KEY ACTIONS
Acknowledge that others use LinkedIn to vet and verify you (and, your colleagues and teams.)
Craft a plan to gain best practices so that you can maximize LinkedIn for your branding and business initiatives.
Triage your current LinkedIn profile and network.
LinkedIn Profiles, remain some of the MOST underwhelming, underperforming, and boring digital content online. Rarely do you see strong profiles across an organization and the larger the organization, the more that plays out. For small to medium-sized businesses, the opportunity to engage your employees, elevate their digital presence, and gain greater SEO value is right there on LinkedIn.
Every conversation I have, every article I read mentions “The Great Resignation”, the difficulty of attracting and retaining talent, and how employers are leveraging creative strategies they would never have dreamed of five years ago. And yet I continually see an opportunity overlooked and when I bring it up, the feedback ranges from “I hadn’t thought of that” to “Where do we even begin with this kind of initiative?” to “We’ve thought about that and have never made it a priority.”
What is it? Do everything you can to help develop your people and make sure they stand out as individuals on Linkedin, build and energize their respective networks and have the digital skills to know how to engage with content.
Develop, not evaluate, is a topic that I recently read about and have been thinking about more and more. It makes sense, right? You bring people you deem as smart, engaging, ethical, aligned on core values, and passionate about what you offer and do and then you leave them to their own devices? Not literally, figuratively. You don’t build in professional development, have a culture of yes and a means to support their interest in stretching beyond their current position and comfort zone.
Some of what you need to do to make this happen comes with a significant price tag and time investment, and yet there are specific ways to significantly expand their presence and yours.
Let’s make the case for why, as an employer, you should support a program that ensures you and your employees look professional, positive, and optimized on LinkedIn.
Consider the following:
Each individual’s profile is a microsite mentioning your company, what they do, who they serve, and how they are different than your competitors. You have 10, 100, 1000 employees, you have your website PLUS each person’s LinkedIn profile. That is a powerful organic SEO strategy that continues well beyond a paid SEO campaign. Add in your company’s previous employees (call that your professional alumni network) and you have even greater power.
Use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website. It’s hard to drive traffic to most small business websites especially if there is no digital strategy in place. People may go from a profile to your LinkedIn company Page and then over to your website. And, while this is a natural progression, we no longer control how people find us and end up at our website. Make it easy for them.
- Help them connect the dots by adding three website pages to your contact information.
- Add a call to action with your email and website URL in your About and Experience sections.
- Make sure your website is a customized button on your LinkedIn company Page.
These are simple, straightforward tips, however, they are not easy to accomplish with a company or nonprofit of a certain size.
Think about these two stats:
B2B Blogs and Websites Receive Most of Their Social Media Traffic from LinkedIn B2B blogs and websites get 90% of their social traffic from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. And LinkedIn drives half of this traffic.
Socially Engaged Employees Help Drive Key Business Outcomes LinkedIn internal data has discovered that engaged employees influence 8x more Company Page views, 4x more Company Page followers, 7x more job views, and 4x more job applications.
LinkedIn’s founding premise was to connect people, human to human, one to one, or one to many. It wasn’t designed as a tool or platform for the business and so I think that businesses, for the most part, have left profiles up to their employees to manage. As they should to a point.
For the person who isn’t a confident writer, not as digitally savvy, grinding away, or simply not interested in positioning or being highly visible, they are going to go with the least amount of information and relevant content. They need help with the messaging and the mechanics.
Those who use LinkedIn regularly probably aren’t paying attention to what’s on their profile. They simply forget and when they do look at it, they realize it’s outdated or just simply stale.
After writing thousands of LinkedIn profiles, clients typically say that they feel more confident networking and sharing content now that they look good. Everyone experiences this every time they get a haircut or new style. It gives you a new spring in your step.
Leaders rarely step back and look at their leadership team, particular business unit, salespeople, recruiters. If and when they do, they usually pause and realize that this will not impress current and prospective clients/customers, candidates, strategic partners, donors, or investors.
LinkedIn Contributes a Lot to the Buyer’s Journey According to Demandbase, social media, peer reviews, and ads influence a buyer’s decision-making journey. 52% of those surveyed said that LinkedIn had the biggest impact during research. They use it to browse existing discussions on products and ask for recommendations. They also use it to connect with individual leaders to get their opinion on products.
55% of Decision-Makers Use LinkedIn Content to Vet Organisations Post engaging and informative content on LinkedIn. 55% of decision-makers use this content to determine which organization to work with. 1 in 5 investors says it’s the best platform when you want to learn about a topic.
People trust people more than they trust brands. Think about how you vet and make decisions. This is why Influencer Marketing is one of the most popular marketing channels with tremendous growth over the last few years. By the way, the trend favors micro-influencers, not mega-influencers. Micro-influencers are influencers that have less than 100,000 followers on their social accounts; mega-influencers are those with over 1 million followers.
I can make a case that you can build a micro-influencer network of current and past employees that increases your reach and business outcomes. And, your micro-influencer, or what we call Center of Influence or COI networks, may only have 500 or 1000 1st level LinkedIn connections.
The numbers are less relevant than the outcome they can deliver.
For every CEO, HR VP, or website who claims that their people are their most important asset and yet they overlook some basic ways to demonstrate that claim it leaves the door open to wonder how genuine that claim actually is.
What has more value? Creating a post or two of your last team meeting or company get-together or developing your employee’s digital presence?
On average an individual has 10 times more 1st level connections than a company has followers.
There are many other indicators of how genuine leadership is regarding the topic of their people. Your employees are your brand. In a more virtual world, they show up more than your office, your trade show and conference booth, your promotional swag, your trucks, and potentially even some of your sponsorships. Your employee’s online presence is more highly visible than ever.
Once you join LinkedIn, each connection made introduces you to an average of 400 new people.
Do the math.
Dorie Clark has written extensively on the topic of personal branding and defines a personal brand this way.
“Your personal brand is the way your values and talents are deliberately expressed through your profession, skill set, online presence, communication style, even clothing. Your personal brand represents what you stand for in a way that both defines you and sets you apart.” -Dorie Clark
I have followed much of what Clark talks about after reading an article she wrote in 2015 that focused on personal branding. Her article prompted a blog post centered on women and their personal brands.
Kevin Kruse from Forbes interviewed Clark and shares her top personal branding tips. They are timeless tips, and when heeded and put into practice, begin to build your businesses’ credibility and marketing and recruiting message.
Our clients include profile development as part of their strategy and see the difference when their employees have optimized profiles that include specific keywords that help extend key recruiting and client development messaging. So while profile development is critical, it is one part of their LinkedIn strategy.
It is an incredibly important part of the strategy though, and where we always begin. Take a few minutes to look at your LinkedIn profile and the people on your team. Recognize how they currently show up. Think about how they could potentially show up.
Strengthen your digital voice, one LinkedIn profile at a time.
