We recently had a client ask us to come up with a one-sheeter explaining the benefits of employees using LinkedIn to help their company. We thought this was a great idea, and after writing one up, we realized that this information is useful across the board, so we decided to turn it into a blog for you all.
As you may know, LinkedIn is the most professional social networking platform, but it is still a social media platform with its own best practices. People use LinkedIn for a variety of reasons: to keep in touch with old coworkers, to stay current with happenings in their industry, to find new information or industry trends, to contribute to the community, to exchange ideas, to grow their networks, or to communicate their views through self-branding.
There are many benefits to utilizing LinkedIn for business, and engaging with your brand can be a helpful first step to impact a brand’s image.
The company’s reach expands
Most people have more connections and followers than brands do. When an employee shares a brand’s content, every connection that they have has the opportunity to see the content. If an employee has 500 connections, that’s 500 more people who can see the content than if that employee did not share. If one of their connections then shares or comments, all of their connections will then see the post, as well. Content sharing creates a snowball effect (in a good way).
Brand recognition and awareness grows
When an employee continuously shares posts or articles from their (or any!) company, their connections gain familiarity with the brand. The more this happens, the brand is more likely to grow, gain followers, stay top-of-mind, and experience the benefits of a solid social media presence, which include increased sales, improved reputation, and a more significant share of voice in the industry.
Increase industry knowledge
Sharing brand posts helps your company gain awareness, but it also can help you increase your knowledge. Often, there is only one representative from a company posting to LinkedIn. When LinkedIn becomes more collaborative and elicits comments and sharing, you gain connections, industry knowledge, thought leadership, and more.
There’s more to LinkedIn than just shares, so let’s take a look at how likes and comments affect your brand.
As with all social media platforms today, algorithms play a significant role. LinkedIn’s algorithm values comments and sharing over likes; when someone simply likes a post, it will sometimes show to their followers, and sometimes it will not. Sharing posts and commenting on them will almost always deliver.
Any interaction will help build your brand’s awareness and followers on LinkedIn. If your goal is to share information with your followers, then adding a comment while sharing a post is the best way to go. If you’re looking to start more conversations with the brand or its followers, commenting will be best. Simply liking (or reacting in any way) a post will still help the brand, but it won’t be quite as effective as commenting on or sharing the post.
There are many reasons to engage with your brand’s posts on LinkedIn (and other social media platforms, we’ll get to those later). If you need help coming up with shareable content to post on LinkedIn, reach out to us. We can handle all of your LinkedIn posting or do a training to help you get started.
