Use Google to search for the people in your team and see what you find. For most people, their LinkedIn profiles are likely to be at the top of the results page. On average, employees have a LinkedIn network that is 10 times larger than their company’s follower base.
That means your bank, finance or FinTech company is already getting lots of clicks and conversations on LinkedIn. But, most of these interactions are going to employee profiles not your company page. The banking and finance industry should be capitalising on all this online activity and the first step is to ensure your employees’ LinkedIn profiles are professional, unified and engaging.
Build an army of brand ambassadors
Fully completed and professionally written employee profiles on LinkedIn will reflect well on your company brand and credibility. When your employees’ clearly set out their career path, transferable skills and the factors that led them to work for your company, their profiles become a powerful demonstration of the high calibre of your team. They also demonstrate the ambition and potential of the company as a whole.
From the moment your employees list themselves as working for your company, they are creating a link from their profile to your company page. This will not only drive traffic to your company’s LinkedIn page, it will also draw attention to the products, services and corporate culture showcased on your website and other social media channels.
In short, every employee LinkedIn profile extends the reach of your company brand. That affects how many people you can engage with, and potentially influence, with your brand messages. The more employees you have on LinkedIn, the more you will expand your brand reach.
Let’s take Invesco as a quick example. Kristina Hooper is Invesco’s Chief Global Market Strategist and #2 on LinkedIn’s Top Voices Finance & Economy list for 2019. She has almost 9,000 followers who regularly engage with her banking and finance blogs about everything from Brexit to corporate governance.
In addition, Invesco has around 6,700 out of their 8,000 employees profiled on LinkedIn. As these employees share the latest company news, events and achievements, they actively advocate for Invesco’s employer brand and culture. Together, they deliver a powerful brand reach for Invesco just by being active on LinkedIn.
How employees feel about your company will be evident to a huge audience
Helping employees build a robust and comprehensive profile will encourage them to promote themselves and your company messages on the platform. This in turn conveys a culture of trust, confidence and transparency. In addition to encouraging them to optimise their profiles, I would suggest creating social media guidelines to advise employees on the most professional way to use LinkedIn.
Boosting your employees LinkedIn usage can be a powerful marketing tool for your company. Deploying positive brand ambassadors means you can create and distribute more content and boost your industry influence to benefit the company as a whole. Effective employee profiles are, essentially, free online advertising for your brand.
“80% of B2B leads come through LinkedIn”
In these uncertain times one thing is for sure; we’re going to be living in a more digital world. More networking, communicating and client, employee and alumni engagement will be conducted online. We’ve seen how this works in practice.
A FinTech start-up approached us because they knew their potential clients would use LinkedIn as part of the tender process. They asked us to write the profiles of all their directors. As a result, they saw a significant uplift in the number of bids they were winning. That’s the power of LinkedIn.
Attract the best talent
LinkedIn is much more than a job site, but recruitment is still an important element. Of course, you can advertise openings and interested candidates can follow your company page and create alerts to be notified of new opportunities. But, if your employees are active on LinkedIn they can broaden the reach and offer a warmer, more personalised initial approach to attract talented candidates. There is even a Referrals tool that matches an employee’s connections to open jobs, so employees can refer people more easily.
For example, we worked with a leading UK insurance firm to re-write the LinkedIn profiles of their senior HR and recruitment team. They recognised that top candidates would do their research and check out these profiles when considering an application or attending an interview. They were keen to create a great first impression of the company and employer brand to attract the best talent. LinkedIn’s own figures show that companies with high numbers of employees sharing relevant content are 58% more likely to attract talent. Remember, applicants will check out the profiles of the team they may end up working with. You don’t necessarily need industry superstars on there but they should all have consistent, well-thought out and on-brand profiles.
Banks and finance companies are definitely missing a trick by not ensuring their teams have up-to-date and dynamically written LinkedIn profiles. Historically, clients, buyers and potential job candidates would consult company websites as part of their decision-making process. Now, they are just as likely to check out individual employee LinkedIn profiles as a way to assess the credentials of the company itself.
There are multiple benefits to having an army of engaged employee advocates on LinkedIn. Not just more followers for your company but more views of your content, more referrals to your company website and a boost to your corporate brand. Ultimately, your employees’ individual LinkedIn profiles could add up to one of your company’s most valuable digital assets.
For help creating your corporate LinkedIn Profiles call 020 7100 6656 or email us.