As the world is heading into the seventh month of living with restrictions due to the Coronavirus, it is becoming apparent that the working world as we knew it, before the pandemic, is potentially not going to go back to normal anytime soon.
We’re living in a new time, where working remotely, zoom meetings and virtual events are becoming the new normal. As a result, we are seeing more and more innovations and changes by business and companies in order to keep up with the emerging culture of working from home.
LinkedIn was a part of this and back in May, they introduced Events to all users. This is a great way for users to create and join professional events that interest them and gain more knowledge of their areas of interest. Since then, they have continued to improve their Events, with the pandemic in mind, with new features allowing for better promotion of the events and ways for businesses to collect data from their attendees, making it a great option and as similar to an in real life event as it possibly can be. Since introducing their Events, it has resulted in 200,000 events being created and reaching nearly 10 million online participants.
In terms of new discovery features, LinkedIn has created a way to promote an event. They have created a way to add personalised event recommendations in the “My Network” tab and send out emails to participants. This features provide a great way in reaching a wide variety of users and encouraging them to attend the event. By introducing this feature, it has already increased in users engaging with the “My Network” tab by 40%+. Furthermore, LinkedIn will now send notifications to your followers whenever you add a new event, allowing for them to never miss an event.
When LinkedIn first introduced events, many businesses wanted a way to be able to collect the data from the participants to be able to use in the future. LinkedIn has since enabled businesses to create registration forms for the event, allowing for you to be able to collect the names and emails of the attendees. Further to this feature, you can also download the list of people from your events page and send a message following the event, which is an ideal way to connect with all the attendees and create a great relationship. This is a great aspect for many businesses, as it is allowing for you to build your network of people you can target.
LinkedIn has also launched LinkedIn stories worldwide. This is giving individuals and company pages the opportunity to post photos and short videos via the mobile app. The Instagram-Style stories will appear for 24 hours and allow for a much more immediate way to share news and highlights of your business. The feature will also be a great way to provide insights into the behind the scenes and Q&A‘s for example.
Another feature that LinkedIn have announced is it’s new video meeting options within LinkedIn messenger. This feature can be used both within a group or with one other person and is great way to keep up with the current circumstances of online meetings instead of face to face meetings. It also provides a more convenient way to immediately connect from your LinkedIn messages all in one place.
Working remotely and having a remote culture is unfortunately not going to change anytime soon. Even as our restrictions begin to lift and we are able to have a cuppa with our colleagues in the office again, we have developed the option of doing things virtually, which we may never be able to shake. It is great to see that LinkedIn has embraced this shift and no matter what the future will hold, it is allowing for ease at this current difficult time.
