Why I’m Not a Fan of LinkedIn Company Pages

A common question I get asked is whether it is better to publish content from a Personal page or from a Company page.

The short answer is most definitely from a Personal page.

Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t.

Success on LinkedIn Comes Through Developing Your Personal Brand, Not Via Your LinkedIn Company Page – However Big You Are!

“People Buy from People First”

I’m sure you will have heard this phrase many times. The same goes for LinkedIn engagement. The main reasons being:

• Not many people actually Follow LinkedIn Company Pages. In fact, it’s only recently at the time of writing this post, that LinkedIn have actually enabled Page Admins to see the names, Profile Pictures and LinkedIn Headlines of the people who Follow their page as opposed to only having access to vague demographics.
• LinkedIn suppresses the reach of Company Page content to give you more reason to use their sponsored InMail and advertising to reach your desired audience. This is a theory my fellow LinkedIn Trainer, Bruce Johnston also agrees with. In fact, Bruce explains how LinkedIn distributes content published on its platform perfectly:
  

  “When you post something on your personal LinkedIn account, LinkedIn will put it in front of a small percentage – like 5 to 8% – of your connections and followers and see how it does. If it does well, that is, if it gets lots of engagement, LinkedIn will distribute it further and so on.

  “So most people assume that LinkedIn does the same thing with company page content and most people would be wrong.
  
  “For all intents and purposes, LinkedIn does not distribute company page content at all. You’re on your own. If you follow any companies, when was the last time you were notified of what they had published? If you are like me, you can’t remember a single instance. Now would you be surprised if I told you LinkedIn had a bunch of cool tools for seeing the content of companies you follow? And that those tools are in Sales Navigator for only $70 or $80 bucks a month? And what type of Sales Navigator users follow company pages? People who either want to sell to your company or people that compete with your company. So the only people that can actually easily see all your company page content are people you are sure not writing that content for.”

• People build relationships with people, not LinkedIn Company Pages.
• Pages’ content is rarely engaging content, it’s usually salesy or self-promotional. In short, it is usually boring! It doesn’t have to be though, see below!

Now, this is NOT to say that you shouldn’t have a Company Page, even if you are a single person running your own business.

Having a Company Page identifies you as a ‘real’ company on LinkedIn. If completed and linked correctly to your Experience section, it ensures that you don’t end up with a grey ghost logo at the top of your personal brand page. That’s important because first impressions count. I see so many Profiles where even the CEO of large companies haven’t identified themselves correctly against the company they created!

It also ensures that all your company employees can identify themselves correctly too. The sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts!

Having a LinkedIn Company Page is a great way to help people on LinkedIn find your website. You can fill out details about your company, including your website address on your LinkedIn Company Page. This then creates a valuable link to your website where people can find out more or maybe even buy from you.

“The first thing you have to realize is that under these circumstances, your company page is more about establishing credibility than it is about increasing your reach.” – Bruce Johnston.

If your LinkedIn Company Page content is not easily seen by your Followers what can you do about it?

Another bonus of Company Pages is that if you publish case studies and links to helpful blog posts on the LinkedIn Company Page, all your company’s content is in one place. The LinkedIn Company Page can then act as a springboard if employees are encouraged to engage and share the content on there from their own Profiles to their own networks.

This helps widen the reach of the content to new audiences and, if employees add their own thoughts before sharing the Company Page content and share their own perspectives in Comments on the LinkedIn Company Page content, it helps build their own personal brand on LinkedIn using their own Profiles.

Bruce makes two very important points when it comes to encouraging employees to engage with Company Page content:

1. It’s better to ask employees who are regular users of LinkedIn and have a decent number of Connections (around 500+) to engage with your Company Page content.
2. If your employees simply ‘Like’ a Company Page post, that’s too easy and the effects are poor. Bruce recommends asking employees to Comment on your LinkedIn Company Page content rather than ‘Liking’ it or even sharing it. When they Comment, the Company post will then be seen by a small portion of their networks. This can help amplify your Company Page’s reach and prevents the only engagement taking place on your Company Page being within your own ‘echo chamber’ (see video below!)

So, we’ve covered employees, but have you ever thought of asking your suppliers to comment on your Company’s LinkedIn Page content?

“Your suppliers have a vested interest in your company’s success, and there are two people at each of those suppliers who should be keen to help you out: the salesperson who is your main point of contact and their company page manager who is likely to be more sympathetic to your efforts than most people in your own company. Ask them if they will comment on your company page posts too.” – Bruce Johnston.

Publish Solutions Not Adverts!

As we covered above, LinkedIn is suppressing the reach of the organic distribution of Company Page posts, probably in favour of trying to get you to invest in sponsored InMail and paid advertising on the platform. That means that often, people are not seeing your Company’s content unless they directly search for and find your page – either via a company search, hashtag search or a content search.

In these cases, your reader is finding you for the first time. They have come across you and because they were using LinkedIn as a resource to search for something.

When people arrive at LinkedIn Company Pages, they tend to be looking for answers to their questions. They ask themselves “I wonder if these people can help me with my problem?”

“When you offer people answers to their questions and information they can use, they will want to return to your Company Page.

When all you do is advertise, why would someone ever want to come back a second time?” – Bruce Johnston

You might find this video a useful summary!