(800) 854-6735
Your employees’ LinkedIn profiles are more than a list of their professional accomplishments. Their posts about life at work — words, tone, messaging — ultimately reflect your company’s brand, culture, and values. Here, we’ll look at why their LinkedIn presence matters in a fractured corporate world and how to build a more positive image on this professional social media platform.
The Power of an Active Presence on LinkedIn
Your employees spend a hefty chunk of their lives at work, and their profiles serve as a window into what it’s really like to work at the company. If their posts seem forced or otherwise sound inauthentic, it can give the air of a robotic team. Alternatively, if they don’t post anything, it may signal disengagement or a lack of enthusiasm for the company. A silent employee base can make your brand appear disconnected or unremarkable on social media, missing valuable opportunities to attract talent, build trust, and establish industry authority.
On the other hand, if they’re constantly posting about amazing teammates, rewarding challenges, incredible company initiatives, or whip-smart mentors, these posts can reinforce your employees' respect for the company. These public proclamations can also do a lot to imprint your brand’s reputation on everyone from casual scrollers to intense scrutinizers. Encouraging genuine, voluntary sharing helps create an authentic employer brand that resonates with both potential employees and customers.
Asking Employees to Share on Social: Best Practices to Get Employee Buy-In
Your team is the best way to amplify your company content online. Boost Remote Employee Engagement and benefit from the business results that come from a fully engaged workforce.
Positive Brand Advocacy
Your employees can serve as some of your most effective brand advocates. They can post links to product pages, promotional offers, or contact information, filling in your brand’s story from an insider perspective. As they share to their network, you grow your brand awareness brick by brick and post by post.
For the most part, your employees’ content on LinkedIn is perceived as more trustworthy than company-sponsored posts. In fact, 76% of people trust the content that individuals share instead of companies. In the best organizations, employees feel free to post of their own volition and put their thoughts into their own words (instead of repeating company-approved jargon).
While you’ll want to put some boundaries on your employee’s LinkedIn content, such as not disclosing proprietary information, it’s important to give your team freedom when it comes to their content. They should feel inspired to share their real opinions, especially if their industry is going through a major upheaval.
Quality Leads
Consider how prospective clients and partners search for companies to do business with. Maybe they start with a basic search engine before delving into the fine print on different platforms. LinkedIn posts can cover a wider range of questions that a client or partner may have before they reach out to you (or after they conduct a demo of your services).
Your leads likely skim your official company posts for proof of thought leadership and expertise, but they’ll also poke around your staff profiles to see their backgrounds and learn about your larger company culture. For example, they might look through the general messaging of your senior leadership team. Or they might research where your employees worked before coming to your company and what types of projects they spearheaded.
Many sales teams also use LinkedIn as a tool to nurture better relationships with new clients. The more transparent their own profiles are, the more likely a prospective client will feel comfortable taking the next step.
Tempting New Applicants
When companies hire new employees for multiple reasons, LinkedIn can provide clues as to why. For example, if multiple employees have short stints at a company, it can speak to a firm’s general turnover. On the other hand, if your company is hiring because you’re catching your industry by storm, your employees’ LinkedIn profiles can show just how exciting it would be for a new hire to ride the next wave.
People want to go where they can stretch their skills and be rewarded for their work. More than just killer compensation packages, prospective candidates may look at LinkedIn to learn whether your employees have positive experiences when they’re at work. They may also want to see what kind of impact they’ll have on their larger world — not just their own career.
If your employees’ feeds are sparse at best or they’re always posting about yet another grueling week, it can turn new candidates off from even applying. Whether your company prides itself on work-life balance, innovation, or global responsibility, your employees’ posts can speak to your underlying motivators and spark the professional passion you need to take your company to the next level.
The Social Media Marketer’s Guide to AI
AI isn’t a magic wand. It’s a tool that generates the best results for people who learn how best to use it. Get the Guide and learn how to avoid the most common mistakes people make.
Industry Event Partnerships
Industry events need panelists, speakers, and general experts to fuel every speech and session. As your employees tackle each new rung in their career, they inevitably rack up an impressive number of accomplishments. When event managers search for industry leaders on LinkedIn, they’re often looking for people who take risks and then speak to the trial-and-error process.
When your employees have an active LinkedIn presence, you can set the stage for new requests and lucrative partnerships. This way, you can simultaneously promote your employees’ expertise and your brand at every event. The platform is a great place for employees to showcase how they took an idea from a casual comment to final fruition.
Driving Visibility with Content Sharing
Most professionals spend years building up their networks, cultivating their connections with people who appreciate when a company goes the extra mile. When they’re proud of what they do (and what the company does), it doesn’t always take much for that pride to shine through. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, when your employees share company posts, it’s a great way to both engage with people and connect your brand to real-world needs.
Better Content Means More Shares
It’s no secret that the best content varies by company, but one constant remains: the better the content, the easier it is to promote. If you lead a sustainable clothing brand, it may be a recent headline about low-wage workers. If you represent a tech company, it may be a well-written blog post about how AI is revamping your industry.
If you want your employees to share your content, you’ll need to figure out what they enjoy most about LinkedIn. Just remember that your content can stretch across departments and interests. For example, you might post a few photos every month on Pizza Friday, where the whole team gets together to celebrate the end of the week.
Your content should tap into your employees’ genuine appreciation of work, whether it’s the fight to make the world a better place or the genuine connections they share with co-workers. As they get into the habit of sharing, you can reinforce a culture that fosters pride and enthusiasm for your company’s mission.
Plus, if your employees focus on promoting the company on LinkedIn, you may be able to reduce your ad spend with the additional organic shares. To sweeten the pot even more, your employees’ shares are more likely to drive real action and engagement across the board. Leads from employee-shared content convert 7x more frequently than other leads.
How to Entice Employees to Step Up Their LinkedIn Presence
All social media platforms are a loop of reinforcement. The more you engage with your employees, the more likely they'll be to engage with you. With a better LinkedIn presence, you can trigger a cycle of positive, informative, and compelling posts about your brand.
If you're looking for an easy way to streamline this process, Clearview Social offers the tools you need to improve your content feed, reward your employees for posting, and engage across departments and functionalities. From AI to analytics, you can implement the underlying framework that gets your employees to take action. Want to learn how Clearview Social catapults your company on LinkedIn? Request a demo today!
Create a Winning Social Media Program
Boost your brand’s social media reach and get your employees sharing company content with a powerful, all-in-one employee advocacy software.