It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a powerful marketing tool.
As the most popular social media platform focused on professional connections, it’s an ideal place to connect with colleagues, business partners — and potential customers.

LinkedIn is an excellent platform for B2B businesses to reach new audiences and nurture potential buyers, but it doesn’t come without its challenges.

How do you stand out and drive attention amongst so much other content? How do you get new audiences to follow you and your pages? And how do you get in front of the right people?

Thankfully, there are LinkedIn features that answer these questions and in turn, drive better results. Here are five useful (and often overlooked) features B2B brands can use to boost marketing effectiveness on LinkedIn.

5 Powerful LinkedIn Features to Try Right Now

Before trying any new marketing tactics on LinkedIn, first lay the foundation for your B2B brand. Create a LinkedIn company page, and encourage your team to create personal profiles that include information about their experience, expertise, and role within your organization linked to your company page.

This foundation will help you get the most out of these other LinkedIn features. And if you want to get fancy, you can provide your team with a branded cover image for their profiles.

#1) Thought Leadership Ads

One challenge on LinkedIn is getting your content noticed. Like other social media platforms, LinkedIn’s feed features a stream of content posted by users. To break through the chatter and increase your chances of getting more eyes on your company content, use a more recent advertising feature with Thought Leadership Ads to boost visibility.

With Thought Leadership Ads, you run a campaign featuring a post shared by someone within your organization. For example, if the CEO of your brand shares a post detailing their perspective on an industry shift, you can promote the post so it is viewed more by more of your ideal audience.

Because you are highlighting content from an individual rather than a company, Thought Leadership Ads are a great way to increase visibility while building a trusted voice for your brand. You can promote personal insights and experience while putting your brand in front of new audiences.

There are a few things to keep in mind with Thought Leadership Ads.

Posts can include an image but not videos or documents.
A link can only be included in the body of the post.
The campaign objective must be brand awareness or engagement.
LinkedIn Audience Network must be disabled.
The employee must list the company as an active role on their LinkedIn profile.

#2) Carousels

Making your LinkedIn content more engaging is another way to help your posts stand out. When more users engage with your content, it increases the chances that your post will show in the feeds of others. To increase engagement with your content, try sharing a “carousel.”

A carousel contains multiple slides of content that the audience can click through to view. Carousel posts can increase engagement as users spend more time interacting with the content as they click through each slide.

While LinkedIn says it removed the carousel post type, you can still create a version of it. Create slides in a PDF format. Then, create a LinkedIn post and add the entire PDF as a document to your post. Each page of your PDF will display as a slide in the carousel.

Learn More: How to Win at B2B Social Media: 5 Steps for Success

#3) Notify Employees

Your employees and their engagement with your page can have a major impact on spreading your company content. When employees engage with your company content, it amplifies the post by sharing it with the employees’ audience and connections.

To help your content get in front of more eyes, use features to encourage employees to share and engage with your content. One way to do that is through the Notify Employee feature. The feature alerts employees when your company shares an update, which can encourage them to repost the content from their profile page.

After you share an update from your company page, select the three-dot ellipsis button above the post and select notify employees. This will send a notification to all employees on your team.

#4) LinkedIn Newsletters

Another way to get your content in front of more audience on LinkedIn is through LinkedIn Newsletters. LinkedIn Newsletters are similar to articles in that you publish original content on LinkedIn. The difference is that when users sign up for your newsletter, they receive a notification each time you release new content.

LinkedIn Newsletters allow you to share expertise, build industry authority, and grow and nurture an audience.

Both individual profiles and brand pages can create LinkedIn Newsletters, but there are some restrictions. To be eligible to create a LinkedIn Newsletter, the account must:

Have more than 150 followers and/or connections
Regularly post original content on LinkedIn
Have not violated any of LinkedIn guidelines in the past

#5) Audience Network

The final feature in our list leverages LinkedIn’s reach both on and off their platform. It allows you to connect with your target audience on LinkedIn as well as on other websites.

LinkedIn has a partnership with other publishers which allows them to share and feature content on third-party sites. The LinkedIn Audience Network allows you to run ad campaigns through this network and promote your content across other websites and platforms.

The power of LinkedIn’s Audience Network is that it allows you to use LinkedIn’s detailed targeting to reach audiences outside of LinkedIn. You can define your audience by choosing professional demographics such as job titles and job functions and get in front of your ideal audience across multiple touch-points, establishing more brand recognition and trust.

Drive Better B2B Results on LinkedIn

Don’t dismiss the power of LinkedIn if you aren’t seeing results by sharing a post every once in a while. LinkedIn is a great place for B2B brands to get in front of potential new customers and connect with decision-makers. You just need the right plan and tactics to make LinkedIn work for you and your brand.

Start using these features to drive more results on LinkedIn, and if you need support with this process, SpotOn is here to help.

Our team of social media experts knows what works on LinkedIn. We’re already helping B2B brands find more business opportunities on LinkedIn, and we’d love to help you do the same.

See how we can leverage LinkedIn to help your business reach new audiences and attract new customers. Learn more about our social media solutions and contact us for a free consultation.

5 Powerful LinkedIn Features B2B Brands Should Try Right Now