LinkedIn Events are back (again)

While most social media platforms are about being social in a broad sense, LinkedIn is the go-to one for being social with your professional colleagues. So the launch of LinkedIn Events is an exciting development for B2B event professionals looking for another way to promote their events.

It’s worth mentioning that LinkedIn did previously have an events feature, between 2008 and 2012, but hopefully its return heralds a more long-term strategy.

At this stage, the functionality is quite basic. Events can be created by individuals on their home page (just look at the menu running down the left side of your screen). A pop up opens for you to include the details, and at the end you can set the event to Public (Anyone can view the event and choose to attend) or Private (Only invitees or people with the event link can view the event, and non-invitees need your approval to attend).

You can give your invitees permission to invite their first-degree connections – an action which carries an appealing implicit endorsement for your event

LinkedIn has limited the event invitations to first-degree connections only, to ensure a high degree of relevance for invitees. But you can expand your reach by sharing the event URL for a public event, for example on your LinkedIn Groups and Pages and ads, and giving your invitees permission to invite their first-degree connections – an action which carries an appealing implicit endorsement for your event.

Hopefully LinkedIn will slowly upgrade the Events feature to make it more powerful. Its potential is exciting, especially when you take into account the LinkedIn app which could be used to help facilitate networking at your events.