Here’s something every recruiter should know… While LinkedIn is about personal profiles and connections, 40% of users also engage with LinkedIn company pages each week. And active pages receive up to 5 times more engagement. (Source: Hubspot).
This should make your LinkedIn company page a vibrant hub to promote your culture and all that’s great about working for you. But the secret is to get your people engaged with your content. With their help it can have huge reach – and that’s what employee advocacy is all about.
Last year we wrote what has turned into one of our most read articles, ‘Promoting your employer brand on LinkedIn.’ This is a kind of ‘part 2’ to that earlier article. In this one we are going to cover why your people should get involved (employee advocacy) and share some tips to maximise your company page.
And, while there are LinkedIn careers features that come at an additional cost, all of this relates to the free company page that all organisations can and should own and develop.
Why employee advocacy works
- Getting your employees engaged as advocates can make a big difference to your content reach. Click through can increase by 50% when employees share company content via their networks. Source: LinkedIn.
- And perhaps this explains why… On average, an employees’ network is at least 10x larger than a company’s follower base. Source: LinkedIn.
A quick takeaway from all of this… company pages get a lot more visitors than perhaps you thought, and employees have the reach you need to share your content.
So, what is employee advocacy?
It’s when your people feel engaged and excited by working for you to the extent that they are happy to share company news, careers content, vacancies – in fact any positive aspect. Often this includes your culture, values and CSR activities. In a LinkedIn context they’ll be happy to share this via their personal profiles to their networks and their reach is often far greater than the organisation enjoys.
Some employers leave their people with a free reign to share what they want which can be perfectly fine. However, those that put a little strategy into employee advocacy may find that it pays off in terms of consistency and encourages more to get involved.
Our tips to make employee advocacy work
Engage and motivate your people: Often seeing the leadership team talking about what the business is doing on LinkedIn sends a message to others to get involved. But it’s not just high-profile LinkedIn users like Sir Richard Branson who can benefit. It’s worth explaining that everyone can win from employee advocacy. Employee advocacy helps them build their professional reputation and personal brand and networks in the process.
Show them how: While acknowledging those who already do it, show others how it can be done. Give them examples and ideas, run workshops and training sessions, but don’t make it a one off. It has to be something that’s ongoing, whether you do a big session, a monthly catch-up or it’s part of a team meeting.
Give them the tools: One of the great things about LinkedIn is that you don’t have to create new content to take part. Sharing what others have written is a very good way to participate – just as long as they know what’s there. So, don’t forget to let them know what’s been published on your company page – or indeed what career stories on your own carers page could make great LinkedIn posts. Why not recommend posts to your employees that they could be sharing? And, if they want to write their own, share what a well-structured post looks like.
Create LinkedIn ‘Champions’: This can be an effective way to bridge the gap from wanting to do it actually taking part. Encourage your champions to share content and talk about what they’ve done on LinkedIn and what reaction they got and the impact or a new opportunity that they found.
Optimise all personal profiles: It goes without saying but everyone who shares content needs to have a profile that is as well set up as possible. This includes being able to see what they do in your organisation. While not everyone wants to carry their employer’s branding, it does look consistent if you provide a branded banner. Candidates and customers will be looking at your people – make it a good first impression.
Enhancing your LinkedIn company page
Now that your people are up and running to share all that’s best about working for you, you’ll want your page to be as good as it can be.
Make it about your people first: The difference between a vibrant LinkedIn page and those covered in ‘digital tumbleweed’ is the people content. If you want potential employees to see themselves working for you, you need to show them people just like them. That means content about your people – like events, career profiles or appointments and promotions. Don’t fill it with sales and marketing info and expect your people to want to share that. The best LinkedIn company pages are about people and values and then shared by individual profiles.
Talk about your culture, commitments and CSR: 77% of candidates are actively searching for examples of an organisation’s culture according to Glassdoor. This is a powerful stat and should influence your page content. Showing this through activities such as volunteering and community engagement brings it to life more convincingly than merely telling it.
Adding a paid careers page: All of the above are tips to help your people get engaged with your free company page. But should you, as a recruiter, invest in some of LinkedIn’s paid for careers features? There are certainly advantages – users can search for job opportunities, register their interest in working for you and, by adding a life tab, you can create a window into your culture and commitments. In fact, we think this is a topic all in itself – which is why we are going to cover the pros and cons of a LinkedIn careers page and compare it to having your own careers page in our next blog.
In conclusion
We believe that every employer should be able to benefit from the exposure a well-run LinkedIn company page offers their employer brand. But, while more LinkedIn users visit a company page than you might have been aware, the real magic happens when your people become advocates for working for you and sharing your content and stories. Getting them onboard with your page is the key to benefiting from the 10x reach they have compared to the organisation itself.
Need a little help?
If you feel that you’d like some help, support or even a little chat around your LinkedIn recruiting activity or any aspect of your employer brand and talent attraction strategy just drop us a line. After all, much of our best work has started with a cup of tea and a Zoom call.
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
