A Company Page Discourse

Welcome to a special edition of LinkedInformed where I debate with Michelle J Raymond the merits or otherwise of LinkedIn company pages.

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts?/?LinkedInformed on Apple podcasts

Michelle is a big fan of Pages and has built her business by helping her clients successfully win business through their company pages, I say that her clients would be far more successful if they focus the vast majority of their time on developing their personal content, engagement, and relationships…you can make up your own mind as to who won the debate!

We didn’t come to an agreement but you might find the discourse interesting. I will summarise the main points made below but to really understand the nuances of each argument I would strongly recommend listening to the full podcast recording.

The one thing we both definitely agree about is that everyone should have a company page and Michelle began our chat by explaining several reasons for this;

• It will make your profile look better to have a company logo in your experience section
• A page makes it easier for your prospects to gain more information about your products/services and proposition. They can see more information about the company and find links to all of its employees.
• The opportunity to double your chances of winning new customers with content and visibility coming from your page as well as your personal profile.

Whilst I agree with the first two points, the 3rd seems a bit of an exaggeration to me!

When I am working with a client who wishes to use their company page as a key tool to generate new business, I feel it would be misleading and damaging to go down those lines. I try to focus the client on their real objective (winning more business) rather than what they believe they should be doing and focus them on what I know works - that often involves a complete strategic rethink on not only what they do but who does it!

The key to winning business is to gain greater visibility on LinkedIn and personal posts will always gain significantly more reach throughout the network than company posts. Spending time and energy on company page posting isn’t a complete waste of time but when time and resources are stretched (and they so often are!) it makes no sense to spend time on something that delivers such low levels of visibility.

Michelle disagrees that company pages don’t perform well, she believes a well-run page with at least 500 followers will generate income.

My issue is that we just don’t see any evidence of that. Company page posts generate very few reactions and comments which severely restricts the visibility of the brand.

Michelle argues that customers very rarely come from the small percentage of people who engage, rather from the majority of passive users who simply observe and then make contact directly.

I agree with this - most of my customers and those of my clients have come from the silent majority but that is the point…If you are reliant on your customers being the small percentage of your followers who see your content, then it’s going to be a hard slog to grow your business!

What about all those potential customers out there who are not following your page (because they don’t know who you are) who will never see your content because you get zero engagement?

Comments and reactions are the key distribution vehicle for your content, without them your content is practically invisible!

Michelle doesn’t believe that bigger numbers (views) don’t necessarily equate to better or more opportunities. She believes that followers have shown an interest in your business so, whilst a smaller group, they are much more likely to buy from you.

She believes that company page content should complement what employees are doing from their profiles such as sharing or promoting the content from employees, this also serves to educate the page followers with more information about the employee ‘make-up’ of the organisation - this is also helpful for employer branding. This type of ‘people focussed’ content performs much better than the more corporate type of content (I wonder why?! ??).

Michelle also made the point that many organisations don’t have staff who want to (or are capable of) posting so it makes sense to focus a content strategy around the company page.

I can relate to this as well but my approach is to work with those people in the organisation who are responsible for business development and train them to improve their LinkedIn and content skills. If they don’t have anyone who wants to do it, recruit someone who does! The answer is not to give up and resort to using a company page instead!

Michelle loves working with small companies that don’t have the resources to be posting or engaging on LinkedIn so they outsource their company page to her and she develops and delivers a content strategy for them. She sees this as a great starting point for any company and in time, as they grow, they can encourage employees to use LinkedIn as well.

This outsourcing solution is only allowed for company pages, LinkedIn do not permit outsourcing of personal profiles.

I can never see a time when company page posts receive good visibility because I think LinkedIn (the company) see Pages as primarily two things;

1. A sales funnel for selling ads
2. An employer branding tool to support Recruiter license holders (Company pages were originally created for this purpose)

These are both perfectly valid and sensible commercial reasons for having company pages but in the last few years subscription revenue (Recruiter licenses) has plateaued but ads revenue has grown and become more important. Therefore it would make no sense whatsoever to allow free company page posts to gain high visibility…if they did, there would be no motivation to advertise!

So no matter how good the content is, page posts are never going to achieve the organic reach they deserve.

Michelle also talked about the other employee advocacy and internal communication benefits of Pages and she believes that LinkedIn see a company page as a ‘hub’ for employees. This keeps employees on LinkedIn longer and that also supports ad sales.

Michelle made the point that personal content that achieves great organic reach and visibility does not equate to more business. Irrelevant content that has nothing to do with your business is not going to win you customers!

My view is very different. Clearly, if all you do is put out popular but irrelevant content then you are less likely to win new customers (although it does happen) but if you combine that content with a well-written profile, a targeted follow-up and connection strategy and content that educates the audience about what you do then you are in a fantastic position to be able to win their business!

The critical first step is to become visible to them, yes you need to use that visibility wisely, but to say visibility does not lead to more business is inaccurate. Company page content does not give you anywhere near the same visibility so a focus on Page content doesn’t achieve that critical first step.

An example of one of Michelles more successful Company Page posts

We then talked about the general quality of company page content - we both agree that the standard is currently very low and is unlikely to stop the scroll. Michelle is on a mission to improve the quality by encouraging people to produce content that is people-focused but part of the problem is that we are so used to poor quality content that we tend to scroll past company posts without a second glance, this makes it even harder to attract engagement.

Michelle quoted LinkedIn’s 3-2-1 formula for content;

The 3-2-1 model calls for a weekly breakdown of three pieces of industry-related content, two pieces of “proud” content (positivity for your employees or community), and one piece promoting your brand or solutions

I can see some benefits in this formula although my experience is that a better formula would be 3 posts that are people-related and 2 that are industry-related.

I asked Michelle how a business should measure its success with company pages and she was clear that the main measure should always be how much business is generated. Whilst I agree, I think the challenge with that is being able to accurately measure it - yes they ‘might’ quote a specific post when they enquire but how did they see the post? Given that it’s unlikely they saw it because someone they follow engaged with the post, they are therefore likely to be a follower and how did they become a follower? They might have been invited by a connection (who they probably connected with due to their personal content) or they arrived at the page because of the visibility of an employee (via their posts with organic reach).

Whilst reach is much more difficult from a page post, Michelle made the point that this can be greatly enhanced by getting employees to engage with the company posts.

So who won the argument?

I guess we are never going to agree about Pages but I have enormous respect for Michelle for being brave enough to come on the podcast and fight her corner.

As I stated earlier, this has been my best attempt to summarise most of what we covered in our discussion but I would strongly advise listening to the episode to fully understand it all.

So where do you stand on this issue? Are company pages equally as important as personal profiles?

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts?/?LinkedInformed on Apple podcasts