3 amazing LinkedIn features that help you with employer branding!

This time I am writing about a topic that is becoming my favorite besides the content on LinkedIn: employer branding - the promotion of your company by the people who work for it (a definition by LinkedIn). Or in other words, how to motivate your employees to start and stay active on LinkedIn.

It is a tough one, actually. When my clients ask me:

How to motivate employees to stay consistent on LinkedIn?

I do not have a straight answer. ??

But …

… lately, LinkedIn gave us some AMAZING features on LinkedIn pages that help us organize with and stay consistent.

They are still just features if we do not do the work. But the work is much easier with these features.

I decided to write an article / LinkedIn newsletter about it to help you with some ideas and to start a conversation to share tips and tricks.

But first things first. Let us start with the basics. I used a LinkedIn article to help me with these concepts.

What is Employee Advocacy

?Employee advocacy as a marketing tactic is a strategic, sustainable program to encourage employees to share brand values and messages in an organic way.?

Basically, it is a tactic to use the power of employees to communicate about the organization. 

What is in it for the company?

1. Marketing

On average, researches show that employees collectively have social networks ten times larger than a corporate brand. That means employees can drastically extend the reach.

Employee shares are seen as more authentic than corporate shares, and people are more likely to engage with the content. Employee shares have double the click-through rate of corporate shares. That is a lot!

With these facts in mind, we can see employee advocacy can reliably boost brand awareness, increase followers to your LinkedIn page, and even generate leads for the sales department.

2. Sales

Social media presence is a necessary component of modern sales. In the B2B space, too, buyers are using social media to help guide their purchasing decisions.

Employee advocacy for salespeople can help increase the number of sales-qualified leads, attract and develop new business, shorten sales cycles, and bring in new revenue streams.

Salespeople who regularly share quality content are 45% more likely to exceed quota.

3. Attracting new talent

The marketing department is not human resources, BUT recruiting is partly a marketing function because attracting top talent requires a sterling brand reputation. It’s marketing’s job to develop that reputation.

Empowering your employees to share experiences and impressions from their own perspectives can communicate these benefits in a more authentic and relatable way.

What is in it for the people?

This question is perhaps even more important, but tougher than the previous one. The benefits are similar:

by building an employer brand an employee builds a personal brand, too. And with that, he or she can benefit to attract more leads - that benefits both parties, the person, and the company.

But it is usually a tough start. To teach them how to use LinkedIn (this is where I come in ??) is just the beginning. Staying consistent is key.

What are the steps to be successful:

It is not a short list, but I strongly believe it is worth it:

1. Define goals and objectives
2. Gain buy-in from executives and leaders
3. Assemble a team of content curators
4. Identify social stars
5. Launch your employee advocacy program
6. Keep on filling the content pipeline
7. Integrate existing platforms
8. Ongoing optimization
9. Analyze and communicate results

I will not go into details. Visit this article to read more about it.

What I DO want to talk about is:

How LinkedIn page is helping you with your employer advocacy program?

I am talking about free features on your LinkedIn page, that you need to know about. This is really challenging - how to organize the content, people, and technology. I hope to give you some ideas!

1. RECOMMEND TO EMPLOYEES

Visit this link to find it (insert your admin page number into XXXXXX): https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/XXXXXX/admin/recommend/

If you do not have it, you will land on your Home.

This is the best place ever! Here you can upload different content, links, videos, photos ... to give your employees content they can use. All they need to do is click Start a post, add their words and click Post.

Here you can see Eva Kern added this content (thank you, Eva, for letting me use your page!).

And what is important - they use the Post, not the Share button, which helps to get more Views. #LinkedInAlgorithmApproved

2. EMPLOYER ADVOCACY analytics

Once your employees use that content (works only with that content under Recommend for employees), you get some stats:

I blurred the numbers but you get the picture what LinkedIn gives you.

Here you see which content performed best:

Isn't this just amazing?

Your LinkedIn page is the content hub, so your employees do not have to search for the content.

I got some feedback and my clients say this is really useful.

3. MY COMPANY TAB

It is an amazing helper to stay in touch with the content of your coworkers. This content here is for employees only. You need to have Work experience with the LinkedIn page of your company on your profile to have access. I used Httpool to showcase (I do not work there, but I do have the Work experience on my profile as their Business partner).

What you can do here on the My company tab:

• Share organic posts and content curated by your marketing and talent branding teams to build employee advocacy - AHA!
• Measure employee advocacy with analytics
• Access a trusted, employee-only community on LinkedIn
• Celebrate one another, with quick insight into new hires and coworker milestones
• Interact with one another, by engaging with trending LinkedIn posts from their coworkers
• Connect with one another, through dynamic suggestions based on their location, team, and shared coworkers

In short - it helps you to have all the posts you want to engage with in one place.

Huh, a lot of information, right? But I still have some more tips for you around the question of What else you can do to help.

Prepare the CONTENT FOLDER for your social stars:

1. Cover photo - prepare a few examples your colleagues can use.

What a lovely bee photo, don't you think? ??

2. A part for the Headline – find the formula how to write it here >>

Like Nastja has: Brand with natural cosmetics, healthy food, and supplements 

3. Links and media for Featured

4. Prepare the copy about the organization for the About section

5. A list of Skills – use Google Ads, Google Analytics to find the most relevant

6. The instructions on how to integrate the right LinkedIn page into Work experience

7. Help your employees with the content - use the features we were talking about in this article; remember, this is the hardest part for them.

If they know what to post, where to find it, and what are best practices, you can expect consistency.

Do not forget about the Notify employees button by each post:

Huh, now this is a big pile of tips and tricks. Hope it helps! I would really like to hear your thoughts, challenges, and practices. Let us have a conversation!

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About Manca Korelc, the author of Power Around LinkedIn Magic Newsletter:

"When I first started my own business in October 2014, I asked myself a tough question: "How can anybody hire me if nobody even knows I exist?" ?? So I set up my LinkedIn profile and started writing. I jumped out of entrepreneurship a year later but continued creating content. From October 2017 I have been an entrepreneur again with big results on LinkedIn."

I devoted my career to teaching the magic behind LinkedIn in business - how to use it for marketing and sales. In the last 6 years, I have conducted more than 340 lectures, and have had the opportunity to work with amazing people.

You can read more about me on my website >>

I am a BIG lover of lakes

Four years ago I created a project Moja jezera (eng. My lakes). The story is simple: to cycle to all Slovenian lakes. The website mojajezera.si is becoming a true online lexicon of all lakes in Slovenia, or as I call it, a mancyclopedia. At the time of this writing, it has more than 1260 lakes.

The peak of the project, and my creativity is THE book. On the 25th of August 2020, my book The Slovenia Lakes was published and I could not be happier about it. You see, I have been dreaming about becoming a book writer for almost 30 years.

If you are into LinkedIn or lakes, make sure we connect. ??