LONG STORY SHORT
Your employees’ LinkedIn profiles are not company property.
The humans on your team very often out-convert your logo. A face builds trust faster than any brand guideline ever written.
An employee who posts actively isn’t only polishing their resume. They’re are doing your business development and employer branding for free. Let them.
A stronger personal brand makes your employee more valuable, including to you. Suppressing it is like benching your best player because they’re getting too good.
If you’re deploying people as LinkedIn assets with no KPIs and no timeline, you’re not running on plans. You’re running on hopes and dreams.
ACTIONABLE NEXT STEPS
Are you really going to keep ignoring the distribution network that’s already on your payroll? No.
Stop having the “are they job hunting?” conversation and go touch grass. Visibility is not betrayal. Paranoia is not a retention strategy.
Build a one-page guideline for your team before someone says something catastrophically off-brand. How hard is it to hand someone a map before they drive?
Now, let’s focus on your most important ambassadors. These individuals usually fall into three categories:
People who are the most active
People who are the most talented
People who need the highest visibility
Combine groups A, B, and C, and you have built yourself a great team of ambassadors.
Establish KPIs with firm deadlines for whoever is managing your LinkedIn presence and support them.
If you can’t measure it, you don’t actually want results; you just want the feeling of doing something.
If you task your team with representing you on LinkedIn but fail to support them, they will become frustrated and less productive. And you don’t want frustrated, unproductive team members, do you?