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Most Professional Service Firms Neglect Their Most Powerful Social Media Platform

Professional service organizations are not taking full advantage of the power and reach of LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with 350+ million members (and adding two more across 200 countries and territories per second.) 

While LinkedIn is viewed as the most important social network for business people – ahead of blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+ – most professional service firms are using their other social media platforms more often.

In fact, less than a quarter of the average professional services firms’ social media posts target LinkedIn.

Our recent Social Media Use by Professional Services (SMUPS) study of 25 top professional services firms (as ranked by Crain’s Detroit Business) showed that, on average, only 21 percent of these firms’ social media posts were directed at LinkedIn.

Yet, according to the SMUPS study, LinkedIn is the platform where firms typically have the largest following, with an average of more than 160,000 followers, including an average of more than 23,000 company employees. That’s five times the average number of followers on Facebook and 13 times the number of followers on Twitter.

Posting regularly and frequently on LinkedIn helps your firm:

1. Tap into and extend what is likely your largest social media network – a group that shares your interests;

2. Build awareness and relationships through special interest groups and conversations; and

3. Demonstrate industry leadership by sharing pertinent presentations, white papers, infographics and viewpoints.

And, of course, LinkedIn is also a great tool for recruiting, especially since current employees are one of the best sources of new recruits.

Need some pointers? Here are five tips for sharing more updates on your company LinkedIn page:

1. Lay out a calendar for social media posts and build a backlog of evergreen posts that you can draw from when your creative well runs dry;

2. Solicit help and contributions from the experts within your company who are writing technical papers, giving presentations and making news;

3. Salute, congratulate or profile your best clients;

4. Connect your LinkedIn presence to your other social media platforms and cross-promote your channels by customizing your message to fit each channel’s format; and

5. Mix up your posts. Make some educational (think: issues, trends); some inspirational (think: quotes); some local involvement (think: community); some personal (think: your best people behind the scenes); as well as some news and promotional.

Ultimately, if you want to harness the power of the most important social network for business, focus on sharing interesting content on your company’s LinkedIn page more often.

Bianchi Public Relations’ professional service social media study reviewed social media usage for a three-month period in early 2015 by top Detroit professional service organizations (law firms, accounting firms, engineering companies, architectural firms and staffing companies) as ranked by Crain’s Detroit Business.