The long and short of it is that LinkedIn prioritises personal profiles over company pages, and the only sure-fire way to boost company brand awareness is to post about the company (and share company updates) on one’s personal profile. Sharing, liking, commenting.

All it takes is 10 minutes every other day, and you can significantly boost your network, stay visible, generate awareness for your company, and build your own personal brand at the same time.

1. One of the hardest parts of building your LinkedIn presence is keeping your network engaged. And if you’re familiar with how LinkedIn algorithms work – and how they often change without notice – even the concept of reaching the right audience in the first place can be a challenge.

2. The most important first step is to grow your network. Connecting with everyone in the industry that you potentially could do business with. You are not guaranteed that they will accept your invitation, but do follow them and invite them to follow you. Personalise your invitation to connect.

Post about real problems that people are facing. Let’s get even more specific. In addition to being relevant, you should post about the issues that are most important to your audience. Who gets to decide what you post? Your network. The people you want to influence. Tracking what works and offering more of that is the game plan.

3. And, if you’ve curated your network carefully, it’s the percentage of people within your network who read your content that is the best indicator of success. This is a far more accurate barometer of influence. In the long run, it’s more valuable, too.

4. Posts with links within them get less engagement. “What I’ve observed is that, if you share a post with ‘double links’, i.e. a company page update that links to an external site, you’ll just pull your views down the drain. It goes nowhere’’. Source.

Consider adding the link in the comments, and make note of that in your post copy.

5. Create a cleverly constructed poll and ask your network to tag other people in the post. This is effective when done the right way. Some people don’t want to get tagged all the time; others are grateful to have been notified. It all depends on the timing, purpose and authenticity of your poll.

a. So why is this effective? Every time a person is tagged in a post or comment, LinkedIn notifies that user, prompting them to join the conversation. Plus, the post gets shown on the LinkedIn feed of every person tagged in the post, so imagine how many people you can reach with just one question.

6. Share your opinion on topics that your network cares about. The more personal the posts are the better the response, guaranteed.

7. Write a strong About section

8. Post regular updates to your page. Consistent fresh content gets indexed and helps the search engine/algorithm recognize your page as an active and valuable source of information.

9. We think posting 2x a week is best practice (max 5 times a week). Change the topic often; change the lengths of posts often.

10. Do not share too many posts from other people – personal posts are more effective. We have also found that shared posts do not perform well as original posts.

11. Get creative with your posts. Reuse and repurpose each piece of content into at least three posts by pulling out a statistic or a quote from the post. You can also repurpose event PowerPoints and informative PDFs as posts. Substantive documents like these help position you as a thought leader. Create an editorial calendar to keep track of your posts.

12. Quick and easy to read gets better traction, and summaries are powerful posts. An example: break big pieces of valuable content into bite sizes e.g. Webinars, take something out of the webinar and feature it.

13. Repeat important information, package it differently. Make sure there is some time between the same content posts. Revise content.

14. Use @mentions to your benefit. Highlight employees, key leaders and clients by putting @ in front of their names – this tags them in the post and provides a link to their LinkedIn profile – this has a two-fold benefit of enhancing their visibility and bolstering your relationship with them.

15. Engage your community and join relevant groups. React and comment in groups. Hashtag feeds to help put your profile in front of new audiences. You can set LinkedIn to notify you of topics that you’d like to engage with. You can also respond to posts and group discussions from your company page. But never sell. Offer valuable information.

16. Share video and visual content. Make sure your posts include eye-catching visuals. You can easily create these yourself using Canva. Unique imagery and especially videos stand out more on feeds, helping your personal brand (and company) get noticed. LinkedIn data shows that custom image collages drive heightened levels of engagement on the platform, so consider uploading a series of photos from events or photos of your employees.

17. Do not get stuck on a ‘recipe’. This includes the use of visuals too.

18. Colleagues to be instructed to like, comment and share one another’s content, in order to widen awareness. Create a formal structure around your company’s employee engagement, for your employees to share content and promote your page.

19. Answer comments with something equally valuable. Abusive or degrading comments to be deleted/blocked. Never answer abusive or negative comments – having an online debate is a bad idea. Discussion can be taken offline, by asking for an email address.

20. Analyze your competitors’ company pages as well as industry leaders’ personal profiles. Competitive research is a very useful tool in refining strategy in every area of marketing, and LinkedIn is no different. Make a list of your top competitor firms and keep abreast of what they are posting so you can be in the know, but more importantly, identify content gaps and provide something your target audience won’t find elsewhere.

21. Strategically use #hashtags. One of the most powerful ways to gain new followers and extend the reach of your posts is to use relevant hashtags. To find the right hashtags, look at your competitors’ usage, use the # sign in the main LinkedIn search bar for research and use online tools such as Hashtagifyme and Ritetag to help you find the right hashtags. Also, when you associate your LinkedIn page with relevant hashtags, you can react/comment on conversations from your company’s perspective.

22. Adjust your content based on analytics. Company page administrators can access a robust set of analytics, which provide demographic information about your followers and visitors, as well as engagement data for your updates. Use these insights to learn what’s resonating vs. what’s not with them, and align your content with your audience’s needs.

23. Invite others to like your LinkedIn company page. Page administrators can invite their first-degree connections to follow their company page in batches of 50 at a time. Note, there’s no way to know who accepted your request and who didn’t and a big pain point for me with LinkedIn is that it doesn’t currently enable you to see your actual followers.

24. Use a smiling, professional profile picture. Human psychology teaches us that we are instinctively drawn to look at human faces.

25. Post your own articles.

a. Time-consuming, but it’s nonetheless important for becoming an influencer. Whenever possible, write your own articles.

b. Time and again, as we have studied hundreds of posts and thousands of LinkedIn activity metrics, we noticed that when the influencer posted content that he or she wrote, the engagement was higher.

c. We first noticed this on our own page. When we posted articles written by other people, the engagement was so-so.

d. Summarizing extensive content written by other thought leaders is also a good way of generating your ‘own article’, with your professional view on the subject to strengthen it further.

26. Use the first-person when you post. This point is easy to overlook, but very important regardless.

a. If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I always write in the first person. I share stories, experiences, and use the words “me,” “my,” and “I.” Why do I use the first person?

b. Because I’m a real person. I’m talking to real people. I try to write the same way I talk. It feels more natural that way.

c. Why should it be any different when I’m posting a status or update?

Richard Branson

27. Out of likes, comments and shares, the most valuable is a comment and then a share. Likes are not the most valuable. A share gets the best value as it will be seen by the sharer’s followers!

28. Regularly post great content. Maintaining a steady stream of new content on your company page will give it more visibility on members’ feeds (profile that post at least weekly see a 2X increase in engagement, according to LinkedIn). Regularly publishing high-quality content boosts your visibility on LinkedIn, increasing engagement.

About Joburg Capital:

Joburg Capital is a global digital marketing agency based in Johannesburg helping businesses grow and succeed with creative digital strategies tailored to their needs.

Our team of experienced professionals combine the latest strategies with proven tactics to create cost-effective and results-driven campaigns.

Discover how we can transform your business and reach new heights.

How to do this? First, keep your audience interested with timely information so they visit your page for new content. Second, when your followers share your content or comment on it, their connections will often see the activity in their feed. This increases visibility to potential followers. Note – there is no secret sauce to this – some people may see your content and others may not. The final step is to share your content in as many relevant groups as possible.