Episode 204
LinkedIn Company Pages in 2026. What Every B2B Marketer Needs to Know
B2B Marketers are feeling the impact of changes to LinkedIn Company Pages in 2025. Declining reach, falling engagement, confused stakeholders, and pressure to “just make the Page work.”
In this episode, Michelle J Raymond sits down with Zoe Bermant to break down what every B2B marketer needs to know for 2026 on how LinkedIn really works and the new strategies that actually drive visibility, followers, and results.
If you manage a LinkedIn Company Page or support one as part of your B2B marketing strategy, this is your essential playbook for the year ahead.
Key moments in this episode -
00:00 Guest Intro - Zoe Bermant
03:19 The Decline of Company Page Reach
04:54 Strategies to Navigate Reduced Reach
05:44 The Role of LinkedIn Premium
06:23 The Importance of Organic Content and Boosting
08:59 LinkedIn Company Pages Premium: Features and Benefits
28:49 Challenges and Solutions for Social Media Managers
35:32 Final Thoughts
Connect with Zoe Bermant on LinkedIn
CONNECT WITH MICHELLE J RAYMOND
- Michelle J Raymond on LinkedIn
- Book a free intro call
- https://socialmediaforb2bgrowthpodcast.com/
- B2B Growth Co newsletter
Today's episode is sponsored by Metricool. Make sure to register for a FREE Metricool account today. Use Code MICHELLE30 to try any Premium Plan FREE for 30 days.
https://metricool.com/michellejraymond/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=20251202_michelle-raymond_dec-premium_en&utm_content=audio&utm_term=q3
Transcript
G'day everyone.
Speaker:It's Coach Michelle J Raymond, your trusted guide for building your
Speaker:business and your brand on LinkedIn.
Speaker:And we are continuing on our series of friends that I wanna talk to and
Speaker:I'm gonna let you listen because this is going to be a fabulous
Speaker:conversation about Company Pages.
Speaker:Zoe Bermant, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker:Thank you for having me.
Speaker:This is your second time on the show, so I appreciate you coming back because when
Speaker:it comes to Company Pages and specifically everyone, we're gonna be talking about
Speaker:Company Pages premium, it's probably the most often question I get asked.
Speaker:And just so you know, I got Zoe on the podcast because people
Speaker:are even asking Zoe right now
Speaker:are you getting paid by LinkedIn to promote Company
Speaker:Pages premium to other people?
Speaker:We're gonna get into this right after a quick word about our
Speaker:podcast sponsors Metricool.
Speaker:Alright Zoe, I know people want to talk about all things LinkedIn Premium, but
Speaker:we're not gonna go straight into that.
Speaker:I'm gonna make them wait.
Speaker:Classic podcast host manoeuvre.
Speaker:But I wanna talk about something that's probably more important right
Speaker:now and that is Company Page reach.
Speaker:It's pretty much declined over the last five years.
Speaker:Many people would say to almost non-existent in the home feed.
Speaker:And you've probably seen this firsthand across the board with your clients.
Speaker:How are you navigating this shift with them?
Speaker:Because I think your experience working with so many different Company Pages is
Speaker:definitely going to help some people out there that might be struggling with this.
Speaker:You know, it's not new to this year.
Speaker:In 2023, we launched with an event that we hosted at Google called,
Speaker:it's not about the post because we were opening up our feed.
Speaker:You know, you go into LinkedIn, you're scrolling through your feed,
Speaker:and I was saying to people, how many Company Page posts seeing in your feed?
Speaker:You follow how many brands?
Speaker:Are you seeing those brands?
Speaker:You follow them?
Speaker:Are you seeing it in your feed?
Speaker:And even back then, 2023 and, and since then, the reach just keeps getting worse.
Speaker:I think in those days it was about 11 posts in a hundred in your feed.
Speaker:Now you're lucky if it's one or two, and even if you go to the Company Page and
Speaker:you ring the bell and you engage with the page and you follow the people and you
Speaker:doing all the right things on LinkedIn, go to your feed, scroll through, the
Speaker:only content from brands that you're seeing is stuff that's being promoted to
Speaker:you, they're paying for you to see it.
Speaker:So that is it.
Speaker:Begs the question, who's viewing Company Pages?
Speaker:Where are these likes and impressions and engagements coming from?
Speaker:And it's a really big challenge.
Speaker:So we face it with three main strategies.
Speaker:Number one is to invest in people.
Speaker:You know, if you are going to an event, great.
Speaker:Put the event post on your Company Page.
Speaker:Your Company Page is a bulletin for what is happening at your company and
Speaker:it supports all the other activity.
Speaker:We invest in layers of advocacy, thought leadership, ambassadors,
Speaker:and then everybody else, and we get everybody else to like and
Speaker:repost the Company Page profile.
Speaker:Um, content.
Speaker:We get the ambassadors to create their own original content.
Speaker:We get thought leaders to create thought leadership, and if you invest
Speaker:in people, we see that that's how you're reaching your audiences.
Speaker:Then you're getting page views, you're getting likes, you're getting
Speaker:engagement on your company profile.
Speaker:It's not coming organically through people's feeds.
Speaker:The second thing that we invest in is.
Speaker:Premium.
Speaker:We're slowly bringing our clients to a place where they're understanding LinkedIn
Speaker:want you to pay to play, and it's so bad that, and we'll come back to this when we
Speaker:talk specific about premium, but if you switch it on and then switch it off again,
Speaker:like you do their one month free trial.
Speaker:Everything will tank completely.
Speaker:By the way, you'll see this on your personal profile as well if
Speaker:you boost your posts and then stop boosting your posts, all your posts
Speaker:don't go anywhere organically.
Speaker:But that's social media.
Speaker:LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok are pay to play platforms.
Speaker:The people who agree to pay see bigger returns than the
Speaker:people that don't agree to pay.
Speaker:And then the third thing is and I hate to say this 'cause we're very much an
Speaker:organic, led agency, but we do encourage boosting for reaching audiences.
Speaker:But we do it as a, an add-on.
Speaker:You know, you've gotta get organic, right?
Speaker:You can't just do paid media and paid boosting and expect
Speaker:that you're gonna have results.
Speaker:You have to have social first good content with good advocacy in place and then you
Speaker:can say, okay, now how do we level up?
Speaker:How do we 10 x?
Speaker:And then you go and boost everything.
Speaker:So those are our three wins to get social media working.
Speaker:And I'm so glad that you came at it from all those different angles because
Speaker:you know me, we've been friends on the platform for the last five years talking
Speaker:all things Company Pages and from that perspective, I always get dragged into
Speaker:every post that's out there that tells me Company Pages are a waste of time.
Speaker:To your point, yes, they don't show up in the home feed anymore.
Speaker:I can't get on this podcast and lie to you or anyone out there and say, oh
Speaker:no, everything's sunshine and fairies.
Speaker:Because if you log on yourself, you very quickly and easily see as Zoe shared, that
Speaker:your organic posts are not in that feed.
Speaker:And then the argument comes, well, why bother?
Speaker:But there's more to Company Pages.
Speaker:There's more to building a brand, there's more to social selling or whatever
Speaker:way you wanna look at it, linkedIn marketing than just post impressions.
Speaker:And I love, using the term, the Power of Two.
Speaker:Bring the employees together, bring the brand together, and we've all
Speaker:got to focus on the same goal.
Speaker:So yeah, I was nodding.
Speaker:For those of you who are listening to this on the audio podcast, I have been just
Speaker:nodding the whole time Zoe's been talking.
Speaker:I absolutely agree with that.
Speaker:Boosting, interesting.
Speaker:It's not something that I particularly use that often for myself or clients.
Speaker:But you are right.
Speaker:You can't just pay money on LinkedIn to make bad content work.
Speaker:You know, if you haven't done the work, the foundations like positioning and
Speaker:messaging and what kinds of, graphics work or land with your audience or
Speaker:the copywriting, then you are just literally making a donation to LinkedIn.
Speaker:So if you are doing that.
Speaker:And using that Boost button and just making that donation.
Speaker:I'm gonna put my bank account details in the show notes, and you could
Speaker:just send your money straight to me.
Speaker:I promise I'll do more with it.
Speaker:I'll share it 50% with Zoe, because we can save you.
Speaker:Like it's just, it kind of gets a little crazy.
Speaker:But let's talk about LinkedIn Company Pages premium.
Speaker:So it's been around for what the best part of a year or so now, and
Speaker:it was the sign of things to come.
Speaker:I think 2025 is definitely the year of pay to play on LinkedIn, and it's
Speaker:been a bit of a shock to the system, but when you are working with your
Speaker:clients, do you recommend to them to invest in Company Page premium?
Speaker:And what kind of businesses does this actually make sense for?
Speaker:So we're talking budget wise, what I, in Aussie dollars, we're sitting
Speaker:around a hundred to 130 Aussie dollars, depending if you pay annual.
Speaker:Around the world, like how do you decide who it's good for
Speaker:and who should save their money?
Speaker:That's a great question and I, I'll start first by saying, when LinkedIn
Speaker:Premium first came out it, like any LinkedIn new feature, it was half baked.
Speaker:It wasn't available to everyone and even now there are different prices for
Speaker:different companies like you go to sign up on one company and it's like you said,
Speaker:about $90 and another company, it's $130.
Speaker:And there's also different features available to different companies,
Speaker:which I discovered just by accident.
Speaker:So it's still in its processes of becoming a real valuable tool.
Speaker:But there's no doubt that LinkedIn have gone all in on this, because
Speaker:they've tanked to reach for everybody.
Speaker:And it's becoming clearer that if you're willing to pay for the premium, you're
Speaker:going to see bigger and higher reach.
Speaker:And people are still questioning it.
Speaker:You know, with us it was a decision of, we really just needed one feature on for one
Speaker:of our clients, which is the Auto Invite.
Speaker:And the way the auto invite works is anyone who engages with your
Speaker:content on your page is automatically invited to follow the brand.
Speaker:And this was for a VC, a venture capital firm where they have a lot
Speaker:of engagement 'cause there's a lot of founders and startups in their ecosystem.
Speaker:Their posts get amazing organic engagement, but their page was
Speaker:growing really, really, really slowly.
Speaker:What we found when we switched it on and what happened , and I get accused
Speaker:of being , a LinkedIn lackey and, and promoting this, were having this.
Speaker:They didn't have the option to switch it on.
Speaker:And I had it on for a different client and I was like, it'd be
Speaker:so cool if I could have this.
Speaker:So I wrote a post and I tagged LinkedIn and I'm like, why is this
Speaker:not available to other people?
Speaker:And someone from LinkedIn reached out to me and said, I can switch it on for you.
Speaker:And I said, well, here are all the pages we wanna switch it on for.
Speaker:So I then had someone at LinkedIn I could talk to and it became a
Speaker:whole matter of switch it on, why is this page different from that page?
Speaker:Why is the cost different?
Speaker:But what we did see is, apart from that one feature the pages that switch it
Speaker:on their reach grows, their visibility grows, their credibility grows.
Speaker:And there are some kind of cool features that are optimized
Speaker:now for your landing page.
Speaker:So when people do come to your company profile, you've got a carousel
Speaker:that you can have like a slide of think five banners at the top.
Speaker:You can have featured, uh, awards.
Speaker:You can have a customer testimonial.
Speaker:So it's giving you things that are kind of leveling up the landing
Speaker:page that people come to when they come to your company profile.
Speaker:As well as all the benefits of the added reach and the added engagement.
Speaker:And it's a sad story to tell, but we're in the process of starting year end
Speaker:reports and Q4 reports, and for most of our clients, like just yesterday, we had a
Speaker:client say to us, what are the highlights from this year that I can tell my C-suite?
Speaker:I'm going into a meeting and we just couldn't.
Speaker:It didn't matter how we manipulated the data.
Speaker:I said, let's take the top 20 posts from this year, put them next to
Speaker:the top 20 posts from last year, and maybe that will give us something.
Speaker:And even there both reach, engagements and clickthroughs.
Speaker:There was nothing good about this year, and this is one of the brands
Speaker:that didn't switch on premium.
Speaker:It's really interesting because you know, when people come to me and you
Speaker:know that everybody knows me for Company Pages and I'm out there speaking,
Speaker:I've written a book on it and people will put me up on this pedestal.
Speaker:And when I start working with clients and we're doing all the cool stuff,
Speaker:but the numbers are still sliding down and they're looking at me going,
Speaker:Michelle, like, what's going on?
Speaker:And I'm like, no, no, no.
Speaker:Like, you know, just trust me.
Speaker:We'll work our way back up.
Speaker:But there is that period of time where I know that there's a lot of
Speaker:people out there listening, social media managers, marketing managers
Speaker:that are running these Company Pages and thinking, what the heck do I do?
Speaker:Because nothing that they've tried, and it can work on all kinds of other
Speaker:platforms, but when they come to LinkedIn, things just aren't growing.
Speaker:And I used to say to people, number of followers, it's not that big
Speaker:a deal, until I had a bit of a change of heart and an epiphany.
Speaker:We look to that as social proof, and the bigger the number of followers, the more
Speaker:the page is held in that higher esteem and I think that then attracts more people.
Speaker:It's like the, you know, nightclub that's got the lineup
Speaker:out the door, around the block.
Speaker:Of course we wanna see what's going on in there, so we line up as well.
Speaker:And so that follower growth and helping people grow that quicker.
Speaker:I now see is much more valuable than potentially.
Speaker:When I recorded a podcast episode on that feature about a year ago, I was
Speaker:like, yeah, does it make a difference?
Speaker:Actually, I think it does now.
Speaker:But for the people who are thinking, okay, we can afford, you know, whatever
Speaker:the budget is for Company Page Premium, what feature do you think has had
Speaker:the biggest impact for your clients?
Speaker:Is it the follower growth that you see is the biggest one, or is there
Speaker:something else that you really love?
Speaker:I think it's the craziest one when you go into invite people to follow your page.
Speaker:You can actually now look at your competitor and see their
Speaker:followers, invite them, which is insane if you think about it.
Speaker:The only thing to remember is that the person doing the inviting is like,
Speaker:you know, all those notifications you get in LinkedIn saying, so and so has
Speaker:invited you to follow this page or follow this newsletter or follow this brand.
Speaker:You are the person sending out the invite.
Speaker:And I think Company Pages get 250 invites a month.
Speaker:But you can be really strategic and targeted with it.
Speaker:And it also gives you the option to choose, by job title or role or whatever,
Speaker:so you can actually geo target it.
Speaker:So I can go in and I can say for a brand that we're representing in treasury
Speaker:banking, which is like, it's so niche, I can go and say, I wanna find people
Speaker:in the US with this job title, whatever, and then invite them to like the page.
Speaker:And that is a game changer because they tend to.
Speaker:We used to see about a 5% accept rate, I think, which is really low.
Speaker:I mean, it's nothing.
Speaker:If you are inviting a hundred people and you've got a 5%, that means
Speaker:you're inviting five successful people to follow your brand a month.
Speaker:It's not gonna bring you hundreds of followers.
Speaker:But now we see about 20, 30% success rate because you're much more targeted
Speaker:in the people that you're inviting to follow your brand, and they're more
Speaker:likely to follow because this is of interest to them than because you just
Speaker:randomly knew them because you worked with them 5, 10, 15 years ago and
Speaker:you're connected to them on LinkedIn.
Speaker:Look, and this is the reminder to everybody that's listening.
Speaker:If you aren't taking advantage of those 250 page invite credits each month.
Speaker:I think that that's a missed opportunity.
Speaker:I know that there are people out there that used to say to me, Michelle,
Speaker:like, you can't send a connection message with them so they're bad
Speaker:and evil and we shouldn't do it.
Speaker:And now those same people, because there's been such a shift over on
Speaker:personal profiles, if you don't pay, you can't send connection messages.
Speaker:So now I think connection messages are out the window and from that perspective, now
Speaker:we're all like going, who even wants one?
Speaker:I don't wanna get one.
Speaker:And I've actually found when we're doing it for our clients, if we're
Speaker:out there connecting personally.
Speaker:No message performs hands down a thousand percent better than anything else.
Speaker:You know, if we put a message on there on that first one, they're like,
Speaker:you are trying to sell me something.
Speaker:I'm, you know, you are out.
Speaker:So it's, I think that's gonna work well for Company Pages.
Speaker:Now no one's gonna be sending messages.
Speaker:To add to that, your employees have 30 people a month they can invite as well.
Speaker:The only thing I'll say is, and I see it myself in my own notifications every
Speaker:day, is it's getting really crowded and noisy, and after a while, all
Speaker:these invitations become meaningless.
Speaker:And if every company's relying on that to grow their company brand.
Speaker:It's a problem.
Speaker:To go back to your point about follower growth in our reporting
Speaker:this year, we made a big change.
Speaker:We started showing everything by visibility, resonance,
Speaker:credibility, and opportunity.
Speaker:And credibility.
Speaker:Is that what you were talking about?
Speaker:It's those page followers and mentions and tags and things like that.
Speaker:That's credibility.
Speaker:Like that.
Speaker:Seeing the res like.
Speaker:How well your company is perceived.
Speaker:And so follower growth becomes important.
Speaker:But one of the things we keep reminding our clients when they're
Speaker:looking at competitors, they're like, why is this competitor
Speaker:growing like 30% faster than we are?
Speaker:Because their competitor is using job ads with the auto apply on LinkedIn,
Speaker:and every time someone clicks to apply for a job, so they put up one
Speaker:job, it gets a thousand applicants.
Speaker:They get a thousand new followers.
Speaker:Or 800 and something.
Speaker:Some people turn it off, but it's an auto thing to follow the
Speaker:brand when you apply for the job.
Speaker:And only if you choose to turn it off, then it doesn't follow the brand.
Speaker:So, you know, we've even got clients who are saying to us, okay, we wanna
Speaker:start using job ads that don't exist.
Speaker:Jobs that don't exist just to grow their page.
Speaker:Following.
Speaker:Then this gaming of the system and also the auto invites and the inviting and the
Speaker:inviting, and the inviting and inviting.
Speaker:After a while, it all becomes meaningless and it's a problem like genuine
Speaker:authentic growth and authentic voice and authentic social first content is
Speaker:the way to win and advocacy and thought leadership and all of that stuff.
Speaker:If you're just there to game the system so that you can say, I've got a thousand
Speaker:new followers, or I've got slightly more followers than my competitor, are you
Speaker:really getting value and ROI out of that?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Oh, I, I've got my eyes rolling and my teeth gritted as I listen to
Speaker:that because you are right, like all those stupid automation tools and
Speaker:things that promise to get around LinkedIn's limits and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:I've been on a mission.
Speaker:I now actually have an email address to report automation tools, so just
Speaker:shout out to all of the listeners.
Speaker:If I come across a tool that breaks the LinkedIn rules,
Speaker:I'm dobbing on them, right?
Speaker:Because, yeah.
Speaker:It ruins it for the rest of us and I've just had enough.
Speaker:You are not being clever, you're not being smart.
Speaker:You're just ruining it for all of us.
Speaker:And from that perspective.
Speaker:I love LinkedIn, but I have definitely struggled this year where there have been
Speaker:times when I've fallen out of love with it, with the combination of lots of things
Speaker:that all happened throughout the year.
Speaker:Lots of bumps, lots of lumps, lots of gut punches, it felt like, but
Speaker:I got to the point where I was like, no, I love this platform
Speaker:and what it can do for businesses.
Speaker:I've gotta get my head back in the game.
Speaker:And I actually have come to the realization it, all of these
Speaker:things have just flushed out, who are the great marketers that can
Speaker:adapt and get this stuff sorted?
Speaker:And who are the ones that are gonna try and cheat the system because
Speaker:they've skipped over all of the basics and the foundations and the strategy.
Speaker:You know, you don't need to do that kind of stuff if you go back
Speaker:and get your foundations right.
Speaker:And I'll get back off my soapbox right now and, uh, take a chill pill because I want
Speaker:to ask you a question because it's not very often Zoe that I can go and hang out
Speaker:with someone and talk all things Company Pages and them be excited like you are.
Speaker:So this is like my Christmas coming today where I get to talk all things Company
Speaker:Pages with someone else that loves them, but I have to ask for everything that's
Speaker:been going on right now, you, your team, I would love to know what kinds of things
Speaker:you've been testing and what types of content are you finding that consistently
Speaker:perform best on Company Pages.
Speaker:Can you share some of your secrets with our listeners?
Speaker:Yeah, so it's great.
Speaker:I love this question because I get these brands that come along and they're
Speaker:like, we are in computational computing and our audience is really technical
Speaker:and like they think that the co the content has to be completely different.
Speaker:And I'm like, what works on LinkedIn for the algorithm and what we see works?
Speaker:Carousels and galleries, right?
Speaker:And we start from there and then we go to, you know, single images and video.
Speaker:Although everyone says video is the content platform, it's a huge
Speaker:investment, and the ROI is not there.
Speaker:And we just don't see the value in the video that we thought would be there
Speaker:this year or that we used to see.
Speaker:So our order of preference is a gallery.
Speaker:Which is the easiest.
Speaker:It's just loads of images.
Speaker:Then a carousel, which takes a lot more work and it's more designed,
Speaker:and then a static image, and then a video, and then a plain text,
Speaker:and it's just as simple as that.
Speaker:Now, within the galleries, what we are discovering is you can
Speaker:get super duper, duper creative.
Speaker:And we've got one big enterprise brand that everybody knows.
Speaker:And I would love to be able to just like throw it out there, but I can't.
Speaker:But what we did was we've developed a way to animate using gifs so
Speaker:that when it displays the four images, they move across all four.
Speaker:In a coordinated way.
Speaker:Each one is actually just a standalone gif.
Speaker:Um, and then you've got your plus symbol with all your extra images after that.
Speaker:So it visually is wow, you see it.
Speaker:And then the other one to that, the add-on to that is to sometimes
Speaker:have statics, sometimes moving.
Speaker:So because you can add multiple images to a gallery, and some of them can be
Speaker:gifts and some of them can be static.
Speaker:Again, if your first main image moves and then everything else is static, or
Speaker:this one moves and this one's static, but something jumps from here down to
Speaker:the bottom image because you've timed it and you've planned it that way.
Speaker:It is wild.
Speaker:Like we've had something blow up in the bottom image and then all of a sudden
Speaker:fireworks come out in the top image.
Speaker:So listen, this is an investment in stop, think, plan, test.
Speaker:We have a testing group on LinkedIn where we can upload content, see that it
Speaker:works, see that everything coordinates properly, and we are doing much, much
Speaker:more of these kinds of formats because we know that they work really well.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:I haven't seen any of those.
Speaker:After the podcast, if I can have some secret squirrel top secret
Speaker:clearance to come and check these out.
Speaker:'cause that sounds super cool.
Speaker:For me i'm gonna ask you one more question about the types of content.
Speaker:So there's probably two that I love that you didn't mention, and
Speaker:they are polls and newsletters.
Speaker:I still think polls, despite what everybody else is saying right now,
Speaker:for me and my clients, they work a treat again, method to the madness.
Speaker:Two choices.
Speaker:Make someone choose really easily and pick a hot topic in the industry.
Speaker:That's my disclaimer.
Speaker:If you give them four options and they're all blah, blah, you
Speaker:already knew the answers anyway.
Speaker:They don't work, so can we just like put those ones aside, press the buttons
Speaker:on a hot topic and get people into it.
Speaker:But newsletters I still love.
Speaker:I I've been a fan of them since day one.
Speaker:How do you find them for your clients?
Speaker:Are they part of what you are promoting?
Speaker:Or is it?
Speaker:No, no deal.
Speaker:We are doing that, elsewhere.
Speaker:Yeah, so I'll start with polls.
Speaker:When you put them side by side with the metrics of all your other content,
Speaker:they sit in like third or fourth place, so we don't often do them, but
Speaker:it is a fun way to break up content.
Speaker:We find, and I used to say, listen, there's not a lot of value in them
Speaker:because if you're expecting hundreds of thousands of people to answer.
Speaker:Having said that, we'd had some standout examples.
Speaker:Like we had a cyber client where the CEO and again, it was from a personal
Speaker:profile, not from a company profile, but he asked, should companies pay ransomware?
Speaker:I have my opinion, but I'm curious about yours.
Speaker:Controversial topic, and everybody had an opinion on it.
Speaker:So 500,000 votes later, and he was like thrilled.
Speaker:Then the Company Page did the exact same poll and, like 300 replies later.
Speaker:It just didn't have that.
Speaker:And it's same topic, same controversy, same people with opinions, but less people
Speaker:see it because it's on a company profile.
Speaker:So that was number one.
Speaker:Number two I got taught a lesson because I, you know, say to my clients,
Speaker:there's no point doing a poll unless you really creative with it and whatever.
Speaker:But we had a client that wanted a series of polls leading up to a
Speaker:survey results that were coming out.
Speaker:So they would take some of the questions from the survey, put it into a poll.
Speaker:And the guy came back to me on our weekly meeting and he said to me,
Speaker:you wouldn't believe it, but I picked up two new clients this week based
Speaker:on that poll because it was so niche and the questions were related to a
Speaker:pain that one of their customers had.
Speaker:And even though that actual poll had only had something like 15, 20
Speaker:answers on it, the two within the 15 20 we're potential new clients.
Speaker:So value isn't always measured in hundreds of views, thousands of likes
Speaker:and and millions of impressions.
Speaker:It's measured in, you've got the right audience with the right message at the
Speaker:right time, and you've ticked three boxes, and then magic happens on social media.
Speaker:As we've been talking, I was wondering, and I haven't looked at this or done
Speaker:any analytics and you are like my go-to when it comes to analytics.
Speaker:Like you know that that's not my strong point.
Speaker:Never has been, never will be.
Speaker:But I'm wondering with Company Pages premium, if you have 300 engagements
Speaker:on your poll, I wonder if they get invited to follow the page if they're
Speaker:not already, because that could be fun.
Speaker:That could be a fun way to, yeah.
Speaker:Blow the right audience up.
Speaker:Not just trying to get an audience for the sake of it, but getting
Speaker:people that are interested in that.
Speaker:And I think it's probably easier to get them to engage in a poll than what it
Speaker:is sometimes with Company Page posts.
Speaker:And I don't know if you have any insights in that, but it was just an idea that was
Speaker:popping into my brain as you said that.
Speaker:'cause polls could be an easy way that people could say, vote either way.
Speaker:And then, they get auto invited.
Speaker:That would be cool if that worked.
Speaker:If you go back to that VC example that I gave they do do polls because
Speaker:they're polling their startup founders about the biggest pains that they
Speaker:have and raising funds and whatever.
Speaker:They switched on their premium because they had one KPI.
Speaker:You ready for it?
Speaker:Grow our
Speaker:page followers, and all I wanted to do was switch on the auto invite.
Speaker:And we see they have about 17,000 followers, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker:and we see around 90 to 150 followers a month on auto invite.
Speaker:Wow that's pretty high because I would say historically, if even if you look
Speaker:at just the Company Page invites, like if you're sending out 250, you probably
Speaker:get 60 to 80 if you're coming from the right person and super targeted
Speaker:and using all of those filters.
Speaker:So that's interesting.
Speaker:I'm gonna watch this space and do some testing of my own.
Speaker:To all of our listeners that are out there, I think there's one more
Speaker:important thing that you and I can discuss that I think has probably
Speaker:impacted a lot of people out there.
Speaker:Either those that are starting out in their career as social media
Speaker:managers who often get handed the Company Page, last person in most
Speaker:junior gets handed the Company Page.
Speaker:Or we're at the other end where you're a one person marketing team
Speaker:and you are responsible for the Company Page and everything else.
Speaker:Or we've got agencies that might be listening to us as well,
Speaker:similar to what you and I run.
Speaker:But from that side of things, I wanna talk about the feeling of, I don't know,
Speaker:I guess being worn down by everything that's been going on with Company Pages.
Speaker:On one hand, if you listen to everyone on the feed, they
Speaker:say they're a waste of time.
Speaker:Don't bother.
Speaker:Just promote your employees.
Speaker:Get employee advocacy going, ignore your page.
Speaker:And you know, people are getting paid to do these jobs and doing
Speaker:their best, and then logging onto LinkedIn and getting just slammed.
Speaker:And then the numbers are sliding down out of control despite your best intentions.
Speaker:So if someone out there is listening and feels like they've
Speaker:been doing all the right things.
Speaker:But not seeing results.
Speaker:What advice would you give them?
Speaker:The wisdom of your experience for the new year.
Speaker:First of all, sympathy.
Speaker:Let's just take a deep breath because it is hard and painful.
Speaker:Um, and you know, I as you rightly said, I have an agency, so it's like times this
Speaker:by 50 clients and the pain is very real.
Speaker:So I really feel the pain for every single person out there.
Speaker:Take a deep breath and, if you are struggling to convince your company
Speaker:that advocacy is worth it, and if you're struggling to get people
Speaker:to buy into advocacy, start slow.
Speaker:Pick one person.
Speaker:Let's say if you set a goal of one person, or if you've got three product
Speaker:lines, maybe pick three people, one in each, pick an ambassador, one person
Speaker:that you mentor, that you make it easy that you create content for, right?
Speaker:And you just keep feeding them and making it easy for them.
Speaker:And even though that's not in your job title and it's not in the scope of work,
Speaker:and we do it as an agency, I like said to one of my clients last year for free,
Speaker:I wanna start mentoring ambassadors.
Speaker:Bring me three people a quarter and let me take them through a process.
Speaker:And within a quarter some of them fall and fail.
Speaker:And they were never meant to be ambassadors in the first place, and
Speaker:other people fly and so on before you know what, they don't want my help.
Speaker:They're creating their own content.
Speaker:Because they're seeing the value.
Speaker:They're going to exhibitions and shows, and people know who they are.
Speaker:They're getting invited to more, uh, speaking opportunities.
Speaker:They're being quoted in the press.
Speaker:And it ties into the whole marketing stack, pr and it's gonna start tying
Speaker:into GEO, which is, you know, the Agentic Engine optimization so that
Speaker:you can show up in ChatGPT and LLMs, everybody's talking about that and
Speaker:everyone's saying PR isn't dead.
Speaker:You need PR to get the mentions in agentic tools.
Speaker:Well, guess what?
Speaker:How do you get more PR?
Speaker:You big up your people and make them voices in the industry and that
Speaker:comes through their social media.
Speaker:So everything ties in and you can suddenly start to build this amazing visibility.
Speaker:And there's this thing called ego.
Speaker:So you take one person, you big them up, then suddenly hold on.
Speaker:That's not the right person to be bigged up.
Speaker:I'm bigger than that person.
Speaker:You should be doing my profile.
Speaker:And then you start to get all these other people.
Speaker:You know, investing and interested and, and the interest grows.
Speaker:And if you start high in the C level, you know, and you get them engaging
Speaker:with other people's posts within, you can change an entire culture in
Speaker:a company to where a social culture, we're interested, we're engaged.
Speaker:The CEOs liking posts and engaging with his employees and what is the
Speaker:knock on effect of that success and that success is translatable to
Speaker:the social media account managers.
Speaker:Now what I will say is you've gotta measure that, and that is
Speaker:the hardest thing on this earth.
Speaker:So when you're mentoring people.
Speaker:Come up with a system of how they report back to you, their success, so
Speaker:that you add that into your results.
Speaker:Yeah, here's how the Company Page is doing.
Speaker:But when you add this, which has 400 or 800 times the success that the
Speaker:Company Page has, that's your success.
Speaker:Make it your success.
Speaker:And then you have all of that under your belt, and you're not
Speaker:just saying, well, the LinkedIn algorithm's really bad at the moment,
Speaker:so everything's down and it's tanked.
Speaker:Or last year we had one really standout post and everything else
Speaker:went like belly up this year.
Speaker:You can actually turn that narrative around, but you have to
Speaker:take charge and don't use their excuses as your excuses because
Speaker:they don't understand social media.
Speaker:If they understood social media, and I said this to Michelle earlier, if
Speaker:they understand social media, they're not asking you to put up a post today
Speaker:about a webinar that's starting in two hours time thinking they're gonna get
Speaker:hundreds more registrants to it, because that's not the way social media works.
Speaker:We know that, but we end up doing it because it ticks a box.
Speaker:Somebody had told us to do it, they think it's gonna bring them more registrants.
Speaker:So we do it, but we know we're not dumb.
Speaker:We also know that if a blog went out today.
Speaker:The post doesn't have to go up today.
Speaker:You can actually think and be creative and do a really fun post
Speaker:with it or break it up into 10 posts if you have time to think.
Speaker:But if everything on social media is the blog went up today, the post has to
Speaker:go up today, then what you end up with is really bad social media and then
Speaker:the results are also not that great.
Speaker:Look, you have the wisdom of your experience.
Speaker:I appreciate you sharing that.
Speaker:I think the main message that I wanna echo is it's gonna take teamwork.
Speaker:2026 is gonna be when page admins, whether you're part of the marketing team
Speaker:or the social team, need to have more conversations with their colleagues and
Speaker:ask for help and work out how can you use the page, I call it Page advocacy.
Speaker:To help promote those individuals in the business.
Speaker:How do you shine a light on those employees so they do feel 10 foot
Speaker:tall, bulletproof, and that you are there to support them, not just someone
Speaker:that's saying, Hey, I need your help.
Speaker:You need to help me get my KPIs.
Speaker:Because if you work out how to work together quickly as a team,
Speaker:that's where the real magic comes.
Speaker:And I say that like it's just easy and you can click your
Speaker:fingers and it will all happen.
Speaker:It doesn't.
Speaker:It takes time and commitment and the right culture behind it.
Speaker:So Zoe, thank you for everything that you have shared today.
Speaker:I know that there are people out there that are gonna be listening
Speaker:to this and have really enjoyed it.
Speaker:So I'm gonna put all of your details and how they can find you in the
Speaker:show notes so that they can connect with you and follow you on LinkedIn.
Speaker:But from my side of things, I wish you all the best for 2026.
Speaker:Thank you for coming back on the podcast and until next time, cheers.
