LinkedIn Marketing for Small Businesses: Profile vs. Company Page

If you're doing LinkedIn marketing for small business, should you be focusing on your company page or the personal profiles? In this episode, let's clear that up. Welcome to the social media for B2B growth podcast, I am Michelle J. Raymond, and each episode I'm sharing best practices and actionable tips you can apply to your own B2B social media strategy. Get it everyone, it is coach Michelle J. Raymond, your trusted guide for building your brand and growing your business on LinkedIn. And when it comes to growing your business on LinkedIn, I know that there is all shapes and sizes of businesses out there. And this episode is dedicated to those of you who are working in small businesses, I'm talking to you consultants, solopreneurs, those that are in a small team, maybe five to ten people. LinkedIn profile versus LinkedIn company page. Where should small businesses focus their time and attention? And why does this question even matter? Look, on one hand, I get it. There is so much conflicting advice out there on LinkedIn. You have people like myself that are saying company pages are great, they should be a part of what you're doing. I talk about the power of two, using your company brand and your personal brand together. There are other people out there who shout it from the rooftops that company pages are a waste of time. In fairness, if you were to do a post on your profile versus your company page, I'm not here to tell you that it will go further if you post it on your company page. It's just not the case, but it also doesn't mean that that's the only function of your company page. So we're going to talk about that so that you can have clarity around what's best for you. If I ever tell you on this podcast that you should do something my way or the highway, you should never listen to this podcast again because there is no advice that is a one size fits all when it comes to winning on LinkedIn. Every single week, you want to know should you be putting effort into your company page. And we're going to go through that. I'm going to step you through how you can decide for yourself if it's the right thing or not. And only you can decide that because number one, I don't know your business or your goals inside out. So we're going to talk about this. We are also going to talk about why company pages can be really helpful for your business, even if you are a business of one. We're going to talk about how I did it in my business. I'm going to share exactly how we do it now. Right after this quick word from our podcast sponsors, Metricool. I'm a proud Metricooler. And if you'd ask me what was on my wish list for new features, two things have always been right at the top. Today, I get to share with you that those wishes have come true. First up, LinkedIn Analytics for personal accounts, which is a total game changer. You can finally see what's working, what's not, and stop guessing with your LinkedIn content strategy. The second feature, you can now quickly and easily tag people and company pages. No more clunky work around just create tag and post. These only scratch the surface of Metricool's capabilities. I want you to be able to check them out for yourself. And so I have arranged a special offer for you listeners. If you head to the show notes and find the link, you can test any Metricool Premium plan free for 30 days when you use code Michelle 30. Give it a go and let me know what you think. If you missed the episode that I did with Thai Heath from the B2B Institute, just a few episodes ago, she's from LinkedIn. They do all the research into B2B marketing on behalf of LinkedIn. So she is in the know. And I said, look, you can't come on this podcast unless I ask you, our company pages are waste of time. Now, if you missed the episode, go back and listen, but I'm going to catch you up here. And essentially, she had this great analogy. If you think about it, your personal profile is your front door on LinkedIn. It is the place where most people will come and discover you. So it's really important that you create a great first impression and you start to build those elements of trust with your community. So that means making sure your profile is updated, making sure everything around your branding is in alignment that we don't have any missing gaps. If you're underselling yourself, it's time to go back and do some of the work around that. So that's the front door. But what happens when people are getting a little bit closer to wanting to buy from you and start to question, is this a legit business? Can I find out a little bit more? Can I go deeper? And the analogy that Ty used is that you go through that front door into the company page, which is the living room. And we want to make sure that it's cozy, that they find everything that they want, and that it's not just this beige and boring forgotten mess. Nobody wants to sit in there with the, you know, proverbial elevator music going on where it's so boring or were still, they find a ghost town. You need to choose what happens if somebody is researching and discovers your company page by poking around on your profile. They can see it in your work experience section and up the top as well, or they Google your business name and it comes up in that first page of results. So two choices, let them find the ghost town or roll out the red carpet as I say. So this is something that you need to think about. So if you have a company page set up and you have your profile set up, it is really important that we use the power of two. And the power of two is how can you use that company page to lift you up? And on the other side, how can you use the personal brand to leverage that and build up your company brand? And you will get better results than either of them alone. When you do this, there is no need to pick either or do you pick profile or company page? How can you use them together? Having similar branding across both? Having similar calls to action? Are you using similar language? Have you put a lot of effort into your personal profile and neglected your company page? Look for ways that these can be used together. And as I shared in the beginning, I'm going to tell you exactly how to do this and how I've done it with B2B Growth Co versus Michelle J. Raymond. When you look at this and you understand that the company page and profile are different, then you can take that pressure off and stop comparing the two. It's like apples and oranges in the popular saying like you don't compare the two. They're just different. They have different jobs. And so from this perspective, the real question that I want you to be asking is not pages versus profile for your small business? What I want you to go back and have a look at a game plan on LinkedIn and answer me the question, what are your business goals? What are your resources that you could put into this? And where do you see that you want to be in two years or five years? For some of you, you might be very happy being consultant. You're already time poor because you're trying to do everything you're wearing 50 hats. I see you. I hear you. I've been you. I know exactly what it's like. And so from that perspective, if your goal is just to keep things ticking over, you're going to put so much effort into your personal profile and very little into your company page. So 80/20 rule applies for every four posts that you do on your personal profile do one on your company page. Make it that simple. The other side to this is maybe you are someone that's looking to grow your business and have more employees or even further down the track, sell this business to somebody else. And this is a question that I had to ask myself. Right now, I have no intentions of selling my business or having other employees besides Lil. It's just the two of us. The work and effort that we put into our company page is different than if I all of a sudden decided that I wanted to have a team of 20. My goal was to sell this in five years and I was trying to 10x it in the meantime. That, if it was my business goal, would be very different to how I would approach my LinkedIn strategy. So I want you to think about where are you at in your journey? Where do you want to go? And if the answer is you're very happy being a consultant, there's no plans to be bigger, then yes, spend your whole time over on your profile and creating content that way. And just let your company page tick over. Don't let it become the thing that breaks the trust that you've built through your personal profile. And what I have always loved about company pages is whether you're a business of one or a business of 15,000 employees. We all get the same features for free. You're banners the same size, the headline, the amount of content that you can use. We've all got the same features. And nobody lands on a company page and looks and goes, oh, that's only one person in that business versus or that's 10,000. No, we look and say, are we in the right place? Does this person do what I want solve the problem that I have and can I see why they would be the best fit for me? It's aligned with our goal. So it's not taking away from the work that we've done as we've greeted people at the front door. Think about it like this and think, first of all, I will always tell you, go back to your game plan. When we go back and reverse engineer from our business goals, back to our LinkedIn strategy and figure out how we're using LinkedIn to get our business goals, then the answers that you need about whether you should focus on your profile or your company page become very, very clear. If you have teams that can help you or a VA or whoever, or you're outsourcing your company page management to someone like myself, then that's a different conversation. If you're trying to do it and time poor and juggling everything as it is. So you can see only you can decide whether companies are a waste of time or not. What does this look like in reality? I'm a small business owner. There's myself and Lil in the business, right? So there's just two of us. So there's Michelle J Raymond, the name and the face of the business that you all know. And there's B2B Growth Co as my company page, which I has about four or five thousand followers. And then I personally have 25,000 followers. Give or take. I am not putting all of my eggs into the company page basket. Why? Because I need to choose where I spend my time and energy so that I can get the biggest return for that time and energy. And at this point, when it comes to posting content, I would be putting most of my efforts into my content that goes out on my personal page. But if you go to LinkedIn, you'll actually notice that we also have a content strategy going out on the company page. And I have one for my podcast as well. And the reason that we have that is because one day, Lil and I might want to have employees and grow the business in different ways. So one day down the track, if other people are looking for jobs and doing their research, then they're going to come across and discover, yes, this is a LinkedIn agency that walks the talk and they're my kind of people and I may want to work there. The other reason for me, obviously, I work with lots of people around their company pages. So it is important that even if it's not to grow my business, it does attract people who are looking to see, am I the real deal? So I can't talk about growing someone else's company page if I'm not doing it myself. Now back in the beginning, one of the ways that I was trying to figure out how company pages could work for solo-proners, like myself back when it was just me in the business, is the A to B growth code would show up and comment and like on every one of Michelle J. Raymond's post. And you'll notice that that still happens today. And today, we go one step further where we will repost Michelle J. Raymond's content back onto the B to B growth code company page on post that are important on ones that we want to add to our greatest hits library because that's what I call our company page. It's where you find the best of the best. And from that perspective, this is why I have always loved company pages because they can be your team's biggest cheerleader. If it is just you and the team, good news. It can show up and cheer you on as well. And an answer level of legitimacy and trust. And I've worked with people in over 24 different countries. And when you're working and doing business online, making sure that you build as much trust as possible to make those opportunities stand out and become easy to close, then my company page helps with that. So it's not all about impressions. Can we just drop that? Like honestly, that's probably the thing that drives me most bananas is that company pages aren't just about the impressions that you get on a post. There is so much more to brand building than just content impressions. Do you want to grow your business on LinkedIn? Of course you do. But let's be honest, it's tough out there. The algorithms changing, buy a behavior shifts, and let's not even start on the content fatigue. This is exactly why I created the B2B Growth Masterclass, a proven framework to help you cut through the noise, align your team, and spot real opportunities to grow. It works because it's built for business, not vanity metrics. All the details you need are in the show notes, so let's grow your business together. If you are listening to this and trying to figure out, how could your page support you as an individual? Just a simple way, they could go away and take an action, the company page comments on your post. And it will feel weird in the beginning. Like it absolutely does. I'm here to tell you that in your head, we'll be going, it's just me, aren't I going to get found out by the people that are coming to my profile and seeing that content? And they know it's me. Sure, some people do, but use it in a way that maybe you wanted to put a link in the post and didn't. Maybe you want to direct people with a call to action off the platform and the company page can do that rather than you. It can have a completely different personality or it can be exactly the same. It is never going to hurt. And so that part of your brain that says, I shouldn't do this. It feels weird. It feels awkward. Well, guess what? When you do things that other people won't do on LinkedIn, that is exactly how you win. That is how you stand out. So you can blend in with the crowd who isn't willing to give this a go or you can think, yeah, maybe that Michelle's got something here. Maybe it is another opportunity for you, your work and repurposing is a winner when it comes to this. But think about it. How can you do things that other people aren't prepared to do? And being uncomfortable and trying new things is absolutely one of the key things that you should try and master as you grow your business on LinkedIn because honestly, this is where the magic happens. Quick recap. It's not profile or page. It is LinkedIn profile and company page. It is the power of two. It is about how can you use the two of them together? That is how you get faster results. That is how you grow quicker. And that is how you can really add legitimacy to your small business or your consultancy that you're running. So yes, it is different for small businesses and how you approach LinkedIn. But go back. Do the work. Set your game plan out. What are your goals that you've got coming up? What are the resources that you can allocate to this and then figure out how you can make that company page really work for you and give you a competitive advantage versus all the other consultants and solo proners that are out there. If you are a small business owner or a consultant and you're looking to grow on LinkedIn and this episode has helped you, make sure that you reach out and connect with me if we're not already. I will share it with somebody that you think this will make a difference with. Until next week, cheers. Thanks for listening, everyone. Once again, if you found value in today's episode, please follow us, subscribe and leave a review in your podcast app. And more importantly, connect with me on LinkedIn for more insights and strategies. Until the next episode, keep growing your B2B with social media.