Leveraging LinkedIn for companies in China
Find here Daxue Talks episode 80. Our guests Julien Sicard and Tamar Hela from LinkedIn Local Asia (Shanghai) share how LinkedIn can be used effectively for businesses and individuals. How to leverage LinkedIn for networking and build an online community? How is Wechat used for the 3000-member LinkedIn community in Shanghai?
Full transcript below:
How can a LinkedIn user or company better take advantage of LinkedIn groups?
If we compare the LinkedIn groups in comparison to the Facebook group, the algorithm of LinkedIn is definitely not for the groups. It’s very centered on the personal profile and regarding that, I mean there is not that much to take advantage of the LinkedIn group. Some people would be in certain groups, so let’s say you’re targeting real estate people in Dubai. You might find a group on LinkedIn but it’s not one of the best ways actually to target people. We don’t know, maybe as they’re growing they change, maybe they will definitely position the groups as a priority but my gut feeling telling me is more again with live video. Because of the current situation, more and more companies and people are going online, so live streaming is definitely a way. At the moment the live streaming feature is limited to certain influencers on LinkedIn. We’re going to see what will happen with the group but at the moment I don’t believe the groups will be a strong feature on LinkedIn.
How can one merge online and offline communities on LinkedIn to expand their audience?
Great question, that’s exactly what we do with LinkedIn local and that’s how LinkedIn local started. It was started by a community, a woman in Australia who worked from home and was feeling quite lonely about not having co-workers to see every day, but she noticed that online on LinkedIn things were very active for her. So, she started LinkedIn Local and thought maybe there’s a few people in my community who want to meet up, share ideas, talk about business, talked about LinkedIn and how we network and use it for our business and from that it just grew exponentially. So I said in the introduction, it’s become this huge community and what’s really special about this particular community more than other types of meet ups, even if it’s focused on LinkedIn, this is like the official group and it keeps things so professional and so filtered. We would want to say because when you have a strong brand like LinkedIn, it’s different than other social media platforms. Even just networking events, two people can also connect online from offline, so it goes both ways and I think especially nowadays it’s so important to do that because people want a human connection.
How can companies in China use LinkedIn Local?
There are many aspects and LinkedIn Local in Shanghai is very particular because we use the power of WeChat. One of the aspects that is very interesting for a company is using one of our WeChat groups to boost their engagement, meaning like we’re going to share different posts, like that between community members, we’re going to like, we’re going to comment. So, we are together in the algorithm meaning it’s more free visibility. This is an amazing opportunity for the company because we don’t charge for that and we create a system, we educate the members on how to take advantage of the algorithm.
Besides this technical aspect there is the fact that inside our community it’s so well qualified, meaning we’ve got more than 70% of people that are high executive or CEO, meaning that inside the community there is definitely a network to take advantage and we have seen that – I mean like the last months more and more community members train to make business together so it is super interesting, beyond the fact that okay you are – we organize like networking events and whatever and yeah – so the third aspect I would say its education because right now LinkedIn it’s a big deal. Maybe not a few months ago before the current situation that we have, but if you don’t know how to prospect online, or you go for this innovation of prospecting online, meaning you use the best platform for that, meaning linked in right – and if you don’t do that while it’s simple, you’re just going to die. Your business is just going to die, and again as a community leader – obviously there is the agency but as a community leader well I think it was the main purpose, and like, we share different workshops, through different webinars or even the WeChat group when we have time, to again answering some questions to add to most of the businesses that we can right. So yeah this is the three main aspects that I would say, especially here in Shanghai how people can and businesses can take advantage of LinkedIn Local.
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