Building Brand Awareness and Presence on LinkedIn

Most brands treat LinkedIn as an afterthought, usually just as a digital résumé board where they occasionally post job openings. However, LinkedIn has over 1 billion members worldwide, and I bet a lot of them call the shots in their company.

What if I told you that the platform you’ve been neglecting could be your most powerful channel for reaching decision-makers, establishing thought leadership, and growing your B2B connections? If you ignore LinkedIn, you’re leaving so many possible connections on the table.

Captain Shane’s here to help you get your sea legs and sail the waters of LinkedIn. This is your guide to building brand awareness on LinkedIn that goes beyond the basics. I’ll share bits and pieces from my playbook as well as practical steps you can implement immediately, whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to level up your existing presence.

Let’s take a look at what we’re learning today:

• Why LinkedIn deserves a central place in your digital marketing strategy.
• How to optimize your company page for maximum visibility.
• Content strategies that actually drive engagement (not just likes).
• Employee advocacy approaches that multiply your reach.
• Common mistakes to avoid and best practices to follow.
• Measurement frameworks to prove your LinkedIn ROI.

First, let’s start by going over why you should take LinkedIn seriously.

Why LinkedIn Should Be Your Priority Platform (Even in 2025)

“LinkedIn is boring.” “LinkedIn is just for job seekers.” “Nobody engages with content on LinkedIn.”

I hear these objections constantly, and honestly, they’re outdated myths that are costing businesses serious opportunities.

The LinkedIn you might’ve known isn’t the LinkedIn today. It’s no longer just a digital Rolodex but a full-fledged content platform where business conversations happen daily. In fact, LinkedIn is responsible for 80% of all B2B social media leads.

But here’s what makes LinkedIn truly unique: intent. Users come to LinkedIn with a professional mindset. They’re not mindlessly scrolling between cat videos and vacation photos. They’re actively looking for industry insights, professional connections, and solutions to business challenges.

The Decision-Maker Advantage

Because LinkedIn is where the decision-makers are. While your Instagram followers might admire your brand aesthetics, your LinkedIn followers are people who can actually sign contracts.

This is the platform where C-suite executives, department heads, and budget owners gather to stay informed. Unlike other social networks where you’re interrupting personal time, on LinkedIn, you’re meeting professionals where they’re already thinking about work.

The B2B Content Superpower

Hear me out: LinkedIn might actually be more creative and engaging than Instagram right now.

Sounds crazy? Think about it first. As Instagram and TikTok have become saturated with similar-looking lifestyle content and increasingly restrictive algorithms, LinkedIn has been expanding its content formats and engagement opportunities. Long-form articles, newsletters, polls, documents, and videos all perform well on LinkedIn.

Plus, LinkedIn’s algorithm still gives organic content a fighting chance. While Facebook organic reach has plummeted to low single digits, thoughtful LinkedIn content regularly reaches 10-15% of your followers, and sometimes spreads far beyond your network.

The platform rewards substance over style, which means businesses with actual expertise (rather than just good aesthetics) can genuinely stand out.

Building Your LinkedIn Foundation: Company Page Optimization

Your LinkedIn Company Page is the cornerstone of your brand presence. Yet most pages I review are seriously underutilized. Let’s fix that.

Beyond the Basics: Strategic Profile Elements

Anyone can fill in the basic fields of their company page, but creating a strategic profile requires more thoughtful work. Here’s what makes a great company profile page:

Compelling About Section

Your “About” section isn’t just a place to paste your mission statement. It should tell your brand story in a way that connects with your specific LinkedIn audience.

Include:

• The problem you solve (not just what you do).
• Your unique approach or methodology.
• Clear differentiation from competitors.
• Relevant keywords for LinkedIn SEO.

This way, visitors can tell what your company is all about with a single skim.

Custom Button and URL

Customize your CTA button based on your primary goal. “Visit website” is the default, but if you’re focusing on lead generation, “Contact us” might convert better. If you’re recruiting, “View jobs” makes more sense.

Visual Brand Consistency

Your profile image (logo) and cover image should work together to create a strong visual impression. The cover image is particularly important, so don’t waste this real estate on a generic stock photo.

Instead, use it strategically to:

• Highlight your value proposition.
• Showcase your team or culture.
• Feature a current campaign or initiative.
• Include a subtle call to action.

One approach I’ve found effective is creating a cover image that extends your brand identity while including a tagline that focuses on the benefit to your audience rather than the features of your product.

Create Showcases for Different Audiences

Here’s a feature many brands overlook: Showcase Pages. These are extensions of your company page that allow you to highlight specific business units, products, or initiatives.

If you serve distinct audience segments, consider creating dedicated Showcase Pages for each. This allows you to tailor content specifically to each segment rather than trying to please everyone with every post on your main page.

The Custom URL Debate

As much as it might look great, securing a custom URL for your LinkedIn page might not be worth the bureaucratic headache.

LinkedIn makes customizing your company page URL surprisingly difficult, requiring specific criteria and sometimes manual review. While a clean, branded URL looks professional, the truth is that most traffic to your page will come through content and search, not direct URL typing.

If you can get a clean URL easily, do it. If not, focus your energy on the elements that drive more measurable results.

Content Strategy That Drives Real Engagement

Content is where most LinkedIn strategies live or die. The platform is hungry for valuable insights, but it mercilessly ignores promotional fluff.

The 80/20 Rule of LinkedIn Content

The fundamental principle of effective LinkedIn content is the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should provide value to your audience, while only 20% should directly promote your products or services.

But there’s a nuance here that many miss: “Providing value” doesn’t mean you can’t be strategic about it. Every piece of content should align with your business objectives, even if it’s not explicitly promotional.

For example, if you sell cybersecurity software, educational content about emerging threats subtly positions your company as a knowledgeable advisor while making your audience more receptive to security solutions.

Content Types That Consistently Perform

Based on my experience and observations, here are the content formats that consistently drive engagement:

Industry Insights & Trend Analysis

Share your perspective on industry developments. What do recent changes mean for your audience? How should they adapt? This positions your brand as forward-thinking and informed.

Data-Driven Content

Original research, surveys, and data visualizations perform exceptionally well because people love making decisions based on hard numbers. If you can share proprietary data from your company, that might give you an even greater edge for uniqueness.

Problem-Solution Frameworks

Identify a common challenge your audience faces, then provide a clear framework for solving it. This proves your expertise while delivering immediate value.

Behind-the-Scenes Content

Humanize your brand by showcasing your team, culture, and processes. This builds trust and differentiates you from competitors who maintain a faceless corporate presence.

Contrarian Takes

Now for a technique that requires courage but delivers outstanding results: challenge conventional wisdom in your industry.

Taking a well-reasoned opposing position to popular social media trends can trigger meaningful discussion. The key is to be thoughtful, not controversial, for its own sake. Back up your position with logic and evidence.

Long-Form Content Isn’t Dead

Despite the internet’s obsession with short-form video, long-form content still performs remarkably well on LinkedIn. While attention spans are supposedly shrinking, professional audiences will actually engage with substantial content if it delivers value.

Articles of 1,000+ words can generate significant engagement when they dive deep into complex topics. LinkedIn’s article format may not be as flashy as video, but it allows for a comprehensive exploration of ideas, perfect for B2B topics that can’t be adequately covered in a 30-second clip.

The key is formatting: use headers, bullet points, and visual breaks to make your content scannable while rewarding those who read the full piece with detailed insights.

Employee Advocacy: Your Secret Multiplier

If your LinkedIn strategy relies solely on your company page, you’re missing possibly the biggest opportunity on the platform.

The Personal Reach Advantage

Here’s a statistic that should change how you think about LinkedIn: content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels alone.

Why? Because the LinkedIn algorithm heavily favors person-to-person interaction. A post from “Jane Smith, Marketing Director at XYZ Company” usually performs better than the same post from “XYZ Company.”

The math is compelling. If your company has 100 employees with an average of 500 connections each, that’s a potential reach of 50,000 people, likely far more than your company page followers.

Building an Employee Advocacy Program That Works

Employee advocacy can be tricky because, in most cases, you need them to buy in first before they want to post about your company on their platforms. Here’s what separates successful programs from failures:

Make Participation Optional but Easy

Forcing employees to share company content backfires spectacularly. Not only does it create resentment, but inauthentic, obligatory sharing is painfully obvious to audiences.

Instead, create systems that make voluntary participation simple:

• Provide a regular internal digest of shareable content.
• Include pre-written post text they can use or modify.
• Create content around topics employees genuinely care about.

Making things effortless and easy will increase the likelihood of them sharing your content in an authentic manner.

Focus on Personal Branding Benefits

The most effective employee advocacy programs position content sharing as a personal branding opportunity for employees, not just a favor to the marketing team.

Help employees understand how sharing thoughtful industry content elevates their own professional reputation. When they see personal benefit, participation increases dramatically.

Recognize and Reward Participation

Create lightweight recognition for active participants. This could be as simple as a monthly shoutout in the company newsletter or a small gift card for those who consistently engage.

Train for LinkedIn Effectiveness

Most employees aren’t LinkedIn power users. Provide basic training on how to optimize their profiles and engage effectively on the platform. Even a 30-minute workshop can dramatically improve results.

Challenging the Conventional: Let Employees Go Off-Brand (Sometimes)

The most successful employee advocacy programs I’ve seen actually encourage some deviation from strict brand messaging.

While consistency matters, authenticity matters more. When employees share company content in their own voice, adding personal perspectives or relating it to their specific role, engagement typically increases.

This approach makes some brand managers nervous, but the benefits far outweigh the risks. Authentic, human voices break through the corporate monotony that dominates LinkedIn feeds. So let your employees cut loose in their posts…though not too loose.

LinkedIn Groups and Community Building

LinkedIn Groups suffered years of neglect, leading many marketers to write them off entirely. But that’s changing, and savvy brands are rediscovering their potential for community building.

Creating vs. Joining: The Strategic Choice

Should you create your own LinkedIn Group or join existing ones? The answer depends on your resources and objectives. Let’s go over your options:

• Creating a Group: This gives you complete control but requires significant ongoing investment to moderate, seed conversations, and build membership.
• Joining Groups: This provides immediate access to existing communities but limits your control and brand visibility.

For most brands, a hybrid approach works best:

1. Join 3-5 established groups where your audience already gathers.
2. Become a valuable contributor to these communities.
3. Only after establishing credibility, consider creating your own group focused on a specific niche not well-served by existing groups.

This way, you can attract group members who already know your brand when you set up your new group.

The Engagement Formula That Actually Works

Many brands fail in LinkedIn Groups because they treat them as promotional channels. The successful ones follow what I call the 3:1:1 ratio:

• 3 parts pure value (answering questions, sharing resources).
• 1 part thought leadership (original insights that position your expertise)
• 1 part subtle promotion (only when directly relevant to discussions).

This approach builds trust first and sales second, exactly how professional relationships develop in the real world.

LinkedIn Groups Might Beat Private Communities

While many brands are investing in proprietary community platforms, LinkedIn Groups offer unique advantages:

• Your audience is already there (no new login to remember).
• Professional context is built-in.
• LinkedIn’s notification system drives return visits.
• SEO benefits as group discussions often appear in search results.

The downside is less control and fewer features, but the reduced friction for participation can result in higher engagement overall.

Common Mistakes to Avoid on LinkedIn

Even experienced marketers can trip up on LinkedIn if they use the wrong approach. Let’s explore some common mistakes and pitfalls to avoid so you don’t fall into them yourself.

Treating LinkedIn Like Other Social Platforms

One of the most common errors is applying the same content strategy from Instagram or Facebook to LinkedIn. The professional context of LinkedIn demands a different approach.

Posts that might thrive on other platforms, like casual behind-the-scenes content or trending memes, often fall flat on LinkedIn without proper framing. Similarly, the overly promotional approach that might work on direct marketing channels typically gets ignored here.

Instead, recognize LinkedIn’s unique position as a professional network. Content should be business-relevant, thoughtful, and provide clear value to a professional audience.

Inconsistent Posting or Engagement

Many brands create a LinkedIn page, post sporadically for a few weeks, then abandon it when immediate results don’t materialize. This stop-start approach guarantees failure.

The LinkedIn algorithm rewards consistent activity, both in posting and engagement. Disappearing for weeks or months signals to the algorithm (and your audience) that your brand isn’t reliably active, reducing your visibility when you do return.

Set a realistic publishing schedule you can maintain in the long term. Even consistently posting just once a week is better than posting daily posts that suddenly stop.

Ignoring Comments and Conversations

This is a cardinal sin on any social platform, but it’s particularly damaging on LinkedIn. When someone takes the time to comment on your post and receives silence in return, they’re unlikely to engage again.

Some brands are so focused on pushing out content that they neglect the “social” aspect of social media. Every comment is an opportunity to deepen relationships and demonstrate that there are real humans behind your brand.

Make it a practice to respond to comments within 24 hours. Even a simple “Thanks for sharing your perspective, Jane!” is better than nothing.

Over-Automation Without Human Touch

Automation tools can be valuable for scheduling and analytics, but some brands take it too far, scheduling weeks of content without any human monitoring or interaction.

This approach often leads to tone-deaf moments when scheduled posts go out during major news events or crises when they’re inappropriate. It also results in missed opportunities to join trending conversations.

Use automation to enhance your LinkedIn strategy, not replace the human element. Review scheduled content regularly and maintain an active human presence for engagement.

The “Me, Me, Me” Syndrome

Perhaps the most widespread mistake is creating a LinkedIn presence that talks exclusively about your company, products, achievements, and news. This self-centered approach rarely builds lasting engagement.

The most successful LinkedIn brands understand that their content should be primarily about their audience’s needs, challenges, and interests, not just company announcements.

Even when sharing company news, frame it in terms of what it means for your customers or industry. Make your audience the hero of your content, not just your brand.

Best Practices for LinkedIn Success

Now that we’ve covered what not to do, let’s go over what to do to set your LinkedIn page for success.

Optimize for Search and Discovery

LinkedIn is increasingly becoming a search engine for professional information. Optimizing your content for search can significantly amplify your reach.

Include relevant keywords in your company page, showcase pages, and post content. Use hashtags strategically, focusing on specific, relevant tags rather than overly broad ones.

Also, consider creating cornerstone content around key topics your brand wants to be known for. LinkedIn’s article format is ideal for this, as these pieces can rank in both LinkedIn and Google searches.

Develop a Distinctive Brand Voice

With so many companies on LinkedIn, a generic corporate tone won’t help you stand out. Develop a consistent, recognizable voice that reflects your brand personality while remaining professional.

This might mean being more conversational, using industry-specific terminology, incorporating data-driven insights, or even tasteful humor when appropriate.

Whatever voice you choose, apply it consistently across your posts, articles, comments, and employee communications about the brand.

Create Interactive Content

LinkedIn offers several interactive features that can boost engagement beyond standard posts: polls, documents, carousel posts, and more.

Polls, in particular, are engagement magnets because they require minimal effort from users while providing valuable insights. Ask thoughtful, industry-relevant questions that prompt participation.

Document and carousel posts allow you to share multiple images or slides, perfect for data visualizations, step-by-step guides, or before/after showcases.

Build Strategic Relationships

Identify key influencers, partners, and even complementary brands in your industry. Engage meaningfully with their content by leaving thoughtful comments and sharing valuable perspectives.

Over time, these relationships can lead to collaboration opportunities like co-created content, joint webinars, or cross-promotion that expands your reach to new audiences.

Measure What Matters

Develop a comprehensive measurement framework that connects LinkedIn activities to business outcomes. Moving beyond vanity metrics is crucial.

Define what success looks like for your specific business context. Is it brand awareness, lead generation, thought leadership, or recruiting?

Track not just engagement metrics but also traffic to your website, content downloads, demo requests, or application submissions that originate from LinkedIn.

By establishing clear goals and relevant metrics, you can refine your strategy based on what’s actually driving results rather than what simply looks good on a dashboard.

Measurement Framework: Proving LinkedIn ROI

Working without measuring is a great way to not realize the impact of your efforts. Without proper measurement, even the best LinkedIn strategy risks being undervalued or prematurely abandoned. Let’s develop a framework that demonstrates true impact.

Beyond Vanity Metrics: What Actually Matters

LinkedIn makes it easy to track likes, comments, and shares, but these engagement metrics tell only part of the story. A more comprehensive measurement approach includes:

Awareness Metrics:

• Follower growth rate.
• Content reach and impressions.
• Share of voice (compared to competitors).

Engagement Metrics:

• Engagement rate per post.
• Comment quality and sentiment.
• Video view duration.

Conversion Metrics:

• Click-through rates to site.
• Form fills or lead captures.
• Influenced pipeline and revenue

You don’t have to measure all of them because that’d probably overload you with information. The trick is connecting these metrics to business outcomes and measuring the ones that matter for your objectives.

Setting Up Proper Attribution

Proper attribution is crucial for demonstrating LinkedIn’s contribution to your marketing funnel. This requires:

1. UTM parameters on all LinkedIn links (organic and paid).
2. Setting up LinkedIn’s Insight Tag on your website.
3. Creating dedicated landing pages for LinkedIn campaigns.
4. Developing multi-touch attribution models in your CRM.

By connecting LinkedIn activities to specific leads and opportunities, you can draw a clear line from social engagement to revenue.

Lead Quality Over Quantity

Many marketing leaders still evaluate social media success based primarily on volume metrics. How many leads generated, how many followers gained, and so on.

I’d argue this approach is fundamentally broken for LinkedIn, where quality dramatically outweighs quantity.

Ten engaged followers who are perfect-fit decision-makers for your solution are worth more than 1,000 passive followers with no purchasing authority. Similarly, five high-quality leads who enter your sales pipeline are worth more than 500 unqualified form fills who waste your sales team’s time.

This quality-first perspective requires a shift in how you report results. Instead of leading with volume metrics, start with impact metrics:

• Percentage of LinkedIn leads that convert to opportunities.
• Average deal size of LinkedIn-sourced customers.
• Customer lifetime value of LinkedIn-acquired accounts.

When presented correctly, these metrics make a much more compelling case for continued LinkedIn investment than raw follower or impression counts.

Key Takeaways

LinkedIn presents a unique opportunity for brands willing to invest in authentic, value-driven engagement. While other platforms grow increasingly crowded and consumer-focused, LinkedIn remains the premier destination for professional networking and B2B marketing.

The brands that win on LinkedIn aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or the flashiest content. They’re the ones who consistently provide value, build genuine connections, and approach the platform with strategic patience.

Let’s recap what we learned today:

• • LinkedIn’s unique position as a decision-maker platform makes it essential for B2B brand awareness.
  • Optimizing your company page serves as the foundation for all other activities.

• Content strategies should balance value, thought leadership, and selective promotion.
• Employee advocacy creates exponential reach when implemented thoughtfully.
• Common mistakes to avoid and best practices to follow for maximum impact.
• Measurement frameworks should focus on quality metrics tied to business outcomes.

Whether you’re just starting your LinkedIn journey or looking to take your existing presence to the next level, it’s never a bad idea to build your presence there to attract attention from professionals and decision-makers. Plus, all my tips will help you build awareness and forge those connections.

Whether your LinkedIn page is abuzz with activity or a ghost town, it’s never a bad idea to take a look at your LinkedIn strategy and identify what can be improved. Take some time this week to review its performance and make small tweaks for the better.