Influencer marketing has become big business on TikTok and Instagram, where popular creators can make good money helping brands promote their stuff. Now, LinkedIn wants in on the game.

As of last week, LinkedIn has been letting advertisers pay to boost users’ posts, including those with large followings. Its product, called Thought Leader Ads, launched in limited capacity last year.

gave Microsoft-The value business is looking for a shock, as LinkedIn’s revenue growth through 2022 is stuck in the single digits. The company is turning to its membership to help fuel expansion, which hit 1 billion in November.

To date, influencer marketing has largely been a phenomenon of consumer apps, where short-sticks and gimmicks can turn Internet-savvy creators into celebrities with millions of followers. Almost two-thirds of US social media marketing dollars this year will go to parent Instagram. Meta And TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance, along with Instagram and TikTok, are on track to capture a combined 2 percentage points of additional share by 2026, according to eMarketer estimates.

eMarketer says LinkedIn, which launched a year before Facebook, will take just 4% of the market, equivalent to $4.5 billion in marketing revenue, and that its share will remain flat over the next two years. will

“Ads and ad formats take a long time to really take root,” said Max Willens, a senior analyst at eMarketer, referring to LinkedIn’s latest effort.

LinkedIn introduced Last year thought leader ads but with limited usage. Brands can only promote posts from their own employees. MasterCardFor example, promotional posts written by some of its leaders in Singapore, one of which received 500 notifications on the first day. LinkedIn has used ads from thought leaders itself for some of the posts for operating chief Dan Shapiro, but not yet for CEO Ryan Roslansky.

By opening Thought Leader ads, LinkedIn is allowing anyone to promote a post as long as the author gives permission. Social media marketer Brandon Gahan is so keen on this format that he’s focusing most of his efforts on helping companies use thought leader advertising.

“In an era where brand safety is a big issue, LinkedIn has a leg up, especially unlike Twitter,” said Gahan, who last year started an agency called Creator Authority, a social media platform. said, referring to the form now known as X.

X lost some leaders working on brand safety last year, just as the Elon Musk-owned platform was seeing a rise in hate speech on the app.

LinkedIn has long been an effective site for advertisers as members enter their job details, making it easier for brands to target ads to relevant audiences. Advertising tends to focus on business-focused products such as software and computer infrastructure, although automakers, universities, and banks also use the network to reach potential customers.

“If you’re looking to sell a high-end B2B product, and you know the buying group is the CFO and someone in finance and someone in HR, we literally put ads in front of those specific people on LinkedIn. can, because the first-party data is so robust,” Roslansky said At a conference in late 2022.

Thought Leader’s ads came about when employees saw marketing clients promoting screenshots of other users’ content. Since turning on the offer last fall, the ads have gotten more engagement than regular ads with images, said Abhishek Shrivastava, LinkedIn’s vice president of product management.

“Humanizing your brand is very important for B2B and is an underutilized space,” said Shrivastava, adding that clients are very excited about it.

It can’t be cheap. It typically costs more to get 1,000 ad impressions on LinkedIn than on Instagram or TikTok, in part because the company charges advertisers more to reach its more affluent user base. Instead of comparing costs to other sites, brands will look at sales and business leads from running ads, Shrivastava said.

For months, project management software startup ClickUp has been paying its own executives to promote LinkedIn posts. Chris Cunningham, the company’s head of social marketing, said traditional ads on LinkedIn can sometimes be repetitive and generic, and he’s eager to see how Promoted Posts performs when influencers are involved. will

ClickUp on other social networks has had more success promoting creators’ posts than standard ads, Cunningham said. In addition, he said, “It is very easy.”

Betsy Hindman, a marketer in Tennessee who helps companies make the most of their LinkedIn presence, said a brand ambassador can have more impact with an audience than a simple ad.

“It’s part of a complete end-to-end strategy that involves warming people up with any type of content,” he said.

Generating a list of creators will likely take time. Some influencers are represented by agencies, and LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager advertising system does not have an automated process for connecting media buyers to agencies.

“That’s the direction we’re looking for,” Shrivastava said.

More data will be available to advertisers soon. Starting in a few weeks, LinkedIn members will be able to search any company’s ad collection and see its Thought Leader ads, a spokesperson said. This can help advertisers see what works best.

A potential boon for LinkedIn hinges on TikTok’s fortunes. The app faces a possible ban in the US after the House of Representatives introduced legislation last month that would have forced ByteDance to sell it within six months. The pace has since slowed, although Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Emphasized Lawmakers will take up the matter early this week.

eMarketer’s Willens said the agencies are monitoring the issue, but added that “nobody feels there’s a threat.”