LinkedIn and Events – Beyond the meet and greet

Events advertised on LinkedIn can be valuable to attend. How do you know which ones to go to, and how can you avoid events that are glorified sales pitches?

Finding events – You could spend your life going to LinkedIn events. There are so many paid and free events advertised that in all seriousness you have to be very discerning about which ones are likely to be relevant to you and which ones are not. On the bottom right hand side of your profile page is a widget that will let you find events relevant to topics that interest you. This is one way to find them. The other is to go through the Groups you joined. Many colleagues will display relevant events here. You may also become aware of events as those you are linked to confirm they are attending and thus the event will show in your news feed.

Attending Events – Of course, you can attend the events that require payment but with a little more digging you may be able to find event that are free of charge and where you will actually both a) learn something and b) have a network opportunity. Go with an open mind and plenty of business cards. Once you’ve got the first two or three under your belt you’ll begin to know what the format is and how to get the best out of it for you. Many free events tend to take the form of content marketing or thought leadership – we will come on to these ideas later in the book.

Creating Events – Some people use free events as a marketing tool in itself. To an extent creating an event this way is a cross between content marketing, thought leadership and demand generation. In order for it to be effective for you as a company you have to get qualified leads out of it, but most importantly in order for the event to be effective for the attendee it has to provide them with value.

Creating and running your own event is a great way of beginning to position yourself as a thought leader. This plus content marketing, which we will discuss tomorrow, can really help embed you and your company in the industry landscape.