Boost your Brand on LinkedIn

Boosting your brand on LinkedIn ??

Just like I was told many time by my Sergeant Major in the military - "Cropper you are one hair away from failure"...

However I like to flip this around and use it positively now ??

I might also be a "hair away from success" as well. And so may you with boosting your organizational brand on LinkedIn...

You can boost your company brand and at very little cost except with a bit of time from you and your employees, and it only takes a tiny bit of work to get a pretty good ROI... You may very well be a hair away from making a difference in this world!!

Let's look at some numbers first though to solidify this topic and why it matters ??

I need to sell you on the value first, so read these and think about how nice it would be to get on the Global LinkedIn brand wagon!

LinkedIn Latest Statistics:

1. LinkedIn is an established Global brand with nearly 2 decades behind this name!
2. LinkedIn is available in 25 languages
3. LinkedIn has?810 million members in 200 countries worldwide!
4. Yes Facebook has about 3 billion users, but LinkedIn is (mostly) about business!
5. Almost 60% of LinkedIn’s users are between 25 and 35, a good potential database for viable future candidates too ;)
6. # Tags actually add value! For example, some of the top most followed hashtags include; #innovation (nearly 40 million followers!), #management (about 40 million followers!), #technology (about 26 million followers!), #investing (about 15 million). You get the idea! Hashtags actually work!!
7. Weekly nearly 50 million people look for a job on this platform! (and that's a lot!)
8. About 6 people are hired each minute via LinkedIn (damn can this get much better?)
9. In the USA alone at least 30 million of it's total users logon at least once a day!
10. LinkedIn posts with images get at least 2x better engagement!
11. An AD on LinkedIn can reach up to 14% of the world's population!
12. Brands have seen a 33% increase in purchase intent resulting from ad exposure on LinkedIn

Ok, enough said! And there are plenty more other positive reasons on why you need (MUST) leverage this platform more to help build your brand, sell your products or recruit great talent etc!

As a business leader these numbers should be a big enough reason for you & your employees to utilize the power of the LinkedIn platform, yet everyday I see many companies posting content on LinkedIn with only a few of their employees (including my own!) Liking these posts...

What a missed opportunity that is! The power of LinkedIn is that by even just a few people liking a company post, a company job posted, company news etc, we spread the word through our own network and own connections.

It's like setting up thousands of dominos and by simply knocking one over, we set off a huge chain reaction in all directions on a global scale...

Now unless your employees are very unhappy with their job or the company, then it shouldn't be too hard to get most of your folks onboard this "brand building wagon" ??

Your first and biggest opportunity is to build "a company culture" of collaboration through the sharing & liking of either employee or department related posts or company posts on LinkedIn. This is without doubt the easiest ROI. Get senior leadership, HR, recruiting and marketing to come up with ideas on how you can do this! The message should be "we are all in this together" and the more we all invest in this process the more likely we all win! (This could be more clients/revenue, more investors/stock-price impact, hiring better people to make for an even better company the list of positive reasons is long!).

Your second step is to make sure you have a company # hashtag? When I joined my current company even though, and even though it was nearly decade old, there was no company hashtag! What? Super easy to create this and then the next step is to have anyone posting anything about the company to use this hashtag # so all Information about hiring, products, people and even clients is all collected in one place, one # that you can FOLLOW and get updates on! Make sure everyone in the company follows this hashtag too...

Make sure as many people as possible (all your employees first!) FOLLOW the company LinkedIn page - this is also an easy low hanging fruit. Anyone following a company should get the latest updates/posts at the top of their LinkedIn feed when they log on... Get any clients, candidates, investors to FOLLOW you when possible!

Company LinkedIn page is a moving target! Make someone or a team (Probably marketing & HR) take ownership. It is critical that someone is updating this page, sharing posts and articles and company news on the company page at least 2 or 3 times per week. Make sure all your jobs (at some cost though) are posted/shared via the company page as well. This page needs to be constantly polished it is NOT a static webpage and is easy to update/and keep if fresh!

Get your employees behind the brand and leverage their LinkedIn profile to boost your company profile. This is simple! Has everyone updated their profile to their current organization? Has everyone got a professional linkedIn photo? (a photo can increase a profile by up to 7x views), Do your employees have professionally branded "Background Photo's", this makes the profile standout and you can sublimely brand your company's name subliminally 24/7. It creates conformity with your brand, it shows collaboration, and pride in the company name! Spend money on this, it isn't hard to produce a dozen photos and share these with all employees giving them a choice on what photo they use/when they update it etc!!

Build the LinkedIn company brand from day 1 of all new hires. Basically make sure that you have someone in HR/marketing spend at least 30 minutes in the new hire onboarding session and help ev try employee create a company branded LinkedIn profile and discuss best practices along with how important their support is (remember it is honeymoon time and new hires are more likely to be supportive when they have just joined ??)

Secondly make sure your teams, and employees all connect on LinkedIn! This makes for overall better company wide visibility as well as helping folks for free to "get to know each other" no matter where they work in this world!

All of these ideas above are simple to roll-out and will no doubt boost your organisation on a global scale. It may even surprise you how simple and yet how rewarding it actually is/was!

Please reach out to me if you need other Tips & Tricks and listen to the Simon & John #podcasts for other ideas on hiring, branding, employee engagement etc amongst other great topics!

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/simon-and-john-careers/id1588619077

Article by: Simon Cropper