An informative article on Forbes explains that having a LinkedIn profile promotes increased visibility for your brand. LinkedIn takes engagement of your company page into consideration when deciding where you rank in searches on their site. In order for LI to work its magic and get your company this increased visibility, it’s important that not only you, but that your employees as well get on the bandwagon. It’s crucial that you not only get your employees to join LI, but that you get them engaged, so that they use LinkedIn effectively to help your company.

Furthermore, a study at BrightEdge reported that “companies that had a greater proportion of their employees on LinkedIn had more followers”. Pretty convincing, huh?

So…how do we do it? How do we get our employees engaged on Linkedin?

1. Educate: First off, if your employees aren’t on LI yet, educate them. This could be by holding a department or company wide seminar on the importance of LinkedIn as well as an informative and interactive tutorial. Following the basic LI education and sign up, it’s important that your employees use it and use it effectively.

An article in Forbes explains that LI is important in order to encourage your employees to link to each other: one way of doing so is by educating and helping the different departments stay connected and on top of what others are doing based on what they share.

2. Endorsements: The “endorsements” feature can be helpful, in encouraging your employees in a way that acknowledges their accomplishments to a large community. These forms of public praise are not only powerful rewards for great work, but will likely increase in your employees’ involvement in your  company’s LinkedIn community.

3. Ask for feedback: one of the best ways to keep your employees (and other followers) coming back for more, is by establishing yourself as a source of up-to-date industry information and thought leadership.

By sharing the latest articles on topics within your industry, no matter what information you’re sharing- make sure to ask your employees (and other followers) for their opinions and feedback.

Like any matter, it’s important that your employees feel that they are involved in the organization.

Employees are likely to feel a motivation sense of ownership for goals, when they play a major role in creating them, versus simply feeling that they are executing someone else’s vision. It evokes a sense of ownership and shareholder stake in the success of your business: Be sure to have your employees take on their own projects and postings with regard to LinkedIn (as opposed to simply posting whatever you ask them to).

4. Be Creative & Open about Content: Devote a few hours a week to brainstorming sessions with your employees. Your social media marketing manager might be the kingpin to your content but it cannot be done alone. Input from every person in your company is critical.

5. Create or Promote Brand Ambassadors: Interesting articles, tough questions and open discussions are useless without people who are willing to engage with the content. Depending on your company and your industry, this may be harder for some, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to make it happen. As always, start with your employees and people within your own network and ask them to help build up engagement by interacting with your posts, bringing people from their networks into conversations and overall playing the initial “brand ambassador” role. Once this is done, you’ll have people engaging more often. With some time and effort (both on your end and for those helping you to create the right atmosphere on the company page) your company can have an engaged followers that come back to your page for information, discussions and updates.

Using Roojoom, I’ve compiled informative websites that are helpful in being a good leader, thus engaging your employees.

Understanding that your employees are your brand ambassadors is the basis to getting them to use LinkedIn. Once applied, your company will rank higher and exhibit better customer engagement. With proper workshops, you can easily and effectively educate your employees on LinkedIn’s importance as well as how to use it effectively.

Infographic source: http://www.ronsela.com/brand-ambassadors-influencers/