Boost a LinkedIn Page post

Boosted posts are paid ads that you create from existing LinkedIn posts. Promote your best LinkedIn content to grow your audience and get more awareness for your brand awareness. You can choose who you want to see your posts and when your campaign runs to get the most out of your ad spend.

Once you have a LinkedIn ad account, you can do the following:

• Boost existing, live posts in Hootsuite Social Advertising (go to Ads, and then select LinkedIn Boost).
• Boost a scheduled post in your Hootsuite calendar, or boost a new post when you create it.
• Boost a post from a LinkedIn Company Updates stream.

Before you begin

You must have a LinkedIn ad account (with a valid payment method) associated with one of your Pages to boost a post. The user who connects the LinkedIn Page to Hootsuite must have advertiser permissions (Account Manager or Campaign Manager role) for the ad account in LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

• To create an ad account in LinkedIn Campaign Manager, see the LinkedIn help article Create an Ad Account.
• To connect your LinkedIn Page to Hootsuite, see Connect a LinkedIn account.
• To manage your ad accounts, see Manage ad accounts and advertising permissions.

Members in a Hootsuite organization must have one of the following roles to boost content:

• Be an organization Super Admin or Admin.
• Have Unlimited, Advanced, or the custom Boost posts permission for the LinkedIn Page.

Boost your LinkedIn post

1. Go to Ads, and then select LinkedIn Boost.
2. Select Find a post to Sponsor and select a published post to boost. You cannot boost a post that contains more than one image (carousels). Note that it can take up to two hours for new or updated posts to appear in this list.
3. In the Sponsor settings window, select the LinkedIn Page and ad account to use to boost your post.
   
   If you don't see a LinkedIn Page that’s connected to Hootsuite, make sure you have advertising permissions for the ad account in LinkedIn Campaign Manager. If you are a member of a Hootsuite organization, make sure you have Advanced or Custom social network permissions for the LinkedIn Page.
4. Choose a Campaign group for your boost campaign.
5. Choose an objective (engagement, video views, or website visits). LinkedIn uses this information to show your post to people who are likely to take the action you want.

   Note: If you choose "website visits" as an objective, your post must contain a URL. If it doesn't, the boost campaign will fail.

6. Choose your audience. Select Edit to specify the attributes you want to target, like location, company information, demographics, education, job experience, and interests, and then select Save audience to confirm your changes.
   

   Tip: Keep an eye on the potential reach of your audience as you build it. If the size of your potential audience becomes too small, remove some of your audience parameters.
   

7. Select Enable LinkedIn Audience Network to expand your audience to LinkedIn members who share attributes with your target audience. For more information, see LinkedIn's help article about Audience Expansion.
8. Set your budget and the length of your promotion.
9. Select Sponsor on LinkedIn.

Set up an automated boost campaign on LinkedIn

Follow these steps to set criteria that determine which posts to automatically boost for you.

Step 1: Set up your LinkedIn campaign

1. Go to Create, select Automated boost, then select On LinkedIn.
2. Select the LinkedIn Page and ad account you want to use for your campaign.
3. Select a Campaign Group.
   LinkedIn uses campaign groups to help you manage related ad campaigns at scale. We recommend you create a new campaign group in the LinkedIn Ad Manager dedicated to autoboost campaigns.
4. Enter a name for your campaign.
5. Choose an objective for your campaign. This is the business goal you want to achieve. You can choose from the following options:
   • Website visits - Drive traffic to a website or landing page.
   • Brand awareness - Get your ads in front of more people.
   • Engagement - Increase audience interaction with your content.
   • Lead generation - Collect contact information from potential clients.
   • Conversions - Get more people to buy from you, register for your events, or download a resource. If you select this option, you'll be asked to specify the event you want to use to track the conversion.
6. Select Next: Audience and budget.

Step 2: Choose your target audience

Set up a target audience for your LinkedIn ad campaign to make sure the right people see your ad.

When you set up the target audience for your ad campaign, you have two options: you can build your own audience, based on specific characteristics like language, location, and interests, and include or exclude matched audiences already created in LinkedIn, or you can use a saved audience imported from LinkedIn.

Build your own audience

Follow these steps to build your own LinkedIn audience.

Note: If your target audience includes people living in the European Union (EU), you must confirm that your ads are not political in nature to comply with EU regulations. Select the checkbox to proceed.

1. Select the Build your own audience option from the list, and then select Edit audience.
   
2. In the Build your audience window, select a language for your target audience. LinkedIn targets people whose LinkedIn profile language matches your selection.
3. Under Locations, choose how you want LinkedIn to identify your audience's location.
   • Select Target by recent and permanent location to reach people based on the location listed in their LinkedIn profile, and their IP address (for short-term visits to other locations).
   • Select Target by permanent location to reach people based only on the location listed in their LinkedIn profile.
4. Type a location in the search bar to target a geographical area. You can get specific with a city or metropolitan area, or target a broader area with a state or country. You can also select Exclude Location to specify locations to leave out.
5. Optionally, type in the name of one or more matched audiences you've already created on LinkedIn to refine your target audience. You can also select Exclude Matched Audiences to specify audiences to leave out.
6. Under Detailed Targeting, select Include People to expand the list of categories you can choose from to target your audience by specific attributes. You can select attributes in the following categories:
   • Company: company connections, followers, industry, name, and size
   • Demographics: age and gender
   • Education: fields of study, degrees, schools
   • Job Experience: job function, title, seniority, years of experience
   • Interests: LinkedIn groups and member interests

   For more information on the attributes in each category, see the LinkedIn help article Targeting Options for LinkedIn Advertisements.

   Note: Due a limitation in the LinkedIn API, the potential reach for a target audience shown in Hootsuite may differ from the potential reach for the same targeted audience shown in LinkedIn.

7. Optionally, select Exclude People and specify the attributes of people you want to exclude from your audience.
8. Select Save audience to save your changes.

Use a saved audience

Follow these steps to use a saved audience from LinkedIn:

1. Select the Use saved audience option from the list.
   
2. Enter the name of an audience you've already created and saved in LinkedIn and select it from the list.

Step 3: Set your auto boost criteria

Set the criteria to automatically promote posts that match it.

1. Choose which posts to boost automatically. You can choose to boost all posts or select Posts with a minimum amount of engagement. Here, you can set minimum engagement criteria that must be met for the post to auto-boost.
   
2. (Optional) Set the types of posts you want to include in your auto boost campaign. You can choose to boost all posts or a specific type of post.
3. Set the duration of time you want to boost each post.
4. Enter keywords that must appear (or not) in posts you want to boost. You can enter multiple keywords (select Enter to separate keywords).
5. Enter any of your Hootsuite organization's tags that must be included in posts you want to boost. Your organization's tags are different from hashtags. These tags allow you to visually classify posts and conversations by category, which is useful for keeping track of things like engagement for specific campaigns and for providing other team members context about specific messages or posts. You can include multiple tags (select Enter to separate tags). Learn more about tags.
6. Select Publish campaign.

LinkedIn will promote all the posts that match the specified criteria, including posts published in the previous 7 days.

Edit your boost settings

You can manage and edit your own scheduled boosted posts at any time. For auto-boost campaigns, you can only edit the campaign name, duration, and budget.

1. Go to Ads, and then select LinkedIn Boost.
2. Select a LinkedIn ad account from the list, and filter the campaign list by selecting an option under Campaign status (active, inactive, or all campaigns).
3. In any of your posts, you can do the following:
   • Select Edit Name to change the campaign name.
   • Set the campaign status to Active or Inactive.
   • Select Options to delete the boosted post campaign.

Note: Once a boosted post has been published, you can't change the content of the post. If you need to make a change to the content, delete the boost campaign, then edit the post (learn how to edit a post), and boost it again.

Manage boosted posts in your Hootsuite calendar

If you added Boost settings to a scheduled post, you can change them before the post is published. Only boost campaigns created in Hootsuite appear in your calendar.

1. Go to Plan to view your calendar. You can quickly identify your promoted posts here - just look for the $ sign on the post.
   
2. Select the scheduled post, and then select Edit.
3. In the Edit post window, go to the Boost your post section, and select Edit.
4. Make your changes, and then select Save settings and continue.
5. Select Save edits.

You can also delete the boosted post from your content calendar. If you want to duplicate the post (select More and then select Duplicate), you'll need to re-enter your Boost settings.

Once a scheduled promotion is published and live, you can monitor the promotion results in Advertise (go to Ads, and then select LinkedIn Boost).

Review LinkedIn boost performance in Advertise

You can view metrics for your boosted LinkedIn posts to see how they're performing.

1. Go to Ads, and then select LinkedIn Boost.
2. Select a LinkedIn ad account from the list, and filter the campaign list by selecting an option under Campaign status (active, inactive, or all campaigns).
3. For any campaign in the list, select View metrics to see key performance metrics for the boosted post.
4. Optionally, select See post on LinkedIn to open LinkedIn and view the post.