Employee Power Branding - Part 3 of 3

"Hakon, you talk about engagement but how much traffic are you generating and bringing to your personal brand and by default Pleo's by doing what you’re doing?"

So....

We've gone over the high level bits in PART 1 and dabbled in practical steps to start your journey with Employee Power Branding in PART 2.

Now, let's look at tangible outcomes for you personally but also for the company or companies you represent, know and love!

Let's start by addressing the elephant in the room.

In the name of transparency, the core DNA of Pleo, let me hit you with some raw data (my real LinkedIn data).

The graph below (the one we all know and love from LinkedIn), shows my organic inbound traffic between March to the very end of May of this year.

Observations:

• Average inbound traffic is somewhere between 100 & 120 views per week

All my traffic is organic traffic generated from either my content or engaging other peoples content or even being mentioned on linkedIn through other posts.

I do not use any tools to enhance my reach, such as LinkedIn Helper which my outbound team has tried and tested (worth a review as we've heard good things).

Individually, you will all know what your view counts look like, they might be higher or lower, but the key here is engagement.

Are:

A) People returning to your content and sharing it / recommending you?

B) New people discovering it and following you / engaging with the company?

If I showed you my traffic 9 months ago it would have been in the region of 25 to 50 views per week, just as a comparison and a lesson that this process DOES TAKES TIME.

• There is a gradual increase in traffic + engagement over time

The key here is consistency in posting, daily or weekly and don't be fooled by vanity metrics, I mean views are great but what is happening?

Are people speaking with you, asking for advise and or mentioning you?

Those three things are important to help you build your personal brand and expertise, if becoming a thought leader is something you're interested in.

Never state you are a thought leader, your network should do this for you.

Now.....

Let's look at what happened to the stats when I published the post (below ??) on May 31st.

??Announcement of our our Series A??

??This was the BIGGEST, farthest reaching post I've ever done on LinkedIn, generating almost 400 likes, 40 comments and 28K views.

Observations:

• Views from the feed don't translate into profile views or impressions

Despite 28K views the post generated 635 organic views to my profile, this highlights how LinkedIn tracks a view which is superficial and it should not be a vanity metric to focus on or chase.

What I think is important though is that 28K people skimmed this post and if they didn't know what Pleo was before hand, there is a high chance they may have done a quick search on google.

Unfortunately, I don't have our website traffic stats for the day but I'm sure it would have also been interesting to dive into.

• This post drove over 400 inbound connection requests (can't show you though)

Network growth is a fascinating process. ??

The best part of Employee Power Branding is connecting with people that are generally interested in following you and your work.

The process here is the gradual increase in reach of all subsequent posts and that reach is to a more genuine and engaged audience that fights for you.

What I have come to realise is understanding why professionals actually use LinkedIn and the number one answer is:

Inspiration and knowledge seeking

So I feel we all have a duty to become creators of content that is unbiased and tells the story as it is for others to become inspired and learn.

• Good content is vital but good content that is entertaining is POWERFUL!

With so much content pushed daily onto LinkedIn you have to standout, grab peoples attention and stop them from scrolling.

Leveraging simple things like:

A.) learning to video edit (even on iMovie)

B.) Using Photoshop

Can significantly enhance the interactions on your posts because people look forward to watching them and you claim your "SIGNATURE TRADEMARK".

Drum roll please......Because...

This introduces the final piece (for now) on Employee Power Branding.

Leveraging and refining your "POWER POSTS" (linkedIn posts getting 10K+ views - for me).

My top tip to producing LinkedIn Power Posts:

Below you will see the last 90 days of my LinkedIn traffic.

Notice very clear peaks in profile view counts and these are aligned with very specific posts that I've done which boost traffic and engagement (by default not as an intention).

The tip:

Be bold, original and tell a story - leverage video (simple advice but very true)

Investing a little extra time into making a post different (with some video editing), with music and a strong intriguing headline can go a long way and also just introduce some excitement to your followers and connections.

Below are some examples of what impact certain types of posts can have on traffic.

Announcing our plans to launch a UK office

Follow this link to the actual post with the video (https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6448028464820953088/)

This was such a fun post and took me about 20 minutes to produce using iMovie (yes, it's that basic).

I knew we had this special wooden box lying around the office and it inspired me on the idea of bringing to life opening up a treasure chest to reveal the secret (news) inside.

I use a great service called Epidemic Sound to get all my music which adds another excitement layer and is just fun (I will be doing another blog on video editing and music adding in the future).

Announcing my First Holiday in 7 years

Follow this link to the actual post (https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6456141357676396544/)

I was sitting in the airport for this one and had 15 minutes to spare before my flight.

It then hit me that I had never taken such a long holiday in my career, so, it just felt natural to share on the spot in raw format.

Not much planning here but genuine and a message I knew many of my connections could or would relate too.

Final Thoughts:

I want to finish this series off by pointing out the most important philosophy behind Employee Power Branding.

If done well:

This can become a movement that your entire workforce can embrace, multiplying awareness 10X but most importantly, developing all of their own personal brands and elevating the traffic and employer brand you will portray to the world.

I'd love everyone's feedback on this, please jump in on the comments, be as critical and experience-driven as possible?

Happy Hustling Everyone #Pleostrong