LinkedIn for Companies: Empower Your Employees!

Companies are just a legal entity without their employees. To succeed (on LinkedIn), employers must empower their employees.

When talking to companies about LinkedIn, I usually start off by explaining the differences between a company page and a personal profile

The LinkedIn Company page

This is the company’s profile on LinkedIn. It is a page that can be managed by multiple people within the company. It’s mainly a broadcasting tool, to get more visibility for the company.

The Personal Profile on LinkedIn

This is your personal page on LinkedIn. It’s where you tell us about who you are, what you do, who you help, and your past accomplishments. The Personal Profile should (in my humble opinion) be written in a personal tone, so that you come over as very approachable.

Before I even start, I know which one of the two they are really interested it in: the company page of course. So you can imagine the look on their face when I tell them that the LinkedIn Company page is just a tiny piece of the puzzle unfortunately, and not the easiest one either.

LinkedIn Company Pages Are A Nice to Have

I like to refer to Company Pages as a ‘nice to have’. And only under the condition that someone is responsible for managing that page and updating it with regular news. If there’s no resources for that, I’d actually rather skip it all together. The main reason for this is that it is very difficult to get followers to your company page. People are interested in people on LinkedIn, not in companies.

LinkedIn Profiles of Employees Are a Must Have

The LinkedIn Profiles of the employees on the other hand are a ‘must have’. They are the real leverage for a company to be successful on LinkedIn.

Here are some of the benefits for the Employer

Each employee has his own network
Each employee manages his own network on LinkedIn. Some employees will have only 50 connections, others will have over 500. The sum of all the contacts together will have an impact.
The company grows its reach to new contacts and therefore new prospects
When the employee shares content related to the company, the company grows its reach to new contacts.
The company gains in notoriety because employees position the company as an expert in its field
When the employee shares content related to the company, the company benefits from the positioning

Benefits for the Employee

By being more active and by sharing good company content the employee positions himself as a ‘employable’ person and an expert in his/her field. It’s what we call ‘Personal Branding’. His contacts will consider him the go-to person for a certain topic and/or industry.