen to my interview with Neal Schaffer.

Post Of The Week

That’s it for this week.

I hope you found that useful and thought-provoking. Please feel free to reach out if you have any feedback or suggestions for the show.