LinkedIn has announced the launch of LinkedIn Sponsored Updates which will allow companies to promote business content such as videos, presentations and product news in the newsfeed of LinkedIn members.

Sponsored Updates will appear in members’ feeds on their LinkedIn homepage and will be clearly marked as ‘sponsored’. The member experience will be seamless with a combination of organic and sponsored content in their newsfeed. Members can engage with the content as usual via ‘Like’, ‘Share’, and ‘Comment’ options and they can ‘Follow’ the company that generated it.

Posts will appear across desktop, tablet and smartphone devices and will be available to marketers both on a CPM and CPC basis via a bid-based auction. Companies can track post and campaign effectiveness through comprehensive analytics to glean insights and fine-tune strategy in real time.

“Content marketing is at the heart of LinkedIn’s marketing solutions strategy,” says Matt Tindale, director, marketing solutions in Australia and New Zealand for LinkedIn. “Our goal is to develop a definitive professional publishing platform and create opportunities for marketers to drive business results by sharing relevant content with our members.”

Telstra was selected to trial LinkedIn Sponsored Updates ahead of the general availability.

Harry Lowes, general manager, digital marketing, Telstra, says the telco was able to increase the rate at which it accrued followers on the platform: “We accelerated the rate at which we attract new followers on LinkedIn by about 12%. We are now approaching 50,000 followers, making us the third most-followed company in Australia on LinkedIn.”

Enterprise companies were able to start using ‘Sponsored Updates’ from yesterday and the offering will be rolled out to self-service customers by the end of this month.

An example of a sponsored post from Telstra: