Ep 282 | LinkedIn Personal Pages vs Company Pages for Nonprofits

So let's talk about LinkedIn and the differences between a personal page and a business page. What are the things that you need to think about when it comes to your strategies around utilizing LinkedIn? Because I understand it's a little different. You might have individuals using their personal page to connect with people, but how do you maintain those relationships with your organization, if for some

reason, that person should leave their job. So it makes things a little difficult, makes things a little stressful, and it might make you feeling a little wary about jumping into LinkedIn. However, it is a gold mine when it comes to the opportunity to be able to build real connections. Take those conversations off LinkedIn into email, phone calls, in person, conversations and really build connections with people at

scale. You don't have to call all of these people, but you can be really authentic and have a lot of conversations in a short period of time to determine kind of which are the next ones to take to the next step. Plus people have direct access to the content that you're sharing, automatically, building trust and understanding a little bit more about who your organization is. Now this doesn't mean that you're creating brand new

content just for LinkedIn. In fact, there are some really great tools that you can utilize to kind of help grow your audience and repurpose the things that you're already creating. So we're going to jump into all of that. We're going to talk about how you can use a business page, how you can leverage your individual personal pages, how you can bring those connections together, and how you can

repurpose content to build trust. Now what we're not going to talk about today are strategies for the DMS, how you can kind of start those conversations. We can talk about that at a later date. There are some episodes that I've already recorded that will link up in here with Jen Cochran, who talked about LinkedIn and your profile and some of those other things previously. So I will link that up in the show notes at thefirstclick.net/282, I believe. Hold on, I'm just

double checking. Should have pulled it up before I started recording, but that's just the way that it goes. Yes, thefirstclick.net/282, I will link that episode up there for you if you want that piece of the puzzle. But for now, we're going to talk about those strategies with your personal and business pages and repurposing content. So before we jump into it, this episode is brought to you by our

November freebie. It is all about your social media calendar and ways to generate new ideas for things that you can talk about and share with your audience. So we created a whole year's worth of content ideas that are social media holidays, holidays that people talk about, like national cat day, International Children's Day and awareness holidays, like breast cancer awareness month, which we just came through, and all of the different heritage months that we talk about and social

awareness type thing. So if you want to know and be able to kind of think in advance and have kind of the easy button for what social holidays are coming up that are going to be aligned with your organization, make sure you head on over to thefirstclick.net/resources. Download it for free and get planning for your 2025 social media calendar. There's some in there that might be really fun and surprise you. For now, let's get into the episode.

You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern, each month, we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals. Okay, so let's talk a basics first. So a business page is

like company page, right? So it would be like we have the first click Company page on LinkedIn. I also have my own personal page on LinkedIn, and typically our personal pages were initially meant for job hunts. How can we set it up to optimize it for employee search? And that is still the case. You can still absolutely use it for that, but it's also now a great place to build thought leadership, to prove and show that you are an expert in your field, to attract new clients, to attract new

donors, to attract new partners. They can learn a little bit about you and why you might be somebody they want to work with your company page, similarly, can be a great place to share new job listings, things that your company is up to. There's great event modules where you can put the events that you have coming up in there as well. There's a lot of video capabilities on both sides. So really, by and large, everything you can do on a personal page you can also do on a company

page. There's a couple different caveats right now, at a company page, you can choose who are the people that you want to have access. Those are the people that can invite new followers. Those are the people that can do the post, the comments, all of that. And the one thing that is that you want to think about is, for example, when I go to my company page and I want to invite people to follow that page, I can only invite. My

followers, right? So you might want to add multiple people at your organization, especially your executive director. Maybe you have a board member that's the president that's very well connected on LinkedIn, so that they can go in and also connect their followers to your company page. Now, there's new features that are coming out all the time, and a lot of times those features are at a certain threshold. You have to have so many people following your page before you can kind of, quote,

unquote, unlock those features. So just something to think about as you grow your page. Now, on a very basic level, of course, your personal posts are going to get more traction, more visibility then your company posts. Doesn't mean you don't need to post things. As people come and take a look at who you are, they'll see some things that are there. LinkedIn, I

believe, recommends posting at least once a week. Again, something to consider, because some of those features are unlocked when they know that pages are engaging and interacting. They don't want people just to be throwing out spam. So certain things are available once you have been kind of consistent with your engagement, consistent meaning,

like once a week. So totally doable. Now, when it comes to the topic of, well, I don't want my employees acting on behalf of myself and the company, because then they're managing all those connections and those relationships, and we don't have access to that. Totally recommend having a social media policy for your organization. LinkedIn should be part of that, and maybe a little bit more specific, but here's what I'm going to recommend, put in a workflow where it is, hey, maybe

I'm the executive director. Maybe I'm the development director, and part of my workflow is, once a week, I'm going into the company page and inviting all of the new followers that I think would be in alignment with the organization, and asking them to follow, if I'm connecting with people on behalf of the organization, and I'm talking to them and I'm sharing content about the organization, it's not going to be weird for them to get an invite to follow your

company page, right? Let them know what they're going to get, what what kind of content is going to be coming out from your page. So that they can do that. That's one really quick and easy way. And listen, it's a social media channel we want to make personal connections, and that's just the way that LinkedIn works. So I think to a certain extent, you kind of have to let that go and know that that's just a part. It's no different than email. It's no different

than one on one conversations. It just is part of the game. So let that fear go, if you trust this person to be fundraising for you, and you kind of have those systems in place, then you know, hopefully they're tracking that as part of their communication in your CRM, so you'll have that history. Hopefully they are again adding them to your company page to follow there. And you know, hopefully they're taking those conversations off LinkedIn and into other conversations. So

again, more of those things are being tracked. So let that fear go and know that we're moving forward in an abundance mindset, and we're going to continue to work our organization and make things happen. So what types of things should you be posting on your personal page? Well, that totally depends on who you are as an organization and what you're doing. So they could be

sharing posts that your company page is putting out there. They might be sharing personal stories of conversations they've had recently with donors or with the community that you serve that are impactful to them. They might be sharing stats about the work that you do and why it's so important. And you can choose if you want your individuals to be creating that content, or what I would recommend if there's kind of curated content that your

organization is making that they can share. So maybe you have a bank of information that people can kind of go to to say, Okay, well, here's some graphics and here's some posts that we can share or that we have previously shared. It's okay for them to share on their personal page, the same thing that's going out on your business page, because, like I said, the reach is going to be different. Your company page content is only going to be shared to the pool of people that will that are following

your company page. And even that isn't going to be the full amount, just like on Facebook, whereas, as an individual, it's going to my entire list of followers, and again, not a guarantee. You know, we're only getting a certain percentage of those followers, but a much broader base engagement is usually a little bit bigger and more impactful on personal posts. So come up with a plan. Maybe it's when the post goes out on a Monday. You're posting it on your personal page on a

Thursday, right? So people are seeing it at different times. So that's how I would recommend that. But definitely have conversations. Have a social media policy for how you want individuals to engage in their personal pages. It's really important. You might even want to do a review of their profiles just to make sure that there's nothing on there that could be confusing or might not align with the values of your current job or current organization.

And it's not to say that people are doing things maliciously or intentionally, but sometimes there are things that we've done past jobs, past companies, where things may have happened in that company in a bad, PR way, or it could be a direct competitor. I don't know. There might be just things inside of your policy that you don't want those things listed on those profiles, so just have those open conversations and be proactive about them so nobody feels offended, upset, hurt, whatever.

Okay, so when it comes to your company page, I think I mentioned job postings are great to include here events. You can also duplicate those events on your personal page, because you can only invite people to an event that you follow. So if I put an event on the first click and I want to invite people, the only people I will be able to invite are the people that I am connected to, right? But you can also have co hosts, and they can invite people that they are connected to. So that's where it

kind of goes a little bit back and forth. So pay attention to that, but I love repurposing existing content on LinkedIn to make things super easy. And here's some ways that I do that. So number one, I have an email newsletter that goes out every

single week. I repurpose that intro. I write an intro, Intro piece that talks about kind of something that I've witnessed, or some marketing thing, you know, that I've seen somebody do that's kind of fun and creative, I will repurpose that as a post on its own, any blog posts or blog content that I am sharing or show notes or whatnot, I repurpose as an article On LinkedIn, because now it's searchable and there as well, my

general newsletter that goes out every week. It goes out to my email list on Tuesday and on Thursday, I push it out to LinkedIn. And here's the beautiful thing about that, when you start a newsletter as an individual or as a company page, it sends a notification out to everybody that you're connected to to say, hey, we invite you to follow this newsletter. People can join it. They can follow it, and they can get regular they get the regular notifications it gets, depending on how they set

up. They get notified in LinkedIn. They might get an email, and they might get a mobile alert saying that there's a new newsletter out. So you want to be consistent, just like you are with your general newsletter, but I literally repurpose and add in everything. I can embed video. I can tag

people. So when I'm sharing podcast episodes, I could tag people. So you can really make it interactive and continue to use it as a tool to connect with your contacts and your connections on LinkedIn. Now it's super easy to set it up on a personal page. You do have to have, I think the Creator thing toggled on, but super easy for business pages, you have to have at least 150 followers in order to set up the newsletter

feature. I saw an article just now that said they recommend roughly 500 people only, because the first one goes out to everybody, but I have people that are on my newsletter that aren't following me on LinkedIn just yet, but I can see everybody who subscribes to my newsletter. So it's a great opportunity for me to send them messages to say, Hey, I see that you're subscribed to the newsletter. You know, what questions do you have about an organization? What can I share?

Right? It gives you an area and an opportunity to have conversation. So if you don't have 150 people on your business page, company page, and you're nervous about having an individual do it, I totally get that work hard to get to 150 so that you can start sending those out, because it's a great way to repurpose content that you're already creating. And then I also repurpose just social media posts that I'm doing on other

platforms. You might need to adjust it a little bit to be able to engage or the language might be a little bit different than, say, x or Instagram, for example, but it's just it could still repurpose it easily. I also recommend sharing other people's posts. So for example, if you're a museum and you have a great art exhibit that's coming up all about the

Egyptians. I don't know why this is what came to mind, but it is somebody out there on LinkedIn might be an incredible Egyptian thought leader that you want to feature, and you could share one of their posts and say, Hey, if you're thinking about coming to our upcoming exhibit, here's some information that's really cool that we ran across that might be super awesome, right?

So you don't even have to create your own content. If you know there's topics that are coming up that you want to talk about, talk about it. Let's say you're an after school program and it's

it's August, and it's getting ready for back to school. Maybe there's a therapist or a social worker or a child care provider that you trust on LinkedIn that shares great information about the transition of back to school, share that information, because what that does is it kind of continues to build you as a trusted source, and also continues to connect you to those other types of people in your world.

That would be great. We just talked about influencers yesterday, right? They're more likely than to also share your content that you're putting out that's really excellent with

their audience, which helps give you more visibility. So we're building relationships in a lot of different ways here on LinkedIn. Absolutely share your events on there, because then people get email notifications. Like I said, you can tag other

people that are engaged. Excuse me, and then think about video. Out an audio event. So one of the things that I love about LinkedIn is that you can do live audio with Q and A. You can bring people up, you can ask questions. So if you're nervous about going on video, this is great. As far as I heard last you couldn't repurpose those once the audio is done, it's done. So it's a live situation. But you can also go live on video, and that does stay in your posts and your recording.

So you might want to think about that as well. Could you do a live show or recorded show to be able to kind of connect with your audiences? Now, again, there's platforms out there that will automatically stream things as if they are live. I don't remember off the top of my head what the number is, but in order to do that with LinkedIn, you have to also have a certain

amount of followers on your company page. So there's a lot of things to cover, a lot of things for you to consider, but definitely think about LinkedIn and how you are utilizing it to get in front of businesses and individuals and connecting with people in a way that's going to help fill that pipeline of potential donors for you to have those one on one conversations with whether they're online or in person or on the phone, whatever it might be, LinkedIn is a great place for you to get

started. So like I said, I will pop in the episode I did with Jen Corcoran about some LinkedIn basics when it comes to your profile and DMS and things like that. If you have any questions, reach out hello at the first click.net, otherwise, we'll see you in the show notes at thefirstclick.net/ 282 so for now, make sure you subscribe wherever you listen, so you

don't miss out on a single episode. Thank you so much. And leaving a review while you're there, I'd love to hear what you think about the show, and if there's any topics that we could share that would help make things better for you in 2025 for now, I'll see you in the next one. Bye.