On Wednesday, AMCHAM Luxembourg held the first of its new series of Lunchtime Workshops on social media, this first one on LinkedIn and hosted by Kneip in Bertrange, with sponsorship from Luxair.
Paul Schonenberg, AMCHAM chairman, opened by thanking the AMCHAM Marketing Committee for instigating the new initiative and confirmed that, although a very impressive number (about 75) of people were in attendance, a waiting list of circa 25 had been created, illustrating the attractiveness of the event concept and format.
Troy Bankhead presented the results of the survey carried out in 2015 by AMCHAM's Marketing Committee to gauge interest in marketing topics, specifically social media. The results came from both large and small companies, highlighting the diversity on AMCHAM membership. 63% of respondents revealed that their company has a social media strategy.
85% post to a corporate Facebook page, with 62% having a LinkedIn page. Only 38% have a YouTube channel. On the issue of actively promoting one's company on social media, the percentages were very high on all (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter). Troy stressed that social media channels are the place one needs to be.
Cédric Delahaye, Marketing & Communication Manager at Elvinger Hoss Prussen, led the main workshop component on “Creating your ALL STAR LinkedIn profile" (from scratch) with an excellent, quick-fire presentation. He revealed that he has created around 60 separate LinkedIn profiles in the past 10 years. Now, LinkedIn has over 400 million members, with around 17% paying for premium access, offering access to statistics and premium features.
He also revealed that he had visited almost all LinkedIn profiles of all attendees and was pleasantly surprised by the quality he saw; he acknowledged that just a small number of those he viewed could do with a significant improvement.
He mentioned that having a professional photo is of paramount importance, not having an image taken at the beach. After entering basic information, one needs to start connecting with other people, starting within one's professional domain (within your company, based on your email address). In additional to a personal photo, it is also possible to upload a photo as a banner.
He advocated linking with an address book, to help increase one's network of contacts. He also stressed that the goal is to connect with prospects and clients, and also that LinkedIn is not like Facebook; instead, it is a professional network platform.
He stressed the importance of one's public profile, which is what is seen by others, particularly creating a 5-10 line summary. He also referred to Skills Management and the features pertaining to endorsements, which one can show, hide and delete. He urged people to focus on up to 15-20 core and relevant skills, with 2-3 lines summarising these skills at the bottom of one's profile summary.
One of the problems associated with a large number of contacts (> 1,000) is that too much information appears on one's timeline, to be able to be processed properly. One solution here is to signify your interests, as a filter. He explained how to share updates on LinkedIn, as well as on Twitter, and publishing posts.
In the LinkedIn Accounts and Settings, he showed how to try a premium account and how to parameterise one's LinkedIn account, including the regularity at which one received messages by email. He also explained the advantages of keeping one's connections personal.
It will take some time to explore all the features and functionalities within LinkedIn, as well as data sections to complete, but he emphasised the benefits of doing so, including parameterising one's profile.
The Social Selling Index (www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi) shows how one performs on LinkedIn and is worth checking out.
Christiane Schmit, Head of Marketing, BD & Communication at Allen & Overy Luxembourg, presented a detailed case study of an international high profile company entitled “Building your business presence on LinkedIn", showing how a company page can be achieved.
She revealed that 81% of B2B decision makers use blogs, 42% use Twitter and 74% use LinkedIn. 54% follow group discussions, 41% believe LinkedIn influence them most, with 22% posting questions on social media.
Content needs to be focussed on audience needs to be considered strategic. she talked about measuring success, with statistics showing numbers of impressions, clicks, interactions, with the latter average being 0.05%. She explained soft conversions (shares, engagement, etc.) and hard conversions (email enquiries, publication downloads, lead generation) - closer to the sales act.
On strategic content marketing, she emphasised the need to create and publish a high volume of content - "a page needs to live", with a minimum of two posts/week. She suggested adopting an editorial calendar which stores content for exploitation, both internal and external, including publication, conferences, workshops and roadshows, as well as job opportunities, awards and thought leadership.
While Luxembourg has not reached the Transformation phase on LinkedIn, where products and services are sold, many companies are certainly embracing the Engagement phase.
The event concluded with an interactive Q&A session involving questions from the audience and responses from the presenters.
The next AMCHAM Social Media workshop will focus on Facebook and will be held on Wednesday 15 June 2016.
Photo by Geoff Thompson (L-R); Troy Bankhead; Christiane Schmit; Melanie Delannoy; Cédric Delahaye
