We Studied Our Top Social Media Posts of 2017. Here’s What We Learned.

7 Tips for Building a Career in Marketing (Advice and Insights From Top Founders and Investors)

“How did you get into marketing?”

At Buffer, members of our marketing team are often asked this question. And the truth is, the path looks different for each of us:

• Alfred was in the army
• Arielle was a health coach
• Kevan, our Marketing Director, was a sports reporter

But for those of you out there who want to start a career in marketing or maybe build from where you are in 2018, we’d love to help you figure out:

• How can you transition from your current role into marketing?
• What should you focus on learning?
• What skills do you need?

To help answer these questions (and more!), we’ve teamed up with Product Hunt, who recently published their first book on careers. The book highlights the best insights from top founders and investors on mentorship, overcoming challenges, and the best and worst career advice they’ve received.

In this post, we’ll share some of the insights from Product Hunt’s book — including lessons from Tim Ferriss and Reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanian— as well as some advice on building a career in marketing from the Buffer marketing team.

Ready to jump in?

7 Tips for building a career in marketing

1. Form habits around your strengths

You are the average of the five people you associate with most. Also, you don’t need to get much right to be and feel successful. Just form habits around one or two strengths.

Tim Ferriss

In Product Hunt’s book, Tim Ferriss’ #1 piece of advice for anyone looking to kickstart their career is to “Form habits around a few strengths.”

And at Buffer, we’ve built our marketing team around our individual, core strengths. For example, as an Editor, I focus mainly on my strengths in content marketing and SEO:

As Kevan explains in our t-shaped marketer post:

Generally-speaking, everyone on the Buffer marketing team will have all the base knowledge and marketing foundation skills; plus, each teammate will have chosen at least one main channel in which they are an expert.

Try to form habits around whatever discipline of marketing you’re most excited about:

• If you’re into video, download some stock footage and start editing it
• If you want to become an SEO master, try reading as much content as possible from places like Moz, Ahrefs and Backlinko
• If writing is your thing, set aside time in your calendar each day to sit and write

It can be daunting to look at marketing and think you need to fully master: analytics, data, CRO, SEM, advertising, copywriting, SEO, community and more.

But in reality, to be a successful marketer, you don’t need to be an expert in every channel: one or two areas of expertise will be enough.

However, before diving right in and choosing an area or two to focus on, experiment with a bunch of different skills to see what’s the best fit for you.

2. “No” is just a starting point

The best piece of advice I ever received was that “No” is often just the starting point, and most careers worth having involve a fair amount of determination, grit, and just general “try, try again”-ing.

Kathryn Minshewf, Founder of The Muse

When it comes to kickstarting a career in marketing—or even climbing the ladder, you’ll likely hear “No” and a lot more than “Yes”.

From pitching editors content ideas to applying for various roles and freelance gigs, throughout my career, I’ve been told “No” plenty of times.

But what I learned along the way was that each “No” was bringing me a step closer to a “Yes”. For example, each article pitch I had rejected helped me to eventually land my first paid writing gig with Crew.

And When I landed my role at Buffer, it was actually the second time I applied — Kevan, who’s now our Marketing Director, was also unsuccessful in his first Buffer application: 

Kevan used the above note as motivation and failing to land his dream job helped him to realize where he could focus his energy to improve.

Treat each “No” as an opportunity to learn and refine your skills.

3. Focus on timeless skills

Write every day. Even if you’re not a writer, I find this practice to be clarifying for many things.

MG Siegler, Partner at Google Ventures

There are certain skills that will never become outdated in marketing. To name a few:

• Communication
• Writing
• Storytelling

These skills will always be valuable.

For example, whether it’s a blog post, copy for a landing page or captions for a video, writing will always be a key skill for marketers to have.

And before joining Buffer, Kevan used to write 2,000 words minimum every day to help improve his craft. Alfred also challenged himself to write every day before he worked at Buffer and again when he first transitioned into a content-focused role.

Try to find opportunities in everyday life where you can practice these timeless skills.

For instance:

• Treat every tweet or email you send as a chance to improve your writing skills
• Next time you’re speaking with a customer service agent, think about how you can make your communication really clear and easy to understand
• The next time you compose a Facebook status, think about how you can effectively tell the story you’re looking to share (these storytelling formulas may help)

 

4. Pursue side hustles

If you’ve got things you want to build, just build them for the sake of learning a new thing.

Alexis Ohanian, Co-founder of Reddit

At Buffer, we love side projects.

And when it comes to marketing, side projects can be a great way to learn new skills and embrace areas you’re passionate about.

For example, when our content crafter, Alfred, was keen to learn more about design and coding websites, he set out on a mission to redesign his personal site and code the changes himself.

Playing around with my personal blog design in Sketch again. Sharing a *very* early homepage design here. Thoughts are welcome! pic.twitter.com/oBJfDd05gn

— Alfred Lua (@alfred_lua) July 25, 2017

This side project enabled Alfred to level up his skills and now he can even commit changes to Buffer code:

Without taking on this side project, Alfred may not have had the opportunity to learn about design and development. But through a side project he’s picked up some skills that are invaluable to our team.

No matter what stage of your career you’re at, side projects are a great way to learn and level up your skills.

When it comes to thinking about a side project, I love the three rules for side projects that Hiut Denim Co shared on Medium:

1. They don’t have to provide you with a living. You can still eat if they fail.
2. They don’t have a deadline. And as there is no time pressure, you don’t revert to your usual formula. You try new things. You experiment. You take risks.
3. This is a Labour of Love. You provide the ‘Labour’. And you provide the ‘Love’. So when you spend time on it, it is because you really want to. That keeps you coming back and pushing it on. That’s important. This thing will require you to keep plugging away at it, maybe, for years.

And across the Buffer marketing team we still embrace side projects that help us to level up our skills in marketing and other areas:

• Kevan has a weekly newsletter on marketing and leadership
• Hailley has a future of work podcast
• Alfred has a fortnightly newsletter on marketing

5. Embrace the industry

I truly believe that to excel in a specific industry if you are a creative, you need to live and breathe the industry.

Helena Price, Photographer

Marketing is an ever-changing industry.

The platforms we use to reach our target audiences, like Facebook, Instagram and Google are constantly evolving and the tactics that deliver results one day, don’t the next.

Often, the most successful marketers succeed because they love what they do and always keep on top of the latest trends, news, and developments.

Marketers at all stages of their careers can benefit from following industry blogs, publishers and leaders.

Here’s a quick list of sources I’d recommend following:

Marketing industry blogs

• AdWeek: a leading source for news and insight for marketers
• AdAge: daily news and updates from the marketing and media landscape
• CMO: insights, expertise and inspiration for and by digital leaders

Individuals to follow

• Matt Navarra: for all things social media
• Rand Fishkin: for SEO, marketing and leadership
• Ali Mese: for a ton of great startup marketing and content advice

6. Help others

Figure out what you’re good at and start helping other people with it—give it away. Pay it forward.

Naval Ravikant, Co-founder of AngelList

One of the best ways to progress in your career is to help others.

When you take the time to help others solve problems and offer feedback, you get the chance to showcase your skills and build your network at the same time.

When it comes to finding people to help out, you could start with answering relevant questions on communities like Inbound, GrowthHackers and Quora.

For example, early in his career, Hubspot’s Director of Acquisition, Matthew Barby, searched the internet for marketing questions he could answer in order to help others:

I scoured through online forums and communities to find questions that I could answer, and when I did answer them, I’d go into great detail.

Keep your eyes peeled across social media for opportunities to help people in your niche, too. Often individuals will turn to Twitter and other online communities when they’re looking for some feedback or help.

Creating content is also a good way to help other marketers. For example, Kevan shares frequent insights about marketing at Buffer in his Medium publication, Crumbs:

And SEO consultant, Dan Shure, takes people behind the scenes of life in the SEO world with his vlog:

Always be on the lookout for opportunities to help others. 

7. Think like a journalist

The most important thing about being a good journalist is the ability to think critically. A good journalist asks the right questions, finds the truth in a story, and tells the reader what matters.

David Ewalt, Author of Of Dice and Men

With the above quote in mind, marketers and journalists are much alike.

In marketing, it’s important to always have a critical eye and question everything. For example, if traffic on your blog has increased, you might ask yourself:

• What’s caused the increase?
• Where is the traffic coming from?
• Why has this happened? And can we repeat this success?

It’s also important for marketers to find the truth in what we’re sharing. Often, marketing content will reference data or studies and it’s up to us as marketers to fact-check what we’re sharing and ensure we attribute the correct sources.

As Smooch. Editorial Director, Dan Levy, explains on Moz:

I once had a blog post queued up and ready to go live first thing the next morning until our eagle-eyed social strategist recognized one of the case studies cited in the post and noticed that the author had completely misinterpreted the results. In a small industry, examples and stats often get recycled from one blog to the next. The result is a case of broken telephone where the facts get muddled in transit. Proper attribution makes it easier to track where the breakdown occurred and to set the record straight.

In marketing, it’s a good practice to approach everything with a curious eye and look for the “why” and “how” behind every piece of data.

As Brian Balfour shares on his blog:

Real insights do not happen by scratching the surface. Real insights come from digging to the deeper layers.

Over to you

Thanks so much for checking out this post. If you’re interested in some more career advice from uber-successful founders and investors, you can check out Product Hunt’s book here.

I’d love to continue the conversation with you below, too.

What would your advice be for someone looking to build a career in marketing? Or if you’re trying to break into the marketing industry, feel free to ask any questions below in the comments.

source https://blog.bufferapp.com/career-in-marketing

10 Free Tools to Help You Understand Your Social Media Audience

We often recommend crafting your social media posts according to your audience.

But how you know who the individuals that make up your social media audience are? And how do you know what content they like?

Answering these two questions is essential if you’re looking to execute a successful social media strategy. And often, you’ll find the answers by turning to data and social media analytics.

In this post, I’ll share a few ways of using data to find out more about your social media audience across the major social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

How to learn more about your social media audience on the major social media platforms

Here’s an overview of the tools that you can use to help you understand who your followers are. Feel free to click on any of the social media platforms to skip to its section.

Facebook: Audience Insights, Page Insights, and graph search

Instagram: Instagram Insights and SocialRank

Twitter: Twitter analytics, Followerwonk, and SocialRank

LinkedIn: Linkedin analytics

Pinterest: Pinterest analytics

Facebook

Audience Insights – Demographics, Page Likes, and more

The most powerful tool to help you understand your Facebook Page fans is hidden within the Facebook Ads Manager: Audience Insights.

Here’s how to access your Audience Insights:

1. Click on the dropdown menu in the upper-right corner of any Facebook page
2. Select “Manage Ads”
3. Click on the “Facebook Ads” menu
4. Select “Audience Insights” (you might have to hover over “All Tools”)

Or you could access it via this direct link: https://www.facebook.com/ads/audience-insights.

Once you’re at your Audience Insights, select “People connected to your Page and enter your Page name under Connections > Pages.

Facebook might have, by default, selected “All United States” under “Location”. If you want a global view of your Facebook Page fans, hover over “All United States” and click on the cross.

Now, let’s find out who your Facebook Pages fans are!

Under the “Demographics” tab, you can get the following information:

• Age and gender distribution
• Lifestyle
• Relationship status
• Education level
• Job title

Under the “Page Likes” tab, you can get the following information:

• Top categories that your fans might like
• Pages that your fans might like

Under the “Locations” tab, you can get the following information:

• Top cities
• Top countries
• Top languages

Here’s the other information you can dig into:

• Activity – as in Facebook activities and their device usage
• Household – as in household size, income, etc.
• Purchase – as in purchase behavior

Household and purchase information is only available for audiences in the US currently.

You can get a good understanding of your Facebook fans from all this information. For example, here’s what I found about Buffer’s Facebook Page fans:

• In terms of age, the biggest group (45 percent) is people between 25 to 34.
• We have slightly more male (57 percent) than female fans (43 percent).
• Most of them work in “Management”, “Sales”, “Arts, Entertainment, Sports, and Media”.
• They also like software and internet companies like Hootsuite, MailChimp, and Social Media Examiner.
• In terms of location, the biggest group is people in the US (31 percent), followed by people in the UK (9 percent).

What did you find about your Facebook fans?

Page Insights – When your fans are online

Besides knowing your Facebook fans’ demographics, interests, and locations, you can also find out when they are using Facebook in a typical week and day.

In your Page Insights, under the “Post” tab, you have a section called “When Your Fans Are Online”. (It should like the screenshot above.)

Under the section, “Days”, you’ll see how many of your fans are active on Facebook on a given day. Under the section, “Times”, you’ll see how many of your fans are active on Facebook during each hour on a typical day. This is a great way to find your best times to post.

Most of our fans seem to be on Facebook every day of the week. On a typical day, they tend to be most active between 12 pm and 9 pm EDT. How about your fans?

Graph Search – Other Pages that your fans Like

While Audience Insights tells you the Pages your fans might like, Facebook’s Graph Search can tell you the Pages they have Liked.

To do this, type “pages like by people who like (your Page name)” on the search bar at the top of any Facebook page.

In the results, there’ll be a section, “Pages liked by people who like (your Page name)”. As the section title suggests, those are the Pages like by your Facebook Page fans. One thing to note is that the results seem to prioritize your friends. So essentially, these are Pages liked by your friends who also Liked your Facebook Page.

So what do you know about your Facebook Page fans now?

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Instagram

Instagram Insights – Demographics, location, and more

With a business profile on Instagram, the best way to learn about your followers is through Instagram Insights — Instagram’s free native analytics. (If you don’t have a business profile and want to convert, here’s how. If you don’t want to convert, read the next section.)

Here’s how to access your followers’ information in Instagram Insights:

1. Tap on your profile photo in the lower-right corner of the mobile app
2. Tap on the analytics button (the chart icon)
3. Scroll down to the “Followers” section and tap on “See more”

Here’s the information about your Instagram followers that you can get from your Instagram Insights:

• Gender distribution
• Age range distribution (men and women)
• Top locations (cities and countries)
• Times and days when your followers are most active

Tip: If you tap on the bar charts for age range and location, the percentages will be revealed.

Our Instagram followers are quite similar to our Facebook Page fans.

• We have slightly more male (52 percent) than female followers (48 percent).
• In terms of age, the biggest group (45 percent) is people between 25 to 34.
• In terms of location, the biggest group is people in the US (38 percent), followed by people in the UK (8 percent).
• They are most active on Tuesday and Wednesday on a typical week and between 9 am and 6 pm for most days.

How does this compare to your Instagram followers?

The follower information in Instagram Insights doesn’t tell you your followers’ interests. A way to figure this out is to look at your top posts. In the third step above, instead of tapping on “See more” in the “Followers” section, tap on “See more” in the “Posts” section.

Here, you’ll find your top posts by impressions – the total number of times that each post has been seen. I would recommend filtering your top posts by engagement, instead, to find out which types of posts your followers like to engage with. To change the filter, tap on “Impressions” at the top and select “Engagement”.

Sometimes, it might not be immediately obvious which type of posts your followers like. In such cases, you could make hypotheses, test a few types of posts, and see what works.

Social Rank – Interests, activity, and more

If you don’t have a business profile on Instagram or prefer not to convert, you could use free Instagram tools like Social Rank.

Once you have connected your Instagram account to Social Rank, click on “Show Summary” in the top-center of the page. Here, Social Rank will show you the many different information about your followers, such as the following:

• Gender distribution
• Top followers locations
• Popular bio words
• Popular hashtags
• Popular time to post
• Followers distribution (how many followers your audience has)

The information under “Popular bio words” and “Popular hashtags” might reveal the interests, job title, or industry of your Instagram followers. For example, our Instagram followers like to use words like “marketing”, “social”, and “media” in their bio, which is what our ideal audience does — social media marketing.

The “Popular time to post” section shows you the times your followers are posting, which is when they are online and when it might be best for you to post.

You could also make some inferences about your followers by looking at your most engaged followers. To do that, sort your followers by “Most Engaged”. Social Rank will show you the followers that have interacted with you the most in the past 45 days. Click on the top 20 to 30 profiles and check out their bio and websites. Are there any similarities?

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Twitter

Twitter analytics – Interests, demographics, and more

The native Twitter analytics provides comprehensive information about your Twitter audiences — your followers, your organic audience, and your tailored audiences.

Here’s how to access this information:

1. Click on your profile photo in the upper-right corner of any Twitter page
2. Select “Analytics”
3. Click on “Audiences” in the top navigation bar

Here are some of the key information you can get from the various tabs (e.g. “Overview”, “Demographics”, etc.):

• Interests
• Gender and age distribution
• Country
• Occupation
• Household income categories
• Consumer buying styles

Here’s what I found about Buffer’s Twitter followers (again, they are quite similar to our Facebook fans and Instagram followers):

• We have slightly more male (56 percent) than female followers (44 percent).
• In terms of age, the biggest group (54 percent) is people between 25 to 34.
• In terms of location, the biggest group is people in the US (36 percent), followed by people in the UK (12 percent).
• They are mostly interested in “Business and news”, “Technology, and “Tech News”.

What about your Twitter followers?

Followerwonk – Job title, activity, and more

Followerwonk is a great Twitter tool that provides a bit more information than Twitter analytics. And it’s free for analysis of accounts with up to 25,000 followers.

To analyze your Twitter follower base, type in your Twitter handle and select “analyze their followers”.

Here are some of the useful information about your followers that you can get:

• Locations
• Most active hours
• Word cloud of their bios
• Gender

Tip: Followerwonk integrates with Buffer so that you can easily create a schedule based on when your Twitter followers are most active.

Social Rank – Interests, activity, and more

Social Rank can also be used for Twitter, and it provides similar information as it would for Instagram.

For example, here are the popular words and hashtags used in our Twitter followers’ bio and posts respectively (they are similar to those of our Instagram followers):

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LinkedIn

LinkedIn analytics – Job titles, locations, and more

The LinkedIn Company Page analytics provides a good amount of information to help you define your LinkedIn followers (and visitors).

Here’s how to access your LinkedIn follower information:

1. Click on “Manage Page” on your Company Page
2. Click on “Analytics” on the top navigation bar
3. Select “Followers”

The LinkedIn analytics offers seven types of demographic data about your followers:

• Country
• Region
• Job function
• Seniority
• Industry
• Company size
• Employment status

I find it helpful to look at the job function and industry data to get a sense of who our followers are. From our data, it seems that most of our LinkedIn followers are marketers and founders in the digital space.

You can find similar information about your visitors — people who aren’t following your Company Page and have visited your Company Page. Instead of selecting “Followers” in the dropdown menu, select “Visitors”.

What does your data tell you about your LinkedIn followers and visitors?

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Pinterest

Pinterest analytics – Demographics, interests, and more

If you have a business account on Pinterest, the best way to understand who your Pinterest followers are is to use Pinterest analytics. (You can set up your Pinterest business account here.)

Here’s how to access your follower information in Pinterest analytics:

1. Click on “Analytics” in the upper-left corner of any Pinterest page
2. Select “People you reach”
3. On the right side of the page, click on “All audiences”
4. Switch to “Your followers”

Or you could access it via this direct link: https://analytics.pinterest.com/audience/.

Here’s the various helpful information you can get:

• Audience size
• Country and metro
• Language
• Gender
• Interests
• Boards (Boards by your followers with many of your Pins)
• Brands (Businesses your followers follows and engage with)

Our Pinterest follower base is slightly different from our follower base on the other major social media platforms. Perhaps because of the demographics on Pinterest.

• We have more female (74 percent) than male fans (21 percent). 5 percent unspecified.
• In terms of location, the biggest group is people in the US, followed by people in India.
• They are mostly interested in “Technology”, “Design”, and “Travel”.

How does your Pinterest follower base look like?

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What do you know about your social media audience?

Understanding who your social media audience is can help you craft the right content for them, boost your engagement, and increase your reach. And by using the amazing social media tools around, you can learn so much about your followers — for free.

Once you have analyzed your social media following, I would love to hear what you have found out. Who is your social media audience? What are their interests? What do they do?

Also, do you know of any other analytics tools for understanding one’s social media following? It’ll be great if you are up for sharing.

P.s. If you found this post helpful, you might like our guide to optimizing your social media content — helping you decide what to post on each social media platform.

Topic: Social media strategy

Image credit: Unsplash

Thank you, Natasza Libich, for asking this question in our Buffer Slack community. 

source https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-audience

The Silent Rise of LinkedIn to 500M Members: What Marketers Need to Know for 2018 [SSM069]

What if I told you that LinkedIn, a social media platform that is now 14 years old, is the next big opportunity for marketers and brands?

While much of the focus over the last few years has been on perfecting our Facebook and Instagram marketing strategies, LinkedIn has been silently growing their user base to more than 500 million users.

The reason for this sudden growth?

LinkedIn is no longer known only for their résumé and job searching capabilities. It’s evolving into a thriving network of incredible content, influencers, and networking opportunities unmatched by other social media platforms.

In episode #69 of The Science of Social Media, we explore the many features that make LinkedIn such a powerful platform for brands and what marketers need to know going into 2018.

Let’s dive in!

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

The silent rise of LinkedIn: What marketers need to know

The LinkedIn journey to 500M members

If you were to ask me to describe LinkedIn in 2015, I might have said something along the lines of, “a great professional network” or “the perfect place to find a job.” Now, as we close out 2017, it’s clear that LinkedIn is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the world of B2C and B2B marketing.

Microsoft must have seen something in the rising star as well – officially acquiring LinkedIn for $26.2 billion at the end of 2016 in one of the largest social media deals in history.

A quick look at LinkedIn’s journey to 500 million members:

• 2003 (0 members): Launch
• 2005 (1.6M members): Introduction of Jobs & Subscriptions
• 2006 (4.2M members): Launch of public profiles for members
• 2009 (33M members): Jeff Weiner joins LinkedIn as president
• 2011 (140M members): LinkedIn goes public
• 2013 (250M members): 10th anniversary of LinkedIn
• 2015 (330M members): $1.5B acquisition of Lynda.com. Launch of Pulse
• 2016 (400M members): Microsoft acquires LinkedIn for $26.2B
• 2017 (500M members): 100,000 new articles published weekly

What’s most astonishing is how fast LinkedIn has grown over the last six years. Between 2011 and 2017, LinkedIn’s user base grew from 140 million to 500 million – shattering the growth rate in previous periods.

LinkedIn demographics

One of the more intriguing aspects of LinkedIn is the demographics of their users.

• Twenty-nine percent of online adults use LinkedIn
• Fifty-six percent of users are male and 44 percent are female
• Fifty-one percent of users have a college degree
• Thirteen percent of millennials (15 to 34-year-olds) use LinkedIn
• Forty-four percent of users earn more than $75,000 a year
• Forty-one percent of millionaires use LinkedIn
• The average CEO has 930 connections
• Statistical Analysis and Data Mining are the top skills on LinkedIn

CEO Jeff Weiner plans to “develop the world’s first economic graph” with the hopes of “digitally mapping out the global economy.” A goal not far from reach seeing how LinkedIn has an in-depth dataset of company, industry, and individual contact information for more than 500 million members.

In the long-term, this will be a game-changer for marketers and brands in the B2B space.

Becoming a content-first platform

Written content

Did you know that LinkedIn Pulse started as the Pulse app – a class project at Stanford University in 2010? It wasn’t until 2015 that LinkedIn fully integrated Pulse into the platform and established themselves as a content-first social media network.

Before Pulse, LinkedIn didn’t offer users or influencers much in the form of organic content. When they announced that they’d be opening up their Pulse publishing platform to the public in February 2014, it opened the floodgates to a world of content.

Today, Pulse no longer operates as a separate application within LinkedIn. It’s seamlessly integrated into members’ feeds as articles to help enhance the content-first experience.

It’s working, too! More than 100,000 organic articles are published weekly on LinkedIn, many of which are written by top-level executives at brands around the world. Startup Founder, Gretta van Riel, explains just how powerful LinkedIn has been for her content:

Video content

On August 22, 2017, LinkedIn launched what might be their biggest update since Pulse – native LinkedIn video.

Just a few months after launch, the evidence seems to be pointing towards videos performing extremely well on LinkedIn. Videos from the limited release are getting shared 20+ times more than any other content. Our team has been hearing the same sentiment from marketers everywhere.

We also had the wonderful opportunity to speak with the LinkedIn team at MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum this year. LinkedIn plans to roll out the native video feature to brands and businesses in the near future — an update that we’re all excited for!

Our teammate, Paul Thomson, has been experimenting with native LinkedIn video with great success.

Several of his videos are performing two to three times better on LinkedIn than they are on other social media platforms. A great sign for LinkedIn as a video publishing platform.

Becoming a platform for influencers

An interesting trend that we’ve been keeping a close eye on is LinkedIn’s development of their invite-only Influencer Program.

As Daniel Roth, Editor in Chief at LinkedIn writes, “LinkedIn’s Influencers — an invite-only group of some of the top minds in business — have access to briefings, data, and experts that the rest of us can only dream about.”

Offering Influencers an exclusive platform to publish content was a brilliant move on the part of LinkedIn. One, because it offers Influencers a guaranteed way to get their content in front of hundreds of thousands of members. Two, because naturally, Influencers will bring their own audience to the LinkedIn platform by simply sharing their content with their followers. And three, it bolsters LinkedIn’s reputation as a thought-leader in multiple sectors.

The Influencers so far include Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Sallie Krawcheck, James Altucher, and more.

In fact, 36 percent of LinkedIn members now read interesting articles they find in their feed, an increase of 20 percent since 2014. Activating influencers to write great content gives LinkedIn a unique advantage over other social media networks.

Becoming a platform for personal branding & networking

Personal branding

Ultimately, LinkedIn’s biggest value proposition and its reason for growth lie in the ability for members to develop a strong personal brand.

• Seventy-nine percent of professionals say that networking is valuable for career growth
• Sixty-one percent of professionals say that regular online interactions with networks can lead to job opportunities

But what does this mean for B2C and B2B companies?

When brands have employees that feel empowered to build a brand and start side projects outside of their traditional work, it’s a win-win for both the individual and the brand.

Having creative hobbies has been shown to make people more helpful, collaborative, and creative in their job performance.

Networking

I can’t tell you how many relationships I’ve made by simply reaching out to someone on LinkedIn and saying hello.

Many of the guests we’ve featured on The Science of Social Media were first introduced to us via a private LinkedIn message.

Whenever I have a question about social media or marketing, one of the first places I turn to is LinkedIn.

Check out this incredible infographic put together by the folks over at Number Sleuth showing just how important LinkedIn has become for personal brand and networking:

Where we go from here

We predict that 2018 will be an amazing year for LinkedIn – both as a social media platform and a marketing channel for brands and businesses.

It’s a fast-growing network with exciting features being released regularly. These features will continue to open up lots of great opportunities for marketers to connect with highly-targeted audiences in new and engaging ways.

Keep an eye on the growth of written and video content as well as an increased focus on activating influencers by brands within their community.

It’s a great time to be on LinkedIn!

More awesome resources from the show

• The Rise of the New LinkedIn [Infographic] – SocialMediaToday
• Harnessing the Power of LinkedIn to Monetize and Grow Your Business – Buffer Blog
• Once a Running Joke, LinkedIn Is Suddenly a Hot Social Network. Here’s What Changed – AdWeek
• Microsoft officially closes its $26.2B acquisition of LinkedIn – TechCrunch
• Applying to Be a LinkedIn Influencer – LinkedIn
• LinkedIn opens video uploads to all as part of a bigger video push – TechCrunch
• How to Publish on LinkedIn Pulse: A Beginner’s Guide – HubSpot

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

• Hailley on Twitter
• Brian on Twitter

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

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About the show

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing strategies from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 10,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

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Image credit: Unsplash, TechCrunch

source https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-silent-rise-of-linkedin