I am sure that you’ve used a bunch of LinkedIn tools already.
Most of them, without any success.
I don’t blame you — it’s difficult to close deals nowadays on LinkedIn.
But, if used properly, LinkedIn can be a HUGE opportunity for B2B companies.
In this article, I’ll share with you some of the best LinkedIn tools for 2019.
Ready? Let’s dive right in!
Contents
Category 1: LinkedIn Tools for Business
Category 2: LinkedIn Tools for Recruiters
Category 3: LinkedIn Marketing Tools
Category 4: LinkedIn Analytics & Reporting Tools
Category 5: LinkedIn Automation Tools
Category 6: LinkedIn Search & Monitoring Tools
Category 1: LinkedIn Tools for Business
1. LinkedIn Profile
You and all your team members must have a LinkedIn profile.
Why?
Well, because LinkedIn can be a great lead generation machine and a great social network for social selling.
Here is how Jeff Weiner’s profile looks like on LinkedIn:
Many companies are successfully using LinkedIn as a network to generate awareness about their services.
A bright example is Drift, with it’s employees acting like brand advocates, promoting the service in a really cool way that adds value to the community.
2. LinkedIn Company Pages
Why is it important that you have a LinkedIn Company Page, besides having a LinkedIn account?
Well, think of LinkedIn company pages as a great distribution channel for your content marketing strategy.
Here is how Drift’s LinkedIn company page looks like:
A LinkedIn company page can connect you with potential customers and prospects.
It is essential if you want to level-up your LinkedIn marketing game.
3. LinkedIn Affiliate Pages
What is a LinkedIn affiliate page?
According to LinkedIn:
“An affiliated LinkedIn page is linked to another LinkedIn page by the LinkedIn Support Team and represents a related or subsidiary organization.”
Here is how Microsoft’s affiliate pages look like:
Keep in mind that:
- A page can have multiple child pages, but only one parent page
- To be able to manage affiliate pages, you have to be an admin in both pages
You are not going to need this one if you run a small business or a small startup.
This is a LinkedIn tool (a feature) for enterprises.
4. LinkedIn Elevate
According to LinkedIn:
“Content shared by employees, has 2x higher engagement versus when shared by a company.”
Why is this so?
Because people want to buy from other people.
LinkedIn Elevate is a way for businesses to empower their employees to share high-quality content.
Here is how it works:
Step 1: Content Curation
Where you get suggestions of content that trends right now (based on your industry or niche).
Step 2: Content Suggestion
Where you suggest content to your employees for sharing.
Step 3: Monitoring
Where you track the results of your employees’ shares affect key metrics for your business.
Keep in mind that LinkedIn users prefer to interact with other users’ content rather than with company pages’ content.
Use that to your benefit!
LinkedIn is a powerful tool in every marketer’s hands.
It can be an important part of your social media strategy and marketing strategy in general.
As you may have heard, LinkedIn started as a social network that would help people who wanted to increase their chances of finding a job by expanding their network.
So, what are some of the best LinkedIn tools for recruiters?
Just keep reading and you’ll find out.
Category 2: LinkedIn Tools for Recruiters
Despite generating new prospects and sending follow-ups on your existing ones, LinkedIn can help you attract and recruit top talent.
How?
Let’s find out.
5) Post Jobs
With LinkedIn, you can post jobs about your current openings and thus reach candidates that are actively searching for a job.
For example, here are Wistia’s current job openings on their LinkedIn company page:
As you can imagine, just posting a new job hoping for the best is not going to help you.
In fact, to attract top talent, you have to spread the message and to be active in conversations on LinkedIn and in other social media.
6) Recruiter
This is where things get interesting.
With Recruiter, you have access to a social network of 560+ Million LinkedIn users.
Not bad, right?
You can browse, contact and hire people from a huge database that has all the information you need.
The best part: you can monitor the results of your efforts in real-time:
And, you can even connect your applicant tracking system with LinkedIn Recruiter to have more in-depth data:
There is a lite version of LinkedIn Recruiter, for those making only a few hires.
You can find more about it here:
https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/recruiter-lite
7) Talent Insights
Another great LinkedIn tool for recruiters.
According to LinkedIn, Talent Insights helps you:
“Answer tough talent questions with data-driven insights.”
Think of Talent Insights as Google Analytics for recruiters.
You can’t reach a decision, without taking a look at your data. Right?
8) Pipeline Builder
What is LinkedIn Pipeline Builder?
It is your way to ensure that you’ll have a number of talents ready for hire, based on:
- High-priority roles
- High-volume roles
- Hard-to-fill roles
You can build a highly-personalised experience for your candidates from start to end:
9) Career Pages
Career Pages is the space you can use to convince ideal candidates to contact you, based on your current or future openings.
Keep in mind that 90% of all candidates are open to new opportunities.
Why don’t you be the one who offers them that opportunity?
Here is LinkedIn’s Career Page:
Make sure to pay attention to the aesthetics of the page, except for the copy and the number of the job openings.
Everything has to be consistent with your overall branding.
Never oversee that!
10) Work With Us Ads
This one is easy.
When a LinkedIn user visits another user’s LinkedIn profile, they get to see a Work With Us Ad:
We are not exactly sure as to the effectiveness of such Ads, but LinkedIn states that:
“Recruitment Ads get up to 50x higher CTRs than typical recruitment Ads.”
11) Airstory
What is Airstory?
It is a Chrome extension that helps you make notes out of your research.
Just to be clear here:
You can use it for various purposes, but as a recruiter, it can help you take useful notes that you could later use in the decision-making process.
Just highlight the things that matter to you when visiting a LinkedIn profile:
And, click Save:
All you have to do is add Airstory to Chrome, and you are ready to go.
Category 3: LinkedIn Marketing Tools
You already know that LinkedIn advertising is a great tool for B2B companies.
Have you ever used it for your business though?
Here are some LinkedIn advertising tools you should know:
12) Sponsored Content
13) InMail
Think of it as the LinkedIn Email.
Keep in mind that you can use InMail as a LinkedIn survey tool as well.
This means that you can send surveys and gather customer data or industry data that you can later use to create content or refine your marketing strategy.
14) LinkedIn Text Ads
Here is how a text Ad from the video marketing platform Vimeo looks like:
15) Run LinkedIn Dynamic Ads
Here is how a dynamic Ad from the telecommunications company Nokia looks like:
16) Programmatic Display Ads
Here is how a programmatic display Ad on LinkedIn looks like:
17) Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales and prospecting tool.
It can play a key role in your LinkedIn marketing strategy and it can help you with your lead generation efforts.
Here is how LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help your business:
- Advanced Lead Search
You can search for leads based on your needs and Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
- Lead Recommendations
You can get a list of leads with contact information, preferences and other useful customer data that you can use in your prospecting process.
Lead Recommendations is a surefire for those who need more LinkedIn leads.
The best part?
You can then extract those leads into an Excel Spreadsheet or Google Sheet.
Besides that, you can:
- Get real-time notifications and sales updates on your leads and sales opportunities
- Keep notes of everything that is important
- Connect LinkedIn Sales Navigator to your CRM
It is without a doubt that Sales Navigator can help you optimise your sales process.
It can also help you automate the LinkedIn prospecting process.
Things that used to take a lot of time can be streamlined and be executed seamlessly.
All you have to do is use it wisely.
18) Crystal
This is not one of LinkedIn’s products.
But, it’s a great one nonetheless.
This is why you should include it in your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
According to Crystal:
“Crystal predicts the personalities of your prospects and customers, so you can send more effective Emails, be persuasive in meetings and accelerate trust.”
In plain English: it helps you build rapport with your prospects and get useful insights that will help you better approach them.
It’s a great prospecting tool that (above all) will help you keep everything clean and in order.
Sign up for a free account and after you download the Chrome extension, start visiting LinkedIn profiles to see how it works.
19) ContactOut
ContactOut is a LinkedIn scraping tool.
It essentially allows you to find a LinkedIn user’s contact information:
- Business Email (provided the domain name)
- Phone Number
Here is how the data that ContactOut gets you looks like:
Now, just to be clear here, LinkedIn and other major social networks like Facebook are getting more strict when it comes to privacy and personal data.
This is why you have to treat contact details and other personal information with confidentiality and respect for users’ privacy.
20) Discover.ly
Discover.ly gives you important information on users whose profiles you are visiting.
This way, you can build rapport and enrich your lead lists or customer data with even more data.
Cool, right?
It can also get your LinkedIn research to a whole new level by gathering information that could take you a lot of time to gather manually.
21) LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Gmail (Sales Navigator Lite)
This is an add-on for your Gmail account.
After installing the Chrome extension on your browser, you can get Sales Navigator insights right on your inbox.
Once again, this is an add-on and it only works if you are using Gmail for your communications.
22) LinkedFire
I am pretty sure it’s the first time you hear about LinkedFire.
So, what is it?
It is LinkedIn lead generation service that fills your top-of-the-funnel with new high-quality leads every week.
If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, you can give it a try.
Category 4: LinkedIn Analytics Tools
23) LinkedIn Page Analytics
According to LinkedIn, viewing your page analytics allows you to:
- Evaluate the effectiveness of your updates
- Understand more about your followers and visitors
You can choose between Visitors, Updates and Followers:
And, get useful insights into your LinkedIn page performance:
24) Social Pilot
Social Pilot gives you:
“A detailed analysis of your posts’ performance, reach and more.”
25) SproutSocial
SproutSocial is a tool that (among others) offers analytics and reporting solutions for LinkedIn.
It helps you establish benchmarks and monitor your performance, based on these benchmarks.
26) Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the biggest SMM platforms in the world.
It empowers businesses of all sizes to use social better in a more meaningful way, by leveraging tools such as page analytics.
If you are serious about your LinkedIn analytics, you should definitely give it a try.
27) Supermetrics
Supermetrics is one of the most popular analytics and reporting solutions right now.
And, what does that have to do with LinkedIn?
Well, one of its integrations helps you monitor and analyze data from your LinkedIn Ads and LinkedIn pages.
Make sure to check it out.
Category 5: LinkedIn Automation Tools
28) IFTTT
IFTTT stands for: If This Then That
It has a bunch of cool Applets (automated actions) that you can use to save time by automating daily tasks that take a lot of time.
29) Phantombuster
If you are a marketer, then you probably know Phantombuster.
You can choose an API that fits your current needs from expanding your LinkedIn network:
To extract LinkedIn search results:
Fair warning: always make sure that everything you do comply with Phantombuster’s and LinkedIn’s Terms of Use and that you respect users’ data privacy.
30) Buffer
Everyone know Buffer.
Buffer helps you write and schedule your LinkedIn posts for later.
All you have to do is set up an account and start writing, editing and scheduling your posts.
By signing up for a free account, you also have limited access to performance metrics for your LinkedIn posts.
31) Voogy
Voogy is a prospecting tool that can help you streamline the sales process.
It’s a Chrome extension that helps you build rapport with your prospects and thus make more meaningful connections based on smart data.
It also offers integrations with popular software like Salesforce, Hubspot and Zoho CRM.
32) eLink Pro
What does eLink Pro do?
It automates the process of profile visits and helps you visit several LinkedIn profiles every day.
But, let me take it from the start.
First, you have to have an Excel spreadsheet with a list of LinkedIn users that are leads and potential customers.
Using eLink Pro, you can auto visit these LinkedIn profiles and get people to visit your profile.
You see, when someone visits your profile, you get a notification about that profile visit:
And, like most of us, you’d want to see who this user is.
This is why this automated LinkedIn profile viewer can work on some occasions.
33) Protop
Similarly to eLink Pro, Protop automatically visits LinkedIn profiles.
You can define your search criteria, and send notifications to people whose profiles you are visiting.
34) Orca
Orca allows you to create, schedule and monitor automated social selling sequences on LinkedIn.
Think of it as a optimise tool for your sales funnels through LinkedIn.
It is an essential automation tool for LinkedIn.
35) Dux-Soup
This one has widely used (and misused) by marketers and salespeople from all over the world.
With Dux-Soup, you can:
- Automate your profile visits on LinkedIn
- Auto-endorse other LinkedIn users
- Send personalized messages on a scale
- Download data in Excel spreadsheet
Be aware that many people have been banned because of abussion of the features of such automation tools.
So, use all of these tools wisely!
Category 6: LinkedIn Search & Monitoring Tools
36) Standard LinkedIn Search
With Standard LinkedIn Search, you can conduct research and even use filters to narrow down the results.
For example, in the above screenshot, I am looking for a LinkedIn Expert in the United States:
Based on the results I’ll get, I will reach out or visit the profiles that fit my criteria for this particular search.
Last Thoughts
So, there you have it.
These are the best LinkedIn tools to use in 2019.
Choose the ones that fit your LinkedIn marketing strategy and start executing.
Now, I turn it over to you.
Which tools are you planning to use in your LinkedIn marketing strategy?
Is it going to be a LinkedIn monitoring tool or a LinkedIn prospecting tool?
In case, let me know by leaving a comment below!
