You can communicate effectively and directly to specific audiences by targeting your LinkedIn posts. 👍
By applying audience targeting to posts you publish, you can deliver good quality content to any desired segment of your followers. There are many reasons for you to look into this – staying relevant in today's noisy and information-overloaded world is one of the top ones.
Note: Targeting only works for Pages, not for personal LinkedIn Profiles.
Similar targeting options are available in LinkedIn's self-service platform for creating and managing ads: Campaign Manager. The targeting solution in the ZoomSphere's Scheduler app, though, is subjected to organic LinkedIn posts. This means that you are selecting from your own follower base and possibly choosing who else on LinkedIn could see it as well.
👉 Targeted posts will only be shown in corresponding members’ feeds. All posts, targeted and non-targeted, will appear on the Page’s feed. (source)
Important:
Targeting will work only if the selected audience has at least 300 members; in other words, you have to target a minimum of 300 Page followers. If the audience size is too small, LinkedIn won't allow you to use this function.
This means that the follower base of your page should be bigger than 300 people because you still need the margin to target your followers.
How do you decide who to target?
The answer to this is not complicated – imagine who you want to engage with. It doesn't end there, of course. What is your audience looking for? Do they want to be entertained, educated, and informed...? You should also make sure that your brand's tone of voice is applied according to your audience's preferences.
Practical Examples
A global brand "talks" to its audience in each country using its local language.
A brand needs to optimize content for specific segments of its followers – targeting based on seniority.
An organization targets a special offer or proposal to a specific audience from its industry.
A design agency uses industry, job function, and study fields targeting to find a new member for their team.
A local farmer's market targets followers based on location to distribute information about an upcoming event.
A university targets possible new students of Master's degree using degree and study field.
There are several targeting criteria:
Regions (Continents)
Location (Countries)
Language(s)
Industries
Function
Seniority
Company size
University
Study fields
If your settings create a small audience, try removing some of your targeting criteria to make it broader.
Examples of how you can use audience targeting
Geography
Geographic targeting gives you an opportunity to select a continent and any country in the world. But remember – you need to have at least 300 followers in the selected area.
Show content only to your followers from a specific country or countries (especially useful for global pages)
Share company news relevant only locally
Share info about local events only with a specific audience
Note: As LinkedIn states, location is the only mandatory field. A person's location can be based on the location included in their profile as well as their IP address.
Language
The language option allows you to target people based on their language settings.
Note: A member’s language is based on the language used in their profile. Many LinkedIn members use English as their language.
Industry
Target followers who work in a particular industry. If your content applies to an entire industry, this targeting option might work very well, although if the content covers only a few particular sectors, it might be better for you to use other targeting options.
narrow down members of certain Job functions in a specific industry – for example, Marketing Managers in the Finance industry
share content with
👉 Complete list of Industries here.
Note: LinkedIn takes the industry information from a member's current position by looking at the company's industry where they are currently working. The company decides what industry they belong to.
Job Function
Job functions are based on the job titles filled out by LinkedIn members. For example, the Healthcare Services function includes doctors, nurses, veterinarians, surgeons, dentists, and other similar occupations.
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TIP: Combine the Job function with the Seniority to reach decision-makers with specific expertise. 💡
If you add a job function only, you will target all of your followers who work in Finance, for example. You can narrow it down further by adding Seniority, for example, Owners/Partners.
Seniority
You can reach people based on their expertise. It describes their position and influence in the company, and it's determined by the person's job title.
reach people who are responsible for buying decisions in their organization
target people based on their seniority – for example, when you are hiring new people for your company (use Entry and Training to target entry-level members or Director and Manager to target members with high leadership responsibilities)
Owner | Has full or near full ownership of an organization. |
Partner | Has substantial partial ownership of an organization. |
CXO | Has direct reports and leadership responsibilities for the entire business function within an organization. |
Vice President (VP) | Executive management that has direct reports and leadership responsibilities for one business function or unit. |
Director | Multi-functional management that has direct reports and leadership responsibilities for multiple groups of individuals. |
Manager | Positions that have direct reports and leadership responsibilities for a single group of individuals. |
Senior Individual Contributor (Senior) | Individual contributor positions that do not have direct reports but have leadership responsibility, advanced knowledge, and do not require immediate guidance. |
Entry | Individual contributors that do not have direct reports, no leadership responsibility, no advanced expertise, and contribute without immediate guidance. |
Training | Students, interns, and trainee positions that need immediate guidance to contribute individually. |
Unpaid | Includes volunteer positions and positions that do not refer to a job. |
For example, a Senior Product Marketing Manager has the seniority of Manager, an Associate Consultant has the seniority of Entry, and a Doctor or Physician would be classified as a Senior Individual Contributor.
Source: LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Company size
You can reach people based on the size of the organization they work for.
Note: Company size comes from the total number of inferred employees who work for an organization, not just the number of LinkedIn members who identify as working for a given company.
Reach people from small-size startups by choosing 2–10 and 11–50 employees
In the same way, you can reach people from big organizations and corporations by selecting 501–1000, 1001–5000, 5001–10,000 employees
Degree
Select people with a specific accomplished degree – an official rank granted by a university, college, or other learning institution.
Note: Choosing to target by Degrees can sometimes limit your audience size as the Degrees field is not always filled out by members. 💡
Targeting people with specific degrees can be useful for organizations offering additional courses or learning programs in their field
For hiring purposes, it can be useful to target members with specific degrees, for example, lawyers – Master/Doctor of Law
Study field
Study Field is the major or area of study within a member’s degree.
study field can represent skills or expertise in a given field
targeting people with specific study fields can be useful for organizations offering additional courses or learning programs, especially for recent graduates
Once you fill out all the targeting options you want, click on the Save button.
If this message shows up and you cannot save your targeting settings, your selected audience size will be too small. Try to broaden your options. It can also mean that you don't have more than 300 followers on your page. You can read more about this at the beginning of this article.
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