LinkedIn Advertising and Job Search

Over the past week I’ve received two interesting emails from LinkedIn (which you may also have received).

The first one was about “Precision Advertising” with LinkedIn. Not only they’re introducing me to the service but they’re also offering a $50 trial for me to test it. How nice (and smart) is that? Companies can advertise their services on LinkedIn and target specific potential customers on the network. If you work in Online Advertising like me, you may think “yeah great but I know that… so what’s the catch there?”. Now advertising is not just for companies and products, it is also for people and skills. Advertising on LinkedIn can become a great tool for job seekers and especially freelancers to promote themselves. With about 120 million members, including almost 8 million decision makers, this platform can offer plenty of business and job opportunities.

What are the main advantages of advertising on LinkedIn? Well you can target a specific audience:

* By job title and function

* By industry and company size

* By seniority and age

* By LinkedIn Groups.

The service works similarly to Google Adwords (except that you can write up to 75 characters in your ad instead of 70). You give a name to your campaign, can create up to 15 ads (with text and images) and control your daily budget. The destination page can be your site/blog or your LinkedIn page. Your ads will then be shown to relevant people and companies accross the network. Just be aware that you will be charged $5 for activating your ads.

The second email was about targeted Job opportunities. LinkedIn now sends you personalised emails with job ads related to your field of expertise. From what I’ve seen so far, the job list is quite accurate. If you click on the See All Jobs button, you will be redirected to the LinkedIn page with all relevant jobs listed which you can then filter by company, date posted, location, salary and experience level. There is also a search box allowing users to look for more specific positions and a “save” option to keep an eye on the jobs  and searches you are interested in.

It is great to see that LinkedIn is really developing its potential with all these different features. I am really looking forward to seeing what will be next. What about online video advertising?…