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LinkedIn Personal Profile or LinkedIn Page? Do I put my energy into building a LinkedIn Page for my brand versus promoting it through my own LinkedIn member profile? 

People keep asking this question all the time and when I was getting started on LinkedIn I was faced with this dilemma myself. 

Which works better? And the answer is it depends. There is no blanket answer to it because situations vary, goals are different etc. But ideally you should be using both and here’s why. 

In this training, I’ll give you five key differences and benefits of promoting your business both on your personal profile as well as LinkedIn page. 

Difference #1:

The critical difference is that on LinkedIn business pages you have followers whereas on your personal profile – you have connections. Think of some networking event, a conference or workshop where people meet each other and introduce themselves, talk with each other and exchange business cards. This is what you can actually do on this massive virtual networking platform using your LinkedIn profile. 

At the same conference you may have seen various vendor booths set up in the hallway which are actual businesses and in LinkedIn terms represent company pages. At the end of the day people do business with people even though they represent companies. In LinkedIn ecosystem relationships building and nurturing can only be done through personal profile. You cannot message, like, comment or congratulate on someone’s accomplishments via your LinkedIn page – you can do that through your member’s profile. 

Difference # 2:

On the flip side, there is an obvious benefit of having a LinkedIn page that allows you to promote your business or personal brand through advertising. You need a LinkedIn business page to run ads from. You cannot run ads using your personal profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn company page pretty much like Facebook page helps with branding. It has its own logo, banner, about, section and you can link your business page and make it visible in the Experience section of your LinkedIn personal profile. 

LinkedIn company pages have other bells and whistles like showcase pages which can feature your different services and products under the umbrella of your company page. You can create events and promote your workshops, seminars, masterclasses, webinars, etc. For that reason, I will still keep a business page anyway given that LinkedIn business pages have a good standing with Google from an SEO perspective assuming that your company page is well optimized, complete and updated. 

Difference #3:

If you are a solopreneur, consultant or a coach, in the initial stages I’d focus on growing my connections network through personal profile. However, I’d still keep my company page updated and will post content regularly. Here is a pro tip: if you share a post, video or any content on your personal profile, you can share the same content on your LinkedIn company page using the page account from your profile. This way you’ll never run out of content ideas on what to post and will keep your company page up to date.  

Do the reverse by sharing original updates and content from the company onto your personal profile to help boost the company page and bring in more followers. See what works better and what brings the most engagement and visibility. Learn how to optimize your LinkedIn personal profile for sales

 As your personal brand or business grows really big or you are already a big business or a corporation, then definitely your focus and marketing efforts should be around the LinkedIn company page. Think of a company page as headquarters or a hub where all your multiple products or services are hosted. Now, your company page becomes a sort of mini-website where you share news, updates, current events, job openings, engage employees etc. 

But even now, you should not underestimate the power of personal profile to help boost the company page even further. This is why it’s ideal if you’re using both your personal profile and company page in any case. As the best practice the CEO or anyone from the executive team (ideally one person who is nominated to be the face of the company) should be using their LinkedIn personal profile to engage with their own network by sharing company news, updates and milestones and be the catalyst for the business. 

Difference #4:

You must have a company page to promote your business through running targeted LinkedIn ads. We have touched upon this difference and benefit a little bit earlier but I’d like to expand more on this. Even though LinkedIn’s average cost per click is considered to be high, the CPA (cost per acquisition) of a new client is significantly lower compared to Facebook or even Google taking into account that LinkedIn advertising is incredibly targeted and some industries make an average sale of $10K-$30K. So, I personally believe there is a huge potential with LinkedIn ads no matter what. 

Pro tip: go ahead and create a LinkedIn insight tag and install it on your website or funnel even if you don’t advertise now. Insight tag which is a LinkedIn version of Facebook pixel allows you to gain insights about your website audience, track and retarget page visitors. So, you want to collect this valuable information now and once you are ready to advertise on LinkedIn you’ll be set and ready to go. 

Lastly, LinkedIn company page analytics helps you with insights on your visitors, their job function, location, seniority, industry, company size, as well as your company updates and followers. Lots of great information! 

I hope by now you are sold on the need to spend efforts on the company page and running targeted ads on LinkedIn. If not now, at some point in your business growth you will be promoting your services and products on LinkedIn using super targeted ads to reach a wider audience and scale. At LinkedFormula we help our clients with LinkedIn advertising and run ads for them. 

Difference #5:

The benefit of having LinkedIn company pages is that it can give your employees a voice by sharing the company’s best posts on LinkedIn. Sharing company page posts can bring in significant organic engagement and reach. Imagine having over 200 employees and each sharing company’s post in their own connections networks. 

This is why companies need to give their employees a voice to be their own brand ambassadors and create a feeling of ownership and belongingness. But that’s another topic for discussion for the next time.  

Back to LinkedIn pages. One of the cool features they have is the ability to target your organic Page posts to a specific language, location, region, university, function, seniority, industry, or company size. This is especially useful if you’re a global brand or company with multiple geographic audiences and languages. Whereas with your personal profile you don’t have that feature and you can only target anyone on or off LinkedIn, your connections only, groups and events members. 

With a company page you can optimize your content with a powerful analytics tool. You can understand your page visitors and followers better and what types of content they engage with the most. 

With all these differences, advantages and disadvantages I think LinkedIn company page and personal profile should work in tandem to get the most out of your LinkedIn marketing efforts. As I mentioned in the beginning of the video there is no blanket answer to which works better? The answer is always it depends. But now you know why you should be using both. 

Hope this was useful and gave you some insights on which direction to go. If yes, let me know by commenting down below what other differences, advantages or disadvantages you know that I’ve missed in this training. 

What’s Next?

If you are a coach, consultant, trainer, speaker or author, you want to discover the faster, easier way to get prospects and sales qualified leads on LinkedIn today.

At LinkedFormula we help our clients sell their digital products and services on LinkedIn and shorten the sales cycle.

This system and processes we have at LinkedFormula can put you on track to hunt down your ideal clients relatively FAST.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can solve your lead generation problem the first step is to get the this FREE LinkedIn Guide

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