LinkedIn Virtual Events Solution: What You Need to Know

In these uncertain times, organizations are having to adjust the way they are communicating to job seekers, their employees, partners and the community. COVID-19 social distancing should not postpone important hiring or employee engagement initiatives. Instead, many organizations have been pro-actively looking for alternative solutions to onsite events to keep their talent acquisition and HR tasks moving forward. The goal is to minimize the disruption to your business while maintaining a positive and effective employee and candidate experience.

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This brings us to LinkedIn’s solutions to host virtual events. LinkedIn is highlighting multiple tools to help during these challenging times, including LinkedIn Events and LinkedIn Live.

LinkedIn Events

Recently launched in a beta phase, this new feature enables companies to organize and host events, while promoting them to their networks. It’s LinkedIn's response to Facebook Events.

To support their millions of members, they have opened the ability for all the page admins to create events that will be organized and hosted on behalf of their LinkedIn Pages. There is no cost for LinkedIn Events, so anyone who is a page admin can leverage the tool! 

LinkedIn Events gives you a chance to house and showcase your event, but it’s not a broadcast platform (read more about LinkedIn Live below). Within the LinkedIn Event you can invite your first degree connections, share the event to your newsfeed and create engagement through comments. See this overview and an example below.

You can promote your event to anyone in your network, and you can make our event public or private, which will show up in the event feed. 

LinkedIn Live

LinkedIn’s response to Facebook Live, which is the first step for individuals and organizations to broadcast live video content to their network in real time. You will still need to:

1. Apply for access to LinkedIn Live
2. Choose a 3rd party broadcaster tool in order to broadcast the live event
3. Follow best practices

Learn more on how to get started with LinkedIn Live.

Since its introduction, LinkedIn Live has seen tremendous growth and has the ability to drive up to 7x more reactions and 24x more comments than regular video, and live-streams from brands across a variety of industries.

One important thing to note is that, at this time, LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events are not directly integrated. However, it’s not difficult to combine the two in one cohesive virtual event solution on LinkedIn. Although LinkedIn is opening access to LinkedIn Events broadly for page admins, you still need to apply for LinkedIn Live, so make sure to apply just in case.

Since LinkedIn Events is still in beta, make sure to familiarize yourself with the known issues and limitations for events organized by pages. 

One Way to Get Started on LinkedIn Events

If you are not ready to use LinkedIn Live or signup with a 3rd party broadcaster tool, you can use LinkedIn Events as a vehicle to promote your event, even if you are hosting an event with a virtual hiring platform such as Brazen, Zoom with Lobby, WebEx, eCareerFairs and others. LinkedIn Events can be a place for engagement before, during and after your hiring event. 

High-Level Steps to Deploy LinkedIn Virtual Event Solution

1. Become an administrator of the LinkedIn page, if you are not already

2. Apply for LinkedIn Live

3. Select a 3rd- party broadcaster tool

4. Create an event on your page

5. Invite your network

6. Engage with guests

More info & ideas for linkedin events and linkedin live

Notifications for LinkedIn Events:

Initial invitation notifications show up in a LinkedIn user’s “My network” tab where they also receive connection requests. The event invitation notification does not show up in the “Notifications” tab. However, the two following items do show up in the “Notifications” tab.

• For attendees of the event, this includes: Reminder notifications about the event’s start date and time event (for instance, a notification 1 week prior to the event) and any changes made to the event
• For page admins of the event, this includes:Notifications for pending requests to attend a private event and when an attendee posts in the event

Content Ideas for LinkedIn Live

Here are some examples of content that can be highlighted through LinkedIn Live:  

• Stream a keynote or panel
• Interview and influence to learn about their “day-in-the-life experience
• Host an “Ask Me Anything” session with a key executiveHost an FAQ with a hiring manager about a coveted position
• Take your audience on an office tour, and let them tell you what they want to see
• Go behind the scenes at team-building events
• Spotlight your most interesting or impactful employees
• Highlight your corporate social responsibility initiatives
• Career Tips from Employees - see this example from Cisco

How to Measure the Success of Events and Your Efforts

• LinkedIn Events - the analytics for events created on LinkedIn Pages is not currently available as a feature.
• LinkedIn Live - analytics are available by simply signing into your Page Admin View and the “Analytics” drop down to view video views, total minutes watched, live and replay versions and the peak number of concurrent video views. You can also track the number of reactions, comments and share and audience firmographics.

Be sure to check the LinkedIn Events FAQs and the Virtual Events on LinkedIn Activation Playbook. 

Conclusion

Both of these solutions can work for you, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. For live presentations and streaming (in other words, one-to-many events) - coupled with the promotion and engagement within the event hosted by your LinkedIn Page - LinkedIn’s virtual event solutions may be a good choice. If you want to host a virtual career fair, this may not be the best option.

If you are interested in virtual hiring events, you may also like these resources:

• Virtual Recruiting: What Talent Acquisition Teams Should Know
• How To Host a Virtual Hiring Event Without Leaving Your Desk
• Virtual Hiring Resources Hub

We can help put together a virtual hiring event strategy that best fits your needs, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us!  

And most importantly, the Recruitics team hopes that you remain safe and healthy.