Building a Brand on LinkedIn: Personal vs. Business

You have a lot on your plate. After all, you’re responsible for the marketing success of your company. You’re busy driving brand growth, managing teams and budgets, and creating and monitoring campaigns. Your time is valuable and likely stretched thin. So, adding a social media content strategy to your ever-growing to-do list probably isn’t top priority.

But, here’s why it should be.

94% of business leaders agree that social media has a positive impact on brand loyalty. Social media enables brands to connect with their audiences on a more personal and authentic level. These personal connections also help brands weather seismic shifts in the social media landscape. So, it’s no surprise that businesses are continuing to prioritize investing in social media.

Deciding to implement a social media strategy is the easy part. Choosing where to spend your time in the beginning —- building the business brand versus building the personal brand on LinkedIn —- is the hard part.

But, guess what? You can do both. You can help build your company’s brand through employee-shared content, which also builds your employees’ personal brands.

We’re going to show you how to leverage both the power of your business brand and the personal brands of your employees to build an effective brand presence on LinkedIn.

Let’s Talk About LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great place to build a business brand. With a community of more than 1 billion members and 67 million companies, LinkedIn offers a unique platform for achieving brand reach across a high-quality base of decision-makers.

It’s also a great place to build a personal brand, especially for your employees. Your employees can use their LinkedIn profiles to share high-quality company content, which builds their reputations. And, when they deploy their personal brand to get your company’s message out to their networks, the impact of your business brand can be expanded exponentially.

What Exactly Is a Personal Brand?

A personal brand showcases what’s unique about an individual, including their skills, values, interests, and style. It’s the image they project to the individuals and businesses in their networks.

Every employee at your company has a unique personal brand that can help raise awareness about your company.

For example, here are a couple of LinkedIn posts from Matt McAllister, Head of Marketing, Emerging Products at Yelp. In the first post, he promotes his appearance on a podcast.

Source: Matt McAllister

And, in the second post, McAllister shares company news about an award launched by Yelp.

Source: Matt McAllister

Both examples show how employees can use their LinkedIn pages to promote both themselves and their companies. In the examples above, McAllister is building credibility and trust with his network while fueling his own professional growth. He is also expanding Yelp’s brand reach and awareness by sharing company news with his network of 5,000+ followers and 500+ connections. Clearly, it’s a win-win for both McCallister and Yelp.

When considering whether to leverage the personal brands of your employees to promote your company, consider these advantages:

• They Give Credibility. Over 50% of consumers are more likely to believe messaging from a business’ employees than from a CEO or spokesperson.
  
  
• They Have Greater Reach. Marketing messages from employees reach 562% more of your audience.
  
  
• They Inspire Potential Hirees. Prospective employees are more likely to want to work for a company that encourages employee branding.
  
  
• They Help Keep Your Best Employees. Encouraging your employees to develop and grow their personal brands makes them feel supported, so they’re more likely to be loyal and stay with the company.

So, What Is a Business Brand?

While a personal brand is centered around the identity of an individual, a business brand encompasses the identity of a company. A business brand showcases the company’s values, mission, and products or services.

On LinkedIn, your company page is the home base for your brand. It’s where you can present your narrative, build visibility, and connect with potential partners, clients, and potential employees.

Previously, we reviewed some posts from a Yelp employee’s personal LinkedIn page. Now let’s take a look at an example from Yelp’s company LinkedIn page.

In this example, Yelp announces new accessibility business attributes to celebrate Disability Pride Month. In the comments, Yelp employees (and others) jump in, congratulating the company on an inspiring and inclusive initiative.

Source: Yelp

Yelp also regularly showcases its employees in company posts, enhancing its reputation for being a great company to work for.

Clearly building your business brand on LinkedIn offers many advantages such as:

• Builds Strong Bonds With Customers. A robust business brand can create strong emotional connections with customers, which helps build loyalty and long-term relationships.
  
  
• Helps Your Brand Stand Out. By showcasing your company’s unique value proposition, you’ll stand out in the marketplace, giving you an edge over the competition.
  
  
• Conveys Your Narrative. LinkedIn is an excellent platform for telling your brand story, showing potential customers that you’re established, credible, and offer services/products that meet their needs.
  
  
• Makes Your Business Easy to Scale. LinkedIn’s platform and tools make it easy to scale and grow your business into new markets or new products and services.

Why You Need Both

A hybrid approach to promoting your business on LinkedIn — one that uses the power of your business brand and the personal brands of your most influential employees — can be a win-win for everyone. While your business brand helps you stand out from your competition, your employees’ personal brands can add credibility for your business through association.

Using an employee advocacy tool like GaggleAMP can also give your business and employees’ personal brands a boost. In fact, more than 100,000 people trust us for their employee advocacy needs.

Are you curious about the results an employee advocacy program can generate for LinkedIn? Learn all about the yearly impact of employee advocacy on your brand reach today.