Employer Branding on LinkedIn: A Buzzword That Often Falls Short

The headline says it. But why is that and what is a better alternative than traditional employer branding on Linkedin?

First of forget about company pages. People want to follow people on Linkedin. Company pages are good for hygiene. it will never drive the same results as personal profiles.

See the comparison of the engagement rate for the company page and personal profile.

Using personal profiles of employees for employer branding

When marketers encourage colleagues to publish company-related content on their personal LinkedIn profiles, it usually plays out in one of two ways:

1. Reposting Company Content Employees simply repost content from the company page, which adds little value to their audience. This often feels forced and unnatural, making it obvious that they were asked to share something. The reach and engagement of such posts are lower than Mariana Trench.
2. Personal Branding Over Company Alternatively, employees get excited about posting on LinkedIn but end up promoting themselves and their personal brand rather than the business.

Let’s be honest—most employees aren’t excited enough about your company to write about it regularly on LinkedIn. In my experience, even when we had a great company culture, people weren’t writing about it on LinkedIn every day.

When employees are active on LinkedIn, it's usually to promote themselves professionally. From talking to dozens of active employees on LinkedIn, I’ve found they do it to increase their visibility and improve their chances of landing better career opportunities.

Who Should Be Active on LinkedIn?

The roles that should be active on LinkedIn and are motivated to create business-related content are typically C-level executives and business owners. Their personal brands are closely tied to the business, and when done right, their content is authentic, inspirational, and drives engagement. These individuals can establish themselves as thought leaders and subject matter experts within their industry.

Motivating Employees to Promote the Company

To be fair, there are some employees who are highly motivated to promote the company—let’s call them ambassadors. These ambassadors, often in sales, product, or marketing roles, have an incentive to showcase their expertise.

Less is more. It's better to have 1 or 2 well-supported ambassadors than many employees irregularly posting content that is unrelated to your business.

How to Ensure Consistent LinkedIn Content That Delivers Results:

1. Set Clear Goals and KPIs Why do you want to be active on LinkedIn? Whether it’s for hiring, brand awareness, or creating business opportunities, be clear on your objectives.
2. Select an Ambassador Choose someone who is outgoing, not afraid to speak on camera, and has valuable insights to share—preferably someone from top management.
3. Help With Idea Collection Collaborate with your ambassador to gather ideas, viewpoints, and comments on current affairs. Use a shared document where they can jot down notes on topics they want to discuss.
4. Refine the Ideas Periodically review the ideas together, select the most relevant ones, and have a copywriter expand them into LinkedIn posts or scripts for the ambassador to record.
5. Create Visuals Have your graphic designer create simple, branded visuals, like a tagline over a photo in your brand’s colors.
6. Produce Short Video Clips Find someone to create high-quality short video clips from the recordings.
7. Maintain Authenticity Make sure the ambassador reviews each post to ensure the tone is authentic.
8. Create a Content Plan Schedule posts for publishing and analyze performance.

Remember, lifestyle posts may attract more engagement, but always ask: “Does this post align with our KPIs and interest our target audience?”

1. Repeat the Process Consistency is key. Learn from the data and keep improving.

Don’t have the resources to execute employee branding effectively? You can fully outsource it to Deal Harvest.