LinkedIn Immediate Future

LinkedIn

It will come as no surprise that since Microsoft’s take-over of LinkedIn, the software giant wants to take on the big guns. Microsoft has been waiting years for the opportunity to successfully enter the social media game. Instead of taking the Google approach and trying to make a social network…

Following Microsoft’s completion of the LinkedIn acquisition, dramatic changes began to roll out at the end of last week. Primarily, for its 450m users, it is a desktop revamp that leads the charge. Whilst not available yet in every country, we took a look at initial feedback and reviews of…

Social media is at its peak, it couldn’t be a better time to grow your business online and reach new audiences. It’s no longer an option, but rather a must for every business looking to expand. In a world where social media channels are rapidly being launched and developed, we…

A goldrush of sorts is happening in the tech world amidst rumours that Twitter could be up for sale and the list of potential suitors for the channel is growing by the day. It’s hard to tell at this point who the serious contenders are. However, this hasn’t stopped the…

We presented at the B2B Summit recently, talking about paid social media. Interestingly, the question on everyone’s lips was; how much should social advertising cost? What are the benchmarks for investment and returns you can expect? Well, a Salesforce report (download) gives us some interesting paid social…

Well I have to confess I did not see this one coming. Given LinkedIn’s history of building, developing and buying their own range of ‘add-on’ products, I was certain that they would release their own CRM/listening tool. The lack of API for LinkedIn has always been an issue for us…

Following in the footsteps of Facebook, LinkedIn is now working on its own version of Instant Articles, a feature that makes it possible for publishers to host fast loading, immersive mobile content, accessible instantly within LinkedIn, rather than linking users back to their own site. According to…

Firstly, it’s a bit of a stupid phrase really isn’t it – curiosity killed the cat. I’m sure some stupid cats have died but if we were curious enough to confront a moving car on a busy road then I am sure we would too… If you ain’t moving then…

Social Media may well be a key element in your company’s marketing mix but have you considered alternative uses for Social Media in the work place? It is entirely possible for Social Media to run much deeper than simply being another channel for your marketing communications. For example by reassessing…

All too often driving attendance to events in the B2B world is an afterthought. Companies spend hundreds-of-thousands of ££’s on set-up, stands, design, product and offline marketing and organisation. Then, in the weeks running up to the event, they realise they have not placed enough focus on making their customers…

When people think of paid advertising in social media they usually think of platforms like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Nothing wrong with that. They have hundreds of millions of users. But how about blog sites? Already blog sites offer thought-provoking and…

LinkedIn has just made a major change to the way brands can interact on the channel. They have just enabled company pages to respond as brand (as opposed to individual company members). Why is this significant you ask? Because it’s totally out of character for LinkedIn to…

As busy professionals, I am sure that you often feel stretched for time to complete your ever-growing to-do list. As your inbox relentlessly piles up, have you ever uttered the words ‘there simply aren’t enough hours in the day’? Or if you are super busy, perhaps there aren’t enough minutes…

With all kinds of summer events on the agenda and the corporate convention season already rumbling away, marketers are increasingly looking for reliable ways to bide the attention of attendees, eager to solidify connection with their target prospects and make sure they stay on their radar to develop a promising brand relationship.

If you’ve used LinkedIn’s publisher platform in the past, you will now have access to detailed information on how well your content has performed, and the audience it reached. In an effort to be more than just a professional’s social network, and to place itself as a prominent…

Here at immediate future we like to stay in shape. Whether it’s running the London Marathon or maintaining brand health, we are always on the ball. With that in mind, we put together the following Social Media Brand Workout to help you keep your…

Recently, I have been working with clients across a wide range of verticals in the B2B space, from pharmaceuticals to chemical engineering to sports equipment. These disparate markets have completely unique business challenges, requirements, sales processes and routes to market. However, there is one thing that many of these companies…

LinkedIn’s latest product utilises the connections of employees in order to publish and curate content with up to ten times the reach of the average company page. “Did you know the average employee has 10 times as many connections as a company has followers?” – LinkedIn LinkedIn Elevate offers your…

Your audience on social media can be a fickle, and tricky one to crack. But it’s a quest worth fighting for! Did you know an astonishing 47% of people who follow brands on social are more likely to visit the company’s website? Precisely why it’s important to…

By adjusting your approach to social media during your businesses peak period, you could turn a stressful and potentially fearful time into a victorious experience delivering spadefuls of ROI. We’ve heard it before: “social can be your best friend or your worst enemy”. This is never truer than during your…

How many social networks do you have a personal account on? Now think about how many you actually use on a regular basis – those two numbers will most likely be different, and from a personal perspective that is not necessarily a negative. Now ask yourself the same questions about…

It was once open to an exclusive club of only the most respected and the most influential, with the likes of Richard Branson and Barack Obama being part of the elite. But now, LinkedIn has opened its gates to all. It was announced last week that the LinkedIn publisher platform…

Linkedin, the “Facebook for business” has released maps of the USA and Europe converting user’s professional skillsets data by city and area. A welcome step towards providing visualization of Linkedin’s unique mountain of data, the maps released last week provide a…

The opening up of the LinkedIn publisher platform is another symptom of a potentially unwell state of content marketing. Quite simply, we are drowning in a sea of content and some of it is just ain’t that good. From the recent Content Benchmarking…

A recent survey by LinkedIn has revealed co-worker friendships are key to employee happiness and a thriving workplace – having worked in previous jobs where the office banter was very much lacking, I can definitely vouch for these results! The study of over 11,500 professionals around the globe aimed to…

Content, content, content. I am not quite sure how many times I use the word “content” in a day but if I did, and I got a £1 for every time, then I would be buying myself Google Glass (even if they are £1000, seriously!). So back…

LinkedIn’s recent set of proposition from their marketing solutions team again illustrates the focus the platform is placing on content, and being the centre point for your daily fix of industry news and views. After announcing widening the publishing platform up to all users, LinkedIn have…

With over 2 million of them on LinkedIn, Groups are a core part of the platform. Whether it’s to enhance your credibility or to generate leads, we take a look at the important role that Groups can play in your marketing activity. With over 8,000 Groups created every week, there…

There are now countless blogging platforms on the web that specialise in a multitude of great features but which of these features do we actually need? Some of the most innovative new blog platforms strip away the list of add-ons and focus on the basics. Now, more than ever before,…

LinkedIn is running ‘full steam ahead’ in its content marketing efforts as it announces the release of two new content analytics tools, dubbed as the “Dynamic Duo” for businesses. Read on to discover why the news should come as music to the ears of B2B brands marketing…

For all you ladies out there, it looks like we’re taking over social media, and smartphones are our weapon of choice – in a metaphorical sense of course! According to research conducted by PR agency Porter Novelli, also published by marketingmagazine.co.uk, women are dominating the social media…

Roll up! Roll up! Brands that are already investing heavily in LinkedIn will be licking their lips at the prospect of the new publishing power about to be at their finger tips (see the full article on the LinkedIn blog). LinkedIn influencers, launched in 2012, saw powerful…

You have built your empire with blood, sweat and tears. You have a small, dedicated team who stand by you. They love working for you, they love the culture, the hours, pay, flexibility offered and the general working environment. So who wouldn’t want to work for you? Well it seems…

I personally think, in this era, you should be able to apply for a job virtually, send your LinkedIn profile, and have a video as a CV. As long as it has the following elements, then why does it need to be a plain old Word doc? Unfortunately I am…

What better way to network than virtually, especially when job searching? LinkedIn, you can call out to your connections to let them know you are job searching. You can be introduced to their connections, for maximum networking opportunities. As LinkedIn is a professional networking site, you can also…

It’s that time of year when we dust off the crystal ball and try to predict and prepare for what 2014 holds for some of our favourite social networks. And here’s what Bakti expects to see this coming year! Facebook: I’ve seen A LOT of articles peppered around the net claiming…

With every company, there are always multiple areas to focus on and different products to promote. But how do you ensure that when promoting online on sites such as LinkedIn, your focus is evident and not just a jumbled-up mess of completely different areas? If this is a…

Sounds like common sense? You’d be surprised! With 66% of companies using Facebook to recruit, should you really be posting profanities on your Facebook page? NO is the answer. As a candidate, either looking for your first step into the professional world, or as an experienced professional, your social media…

We have had mixed news recently around online advertising, with some sites focusing more heavily on their advertising offering, whilst other businesses are popping up to block ads from customers devices… So you know what’s been happening recently, take a look at the latest developments here: Simplified Facebook Advertising…

Who hasn’t been trying to monitor their online performance and hit a road block because you can’t access the proper tools? Maybe you’re up to your eyeballs in meaningless figures and graphs? All you need is a little context, some simple analysis, a general overview – but you don’t want…

On Wednesday evening, I attended a Social Media Week session, ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’. Check out the snap of immediate future‘s Pete looking pretty and enjoying a beverage out of his #SMWLDN cup! As much as I enjoyed the case studies that the panel critiqued and applauded,…

After our recent accolade claiming a top 10 spot in the Cision’s best UK social media blogs, I thought it would only be right to give you a little top 10 of my own. At our B2B breakfast event last week, and…

At immediate future – we love LinkedIn and the opportunities that it provides for meaty social media marketing. In the last two years, the social network has really risen up as a star platform for lead generation with LinkedIn Groups and Company Pages being worked hard by…

Activity in LinkedIn groups shows absolutely no signs of slowing, even with the platform’s emphasis on a content rich update feed. When Facebook made this move with their series of news feed updates, the groups eventually went, but it doesn’t look like they will be going any where fast on…

Direct sourcing of candidates using social media. Forget branding for a moment if you can, this is not about candidate attraction nor is it about creating a pipeline, this is about filling a role you needed to fill last week and how to do it using social media! So, your…

The saying goes: “good artists borrow, great artists steal”, and this seems to be the case with social media platforms and Facebook. Every other day reports come in that the platform has updated its user experience with elements taken from other social media platforms. It seems that the social media…

LinkedIn has gone visual. With the introduction of the feature a few months ago to allow companies to post presentations, images and videos on company page, LinkedIn is clearly embracing the shift towards visual content. We all know that LinkedIn is an effective social media network for B2B…

As social media carries on evolving at lightning speed, the knowledge and skill set divide continues to widen. To be able to fully unlock the power of social media for your business, you need to think beyond the team who manages your branded social media presence and look at the…

Students globally are social media nerds, they know all the acronyms and shortcuts to write blogs, postings and a whole lot more. So why are the youth of today so scared of virtual networking to further them in life? I spent a brief time working at Kingston University. I came…

Despite the rising popularity of such LinkedIn features as the company page, the influencers section and the newsfeed, LinkedIn groups are one of the most popular features of the platform. Search for any industry, and you will find top groups with their membership in tens and even hundreds of thousands.

Yesterday LinkedIn announced a feature just launched on the social network, ‘University Pages’ – essentially data hubs relating to universities and their alumni, from all over the world. So far, the new feature has been released to a seed number of universities including University of Oxford…

Ever since Chris Messina introduced the system of hashtagging to mircoblogging site Twitter in 2007 its popularity has grown to the point that it has been adopted by competing social media networks and has found a place in pop culture, with TV shows and music videos…

I have recently started with immediate future as Head of Talent, recruiting the best talent in social media and keeping the great staff we have already happy in their workplace! On that note, if you work in social media marketing – at any level, or want to – we…

Your business is full of experts. And people who know a lot about what they do is extremely interesting to others. Some businesses are starting to move towards being an authority in what they do, to get people to buy into their expertise, rather than just telling people they are…

With the sunny weather dominating London’s climate for the last couple of weeks, the social media world has somewhat quietened. For many people this is a time of holidays, parks, ice cream, beaches, festivals, BBQs and generally taking a rest from the constant flow of data that surrounds our culture.

Marketing for B2B companies on LinkedIn just got more interesting. At the end of this month, LinkedIn is introducing ‘Sponsored Updates’, which gives users the ability to promote updates on LinkedIn beyond their own followers or connections. In a similar style to ‘Promoted Posts’ on Facebook, LinkedIn…

The world has gone visual. 10% of photos taken in the history of the world were taken in the last year, as online and social media continues to embrace the power of visual content. The statistics speak for themselves: 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook each…

LinkedIn have recently rolled out the new layout, and there is a noticeable buzz within the social media world around it! The new design has already seen a couple of phases, and each time it happens, you see people talking about it! As Em Donnely mentions, the notification toolbar has…

With the popularity of LinkedIn Groups growing alongside the other conversation platforms, such as LinkedIn Today and company pages, it has become a considerable challenge to identify the most relevant groups to join. Let’s say you are an IT professional looking to network with your peers……

Social media continues to revolutionise corporate culture. It opens up new avenues of communication, breaks down barriers between employers, employees and the public, and provides new opportunities for brands to put a human face to their image. CEOs are no exception to this quiet revolution. Customers want to see that…

Hashtags have become the standard way to label social media posts, not only on Twitter but also on Google+ and increasingly on LinkedIn. Monitoring hashtags is an easy way to spot a social media trend and to respond accordingly. However, it is rather unclear what kind of hashtags tend to…

LinkedIn has become one of the most popular global social networks for business professionals, with over 150 million people using the site to network, job hunt and connect with industry peers and colleagues. With over 500 recruitment companies also using LinkedIn as a source of new talent, is there any…

With 200 million registered users and over 11 million in the UK, LinkedIn must focus on helping its user base expand their networks and engage with the platform on a deeper level. In the same way Facebook has introduced Graph Search to help it’s users to discover more within the…

LinkedIn has been making a sea of changes recently to its service, and a new feature unveiled this week promises to be very exciting indeed. LinkedIn announced that their 200 million users will soon be able to mention connections and companies in conversations on the site, which has the potential…

LinkedIn has become the corporate equivalent of Facebook. It is difficult to find a major brand that still has not activated its presence on the platform. And yet, being on LinkedIn is not the same as using it to its full potential. Everything Everywhere ticked at least 3 boxes…