Hootsuite Creates Giant Newspapers for LinkedIn Influencer Campaign

Hootsuite is going all in on influencers to promote its biggest report of the year. This week, Hootsuite launched its Social Media Trends 2025 report—its annual analysis of the biggest social trends that marketers need to know about in the coming year. When the report went live, ads from LinkedIn influencers that work in social media filled their feeds with giant newspapers announcing the new report. Eileen Kwok, social and influencer marketing strategist at Hootsuite, told ADWEEK that this is Hootsuite’s largest campaign of the year. It plays off of the oversized marketing trend on social media where brands like Poppi and J.Crew create giant version of their products to stand out in the real world. The campaign also incorporates the rise of edutainment—social content that combines entertainment with education, one of Hootsuite’s own social trends from the report. “Our goal was to have a very simple message: Our trends report is live,” Kwok said. “It’s bold, it’s in your face, you cannot miss it.” Hootsuite sent the oversized newspapers to 10 social media professionals who have a following on LinkedIn including Brandon Smithwrick, director of content at Kickstarter; Grace Andrews, marketing and brand director at Flight Studio; and Gabriel Gomez, head of social media at MCoBeauty. Hootsuite also created its own social content using the newspaper props that will be posted across the brand's social channels. Within the first 24 hours of launching, Hootsuite’s campaign generated 50 mentions in earned media and more than 5,000 engagements. Kwok also said that the campaign’s cost per lead—or the price to acquire downloads of the report—is one-eighth the price of Hootsuite’s traditional advertising. Kwok said the campaign has led to “the most content downloads” that Hootsuite has ever had from an influencer marketing campaign. The influencers also accounted for 66% of all downloads that came from social media. Hootsuite declined to say how many times the report has been downloaded. Thumb-stopping LinkedIn posts The campaign's goal was to get people to stop as they scroll through LinkedIn’s feed with large photos. The decision to focus on LinkedIn reflects Hootsuite’s business-to-business audience of social media marketers, Kwok said. “If you scroll on Instagram or TikTok, you’ll see a lot of influencers constantly trying to sell you things,” Kwok said. “When you’re scrolling on LinkedIn, you’re following people that you connect with, other brands, and other resources that you’re interested in.” Each influencer was sent a brief explaining the idea of taking a photo with the oversized newspapers to tease the findings of the report in the caption. Kwok also sent the influencers a sample post showing herself with the newspaper as an example. “We pride ourselves on giving the influencer the flexibility and creativity to lean into their own style and tone when it comes to their copywriting,” Kwok said. “We don’t like to be very nitpicky over every sentence or word.” Jordana Rapuch, senior copywriter at Hootsuite, said that the goal was to let the influencers' style and write the post in their own way. “It’s going to appeal more to their audiences, which will in turn benefit us,” she said. “We don’t want their post to feel too much like an ad—giving them the autonomy to do their own thing is helpful to us in the end.” LinkedIn is increasingly pitching itself as an alternative to YouTube and Instagram with video and newsletter formats for creators. ADWEEK recently reported that video uploads to LinkedIn increased 34% year-over-year in October. “LinkedIn is one of the fastest-growing platforms that our audience uses—it’s also quite often the one that people feel most confident in with the ROI it delivers,” Rapuch said.

Influencers & Creators

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