Does Your CEO Have a Solid LinkedIn Presence?

When most companies are planning their social media strategy, they often forget about one crucial channel: their executive team’s LinkedIn profiles. Social media isn’t meant for the corporation only. In fact, employees’ personal brands are starting to play an important role in making a positive impact on a company’s presence, both online and offline.

Make the most of your social media strategy by incorporating the voices of key employees and team members who can help to amplify and distribute your message. If you haven’t thought about leveraging your C-suite’s LinkedIn profiles, now is the perfect time to get started.

Why Should Your Leadership Team Have Active LinkedIn Profiles?

Your team members’ LinkedIn profiles shouldn’t be the only social media presence driving awareness for your company, but when paired with your corporate social media strategy, incredible outcomes can happen. Here are the benefits of encouraging your leadership team to be more active on LinkedIn.

Expand Audience and Reach

An established LinkedIn profile will already have hundreds, if not thousands, of connections, especially if your executives have been in the industry for several years. Using your C-suite team’s LinkedIn profiles to share exciting updates within your company and promote new initiatives can help you to get seen in front of bigger yet targeted audiences, expanding your reach. The more people who see the latest news about your organization, the more opportunities that will follow!

Increase Credibility

People will always have more belief and reassurance in a company when the recommendation or referral comes from someone they trust. This is especially true for newer companies that are up-and-coming and could really benefit from public endorsements. When a team member frequently and positively posts about their employer on social media, it positions the company as one that can be trusted by outsiders.

Support Recruitment Efforts

When job seekers are considering applying for an open position within a company, they want to know that the current employees enjoy their work. This will help to validate their reasoning for wanting to apply for the position, especially when they see several people posting about their positive experiences working for the company! Team members can easily create content that gives an inside look into what the organization is like for an employer, which can drastically benefit recruitment efforts.

Encourage PR Opportunities

Any leadership team member who actively posts on social media may be presented with PR opportunities due to their engaged following, such as being a guest on a podcast, sitting on a panel at a conference, or writing an article for a publication. Participating in these opportunities will always benefit the company, as they further help to spread the mission and message of the organization.

How to Successfully Manage Your C-Suite’s LinkedIn Profiles

A big reason why companies neglect their leadership team’s LinkedIn profiles is they’re hesitant to add one more task and responsibility to their plate. Taking on this project is actually easier and not as time-consuming as you might think — it merely involves having a clear process and strategy behind it.

Select the Profiles to Manage

First things first: not every leadership team member needs to have their LinkedIn profiles managed, so use your discretion on where it makes sense. For example, if someone is already doing a really solid job with posting to their LinkedIn, they can continue their current process and don’t need to have it managed by someone else. Additionally, if there’s a team member who isn’t necessarily client or custom-facing in their role, or focused on overall business development, LinkedIn management may not be needed for them.

This strategy is perfect for the professionals who:

• Have a solid network that should be nurtured
• Frequently meet with clients, customers, investors, and other supporters
• Started the company as the founder and / or currently hold the title of CEO

Once you work through this criteria, you’ll likely find that the number of profiles that should be posted to is a number that’s much easier to manage.

Look at the Corporate Social Media Calendar and Mirror It

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to managing the C-suite’s LinkedIn profiles, so that certainly doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to create all brand new content. Instead, start by looking at the company’s social media content calendar and seeing how those posts can be duplicated for the personal profiles. Here are a few examples of when it makes sense to cross-promote:

• If the company is hiring for a position on the executive’s team
• If the company is sponsoring or speaking at an event where the executive will be present
• If the company is launching a new product, service, or partnership

Because those situations all directly correlate to the team member, it makes sense to have them share that content with their networks as well. Not only does repurposing content save time but it also helps to consistently and positively reinforce these efforts.

Incorporate Personal Stories and Accolades

Although the executive plays a critical role in the company, the company’s latest news and updates isn’t the only thing they should post about. Encourage your team to create posts around personal stories and successes, including:

• An award they received
• A conference they’re speaking at
• Lessons they’ve learned
• Tips they have for their industry

This approach helps to position them as an expert in the field, which may introduce them to other people and bring awareness to the company.

Analyze Performance

Once the C-suite team starts to have posts consistently published to their LinkedIn profiles, take some time to view the performance and analytics of their content on a regular basis. Understanding what types of content drives high engagement and what types of content brings in minimal engagement is crucial for knowing what’s working and what isn’t. Reviewing this data is incredibly helpful for planning content moving forward based on what brings in the most traction.

Hire a Marketing Agency to Support These Efforts

Working with a Social Media Manager for LinkedIn Profiles

More often than not, the biggest reason why leadership teams don’t have an active LinkedIn presence is time. With their hands in so many different projects, they understandably don’t have the capacity or resources to dedicate to their own marketing and personal brand efforts as well. Working with a marketing agency, and specifically a social media manager, can ensure your C-suite has a consistent, value-driven strategy and presence on LinkedIn.

Reach out to Dash of Social for a free consultation to learn more about what we offer.