Be honest, are you confident that your LinkedIn Company Page is
headed in the right direction?
Or are you literally just posting and praying and hoping
that something will work?
Good news, in today's episode we're gonna get that confidence back.
G'day, listeners.
It's Michelle J Raymond here, and I hope you're having a wonderful week.
I have been watching all of the posts on LinkedIn talk
about Cannes, or is it Cannes?
I don't know, potato, potato.
But here in Australia, it's a bit miserable.
The weather's cold.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is melting.
So if you are on the other side of the world, enjoy that sunshine for
me because I'm certainly missing it.
Listeners, you know that LinkedIn company pages are a big part of what I talk
about on this podcast, and I've been thinking about how I can help you more.
And so one of the great ideas that I had was coming up with a miniseries of
at least five podcast episodes, short ones that you can action, that are tied
together so that you can get more out of your LinkedIn company page because
there is a crisis of confidence going on out there with the people that I'm
talking to because Let's be clear, there's been so many changes on LinkedIn.
It's my full-time job to try and keep up with it all and report back to you.
So if you are feeling like this, you are not alone.
There is so many people out there that are reaching out with questions.
So I thought this miniseries is the way that I can most help people.
What am I hearing about LinkedIn company pages that makes me think
that people are out there are having a crisis of confidence?
When they are smart marketers, they have been using LinkedIn for a long
time, and I think it all just comes back to the fact that people have been
posting for months, even years in most of the cases of clients that I work
with, but nothing seems to be working.
Nothing they try seems to move that needle in any meaningful kind of way.
And to be frank, they're not really sure even what good looks like anymore.
And that makes you feel awful, especially when it's part of your job to try and
get all of the numbers up and up and up 'cause, you know, we've been taught
that numbers going up is a good sign.
Now, that would be great if LinkedIn got that memo, but they're actively
pushing things the other way, which is sad, especially for organic LinkedIn
company page traffic on the platform.
Then what happens is people start having a look around and going,
"What are my competitors doing?
That's typically the first sign that something's about to go pear-shaped
Because as soon as you start to copy your competitors, then you start to
look the same as them, and you've lost the one thing that makes you unique
and stand out on the platform, which is just doing things your own way.
And then after we go through that and it's still not working, then people
land on Company Pages mustn't work.
They're a waste of time." Scroll LinkedIn for two seconds and
you'll see so many posts on this topic. "Company Pages are dead.
Post on profiles.
You get 20 billion times more reach."
I've seen all of those posts.
Ultimately, what's going on is that low numbers create self-doubt.
I've been there myself.
I can totally relate to any of you listeners that might be feeling it.
And when you feel like nothing's working, then you start doing random
things, trying to see if they work, and then it just creates this like
spiral that you can't get out of.
So random tactics make things even worse.
I understand why good marketers lose confidence, and I
wanna talk about that next.
Shout out to all of the smart marketers that are listening to the podcast today
because I understand why you've lost your LinkedIn Company Page confidence.
But we're gonna go back to why I think some of these things happen and more
importantly, how they can be easily fixed.
Let's go through a quick checklist of a few things that I think you should go
back and check if you've got them in place because if you have these things in place,
it's much easier to remain confident because you know you're staying on track.
So do you have a documented LinkedIn strategy?
Is it somewhere that you actually refer to or is it hiding in
the proverbial desk drawer?
If you do have one, when was the last time that it was updated?
Do you remember what the objectives were as part of that strategy?
Have you wandered off course and away from those objectives?
Let's ask who actually owns the company page.
Is it you?
Somebody else in the team?
Have people started creeping in and taking some of that territory away from
you and you need to reclaim ownership?
There's also a confusion that happens between regional and global teams or
local teams and everybody wants their say on how the page should be working.
And of course, it just gets so jumbled up and you wonder where are we going, what
are we doing, and your audience feels the same, the algorithm feels the same.
So we need to figure out who actually owns the page, who's driving the page,
and is it aligned back with the strategy.
And also, I think the thing that's more important right now is that
LinkedIn has fundamentally shifted.
Once upon a time, I would've told you it was all about follower growth and
impression growth, but those two things today are harder than ever and I think
when you only measure success by those two things, you're really setting yourself
up for failure and nobody wants that.
Mostly, listeners, what I want you to think about is when was the
last time that we went back and we really set up our strong foundation?
Go back to the beginning, stop posting for a few days.
The world will not end.
I think if you go back to your strategy and go back to the things that you knew
would work when you did that strategy and just update it, then all of a sudden
you're going to be reminded of what it is that you know works for your customers.
And I think that's far more important than any cheap algorithm hacks, any new content
hacks, anything along those lines where people are promising the world when you've
tried most of them and it's not working.
So go back and answer questions like what do you do, who do you do it for,
and what makes your business different?
And that's a really good place to start.
When we go back to the beginning, listeners, and really set up a
strong foundation, I'm not talking about asking the question, first
of all, of what should we post.
What I want you to do is go back and say, "Has our Company Page
been set up for success?" And I'm gonna guess it probably hasn't.
When was the last time that you looked at the positioning and messaging on
your Company Page, whether it's your banner, whether it's your tagline,
whether it's the About section?
When was the last time it was actually updated?
I'm going to assume probably never, unless somebody's
listened to an episode like this.
It's one of those things that nobody thinks makes really that
much difference, and I'm here to tell you it absolutely does.
It does, especially in the world of AI and the new search engine
optimisation that both LinkedIn has, that Google has, and now that LLMs have.
Making sure we articulate things really well is super important,
and keywords become a part of this.
Most importantly, though, does it all make sense to your buyer?
I have read so many Company Pages during my page audit and strategy
sessions where I am left scratching my head, like literally going, "I
have no idea what you're doing."
These are clients that I have done my research, I've read the
website, and I come back, and it's just got so much jargon.
I'm thinking, "I don't know what you're going on about" And so i- if
it's confusing, remember what I say, if you confuse them, you lose them.
So go back and just do a sense check, does this make sense to our buyer?
You will be amazed at what happens when you go back and take a look
at your page setup, and I have literally just been doing that for
my business over this last weekend.
I went down a rabbit hole.
Now, for me, I'd updated my Company Page back in December, so I'd done that, and
then never really found the time to go and update my LinkedIn profile, which
anything we're talking about today equally applies back to profiles on LinkedIn.
And the funny part was, when I looked at my LinkedIn profile, I was shocked.
Actually, I was embarrassed because that person in that profile, I don't
even recognise them, listeners.
And I had to go back and update my Company Page because so much
had changed in six months also.
So this is your first piece of homework from today's episode,
so we have to take action when we hear and learn these things.
Is your page set up for your buyer?
If the answer is no, you know where I'm going next.
What does a confident Company Page look like?
Or in this case, confident Company Page admins on LinkedIn.
The Company Pages that I know are gonna be successful and take confident actions
know exactly who they're trying to reach.
They know why each of the content pillars that they've decided on exists.
They know who owns what.
They know how employee advocacy fits with the Company Page strategy
and everybody's working together.
You know your measures of success beyond those likes,
impressions, and follower growth.
That's real confidence.
Let's look at this practically.
How can you get confidence?
Well, take a moment and go back and have a look at your Page and just say,
"Is it clear to our buyer that they're in the right place? Is the content
that we're creating speaking to that buyer?" And if the answer is no, the
really cool part is you are smart and you know exactly how to fix it.
Some of you might be listening to this episode and saying, "Duh, Michelle,
all of that is really obvious.
It's really simple.
Of course we can take those actions.
My Page would never have all of those fundamental mistakes or those beginner
mistakes." You would be surprised that pretty much every single LinkedIn Company
Page audit that I do with clients, we are going back fixing these mistakes.
And it's not surprising to me because here's the problem.
Somebody set the page up a million years ago, and often it's been handed
over from person to person, and the last person in gets dumped with it.
There's not necessarily a handover.
The strategy that may have been created doesn't get introduced, or
that person doesn't get trained on it, and we assume a lot of things..
Here's the thing page admins and marketers that are listening today.
It is a game of little things that compound, and that can go either
way, little things that you miss or little things that you do that
make a difference between you and the competitors in your industry.
It may sound simple, but I promise you, it's easier said than done.
So until next week, cheers.