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Jennifer Esty

Step-by-step Guide to Enabling LI 2FA

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Subheading

LinkedIn, like many other social media and SaaS platforms, is moving towards two factor authentication or 2FA as it often, and mostly without affectionate, known. 

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As annoying as 2FA is, it really is the most effective way to avoid hacks, so we recommend moving sooner rather than later. 

Besides, although they aren’t telling us the exact date that it will become mandatory, it will no doubt happen on the day you want to use your phone to post an update from the best event you’ve attended in years… 

It should take no more than five minutes assuming you have ready access to the following:

  • The email account you use with LI (note it may be a personal account) 
  • Your LI password (note you can check your password manager if you can’t remember it)
  • Your phone to set up either SMS authentication or Authenticator App (I chose SMS because it always feels less painful somehow)

I’ve included a step-by-step guide below for anyone who is feeling a little skittish and here are a few gotchas:

  • Enabling 2FA will immediately log you out of LI on all devices
  • When you log back in, you will need to follow the 2FA process you selected (i.e. either SMS or an Authenticator app)
  • Enabling 2FA also affects your preferences for LI Campaign Manager
  • Reminder that by default, giving LI your phone number means anyone who has that number can find you on LI, but you can change that preference in Settings

Step-by-step Guide to Enabling LI 2FA 

You’ll be presented with this notice and assuming you have access to the information I mentioned above, choose Update Settings
Two Step Verification for LinkedIn

Or you can follow these steps:

Enabling Two Step Verification Steps

Here LinkedIn helpfully explains a little more about about 2FA, choose Set up:

Two Step Verification for LinkedIn Explained

You’ll need to login and then you’ll see this prompt:

6-digit Code Sent for LinkedIn Two Step Verification

It’s decision time, which will it be SMS or an Authenticator App??

Authentication Methods LinkedIn

Note the small print reminder about being logged out of all devices!

Two Step Verification Methods LinkedIn

Next steps for SMS users:

Adding a Phone Number for LinkedIn Two Step Verification

Grab your code from your phone!

Entering Verification Code for LinkedIn Two Step Verification

Grab your code from your phone!

Enabling Two Step Verification LinkedIn

More information on how LI is using your phone number and how you can manage those preferences here.

Who can connect with your LinkedIn profile if they have your phone number?

Reminder if you have time and did the above on desktop, go ahead and sort your phone or other devices out before you forget.

If you have any questions about 2FA for LinkedIn, or any of aspect of B2B digital marketing, please get in touch!

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    Stuffed, Starved or Satisfied

    John Woods December 11, 2025

    Help yourself to a glass of bubbles and I’ll explain how you can apply your party planning skills to improve your LinkedIn Ads budgeting.

    Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

    Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

    The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

    Quick Win: Optimise Live Chat

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    Subheading

    In the first of our “Quick Wins” series, find out how we helped our client double the number of live chat interactions with a simple tweak.

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    Let’s Chat about Chat

    Live Chat and Chatbots are now a staple across websites and feature in the user journey for both B2C and B2B purchases. 

    Chat can reduce workload for customer support teams whilst simultaneously making it easier for prospects to get the information they need. 

    However, poorly implemented or resourced chat solutions can cause frustration or disappointment for customers and prospects alike.

    Small but Mighty: The Optimisation 

    Our client, BeLiminal, who specialise in agile transformation and training, had been using live chat for some time. 

    The intention of this optimisation was a small-scale intervention that allowed us to work quickly within the constraints of the existing live chat solution.

    BeLiminal Chat Bot

    The old chat

    We recognised that the current chat implementation was generic, with a stock photo and default “How can we help you today?” introduction. 

    We then considered the other default options within the system:

    Chat bot screengrabs

    We opted for the “Topaz” option – allowing us to convey key messaging, whilst removing the need to determine an image that didn’t look authentic. 

    Working within the strict character limits allowed, we settled on the solution below to individualise the chatbot:

    Beliminal Chat Bot

    The new chat

    The Results

    In the month following this small optimisation, BeLiminal doubled the number of users opting to start a chat, over half of which were valuable enquiries from qualified prospects.

    The Takeaway

    Simply taking a step back and looking at your chat implementation with fresh eyes could help you to make a few small tweaks which can have big results.

    For BeLiminal this is just the start of optimising their chat, with upgrades to their chat solution’s automation and tech stack on the horizon.

    If you’re looking to deploy live chat or a chatbot on your website or landing pages or want to discuss optimising your current B2B marketing setup, please get in touch and we’d be happy to help!

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      Stuffed, Starved or Satisfied

      John Woods December 11, 2025

      Help yourself to a glass of bubbles and I’ll explain how you can apply your party planning skills to improve your LinkedIn Ads budgeting.

      Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

      Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

      The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

      LinkedIn’s Newest Ad Format Has Arrived: Thought Leader Ads

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      Subheading

      LinkedIn officially rolled out Thought Leader Ads a couple of weeks ago and if they haven’t popped up in Campaign Manager yet, you should see them very soon. (The functionality appeared for Sharp Ahead over the weekend).

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      We’ll start with how they work but if you just want to know whether you should try them or not, skip ahead now!

      Let’s start with the how first.

      Obviously the first step is to decide which employee post merits sponsorship. Choose someone in your organisation, likely to be a senior member of your team, who has recently created a compelling piece of content. Or choose a recently published piece of content and ask them to post it to their newsfeed.

      Next, get yourself over to Campaign Manager to set up the campaign.

      Pro tip: Although you can either start a new campaign or choose to include a Thought Leader ad in an existing one, we recommend creating a new campaign for your first trial. That way you can keep a close eye on success metrics and budget more easily.

      LinkedIn thought leader ads

      Thought Leader Ads don’t (yet) work for all objectives or ad types. 

      The current functionality allows brand awareness or engagement and only works with single image sponsored content.

      Next, choose Browse Existing Content (a helpful note from LI might pop up if this is the first time you’ve been in to campaign manager since the new functionality has been enabled).

      LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads

      Choose employee as your library source and if it’s greyed out, get yourself back to campaign setup as it’s likely that you’ve forgotten to disable the LinkedIn Audience Network (which is helpfully enabled by default).

      Here you can search by employee and then choose from a list of their posts, which will appear in reverse chronological order.

      linkedin thought leader ads

      Pro tip: The team member in question must:

      • Have a public profile
      • Have your company as an active and current job in their LinkedIn profile
      • Your company name must match the company page associated with the Campaign Manager account

      Next, simply select the content you would like to Request sponsorship for, read through the legalese pop up and send your request. Reminder that the request and subsequent approval emails can take up to an hour to appear in inboxes so don’t wait until the last minute to get your thought leader lined up to approve!

      Sponsor Request LinkedIn Ad

      Note that once a post has been approved for use, it can be used for multiple campaigns without having to request additional approval.

      Viewing Sponsor Requests
      Sending a Sponsor Request in LinkedIn

      Pro tip: You can setup remarketing audiences for Thought Leader ads in the same way you would for other campaign types!

      So are they worth it?

      Certainly, we’ve seen success stories from people in our networks, but for us the jury is still out.

      We experimented with brand awareness and engagement objectives and both campaigns currently have higher than average CTRs at 3.83% which is 50% higher than our next best performing campaign, But they are on the high side at over twice our average (£7.13 vs £3.00) and the CPMs are 10X our average.

      So are they worth it?

      Certainly, we’ve seen success stories from people in our networks, but for us the jury is still out.

      We experimented with brand awareness and engagement objectives and both campaigns currently have higher than average CTRs at 3.83% which is 50% higher than our next best performing campaign, But the are on the high side at over twice our average (£7.13 vs £3.00) and the CPMs are 10X our average.

      Our recommendation? 

      Try a Thought Leader Ad under these circumstances:

      • You have someone in your organisation who already has a large and engaged follower count
      • They have an in-depth, timely piece of content to share
      • Your objectives really are focused on brand awareness or engagement (and not leads)
      • They are a supporting activity to a broader mix of activities
      • You are willing to experiment with a slightly larger audience than usual

      If you want to hear more from us at Sharp Ahead, sign up for our email newsletter and keep an eye on our blog to stay in the loop!

      If you have your own experience to share with Thought Leader Ads or want help setting one up, please get in touch! 

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        Stuffed, Starved or Satisfied

        John Woods December 11, 2025

        Help yourself to a glass of bubbles and I’ll explain how you can apply your party planning skills to improve your LinkedIn Ads budgeting.

        Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

        Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

        The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

        When is a content audit not an audit?

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        Subheading

        Set up your content, SEO, and lead generation strategies for success. 

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        When it’s an opportunity.

        A content audit, or any audit for that matter, probably sounds like as much fun as getting your teeth cleaned (except it takes a lot longer). 

        But it can be hugely rewarding and should set up your content, SEO, and lead generation strategies for success. 

        Read on for top tips on what to look for and how to benefit from a content audit. 

        Why audit your content

        So, what are you going to get out of the audit? First and foremost you will have a catalogue of content that will enable you to understand what assets you have, where they are and how good they are. 

        You can then start to plan how to repurpose, amplify and reuse these assets.

        You will also be able to identify gaps and opportunities for new content, aligning the outcomes with your SEO and lead gen strategies to create content gems that help you meet your marketing and business objectives.

        You are likely to be surprised at the results: there is usually a gap somewhere between what you think your content focus is (and should be) and where it is now. 

        How to audit your content

        A robust audit needs to look at a number of criteria with a measurable means of
        evaluating them.

        Some examples of the criteria we use to evaluate our clients’ content:

        • UX – how good (or bad) is the UX of the asset?
          On brand – is the asset on brand (especially important if your organisation has recently undergone a rebrand)?
        • Focus – what is the focus of the content?
        • Purpose – what purpose does the content serve, for example: brand awareness, lead generation, or customer service/support?
        • Persona – who is the content for?
        • Values/USPs – which of your company values or USPs does the asset convey (there is sometimes an argument to audit against both values and USPs)
        • Engaging – is the content engaging?
        • Pulse – is the content recent (or evergreen)?

        What to audit

        What exactly should you audit? The most obvious place to start is your website and a quick scrape of your site using a tool like Screaming Frog (link) will provide a robust list (assuming most of your content isn’t hidden behind a login).

        You will also want to consider:

        • Any paid ads
        • Organic social pages and posts
        • Emails (including autoresponders, customer communications, and sales emails)
        • Presentations
        • Sales enablement tools
        • Email signature files

        The exact scope will be dependent on the time and resource you can devote to the audit but the more that you include, the greater the impact and the better the outcome.

        Not just digital

        When we work with clients on content audits, we don’t just stick to digital assets. Offline assets, including printed materials, event collateral, press releases (which are to be fair mostly in digital format) and even physical signage are all included and can provide hidden gems or serious opportunities for improvement.

        Not just content

        We also suggest looking beyond the traditional definition of content and including brand assets such as imagery and icons. In a digital context, these types of digital assets are quite often tied closely to content in terms of the user experience and auditing them is likely to reveal some outdated assets and opportunities to repurpose some fabulous assets you may not have known you had.

        What to do next

        Finished your audit? Next you need to analyse the results.

        Are there some assets which need to be retired or remedied immediately? You are likely to find a few outdated or flawed assets during the audit. Determine their priority for fixing or retiring and set out a plan to get them tidied up.

        Where are the gaps? Are all of your personas being served equally (or at least in proportion to their importance)? Are you providing a good balance of brand awareness, lead generation and customer service content? Are all of your values communicated equally or are some being ignored?

        Where are the opportunities? Are there some killer assets that you can reuse or repurpose? Are there sales assets that could turned into lead gen hooks? Are there longer form marketing blogs that would help the sales team?

        The answer to all of those questions can only be answered by a robust auditing process. So don’t put it off any longer, book in that teeth cleaning.

        If you have questions about how to audit your content, or simply want to continue the conversation, please get in touch! 

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          Stuffed, Starved or Satisfied

          John Woods December 11, 2025

          Help yourself to a glass of bubbles and I’ll explain how you can apply your party planning skills to improve your LinkedIn Ads budgeting.

          Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

          Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

          The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

          How To Give Your Agency A Good Design Brief

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          Briefing a designer

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          Do your marketing design tasks go over budget, or require a lot of revision cycles, or just fail to achieve the outcome you hoped for? There’s every chance a better design brief could help…

          With this in mind, we’ve put together a few points on how to give your agency a good design brief in order to reduce confusion and increase the chances you’ll achieve your design objectives, from concept right through to delivery.

          Provide Your Brand Guidelines

          Providing your brand guidelines is a crucial part of providing a good design brief. Your guidelines should demonstrate how you use your branding across various media, print, ads & web (etc). If you’re using a custom font, or a font that is not available to download via typekit (or an equivalent), make sure to share your font files with your designer so they have everything they need to ensure they meet your brand guidelines.

          Keep Things Consistent:

          If you’re briefing a piece of design work for a new advert/design, make sure you present any other ads that you have running, or the latest version of your ad that needs updating. This will help to avoid the design going in a different direction and ensure brand consistency.

          Provide Design Inspiration

          Make sure to include designs from other brands that you like and provide commentary on why you like them. Including a range of different design inspirations will help your designer start on the right track and will also help make it clear which elements of each design you do and don’t like. 

          It’s also hugely helpful to provide examples of stock photography alongside the designs. What kind of style and feel do you like? Are the images with or without people? Corporate or more laid back? 

          It’s often worth investing in an image library or creating bespoke illustrations so that you can avoid using time on searching for the right images and instead use that time refining other areas of the design. 

          If you’re designing for web, it’s also a good idea to provide information around what sort of layout you might like and to even provide examples of any motion design, such as parallax scrolling or animated details, that might help bring your site to life. 

          All of this information helps the designer form a full picture of what exactly you’re hoping to achieve with your design.

          Say What You DON’T Like! 

          Telling your designer what you don’t like is just as important as specifying what you do like. When putting together examples of good design, make sure to include examples of the sort of design you don’t want to see so that your designer can make sure they don’t take a direction you’re not happy with. 

          Specify Where Your Designs Will Be Shared 

          It’s important to tell the agency who will be using the design files as well where they will be used. For example, will they be used only by internal resources who just have access to platforms such as Canva, or will they be shared with other agencies who have in-house design teams? This will help your designer understand what file types to provide when packaging up your design and whether there are any dimensions, aspect ratios or resolutions to be mindful of.

          To conclude, there really is no such thing as too much context and providing as much information as possible will give your designer the best chance at creating a design you feel truly happy with. 

          Want to have these helpful tips at your fingertips? We’ve created a free checklist that you can download and keep on file for whenever you’ve got a design brief to deliver. We hope you find it useful! 

          If you’d like to continue the conversation or find out more about the design services we offer at Sharp Ahead, please do get in touch – we’d love to hear from you! 

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            Stuffed, Starved or Satisfied

            John Woods December 11, 2025

            Help yourself to a glass of bubbles and I’ll explain how you can apply your party planning skills to improve your LinkedIn Ads budgeting.

            Is the B2B Buying Journey Really Changing?

            Jennifer Esty September 3, 2025

            The B2B buying journey is changing at a fast pace, and B2B marketers must evolve their brand’s digital footprint now or risk obscurity in this new world.

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