Attention on LinkedIn is not evenly distributed. People pay far more attention to the personable, authentic content published by familiar people than they do to the company content published by faceless brands.
It makes sense, because every social media platform was built, from the ground up, to help people connect with other people.
On top of that, only around 5% of your total followers will see your company page posts organically. So even if the content is good, very few people see it, and fewer still engage with it.
At Six Sells, we see up to 50 times the reach of a person’s LinkedIn page, and up to 1,000 times the engagement when compared to company page posts.
Why company content gets less attention than people
If you look at benchmark data from Lumen Research, the eye-tracking technology company, you’ll see that advertising often only gets one or two seconds of attention.
If you then go to Google Analytics and look at how long people spend reading one of your blog posts, you will likely find they spend 120–180 seconds.
That’s a big difference, and why we say that it always pays to be the content rather than the advertising wherever that is possible.
LinkedIn is one of the places that is possible. We think about the LinkedIn newsfeed as having “content” and “advertising”, just like most other sites.
On LinkedIn, it is the authentic content from people that is the content, and the company page posts that behave more like the advertising.
Company page nudges
Think about using your company page, organic plus paid, as a nudge.
You probably only have a second of attention to play with, so a brief statement with a branded image that delivers your distinctive brand assets and a key message is probably enough.
Think about your company page as a poster ad in the feed:
∙ one clear idea
∙ quick to digest
∙ Consistent messages, frequently
Executive page content
Your senior executives, however, will get far more attention if they show up authentically, with a little personality, and something interesting to say about what your company does.
Six Sells works with companies to:
∙ First build a communications framework, so that all of your executives are consistent in the messages they speak about.
∙ Build your ideal audiences in LinkedIn Sales Navigator so we can listen to them, and in LinkedIn Ads Manager so we can speak to them.
∙ Meet with each of your executives once a month to talk about the topics on your communications framework, and hear how your executive speaks about them - their ideas, their tone of voice, their stories - but consistent with your company communication framework.
We often tag the company page in the executive posts, which leads people back to your company, and we often talk about the challenges that your company solves for your ideal clients, but in the voice of your executives.
This way, the people carry the story, and the logo is still clearly connected.
Why this matters for B2B sales
As I said at the top, people pay far more attention to the personable, authentic content published by familiar people than they do to the company content published by faceless brands.
B2B (business-to-business) sales is really P2P (person-to-person), and we all know that people buy from people that they know, like, and trust.
Personable, authentic content from your people helps them become more known, liked, and trusted through consistent messages, delivered with frequency, in their own unique tone of voice.
Six Sells works with companies in the media, advertising, marketing, and adtech sectors to create authentic, personable thought leadership content with your execs, supported by a clear framework and the right LinkedIn targeting.
If you are interested in finding out more about how Six Sells could help your business, connect with me on LinkedIn with a short note, or email me at mike@sixsells.co.uk
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