The first myth to bust around LinkedIn events is that they are NOT referring to all events held on LinkedIn.
A LinkedIn Event is simply a dedicated page within LinkedIn where people can learn about an event, express interest, receive updates and engage with organisers before and after the event takes place. The important thing to understand is that the event itself does not need to happen on LinkedIn.
Your webinar might be hosted on Zoom. Your workshop might take place in a hotel conference room. Your networking event might be happening in a local restaurant. LinkedIn simply acts as the place where people discover the event and interact with it.
People do not use LinkedIn events enough. They are easy to set up and, in fact, I would argue that LinkedIn Events are one of the most underused audience-building features available to businesses today.
Why LinkedIn Created Events
As you may have heard me say: LinkedIn is a networking platform.
Despite being grouped under the social media umbrella, LinkedIn has always been designed to help professionals build relationships, share expertise and create opportunities. Events are a natural extension of that.
Events, whether in person or online, provide a place where people with a shared interest can gather together and learn, chat and be a part of a common conversation.
Instead of promoting your event through a series of disconnected posts, events enable you to create a central destination where everything can live. People can see what the event is about, who is attending and what conversations are taking place around it.
For organisers, it creates a focal point. For attendees, it creates a sense of community before they even arrive.
Why Businesses Should Be Using LinkedIn Events
One of the biggest challenges with event marketing is attracting the right audience.
Most event platforms do a good job of managing registrations, but they are less effective at helping people discover your event in the first place.
LinkedIn solves that problem because not only is your audience already there on LinkedIn, you can invite people to your event by messaging them directly in their DM’s via LinkedIn’s super simple and efficient process.
When someone interacts with your event, their network may see that activity. When speakers, attendees and employees promote the event, it reaches their audience. The result is that visibility starts to compound.
This is particularly valuable for businesses running webinars, breakfast briefings, roundtables and educational sessions where attracting the right audience is often more important than attracting a large audience.
A LinkedIn Event allows you to build awareness long before the event takes place.
As well as the ability to invite individual people directly via their DM’s using LinkedIn’s simple process, LinkedIn have made it easy for us to invite targeted groups. What is great is that when inviting groups it’s possible to send an invitation to 250 people at a time – with just one click!
More Than a Registration Page
People rarely wake up one morning and decide to register for a webinar from a company they have never heard of. They register because they have seen content, joined conversations and developed confidence that the event will be worth their time.
LinkedIn Events help create that confidence.
Why Employee Advocacy Makes Such a Difference
One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is relying entirely on their Company Page to promote an event.
Company Pages have their place, but people are far more likely to engage with content shared by individuals. It’s very easy to use your employees to help promote an event. There are two ways they can do this. Let’s look at using all the employees in an organisation.
Imagine a business with twenty employees.
If the Company Page shares an event, the initial event post may show up in their feed and they may click on it and have a look.
Compared to:
Twenty employees sharing the event with their own perspective, experience or reason for attending. It’s not hard to visualise how the potential reach and credibility is likely to increase significantly.
This isn’t about asking employees to become marketers. It’s about encouraging people to participate in conversations they genuinely care about.
The most successful LinkedIn Events are rarely promoted by a single account. They are supported by multiple voices across the organisation.
Secondly let’s look at who are the admins on the company page and how they can utilise their personal profile to maximise visibility of the event.
Let’s imagine a company had a CEO with 22,000 connections, a Marketing Director with 12,000 connections and a social media manager with 4,000 connections.
Let’s imagine that all these 38,000 connections have been curated and chosen and are all relevant connections.
As long as each of these 3 people are either super or content admin on the company page, they can invite their connections!
What about the sales teams? Can they invite their connections? Make them admin on the page and YES! Also, if they’re speaking at the event or attending the event, they can invite their connections. There are endless possibilities to invite relevant people to an event.
LinkedIn Events Work for More Than Webinars
When people think about LinkedIn Events, they often think about online webinars.
In reality, a LinkedIn event can support almost any type of professional gathering.
I’ve seen businesses use them successfully for:
- Networking events
- Industry roundtables
- Conferences
- Recruitment events
- Open days
- Product launches
- Breakfast briefings
- Workshops
- Panel discussions
The format matters less than the audience.
If there are people you want to bring together around a shared topic, a LinkedIn Event can help.
The Bigger Opportunity
The real value of a LinkedIn Event isn’t the page itself.
It’s what happens around it.
The conversations.
The content.
The invitations.
The introductions.
The relationships that start before the event and continue afterwards.
Too many businesses view events as a date in the diary.
The most successful organisations view them as a campaign.
They use LinkedIn to build anticipation, create discussion and strengthen relationships long before the first speaker appears on screen.
That’s where the real opportunity lies.
Final Thoughts
LinkedIn Events are often misunderstood because people focus on where the event takes place.
In reality, that’s the least interesting part.
Whether your event happens on Zoom, Teams, WebinarJam or in a conference room is largely irrelevant.
What matters is your ability to attract the right audience and create meaningful engagement before the event begins.
That’s why I encourage businesses to think differently about LinkedIn Events.
LinkedIn is not your event platform.
It’s your audience.
