In our weekly meeting today*, one of my clients observed that his ‘post impressions are up since we started the programme, but my posts haven’t changed in any way’. We have been working together for just 7 weeks.
What is the impact of this?
It means that more people are seeing my clients’ content than before the programme started, which means that more people are aware of who this person is and what his job entails.
It also means that more people are aware of the company. They may have never heard of that company before they came across this persons’ posts. Now they can check out the company page, the other members of the team and easily hop over to the website.
These are usually the first things someone will do if they come across a profile they find interesting on LinkedIn. They may then ‘follow’ the person and, of course, the company page. This means they will start to see posts from the company AND from this employee. The company could start to become almost a household name.
When, maybe in weeks, or maybe in months, they need what this company has to offer, they may reach out to them as they’re already on their radar. OR, and arguably of greater significance, if this person reached out to them to see if they can talk about their services, it’s not a ‘cold’ interaction.
Why is this person getting more eyes on their posts?
It could be a mix of things:
1. He has optimised his profile so he’s coming up in more searches on LinkedIn, Google and of course via AI search. LinkedIn is the 2nd most cited platform by the LLM’s. This means that choosing which keywords and key phrases we use in our profiles becomes even more important.
2. As part of every employee advocacy programme, I also teach outreach and social selling.
My client is following the programme and he is commenting on more of other peoples’ posts. Therefore he is showing his knowledge and increasing his visibility in wider areas on LinkedIn. People seeing his comments may want to find out more about him, so it’s one click over to his profile and just one more click to read his posts. If a visitor/reader is interested in what they see, they may well ‘follow’ or ‘connect’. As a point to note, my clients’ follower numbers are up too!
3. THIS IS ONE YOU MAY NOT THINK OF AND IT’S HUGE!
The fact that the persons’ colleagues are also more active on LinkedIn since the programme started, means that each employee has more visibility, even if they’re doing very little.
Yes, this is the beauty of an employee advocacy programme where all parties are – even a little bit – engaged! Read on…
Do you know the marketing rule of 7?
It says that we need to see something 7 times before it goes from our short-term memory to our long-term memory.
If I see a post by the employee of a particular company once, I probably won’t remember it. If I see a few more posts and comments of other employees of that company, I am going to remember who they are and what they do, much more easily.
It’s the cumulative effect of an employee advocacy system – and it works! What we do on LinkedIn doesn’t just affect us but the people around us too.
This works from a psychological perspective as I’ve outlined – and what is interesting is that the algorithm also plays a part in this. The LinkedIn algorithm, in its attempt to look at each profile with a 360 lens, will take into consideration how and who we interact with on LinkedIn when calculating how far to share our posts. If we’re commenting on other peoples’ posts and interacting with the company page, the algorithm will push our own posts out to more people. The same will happen if our colleagues are more active on LinkedIn commenting on ours and others’ posts.
This is why when one person in a company is doing very little, they still manage to grow their followers and get more visibility.
Please don’t see this as an excuse for laziness! Quite the opposite! It’s the same with most things: the more you put in, the more you get out! Crucially, what this does mean is that if EVERYONE did a little, that is more impactful to the company than less people doing a lot.
In summary
1. Employee advocacy works to get more visibility for the company as a whole as well as the participants.
2. Engaging more willing people in the programme means each person needs to do less in order to get results.
3. A company needs to consider human psychology as well as algorithmic patterns when planning their LinkedIn activity.
4. 360Brew is looking at everything we do on LinkedIn: our profiles, our content and our outreach so we need to consider these accordingly.
5. The LLM’s are citing from our profiles, our content and our comments – use all 3 wisely.
*If you would like to find out why a weekly meeting works to drive forward an employee advocacy system and what this would look like for your business, please email [email protected] and let’s chat.
