Your people are your brand: LinkedIn rewards humans over logos

Content shared by employees receives 8 times more engagement than brand pages.

LinkedIn users are increasingly following people over brand pages.

“Users want to hear from and see from people who are authentic as opposed to what the brand is putting out,” said Kristi Piehl, CEO and founder of Media Minefield and the Flip Your Script podcast. “But this means that PR pros and businesses are facing a hard truth. Branded company content is no longer enough.”

Organic reach today on LinkedIn is 1% compared with 7% four years ago, she said.

“Algorithms are constantly changing and they’re not going to tell us what they’re changing or why, but over time you can see the trend,” Piehl said. “The trend absolutely is shifting from engagement with brand pages to engagement with the people who are connected to the brand.”

This means that employees and executives need to get comfortable with developing a social presence, which may feel uncomfortable and even risky at first, Piehl said.

But the returns speak volumes for brand messaging and storytelling, she added.

“Content shared by employees receives eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels, and employee advocacy on social media can increase the reach of a brand’s message by 561%,” she said. “On top of that, 78% of consumers say employee advocacy influences their purchasing decisions.”

When Piehl’s team was enlisted to help Iowa-based MidWestOne Bank employees, a company of 776 full time staff, develop a social presence on LinkedIn, they learned what strategies work well and what to avoid.

In the first 30 days after training, MidWestOne Bank and its employees gained 7,000 followers and had more than 52,000 impressions. During this same period, when the company posted a job, it got 13 applications. When an employee shared the job posting, it received 300 applications.

Here’s what Piehl said the most successful takeaways from the training showed and why it’s not as difficult as you might think.

1. Start with the basics: So many people lurk on LinkedIn without updating their profile information or current job status. If employees fall into this category, this is a good place to begin your social journey, Piehl said. Employees risk confusing their audience if the appropriate information cannot be found on their profile, including contact info and a profile picture. “The first thing that everyone should do, and many people don’t do, is make sure that what people find out about them on a platform like LinkedIn is accurate: so the headshot, the banner, the picture behind the bio,” Piehl said.
2. Your posts need a personal touch: Employees can share all the content in the world, but if it doesn’t feel genuine or natural, it’s not going to resonate, Piehl said. Connect with followers on a personal level in a way that’s reflective of who you are and the work you do. This will feel relatable and true. No one is perfect or “on” 100% of the time, she said. Businesses are made up of people. And people like your human side. “In the course of a month if you’re going to post once a week, three of them can be about work, one should maybe be about something personal — and that gets really scary for folks, but that is what people want to see.” Play around with a posting schedule you like in a way that feels manageable and easy, she said.
3. Your audience matters more than virality: Employees might think that a successful social post is one that gets a lot of buzz. That might be true sometimes, Piehl said. But it shouldn’t be the goal. “There’s a sort of concept that if I go viral or a lot of people like it that’s really important and that’s actually missing the point… If you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one.” Make sure that your message is reaching the people who matter most.
4. The “1-3-5” rule: It may feel easier to re-post someone else’s content at first, and that’s perfectly fine, Piehl said. But if employees can follow this cadence, they will see the returns: “If you can write one post a week, comment on three other people’s posts and give five likes, your content will be served a lot more…four times more likely that your content will be shared,” Piehl said. The best times to post work-related content is also on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays during typical work hours, she added.

“We think about the rise of the employee influencer, the rise of the executive influencer,” Piehl said. “These are really important for the brand and the most happy, engaged employees want to do what’s best for the brand. So if engaging on LinkedIn can help the brand, they’re all for it — they’re just, of course, like all of us, a little bit nervous about doing the wrong thing.”

Courtney Blackann is a communications reporter. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at courtneyb@ragan.com. 

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