Is LinkedIn Influencer Marketing Effective? Everything You Need to Know about LinkedIn Influencer Marketing in 2023

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Unlike Instagram and YouTube, LinkedIn is commonly used as an influencer marketing channel, but this just makes it an excellent place to start promoting your brand in a less competitive and more professional environment!

For a long time, LinkedIn was geared towards only business experts and was used only for employment purposes. But things are different now, and it is packed with professional influencers willing to collaborate with business owners for mutual benefits. 

LinkedIn influencer marketing is now a thing; it’s a powerful strategy that aims to establish partnerships with LinkedIn members who have a big following and relevant experience to increase brand awareness, sales, reach, trust, and credibility. 

If you want to have a share of the pie and take your small business to the level, read on as we cover everything you need to know about LinkedIn influencer marketing for eCommerce—from the benefits you’ll receive to the best ways to collaborate with LinkedIn professionals and everything in between.

That being said, let’s get down to business!

Benefits of LinkedIn Influencer Marketing

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According to LinkedIn, 875 million members in over 200 countries use the website to connect and learn from one another. Many of them are decision-makers and business professionals that you probably won’t be able to find elsewhere.

LinkedIn is completely different from other social networking platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, in that it’s built specifically with business networking in mind. It provides members with the best possible professional environment to connect with people and exchange their valuable knowledge. 

LinkedIn influencers typically portray themselves as subject matter experts in a specific niche, such as product development, leadership, content marketing, and advertising. So they definitely have the edge over other less experienced influencers, and their large following who blindly trust their opinion is the best proof.

Influencers have spent years establishing their authority on LinkedIn by writing thousands of valuable posts and communicating with their followers, so chances are many of their followers believe them unconditionally. 

Additionally, LinkedIn influencer marketing is a relatively untapped strategy to boost your brand awareness and sales, giving you a golden opportunity to stand out and outperform competitors. 

Keep in mind, though, that developing a LinkedIn marketing strategy is no easy feat; its environment is quite competitive and will require serious effort to secure good influencers for your marketing strategy. 

Related: How influencers put word-of-mouth on steroids

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How to Choose the Right LinkedIn Influencers

As mentioned, collaborating with a LinkedIn influencer takes a lot of hard work, but you’ll be making this harder for yourself if you try to search for ‘best LinkedIn influencers’ or other similar keywords. 

The search results will probably be filled with super successful people who are unlikely to collaborate with smaller businesses, such as Bill Gates, Gary Vaynerchuk, and  Richard Branson!

On Instagram, you can find some marketing experts who recommend collaborating with a highly relevant influencer with a big following instead of collaborating with a celebrity. You can apply the same strategy when choosing an influencer on LinkedIn.

To build revenue-generating partnerships, you’ll therefore need to strike a balance between the influencer's popularity and engagement rates. 

With this in mind, here are the different types of influencers that you can find on LinkedIn based on popularity and engagement rates:

• Nano influencers: These are influencers with less than 10k followers. They are far less professional than other influencers and tend to post typical content on their page.
  
  
• Micro-influencers: These are influences with 10k-50k followers. They generally get the most genuine engagement compared to other influencers.
  
  
• Mid-tier influencers: These are influencers with 50k-500k followers, and they also tend to get genuine engagement. 
• Macro influencers: These are influencers with 500k-1M followers. They generally have wider experience in different topics and can therefore reach a wider net.
  
  
• Mega influencers: These are influencers with more than 1M followers. But don’t let their extensive following base fool you—their engagement isn't always as high as their following.

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Now to the million-dollar question: which type of influencers should you collaborate with? 

Depending on your influencer campaign goals, a macro influencer or micro-influencers are your best bet on LinkedIn. A micro-influencer can help you with lead generation, while a macro-influencer can help you expand your reach and improve your brand image.

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How to Collaborate with LinkedIn Influencers

Now that you decided which influencers you want to collaborate with, it’s time to actually do the influencer marketing work. So here are the most effective ways to do it on LinkedIn: 

1. Live Q&A Sessions 

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One of the best and easiest ways to collaborate with a LinkedIn influencer is by inviting them to join a Q&A session on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Slack. 

This works best if you already have an active community on these channels, which can help you gain tons of new members looking for answers to their most burning questions. 

2. Webinars

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Another great way to generate leads is by inviting LinkedIn influencers to co-host webinars. 

You shouldn’t have much trouble inviting thought leaders to co-host a webinar since most of them are happy to co-host online events, which allows them to reach out to more people and show off their knowledge in their niche. 

3. Podcasts

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Podcasts are an excellent way to interview top experts on LinkedIn and expand your business. And one of the benefits of podcast is this type of content can be repurposed for social media posts and added as quotes in blog posts!

There are numerous influencers on LinkedIn that are interested in the same niche as yours. Find them and see if they are open to doing interviews. You also want to check to see if they are a suitable fit for you and your target audience.

When choosing this method to promote your business, you don’t want to recreate the interview the influencer has done elsewhere. Keep it unique and valuable, and even if you're after similar stories and takeaways, try to frame the podcast differently. 

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4. Posts

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This is a straightforward and hustle-free method to promote your brand—simply ask LinkedIn influencers to post about your products or services on their page.

If you've been collaborating for a while with them and feel comfortable asking for a favor, go ahead and do it. Otherwise, you’ll need to be creative to convince them to post about your brand and explain what they’ll get in return. 

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5. Articles

If you’re after some additional backlinks from reputable authors, we highly recommend either asking influencers to write an article for you or interviewing them for an article. 

If you choose influencers with big followings, this content will be eagerly shared by followers and also get you high quality backlinks to boost your domain authority. 

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6. Roundups

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You can increase your page engagement without even collaborating with influencers by sharing a roundup of influencers in your niche. 

People on LinkedIn tend to interact with the content you mention them in, which significantly increases the visibility of such posts.

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Final Thoughts 

When properly employed, LinkedIn influencer marketing can be game-changing in terms of brand awareness, sales, and credibility. 

This is because LinkedIn, unlike Instagram and YouTube,  is extremely business-oriented, meaning everyone is there for business, even if they sometimes post funny dog videos! 

We hope this guide helped you understand the basics of LinkedIn influencer marketing. If you still want some help in running and tracking your LinkedIn influencer marketing campaign, you can rely on SARAL to help you find creator contact info, send outreach campaigns, and never lose track of your relationships!

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FAQs

Who is the biggest influencer on Linkedin?

Neil Patel is one of the world's top marketing influencers. According to Forbes Magazine, he is one of the world's most influential people. He helps thousands of people start their digital content creation journey and learn online marketing.

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What is considered a LinkedIn influencer?

A LinkedIn influencer is someone influential in a specific niche who shares organic content with a large following. 

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How many followers do you need to be a LinkedIn influencer?

There’s no minimum amount of followers required to qualify for this ‘position’ because what matters is your influence on the website. But as a starter, it’s recommended to have at least 1k followers, add value, offer help, connect people, and host giveaways.

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What platform is most used for influencer marketing?

In recent years, Instagram has become the most popular influencer marketing platform, and this trend is expected to continue until 2025 at least. 

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