There’s a common dilemma amongst young professionals on LinkedIn.

It can be adequately summed up as, “To post, or not to post.”

For whatever reason, many young professionals don’t fully engage with LinkedIn for fear of what their Employer may think.

Yet, by not engaging on LinkedIn you are giving up the single best opportunity to:

- Grow your personal brand,
- Establish yourself as a thought leader, and
- Market your skills and capabilities

With a little bit of savvy, however, your LinkedIn profile can be a win-win for both you and your company.

Here are 3 tips to make the most out of LinkedIn while not pissing off your employer:

1/ Optimize your profile strategically

2/ Include a Company CTA

3/ The 70/30 Rule

1/ Optimize your profile strategically

Your LinkedIn profile is the homepage for all things you in your professional world.

As such, when someone visits your profile they should immediately be able to figure out

• What you do

• Where you do it

• Whom you do it for/with, and

• What you talk about

Patrick Lyons works at Microsoft and does a great job of this:

As you can see from his profile, all the above questions are answered and it is more than evident that Patrick is leveraging his profile as a billboard for Microsoft (as well as his own side hustle).

What I like:

• His headline is concise and descriptive

• His profile and cover photos are high quality and unique

• He links out to a personally branded LinkTree

When anyone visits Patrick’s profile they not only learn about Patrick, but they also learn about Microsoft.

Always tie your profile back to your company.

2/ Include a Company CTA

The featured section on your profile is one of the most underused yet powerful tools on your LinkedIn profile.

If you aren’t familiar with it, you can basically pin Links, Documents, images, videos, etc. to your profile page.

On the personal side, you can use this space to pin any articles referencing you or even post your resume when/if you are open to work.

More importantly, however, you can strategically use this space as an extension of your company’s brand.

Here are a few ideas to get you going:

• Pin your Year in Review / Impact Report

• Link to all the job openings at your company

• Post the Culture video your team made

Take a look at how my friend Destin does it on his profile:

Destin uses his Featured space to:

• Highlight his company’s newest launch,

• Promote a commercial he filmed, and

• Shoutout an event he hosted

Leverage your profile to recruit and celebrate for your company.

3/ The 70/30 Rule

If you want to make the most of LinkedIn you have to post on LinkedIn.

Shocker, right?

Start simple and ease into it with a post once per week.

Maybe you up those numbers to a few times per week or even once daily.

Once you start getting comfortable with posting an obvious question remains. How much should I talk about myself versus my company?

I’ve found the perfect balance for “I” vs. “We” content to be 70:30.

Here’s how it works:

Spend 70% of your time on LinkedIn talking about:

• Your experiences

• Your wins/failures

• Your ideas and recommendations

Spend 30% of your time on LinkedIn talking about:

• Your company's point of view

• Any corporate events or major successes

• Your team/colleagues

Kyle Hagge from Morning Brew could write a masterclass on this.

Most of his content looks like this:

However, he also sneaks in MB specific content like this:

In posting in this 70/30 split, Kyle builds his personal brand while positively associating it with Morning Brew.

As such, when people think of Kyle they will think of MB and conversely, when people think of MB they will think of Kyle.

It’s a win-win.

What you put into LinkedIn is what you will get out.

Don’t be afraid of LinkedIn and don’t let your Employer bully you into not using the platform.

Great things happen on the other side of the “Post” button.

Until next time,

Ben

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