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LinkedIn Launches Partner Programs to Enhance Content Marketing Efforts
Posted on April 25, 2014
LinkedIn says its new Sponsored Updates Partners and Content Partners programs will help brands build stronger relationships with their target audiences.
LinkedIn is launching two new programs, Sponsored Updates Partners and Content Partners, which it claims will make it easier for brands and agencies to scale their content marketing efforts on the platform and help brands build stronger relationships with their target audiences, according to a blog post.
Sponsored Updates Partners provide customers with tools, powered by LinkedIn APIs, to manage their Sponsored Updates campaigns, while Content Partners provide access to high-quality content to enhance an advertiser’s activities on LinkedIn, the post says.
Both are part of LinkedIn’s Certified Marketing Partners program, which connects brands with companies that have tools to help increase visibility on the platform.
Sponsored Updates Partners help companies improve the return on investment (ROI) for their campaigns by providing management tools that make it easier for brands and agencies to optimize large Sponsored Updates campaigns. That includes the ability to create bulk updates across many campaigns, target different audiences at scale, schedule updates in advance, and track campaign performance using reporting dashboards, LinkedIn says.
They also make it more efficient for brands to use a single dashboard to manage their paid content activities on multiple social channels, LinkedIn adds.
During the pilot period, customers experienced a lift of more than 30 percent in engagement rates on their Sponsored Updates campaigns, according to LinkedIn.
The new program is launching with online advertising platform AdStage, social software and digital marketing services provider Brand Networks, social advertiser marketing software company Shift, the Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, and cloud marketing technology company Unified Social.
AdStage, which calls itself the self-serve, all-in-one online advertising platform that integrates Google, Facebook, Bing, and LinkedIn ad networks into a single interface, says the partnership enables companies to use its platform to promote native posts that display in the LinkedIn content feed of their targeted audience. This helps marketers maximize the ROI of their Sponsored Updates and provides a suite of advanced features, including the ability to adjust targeting and settings across multiple campaigns simultaneously with bulk changes and to group related campaigns into folders to aggregate performance statistics and identify trends quickly, AdStage says.
According to AdStage chief executive (CEO) Sahil Jain, the company’s tools are meant to educate small businesses as well as allow them to manage ad campaigns.
“We have created guides, how-tos, and cheat sheets to help customers improve their results,” Jain tellsClickZ.
AdStage is also building a companion app to LinkedIn, which will let companies manage their sponsored content on the platform, Jain says.
And to make sure organizations have enough quality content to share, LinkedIn is also launching the Content Partners program, which connects companies with publishers, platforms, and original content producers. This gives brands greater access to the most relevant information for their target audience, which in turn brings greater engagement and improved performance, LinkedIn says. During the pilot, several customers performed in the top one percent for all Sponsored Updates campaigns by using the content provided by LinkedIn partners.
To begin, LinkedIn has certified 10 companies for the Content Partners program, including publishers The Atlantic, Bloomberg, CBS Interactive, and IDG Communications, as well as content platforms NewsCred and Percolate and custom content creators Atlantic Media Strategies, Contently, Freshwire, and Group SJR.
Source: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2341463/linkedin-launches-partner-programs-to-enhance-content-marketing-efforts