How to Leverage LinkedIn Live for Business Growth: Tips and Best Practices

• Updated on: 2021-01-10
• Read original article here

Every business, big or small, needs to be present on LinkedIn.

It’s the key to take your virtual presence to the next level. By helping you connect with your prospective customers in a professional setup, LinkedIn is one social media platform you can’t ignore while drafting your social strategy.

The professional social networking site has over 722 million members located in 200 countries and regions – so you can understand its power.

But in a social landscape as crowded as LinkedIn, brands often find it challenging to make their message heard. What’s the solution?

By streaming your video content live, you can reach out to your community in real-time, and in some cases, even create a community if it’s missing hitherto.

Here’s what you need to know to leverage LinkedIn Live streaming for your business growth.

Getting started with LinkedIn Live isn’t as easy as live streaming on other platforms. To ensure you do it right, follow the below-mentioned steps:

Currently, LinkedIn Live is available only for those who apply. The feature is in the beta phase, and giving access to selected members helps the platform maintain quality live video content.

To apply for access, visit the application page and submit your information. Once you have gained approval, continue with the next steps.

You’ll need a third-party broadcasting tool to create broadcast live on LinkedIn. Check the pricing, features, and customer support levels to make the right choice.

After you’ve chosen the right tool, it’s time to integrate it with your LinkedIn account and set it up on your device.

Make sure you have a stable internet connection, and there’s adequate lighting in the room. To know more on how to optimize your setup before you live stream, read: 11 Tools For Successful Live-Streaming: Essentials To Rock Your Live Videos

Once you have the perfect live streaming setting, it’s time to hit the live button!

There’s more you need to do to ensure remarkable LinkedIn Live streams. Here are some best practices to help you expand your live streams’ reach on the platform and engage your audience better.

If you can’t identify who your audience is, chances are your live streams may fail to create an impact on them. Invest some time in developing data-backed archetypes of your target customers. Find out their demographics, their locations, what time are they most active on LinkedIn, etc.

The bottom line is: you don’t want to stream for only a couple of viewers. So, make efforts to find out about your audience and create content that relates to your best prospects. Here’s how you can use website demographics to discover more about your audience.

The live streaming thrill is amazing. Some LinkedIn users even jump straightaway to the bandwagon and go live without a plan. But that’s an absolute no.

Just like any other content type for your brand, LinkedIn Live streams also need a strategy. So, produce some killer ideas with step-by-step information on how you want to achieve your bigger video marketing goals with your LinkedIn Live broadcasts.

Now, this can be a little tricky if you live stream regularly on LinkedIn. You can think of fresh topics by exploring the industry. Think of delivering solutions about the concerns that bother your LinkedIn audience the most.

The key is to stay relevant and stay valuable to your audience, just like EUROCONTROL does in this stream. A part of the organization’s Aviation Hardtalk Live Series, this broadcast shares some highly useful insights about the aviation industry.

Picture this: you went live on LinkedIn, the audience engagement was excellent, the information you shared was bang-on, and your viewers are now waiting for more of such broadcasts. But you’re not available.

So, if you want to make the most of your LinkedIn Live streams, create a schedule and follow it consistently. Pick a specified time, day, or week to go live each month and keep your audience informed about the upcoming broadcast to build anticipation.

Adding on to the point mentioned above, promote your live broadcast well to draw a more extensive viewer base. Create a short but compelling description about the stream, informing your audience what to expect from the stream and when they should tune in.

Use Wave.video to create stunning graphics and teaser videos about your upcoming live streams and share them along with some killing descriptions to catch your audience’s attention. But ensure that you time them right.

Also, tag the guest speakers (if any) to build more traction.

And don’t forget to add relevant but catchy hashtags, especially #LinkedInlive!

See how TTEC does that while promoting their AMA live stream.

Pro Tip: Promote your LinkedIn Live stream not just on LinkedIn but on all other social media platforms that you are on. If possible, shoot an email and create a landing page on your website too. Posting on LinkedIn, Facebook groups can also help with cross-promotion.

Going live doesn’t mean you don’t need a structure or speaking points. In fact, it becomes all the more important to have an outline ready because you can’t edit the video later, as you can with your non-live videos.

Knowing what to speak and when keeps you on track and holds your viewers’ attention as well. So, ensure that you have the main speaking points ready before you go live. And if you have a guest speaker, acquaint them with points that they can speak on.

Once your outline is ready, go for a practice run-through. Whether you are going solo or have a guest speaker with you, practice to make everything comfortable and to estimate the amount of time the live stream will take to cover all the points.

To get yourself ready for a confident live show, follow these tips provided by Ian Anderson Gray, the Founder of the Confident Live Marketing Academy.

As you rehearse, don’t memorize. Leave enough room for flexibility and a certain amount of spontaneity too. Because let’s face it, it’s a live stream at the end, and it has to be impromptu.  After all, you won’t be able to keep your audience engaged with a memorized, monotonous speech, right?

While practicing beforehand decreases the odds of on-air mishaps and slipups, testing ahead of time ensures a smooth running of your broadcast. Test the audio, video, lighting, internet connection, and all the devices you will use to stream live.

Although you can’t totally prevent on-air blunders, testing things in advance helps you avoid audience frustration because of technical glitches that could have prevented by being proactive.

Live video without engagement is a futile attempt. So, respond in real-time to engage your audience and keep them hooked to the screens throughout your live stream. Being agile in answering queries will build trust and might as well bring a few leads.

And to engage your viewers well, ensure that you have two devices ready – one for streaming and the other to monitor comments and answer questions.

Pro Tip: Hire a moderator or ask a family member or friend to help you with the broadcast. They can help you stay on track by mentioning the right points or even monitoring the conversation as you engage with the audience.

As with any live video, it often takes time to settle in. Viewers take time to join in, and you might want to break the ice before sharing the real information. So, consider LinkedIn Live streaming for at least 15 minutes. Anything shorter may not serve the purpose here.

Live viewers usually join in throughout the stream. This makes it important to frequently reintroduce yourself, any guest speakers you may have, and your stream’s topic to ensure that all the viewers are up-to-date.

Understand the difference between LinkedIn and other social media platforms. Here, people are more interested in informational streams that add value to their lives. That’s why you must educate your audience with unique insights that help them with their professional growth.

Besides portraying you as an authority figure in the industry, educating your audience will help build trust and affinity – the long-term players that boost brand-love.

While including a call to action (CTA) in your live stream or its description makes sense, please don’t go overboard with it.

Remember, LinkedIn Live is all about fostering professional connections, not hard-selling through advertisements.

Be it promoting your podcast or a sign-up request, introduce the CTA subtly into the stream without making it the sole purpose.

Check out Gartner’s “Reinvent Your Digital Foundations to Drive the Resilient Enterprise” broadcast and notice how it effortlessly introduces a CTA but doesn’t go too heavy on it.

A successful live stream can bring significant traffic to your LinkedIn page.

Therefore, build a strong presence with a winning LinkedIn page containing all the essential information about your business. Here are a few tips that can get you going:

Unilever has an excellent LinkedIn presence with stunning graphics and a well-crafted copy.

To level up your LinkedIn Live streaming strategy, don’t forget to analyze your live streams’ performance. Measure the key metrics and put the findings to good use by tweaking your live streaming strategy wherever needed. In short, optimize your future streams based on past performance.

Here are a few indicators you need to keep a tab on to measure the success of your live streams on LinkedIn:

Going live is great. However, you must utilize the broadcast even when it’s over because live doesn’t mean it can’t stay alive.

Save your live streams and integrate them with other content forms. For example, you can create blog posts or social media posts on the information you shared during your LinkedIn Live session.

You can also create snippets or short-form videos with Wave.video and post them on your social media platforms, including LinkedIn. Perhaps, you can create a video landing page on your live broadcast.

The options are multiple. You need to diversify into various content types to ensure that your message reaches far and wide.

LinkedIn Live streaming is like no other live streaming capability. It’s available to a few. It needs third-party apps to stream. And it focuses on content quality more than quantity.

So, you have to be cautious enough to present your business in a manner that your brand messaging aligns with your target audience.

Here are a few suggestions to use LinkedIn Live videos for your business growth.

From conferences and workshops to presentations and keynote discussions, you can boost audience engagement for any event by hosting it virtually on LinkedIn Live.

While LinkedIn isn’t too keen on hosting live streams with an excessive focus on brand promotion, you can always share a quick tutorial on how to use a product or service. You can also introduce a new launch and interact with your potential customers through live comments.

Interviews or Q&A sessions act as the fuel your live streams need to continue making an impact on your audience.

Conduct interviews with industry experts and share some valuable tips and insights with your audience. If done well, this strategy will also help you tap into the influencer’s audience and increase your viewership.

Alternatively, you can conduct Q&As and establish yourself as an industry authority, just like Philips does in the example below.

Quite similar to the Q&A sessions, Ask-Me-Anythings (AMAs) are interviews where the viewers ask questions. An incredible way to bring in more audience to your streams, AMA sessions can help you deliver value by letting your viewers know what matters the most to them.

You may not fancy being a trendsetter on LinkedIn, but staying up-to-date with the latest trends can help you boost your audience reach. So, ensure that you highlight industry trends or even seasonal trends, for that matter.

For example, Beyond Clean discusses the challenges manual cleaning poses in today’s Sterile Processing context and shares meaningful solutions as well.

If you have live-streamed before on any other social networking platform, chances are you know the concept of behind-the-scenes. Giving your LinkedIn connections a sneak peek into your office or an event that your company is hosting can be fun and engaging.

Use LinkedIn Live to share important news about your business and make your connections a part of the celebrations.

Teleperformance, a digitally integrated business services provider, recently went live on LinkedIn, where the company’s Chairman and CEO Daniel Julien announced about the Group’s USA operations receiving the prestigious Great Place to Work (GPTW) award.

Just like most new-normals, virtual hiring is also a new-normal. To leverage the potential that online recruiting holds, adopt a LinkedIn Live streaming strategy. And ensure that it focuses on talent-hiring and talent branding. Host online career fairs and inform potential candidates about new jobs with information that’s hard to find elsewhere.

You can also boost your employer brand by showing your brand personality through a live stream that gives a glimpse into your company culture.

In this LinkedIn Live video, Facebook talks about its culture of inclusivity and community. And don’t miss that CTA to attract potential candidates. Indeed, a smart way to give a boost to both talent-hiring and talent branding.

There’s something exceedingly exciting about real-time connections. So much that social media networks can’t help but introduce live streaming features to help foster real-time connections between their users. LinkedIn may be the last of the major social media networking sites to jump on the live bandwagon. But the doors of opportunities that it has opened for its users seem endless.

So, go ahead. Attract, engage, and drive more customers to your business by delivering value through

Do you have some tips that can help businesses maximize LinkedIn Live? Share them below and keep anointing us with some live-streaming stardust.