LinkedIn business pages: essential or overrated?

Can we all agree that social media can be a massive time-suck? If you're anything like me, you don't want to spend all day creating content or engaging on LinkedIn or sending connection requests. You want to do your lead generation activities quickly and crack on with the parts of your job that you absolutely love.

Being really focused on the end goal of your social media lead gen and stopping doing anything that doesn't take you closer to that goal is the best way to save yourself a load of time and energy. Even if your competitors are doing that thing, it doesn't mean it's right for you.

Let's dig into one part of the LinkedIn puzzle that you might be able to streamline or stop focusing on entirely; your LinkedIn business page.

So, with that in mind...

If you do one thing this week, make it…. review the roles of your LinkedIn profile and business page

Why?

It's very easy to think you need to do all the things on the platform to see results but you don't. Instead it's about thinking strategically about which activities will move the needle for you.

How?

If you think about your LinkedIn profile and your LinkedIn business page, these serve different purposes. Your business page represents your company. Your LinkedIn profile represents you. The size of your company and the resources available to you are going to be the decider on whether you need both.

Let's say, for example, you're the founder of a comms agency. Your business page will likely showcase things like case studies and team activities. It's a factual place. It gives prospective clients a view into the agency team and the types of client projects you work on, but it's not necessarily where they are going to build a relationship with you and start a conversation.

Your personal profile is where prospective clients can get to know you, where you can demonstrate your expertise and share your founder story. You can share content from your business page to increase the prospective reach of that content but your goal here is to build trust and familiarity with your audience in order to generate leads for the business. Your thought leadership here is what will ultimately drive establish you as an expert, not your business page.

Recommendation: commit to consistent posting from your business page but don't prioritise this over your personal content. Identify the content categories your ideal customer would be interested in, and think about how you could put your own unique spin on it. Let your personality shine through. Amelia Sordell is a great example of a founder creating content that resonates with her audience without focusing solely on what her agency is doing.

Now imagine you're the founder of a tech start up. You have a team of 3 but you're the one who will be looking for clients and going to new biz meetings. Your aim right now is making personal connections and establishing yourself as the go-to expert in your field on LinkedIn. All of that can be done from your personal profile, and you'll eat up all your time if you try to create content for two separate pages.

Recommendation: you don't need to be posting from a business page if your business is all about what you personally can do for your clients and if your goal is building relationships. As an example, I don't use my business page because it wouldn't contribute anything meaningful to my business.

What now?

Streamline to thrive, my friends. Consider whether you need a business page at all, and - if you do - the role it should play. Remember that it should support your role as the expert, not run the show.