LinkedIn – Personal profiles vs Business pages

LinkedIn can be such a fantastic platform for any business – yes, even product-based businesses. The reality is that most people scrolling there are in a business frame of mind, and that makes it a great space to find like-minded people to have meaningful conversations with. But how do you know whether you should be using a personal profile or a business page?

The short answer is that it is a personal choice, as both options have their advantages and disadvantages – but you’re not here for the short answer!

LinkedIn profiles: what makes them great

The main advantage of a personal profile is that it is much easier to network. People will connect with your personal account if they can relate to you in any way -and that might just be that you live in the same country, you work in a similar industry, you met that one time three years ago, or you both related to the same post.

Interacting with your target audience’s posts, answering their questions when you can and getting them to recognise your name in their notification bar is relatively easy for you to do – although it does take a lot of time!

With a business page, this is much harder and your page relies a lot more on your content. Essentially, you can only interact with posts if:

They were posted by your ’employees’.
They were posted with a hashtag that you follow (but more and more users are moving away from using hashtags in their LinkedIn posts).
They were posted by a Page you follow.

That’s right! You can’t comment on most people’s posts!

Until fairly recently, LinkedIn Profiles only allowed you to see very limited analytics, which made it hard to learn what was really working. Thankfully, we now have fantastic insights to look through! Find out more about social media insights here.

LinkedIn pages: what makes them great

I know what you’re thinking; if you’ve got to have a profile anyway and it’s easier to grow the profile, is there any point in having a Page? Well, my question is: are you the only one promoting the business?

If you have affiliates, collaborators or co-hosts, a Page would allow you to not only re-share and celebrate their posts, but also to notify them every time the Page posts, so it’s easy for them to support you. In other words, growing a Page is really powerful when you have multiple people working towards the goal.

And if it is just you, a Page would allow you the same distancing as using “we” in your copy does. For some small businesses, like myself, the owner is the expert, service provider and only one who can deliver. For others, the owner is building a brand, yes, it’s fueled by the owner’s passion, but ultimately, you’re buying into the brand, not the person.

Note that profiles MUST represent a singular person, or LinkedIn could delete them.

Still unsure?

Let’s talk it through together! Book a Powerhour now and we’ll not only decide which option is best for you and your business, but we’ll also discuss your next steps and the goals you’re working towards. Book here.