Your employees are on LinkedIn. More than 900 million members are registered on the platform with an estimated 310 million active users. LinkedIn defines itself as “business and employment-focused social media platform,” and there are countless think pieces about how to use it from an employee’s perspective.
What’s less frequently discussed is how organizations can more effectively use LinkedIn to drive their culture. LinkedIn is a gathering place where employee recognition, engagement, professional development, and trust can be formed. Conversations and connections across organizations occur.
Organizations know how to use LinkedIn to post jobs, share news, and celebrate accomplishments. But there are ways to more deeply engage on the platform and connect your people to your organization’s purpose — giving them the spotlight — and, in turn, connecting with your future talent, client, or organizational ally.
C-Level leaders: get on there and get active.
Yes, you are overextended and the last thing you may want to do is add another item to your plate. But leaders who get posting and commenting on LinkedIn are more than just brand narrators: they are creating the conversation in their industry and sharing a glimpse of what is meaningful to them.
“Professional identity” is evolving to be more inclusive and meaningful, just as workplace culture is evolving to meet the demand for meaning in the workplace that top talent craves. Getting active on LinkedIn can be purposeful, thoughtful: it is a chance to be a giver, too. Follow your people. Set a half-hour, once a day, once every other day, for engaging with them on the site.
As an organization, tell real stories. Tell them well.
“When we read a story, we are doing something that comes naturally to us, but under more amenable circumstances, with more time to reflect, than in real life,” says the author George Saunders. Nothing resonates with the human brain more than stories. And LinkedIn is a good place to tell stories about your people, with your people. What are they doing? Accomplishing? What values do they have that connect them with the purpose of your organization? Tell your client or customer stories, too. Keep it human. There are so many ways to do this and your marketing team can be tapped to think about the way to curate this for your organization.
Experiment with an abundance mindset. (Give your followers something real).
The workflow app company Trello used to host “Coffee Talks” every Friday. Employees present discussions on work-related or personal projects such as creating a YouTube channel or scaling their Beanie Baby collection. Said Ryan Sorensen, a Trello developer:
“Coffee Talks have been an incredible way to see what other people at Trello care about and how they work. As we’ve gotten larger, it’s been harder and harder to have any grasp on what’s happening with everyone. Coffee Talks give a way to reset that and make the world seem smaller.”
You can take the same mindset into our organization’s LinkedIn posts. Film internal activities that connect to your organization’s purpose. Share them. Some might fear doing this – what if the presentation is about analytics, and it’s really good, and a rival sees it and approaches your person about a job? So be it. Model a strong, giving culture: givers and abundance thinking always win out on LinkedIn.
Another idea: hand the LinkedIn page to specific teams for a day or week to discuss what they’re working on, how they bond outside of work, etc. This is a more effective showcase of the true “culture” of a place than sepia-toned videos on the Careers page.
The office is a tool to orient your culture. So is LinkedIn.
Anxiety about hybrid work, remote work, and work-from home is top of mind for CEOs.
But we forget: the office is a tool. It exists for a specific reason: to bring people together to discuss important topics when they need to be discussed in-person. That might not be every day. It might be for some jobs. LinkedIn as a tool for bringing your people together and your workplace culture to life. (Your people are already there, using it for their own professional growth.)
There are no set rules for LinkedIn, but remember why you’re there as an organization – it’s not just press releases and job openings. It’s to be human with humans. To tell the story of your culture and the humans creating it, every day.
Follow Culture Partners on LinkedIn
Follow Joe Terry, CEO, Culture Partners
Follow Jessica Kriegel, Chief Scientist of Workplace Culture