“There was a very intentional mindset for me that I wasn’t going to change who I was just because I was on LinkedIn now,” she said. “Just because I’m on a professional platform, it doesn’t mean I have to be all buttoned up or only talk about work. And I think there is a desire for younger professionals—millennials and Gen Z, specifically—to basically make this statement that ‘I can be a professional and be a person that has a career while also maintaining my own level of authenticity.”
LinkedIn influencers
As part of its ongoing efforts to court creators, LinkedIn has begun laying “the foundations for an ecosystem of paid, organic and influencer marketing,” Insider’s Enberg said. “And, crucially, B2C marketers are starting to take note.
Those influencer marketing foundations include LinkedIn’s introduction of “brand partnership” labels for sponsored posts in August 2023, following in the footsteps of other influencer-heavy social platforms such as TikTok and Instagram and streaming the disclosure process.
Most of the influencer marketing occurring on LinkedIn at this point has been among B2B brands, some of which have already seen notable impacts from working with influencers such as business owners, analysts, thought leaders and even their own employees.
According to a recent report from Ogilvy, 75% of more than 550 B2B executives surveyed by the agency said they leverage B2B influencer marketing—and of that 75%, nearly all (93%) said they planned to invest further in influencers in the future . And 92% of respondents agreed that targeted marketing involving B2B influencers is “an effective strategy for increasing brand consideration and customer acquisition,” per the report.
Working with B2B creators on LinkedIn evolved into a core influencer marketing strategy for productivity and note-taking app Notion over the past year, said Danielle Ito, Notion’s influencer marketing manager. In early 2023, Notion began teaming up with sales leaders, marketing executives, heads of tech teams and other LinkedIn thought leaders to promote its “Notion for Enterprise” plan and highlight the app’s business use cases, she said.
“This last year has really been a testament to how creators are really realizing that they can use [LinkedIn] as a space to leverage their voice and share their thoughts on whatever their niche is,” Ito said. “Even as we have started to grow our LinkedIn influencer marketing practice, I think the sheer number of creators on the platform has grown along with us. And professionals who maybe aren’t your typical content creator but who do have great insights or can share an opinion on the work that they’re doing—those types of people are really coming up, too, as a new type of creator.”