A funding announcement should be treated like any other PR or marketing campaign. Whether you’re handling the campaign internally or working with an outside tech PR agency, each step should be planned ahead of time, synced with other initiatives, and the results should be tracked. Successful funding announcements should go well beyond mere press releases (but if you need help with those check this article out), and should always be amplified by your tech startup’s social media presence.
LinkedIn is a social platform for professionals and an ideal connection tool for job seekers, thought leaders, investors, and students. It’s also one of the best ways to share your funding announcement with a much wider audience of peers, influencers and prospects.
Follow these tips from Swyft to support your tech startup’s funding announcement with LinkedIn.
Nail down the timing
Timing is everything when announcing a milestone as significant as a funding round. In order to maximize the impact of the news, the timeline of events should be nailed down ahead of time and include everything from the day and time of the announcement and on which channels.
The key to garnering the most attention for your tech startup’s funding announcement is to share the news across all channels at the same time. When the press release—written either in-house or by the tech PR agency that you brought on for support—goes up on the company website and perhaps even on the Wire, you should immediately share that on LinkedIn. This will amplify the message and increase the likelihood of virality and audience exposure to your announcement.
Coordinate blog posts
Similar to your social channels, your tech startup’s blog is another platform that can amplify the announcement and help frame the news. Blog posts are a great way to streamline content across all channels because they can be repurposed and shared on other platforms and even by investors participating in the funding round. Sharing your blog post directly to LinkedIn will allow other people to engage with and share the news and it will link the news back to your startup’s website. Translation? More traffic, clicks and leads. It’s also good for your SEO strategy.
When you or your tech PR agency is writing, titling, and sharing the blog post, just be sure to keep your audience in mind. In a study conducted by LinkedIn, researchers found that Millennials engage with content that, “educates, inspires or develops their skill set” while Gen Xers, “seek content to stay up to date on relevant trends.” You’ll want your blog post to cater to these content preferences, even in something as specific as a funding announcement.
Make LinkedIn marketing a company-wide initiative
The best way to support your tech startup’s funding announcement is to make sure as many people as possible see it. Luckily, your startup has employees, founders and investors, all of whom can act as social media ambassadors for your funding announcement. LinkedIn ranks posts based on personal connections, interest relevance, and engagement potential. Employee sharing will increase the likelihood of personal connections and, therefore, grow your post’s visibility.
It should go without saying that founders and top executives need to share the announcement on their LinkedIn. Yet even in this social media savvy world we now live in one of the most overlooked and massive networks available to fuel your announcements are employees. Alert your employees and any other key stakeholders involved to when and how they can post the news. After all, you don’t want to go off-brand or rogue through a variety of well-intentioned but awkward posts that could reflect poorly on your startup or cause undue confusion among your target audiences.
Finally, don’t forget to enlist the support of your other key stakeholders, like your partner tech PR agency or SEO firm, to help push this to an even broader audience. Their networks are usually large and they are often connected to influencers like tech journalists and investors.
Use valuable hashtags
Whether you’re repurposing a blog post or just sharing a brief “we did it!” funding announcement on LinkedIn, use hashtags to maximize your post’s reach. Tech startup related hashtags connect to audiences interested in startup funding announcements, startup trends, and startup news, and oftentimes these hashtag followers include potential investors. Check out this LinkedIn article for trendy and tech startup specific hashtags to accompany your funding announcement. One key takeaway: limit your hashtags to fewer than ten.
Send your startup funding news directly to influencers and journalists
When appropriate, you could consider sharing the announcement with journalists on LinkedIn with a quick DM to let them know about your tech startup’s milestone. Just keep in mind, media relations etiquette also applies to connecting with people on LinkedIn. Only reach out to individuals with whom you have established relationships or with people who you are 100% sure are interested in tech startup funding news. If you’re working with a tech PR agency, they will already have relationships with key tech media contacts and can share the news directly with them.
If you want to make the news feel even more personal for your general audience, consider using InMail ad copy to target audience members with the big news. This was a successful tactic for financial startup Ellevest that proved to convert leads even with general, non-funding announcement ad content.
Consider post promotion
LinkedIn sponsored updates cut through the noise by enabling your tech startup to target specific industries, companies, job titles and individuals. There’s not always a ton of ROI when putting money behind a social media post, but it could be worth a shot if you want to get more targeted eyes on the content or want to broadcast your startup’s work post-funding.
While funding is exciting and legitimizes your growing tech startup, consumers and partners are most interested in the value of your product. Consider promoting funding related posts only when they also state the value of your startup to your audience beyond investment numbers.
Measure results
No campaign is complete without an analysis of campaign effectiveness and an acknowledgement of the numbers. Your team or tech PR agency should have tracked everything from the beginning including the dates of the campaign, how many times the announcement was shared, and on which channels it was shared.
LinkedIn makes it easy to track and analyze engagement with your funding announcements and to determine what audience is actively engaging with your company. LinkedIn is comparably expensive for CPM, but some tech startups have experienced a high conversion rate from lead to customer on LinkedIn. Keep an eye on your cost per lead in comparison to your conversion rate with LinkedIn announcements to make sure your company is maximizing ROI and hitting CTR benchmarks.