With over 756 million members in 200 countries and regions worldwide, LinkedIn is a powerful tool for today’s marketer. The platform has evolved to become much more than just a social media platform or place for your online resume; it’s your digital footprint both personally and for your organization. LinkedIn is one of the best places for B2B marketing on the internet.
American Marketing Association Chicago Chapter’s most recent workshop, “How to Leverage LinkedIn Company Page Engagement,” led by Kate Paine, CEO, Standing Out Online, explained how the key to success for your organization on LinkedIn starts with strong personal profiles for your employees, that will help to build a strong and engaging LinkedIn Company Page for your organization.
“Above all, it’s important to see LinkedIn not as another social media platform, but as an online business networking tool that helps you build and grow your relationships,” Paine said. “Relationships matter on LinkedIn, whether it’s building a personal profile or a LinkedIn Company Page when setting out to build a profile page, ask yourself how this profile is helping to build relationships.”
The key to a strong and engaging LinkedIn Company Page is to have engaged employees with active profiles. Paine suggests that the only way for LinkedIn Company Pages to be successful is if people on your organization’s leadership team and people within the company are interacting with the page’s content.
The fastest way to create engagement for your LinkedIn Company page is to encourage active employee profiles.
Start increasing engagement on your LinkedIn Company Page by encouraging your employees (not just the marketing team) to create personal profile pages that can help build their own personal brands and areas of expertise. Your employees and their profiles can be a resource to your company to attract talent and position yourself as a company full of leaders in their areas of expertise.
The most important part of a LinkedIn profile page can be found at the top of the page; it is your introduction card and the first place for you to start telling your story. Paine gave our attendees these helpful tips for bringing your personal LinkedIn profile alive:
LinkedIn Profile Photo should be:
- Clear
- Professional
- Show your whole face.
- Avoid using group photos
- When possible use a high-resolution image
LinkedIn Profile Headline:
- Your headline can be up to 220 characters in total
- Start with a tagline or slogan that helps to showcase your story and mission
- Load your headline section with keywords using the pipe symbol to separate (make sure that the keywords you are using are repeated strategically throughout the rest of your profile to enhance the SEO of your profile
The most viewed section of an individual’s LinkedIn profile is the “About” section of their profile, so Paine suggests spending the most time on getting it right, offering a three-part recipe to creating an engaging story about who you are. The “About” section of your LinkedIn profile allows up to 2600 characters which is roughly 500 words.
Three-Part LinkedIn About Section Recipe:
- Who are you? Use the first 1-2 sentences to pull your reader into your professional story. It’s a great time to add a nugget of your personal story to draw the reader in and differentiate yourself from others. The goal here is to lure the reader in so so they will click: “see more.”
- What do you do? This is an opportunity to share what type of problems you solve at work, what type of clients or projects do you work on.
- How do you solve that problem? Share the outcome that you provide when solving problems
Your LinkedIn profile is a chance to tell the story about who you are and what you do. It should be compelling. Your LinkedIn profile should also be optimized by using industry-specific keywords throughout. Remember that your LinkedIn profile is a place to build your personal brand and strengthen relationships; it’s also a place for your employees to become brand ambassadors for your company or organization.
The Best Ways to be a Brand Ambassador for Your Organization on LinkedIn
- Follow your organization’s LinkedIn Company Page
- Interact with the content on the LinkedIn Company Page
- Share LinkedIn Company Page content
- Tag your company in posts
Your LinkedIn Company Page is an opportunity to share the story of your brand while building important relationships with employees, potential employees, clients, and potential clients.
The key to an engaging LinkedIn Company Page starts with filling out all the sections:
- Home
- About
- Regular Posts
- Jobs
- People
- Add Videos
- Share content from your people
- Include a strong CTA for those following your page
There are a lot of opportunities to create and share content about your organization on LinkedIn, and while it is tempting to use the platform as a place for sales, it is better to use the content to cultivate stronger relationships with your audience. Overly “salesy” content can be off-putting and result in significantly less engagement.
Effective Content Ideas to use on your LinkedIn Company Page
- Share how your business is unique
- Share content from other people or industry-specific content or news
- Customer or Employee Spotlights
- Create visually interesting content that your audience can engage with (infographics, simple graphics, or photos)
- Ask your followers questions or use Polls
- Use three hashtags in every post: one branded, two that are relevant to the content)
- Videos (LinkedIn encourages the use of videos if they are between 3 seconds and 9.59 minutes)
- While videos may seem like an extra lift, they are very important because they effective establish trust and authenticity
When creating content for your LinkedIn Company Page, be sure to have a mix of both short and long content, LinkedIn rewards “dwell time” on their platform, and contrary to other social platforms, longer-form content actually helps your Company Page because it pulls people in longer.
Establishing a posting cadence for your LinkedIn Company Page content is important to creating consistent engagement; Paine suggest the following method for every six LinkedIn Company Page posts.
The 3-2-1 Content Posting formula for LinkedIn Company Pages:
- 3 should be industry-related content
- 2 should be content that makes the team feel good/ proud
- 1 should be related to your company
The best way for your message to get out through your LinkedIn Company Page is to find opportunities to grow your follower count. There are many ways to do this, including:
- Posting about your LinkedIn Company Page on other social channels and including the link and benefit to following
- Adding the link to your LinkedIn Company page on your email signature
- Inviting people to Like your page from the admin function
- Using personal profiles to share the company page through cross-posting, tagging, and sharing
To keep followers interested in your LinkedIn Company page and increase engagement with the content on your Company Page, Paine suggested the following ideas:
- Occasionally use a Call To Action to create conversations with your followers; a great way to do this is to ask them questions
- Make sure to keep content informative, offer tips or meaningful industry takeaways that encourage and inspire your followers to share to their networks
- Make sure you keep your team engaged by letting them know that there is new content on your page to engage with regularly
- Tag others when possible, but always make sure you’ve received their approval first
LinkedIn Company Pages are a great way to showcase your brand to the world. When setting your LinkedIn Company page strategy, remember that consistency is key which means that you will have favor within the algorithm and an audience that expects your content to come out on the regular.
To make the management process a little easier, Paine suggests having between 1-3 people managing the LinkedIn Company page internally, depending on the size of your organization. You may find that it makes sense to have people from different parts of the organization managing the page, and the admin rights are flexible from Super Admin to Analyst. You can find out more about the variety of LinkedIn admin roles here.
Following all the steps above will help to create a thriving LinkedIn Company page! By consistently promoting the content that you share internally to your colleagues, the more likely your engagement and reach will begin to increase, and you will begin to see the rewards of using this powerful business tool.
