Andrea Carlos, Project Manager at LinkedIn explored how you can use LinkedIn’s company pages and status updates to attract followers to learn more about your organization and consume important and relevant content.
2. 2
Join Our Upcoming Webinars
Wed, 12/14: Part III - Advanced Use of LinkedIn
• Nonprofit branding, recruitment of volunteers/board
members/employees, building fundraising relationships
Past Webinar (Recording Available)
Wed, 11/2: Part I – LinkedIn 101: The Basics
• Personal benefits of LinkedIn: the components of a strong profile,
introduction to LinkedIn Students app
3. What is this
webinar about?
LinkedIn for Nonprofits
✓ LinkedIn basics for nonprofit professionals
✓ Best practices for nonprofits
✓ Tools and resources
4. Elevate awareness of
your nonprofit
✓ Complete your organization’s Company Page
✓ Get followers involved
✓ Post status updates
5. Does your organization have a
Company Page?
Quick Poll
Yes – it’s great! No
I don’t knowYes – but it could use a
little work
6. Create a Company Page to
showcase your work
Home
✓ Create or claim your
nonprofit’s Company Page
✓ Add an image, logo, and
short description
✓ Encourage board members
& supporters to follow you
✓ Post updates to communicate
with your supporters
7. How frequently does your
organization post company
updates?
Quick Poll
Daily
Never posted an
update
Twice a week
Once a month
Once a week
8. Consider this:
Engage & grow your follower base by regularly sharing company updates
Only 2% of employees regularly
share but are responsible for 20%
of engagement
Make Company updates
147% avg increase in engagement
by sharing a photo in your
company update
9. Status updates go a long way to
generate awareness
✓ Post at peak activity times
✓ Lead with a catchy first line
✓ Reciprocate
11. Connect with Volunteers & Board Members
✓ Ask volunteers and board
members to add their work with
you to their LinkedIn profile
✓ Build an auto-response:
When a volunteer signs up, send
them an automated email asking
them to include their involvement
on their LinkedIn profile
✓ Summarize events in blog posts,
and ask your volunteers to share
on with their networks on LinkedIn
12. Have you or someone in your
organization ever published a blog
on LinkedIn?
Quick Poll
Yes – I have!
No, but we’re in
the process of
drafting one
Yes – someone in my
organization has!
No
15. Master LinkedIn Company
Pages with these steps
Add multiple owners to your Company Page
• How to: https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4783
Make your Company Page pop
• See tips and examples here: http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/12/09/announcing-linkedins-best-
of-company-pages-2014/
Post updates from your organization on LinkedIn
• Steps to engage your followers: https://smallbusiness.linkedin.com/small-business-
marketing/engage-your-audience
Publish a thought leadership piece
• See examples and get inspiration here: http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/01/07/linkedin-
reaches-one-million-posts-opens-publishing-to-new-markets/
16. 16
Join Our Upcoming Webinars
Wed, 12/14: Part III - Advanced Use of LinkedIn
• Nonprofit branding, recruitment of volunteers/board
members/employees, building fundraising relationships
Past Webinar (Recording Available)
Wed, 11/2: Part I – Personal Benefits of LinkedIn
• Basics of LinkedIn: the components of a strong profile, introduction to
LinkedIn Students app
17. Recap & Look Ahead
101 201 301
Add multiple owners to
your Company Page
Make your Company
Page pop
Post updates from your
organization on LinkedIn
Have directors publish
thought leadership pieces
Branding
Recruiting: post and search
for volunteers, board
members, employees
Recruiting solutions
Fundraising
Fill out all components of
your profile
Make personal connections
to colleagues, board
members, and supporters
Post updates on LinkedIn
Today we’re covering the basics that everybody should be doing on LinkedIn. We’ll also be sharing best practices to help you achieve the specific goals you may have on our network.
Now that we’ve graduated from LinkedIn 101, let’s move on to our next session, which will focus on elevating awareness of your respective nonprofit organization. This is going beyond you and we’ll highlight what you can be doing for your organization.
At the end of this session, you’ll be able to complete your organization’s Company page, learn how to engage followers, and understand the importance of your organization posting status updates.
Here are the basics: A company page is a resource that allows your nonprofit to share information with our members about the great work that you do. Whether it’s somebody who sees a job posting from your organization on LinkedIn and is doing research, or an individual viewing the profile of an old classmate and the learning more about the nonprofit his friend works at, these are all opportunities for you to showcase your mission and grow your followers.
Be strategic (perhaps create a content calendar). This should be more than HR or hiring updates, although that definitely is important! The leading thought on frequency of posts is 20 posts per month, which is about 1 post per weekday. This usually gives you about a 60% audience reach.
By creating an engaging company page, you’ll begin to see your followers on LinkedIn grow, as every member on LinkedIn can follow companies, whether they’re interested in learning about the mission of an organization, the impact that that they’re making, opportunities to serve as a volunteer, or potentially working there as a full time employee. Keep this audience engaged through company updates, which get pushed out to all of your followers. Many organizations are already active on posting to various social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Make LinkedIn one of yours!
Some tips on leveraging the type of content you post to increase engagement:
- 74% (on avg) increase in engagement by including a video in your company update
- 84% (on avg) increase in engagement by including a link in your company update
-147% (on avg) increase in engagement by including a photo or image in your company update
Status updates help establish you as a thought leader and expert in your particular industry within your network. These are three recommendations I have on sharing status updates:
1. Post at peak activity times: users are active at varying times of the day on each social network, so keep the peak times in mind to maximize the impact of your posts. On LinkedIn, peak activity times are 7-9am and 5-6pm (local time)
2. Lead with a catchy first line
3. Share, comment and like other people’s content and they in turn will be more likely to interact with your posts.
Company pages or updates?
Over 1MM members have published blog posts on our Pulse platform – you or someone within your organization can be one of them!
It may be difficult to get your leaders to post themselves, but perhaps have your comms team draft a thought leadership piece on their behalf or ask for 30 minutes of their time to publish an interview.