LinkedIn: company page or the leader's profile?

“Should we post on the company page or on my profile?” The question comes up with almost every leader of a 20 to 500-person company who decides to take LinkedIn seriously. The quick answer fits in one sentence: both, but not for the same thing. The company page is a reference people consult; a person’s profile is a voice people follow. Mixing them up gives a page that sounds like a press release and a leader who reposts announcements.

This article covers what each does better, how to split your posts, and what employees and advertising can add. It fits within our guide to marketing automation for SMEs, which covers scheduling and what can be handed over to tools.

Company page or profile: two different roles

Neither replaces the other. A buyer who discovers an idea on a leader’s profile often goes on to look at the company page, then the site: they check that the company exists, what it sells and to whom. If the page is empty or out of date, the attention won is lost at that step.

What the company page does better

It reassures and it organises. That is where people find offers, customer cases, event announcements, job openings, and it is where advertising campaigns start. LinkedIn itself gives a few pointers in its best practices for Pages:

These are LinkedIn’s figures about its own platform: above all they say that a complete page kept up every week beats a neglected one. One post a week is enough: a customer case, a blog article, an event, a job opening.

What the leader’s profile does better

It gives a face and a point of view. People follow a person for what they think of their trade, what they have learned, what they refuse to do. Those posts open conversations in comments and private messages that the page cannot hold in the same voice.

The profile has its limits, to be written into the year’s marketing plan:

• It depends on one person. If they stop, change roles or leave the company, the audience leaves with them. Hence the value of keeping the page, the site and a newsletter whose list belongs to the company alive in parallel.
• It takes the person’s time. A leader can get help with formatting, not with thinking: an idea they do not hold shows in the comments.
• It commits the person. Every position is public and dated.

How to split your posts

A simple rule avoids duplicates: the idea is born on the profile, the page picks it up and files it, the site keeps it.

The step through the site matters: a LinkedIn post drops out of the feed within days, an article stays findable for years. A webinar follows the same path: announced by the leader, carried by the page, kept as a replay on the site.

Employees: invite, never oblige

Employees have their own networks, often closer to customers than the page’s. A LinkedIn Page lets you notify them of an important post, at most once a week according to the best practices quoted above. Sharing remains a choice: an imposed share shows, and everyone stays in control of their own profile.

What the company can do is make sharing easy and worthwhile: a post about their work, a customer case they took part in, a job opening in their team. Bots that like, comment or share on their behalf remain forbidden by LinkedIn’s user agreement.

When a text is drafted with AI, the person who signs it reviews it and makes it their own. If you are wondering whether to say so, we discuss it in Should you disclose that AI wrote a text?.

Sponsoring a post by the leader

LinkedIn lets a company pay to spread a person’s post more widely, while it stays displayed under their name. According to its presentation page, these ads can feature employees, industry experts, customers or content creators, and the author receives the request and can approve or deny it. It is a way to extend a post that has already found its audience, rather than sponsoring a company announcement. To know whether LinkedIn advertising is worth its price in your case, see LinkedIn Ads: expensive, but who is it worth it for.

What we do ourselves

The principle holds for LinkedIn: a person signs, a person reviews, and the company keeps a record of what was published in its name.

How do you know what LinkedIn brings in?

Likes and followers are reassuring; they do not say what brings in revenue. Add the source, medium and campaign to every link you post, from the profile as from the page, and check that the site’s form copies them into the CRM. The day a deal is signed, you know whether it came from LinkedIn, and from which post. The method is in our guide to automated marketing reporting.

Where to start

Complete the company page and set it a pace of one post a week. Then ask the leader for three ideas they stand for in their trade: those are their first three posts. Plan from the outset the path to the site and the newsletter, and content offered in exchange for an email address to turn attention into contacts. Email sends are covered in our method for running an email campaign, and audiences abroad in our guide to international SEO. For the place of AI in these jobs, read AI and digital marketing: what changes for agencies.

To connect your posts to your enquiries and sales, our digital marketing offer tracks each contact with its source through to the CRM.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Its best practices for Pages (new tab)business.linkedin.com
2. Its presentation page (new tab)business.linkedin.com