Employer Branding: How to Grow on LinkedIn as a Business | Sales & Marketing Keynote with Erendiz Ates

The Explosive Growth of LinkedIn

Welcome everyone! I have some great news for you – LinkedIn continues to scale at an incredible pace. The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this growth, with 4.2 million Belgian LinkedIn accounts now active. That’s a crazy number when you consider that half of those 4.2 million users are active on the platform monthly.

To put that in perspective, in the Netherlands there are 9 million LinkedIn users, and globally the platform has reached nearly 900 million members. The 1 billion user milestone is fast approaching. You have to remember that LinkedIn has only been around for 20 years – the majority of this growth has happened in just the last few years.

What this means for you is that LinkedIn is becoming an increasingly important platform to be active on, both as an individual and as a business. The demographics of who is using LinkedIn are also shifting. It’s no longer just the domain of IT professionals, managers, and salespeople. People from all backgrounds and education levels are finding their way onto LinkedIn.

Optimizing Your Company Page

So let’s start by looking at your company page on LinkedIn. How many of you here today actively manage an effective company page? [Raise hand] Fantastic, great to see so many of you already on top of this.

However, the reality is that many company pages are not optimized to their full potential. Don’t be a “Rocky” – you need to first apply the LinkedIn playbook and ensure you have a fully optimized identity for your company page and profiles.

• Ensure you have a relevant network as an individual
• Build a relevant community as a company page
• Create fantastic content

Once you’ve got those basics covered, then we can start to dive deeper into employer branding and leveraging your company page to its fullest.

Let’s use Kinepolis Belgium as an example. I often go and review company pages, and when I look at Kinepolis Belgium’s page, I see they have around 5,600 followers, some connected profiles, and an activity rate of 18%. The average activity rate for company pages is 25%, so they’re a bit below that.

But more importantly, when I dig deeper, I find there’s actually quite little information on their company page. The description is just a single sentence, when it could be using the full 2,000 character limit to really showcase the company, its values, culture, and employee value proposition.

The Checklist for an Optimized Company Page

I’ve put together a simple checklist for you to assess where your company page is at right now:

• Add a detailed description (max 2,000 characters)
• Include relevant keywords, your mission, and what visitors need to know
• Add hashtags related to your business
• Translate your page into multiple languages
• Aim for an interaction rate of at least 5% (average is 25%)
• Ensure at least 25% of your followers engage with your content
• Target your content to specific regions or industries
• Add social proof elements like testimonials and CTAs

Once you’ve gone through this checklist and ticked off all the boxes, you can be confident your company page is truly optimized and ready to start driving real results.

Highlighting Your Products and Services

The next step is to make sure you’re highlighting your actual products and services on your company page. This feature has only recently been made available, initially just for the IT and finance sectors, but it’s now rolling out more broadly.

This allows you to showcase your offerings, with the ability to add descriptions, images, videos, and even customer recommendations. I had to search quite a bit to find companies that had already activated this, and I’m pleased to say there are a couple in the room today who have done so. Congratulations!

A small tip here – as you build up your company page following, you’ll want to get the right people involved as “page managers”. These should be colleagues who have a strong, relevant network that you can tap into. Don’t just rely on the marketing team or the page admin – get your experts, your thought leaders, and even your CEO involved in managing and posting to the page.

Do a quarterly “page management rotation” where different people take responsibility. This will help you rapidly grow your following and community on LinkedIn.

Optimizing Your Employee Profiles

Another important aspect is ensuring your employees’ personal LinkedIn profiles are also optimized. When someone is considering applying to work at your company, they’re not just looking at your company page – they’re also checking out the profiles of the people who work there.

Research shows that 76% of job seekers will look at employee profiles before applying. So you need to make sure those profiles are sending the right message and showcasing your employer brand.

The top 5 things people look at on a LinkedIn profile are:

• First impression – your profile photo and headline
• Connections – your mutual connections with the viewer
• Activity – how recently and frequently you’ve been posting
• About section – your personal pitch and value proposition
• Social proof – recommendations, featured content, etc.

Make sure your employees’ profiles are optimized for each of these areas. Their headline should clearly communicate their value proposition. Use the featured section to showcase things like event participation, ebooks, employer branding videos, and job openings.

Encourage your employees to be active ambassadors, posting content that aligns with your company’s brand and values. Provide them with branded banner images they can use. This will create a cohesive, professional impression that attracts top talent.

Leveraging the LinkedIn Creator Mode

The final piece of the puzzle is understanding LinkedIn’s Creator Mode. This is a setting that shifts your profile from a traditional “connect with me” approach to a “follow me” model.

Creator Mode is really intended for people who are regularly posting content and building a following on LinkedIn. It changes your connection button to a “Follow” button, signaling to your network that your goal is to build an audience rather than just collect connections.

Even if you’re not a heavy content creator, I’d recommend turning on Creator Mode. It gives you access to some useful analytics, like seeing how many profile views you’re getting and how widely your content is reaching. This data can help you refine your LinkedIn strategy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, effective employer branding on LinkedIn today requires a combination of marketing and HR skills. You need to be savvy at both promoting your company’s brand and attracting top talent to join your team.

By optimizing your company page, showcasing your products and services, getting your employees involved as brand ambassadors, and leveraging the power of LinkedIn’s Creator Mode, you’ll be well on your way to building a strong employer brand that attracts the right people to your business.