All language subtitles for 001 LinkedIn_ History & Context_en

Let's continue with LinkedIn first, the history.

LinkedIn is older than Facebook.

Reid Hoffman, one of the early members of PayPal, founded it in 2002.

But initial growth was slow on some dating and we had only maybe 20 sign ups.

LinkedIn growth never really exploded as Facebook's, but they've been around for around 18, 20 years

now and have grown to over seven hundred and six million members.

The strategy that got them some traction was focusing on what worked well.

For example, they gave it a lot of attention to their homepage, which accounted for 40 percent of

their sign ups.

They quickly increased that number to 50 percent within four months.

Thirteen thousand more people per month, whereas getting email invitations to increase from four percent

to seven percent.

Nineteen thousand more people per month took two years.

What they always had going for them was being profitable very early, thanks to premium subscriptions,

a paid job board and a few other freemium options.

They were making money.

After only three years of being in business, they experienced several key turning points, such as

allowing users to import contacts, focusing on the professional San Francisco tech scene and acquiring

and integrating great services like SlideShare and Pulse.

These decisions helped them grow into a seven thousand six hundred person company that Microsoft bought

for over twenty six billion dollars.

Now, context on LinkedIn.

It's all about being professional.

This isn't Facebook.

The casual writing style that's used to make some blogs so popular doesn't really work well on LinkedIn.

People are there for one thing only, which is business.

They want to learn about what's new in their industries, who's hiring, who's firing and how to optimize

their performance at work.

A presentation or SlideShare about baking muffins won't do nearly as well as an in-depth company presentation

from a tech conference.

If you're a content helps people expand their networks or conduct business in a better way, it has

a place on LinkedIn.

If not, you might want to focus on other channels first.

Now LinkedIn groups.

What's this?

If you're familiar with Facebook groups, the LinkedIn groups shouldn't stretch your imagination too

far.

Just think of Facebook groups.

But for business people, basically LinkedIn groups are a place for like minded professionals to gather

and discuss topics of interest or establish their expertise.

You might want to consider joining one to establish your business as an expert on certain topics, or

if you're starting a career to go into all these industry LinkedIn groups.

After all, the more people that believe your business knows what it's talking about, the more people

who will work with you in the future.

It's an easy strategy for making connections and growing your content marketing audience.

Now, LinkedIn advertising is another beast.

As with all social media platforms, you can also use LinkedIn to run your ads.

And if your business falls into the B2B category business to business, LinkedIn might just be the best

place for your advertisements.

In fact, marketers read LinkedIn as the most effective social media platform for B2B companies.

LinkedIn is also the top platform for lead generation by a long shot.

Evidently, since people on LinkedIn are there to talk business, they also don't mind interacting with

business.

This means that your business can get some serious attention on the platform.

If you play your cards right, an ad might just be the way you choose to do that.

It's very important to check over LinkedIn in our other videos, as well as our lead generation video,

because these are crucial to your success on LinkedIn.

But definitely explore LinkedIn ads as a potential option outside of Facebook and YouTube or Google

ads to grow your clientele.