As the number one choice of professionals to connect on social media, LinkedIn is custom-built for CEOs and execs to position themselves and their company. Whether you’re seeking to brand yourself as a thought leader or your business as a top competitor, LinkedIn has the audience and the tools to do so. But first you’ll need a strategy.

What does an effective CEO LinkedIn strategy look like? We’ve broken it down into several steps in both creation and implementation. Follow this guide and you’ll be able to position yourself and your company for social media success.

Optimizing your profile

One key to building an effective LinkedIn strategy is to lay the foundations. And nothing is as foundational as your profile.

Your LinkedIn profile is often the first impression people have of you. Therefore, it behooves you to post a photo taken by a professional photographer and a banner, possibly your company logo and mission statement (or a collage of photos, as in the case of Chris Nassetta, CEO at Hilton). A compelling headline, a (brief) bio that reflects who you are and what you do in the About section, and testimonials from customers allow you to further bolster your bona fides.

Premium members can add a custom hyperlink button in their profile and above all their posts. This encourages visitors to take action, such as “Book an appointment” or “Visit my website.”

Another tip: in the About section, include relevant keywords to attract suitable opportunities. For example, if you’re seeking speaking engagements include the term “speaker.”

Posting content

CEOs and business leaders should share a mix of content that reflects their expertise, company values, and industry insights. Articles, milestones, thoughts on industry trends and appearances on panels, such as Renate Nyborg‘s at SXSW, are all grist for the mill.

Also, when deciding on what kind of content to post on LinkedIn, consider that people are easily bored. For that reason you will want to switch up the types of content you post. Have fun and experiment (within reason) with the types of content you post. Be creative and memorable by trying new formats, platforms, topics, or angles for your content. Add some humor (dad jokes, not Andrew Dice Clay, please), personality, or emotion to your posts.

Understanding the algorithm

Like all social media platforms, LinkedIn is continually monkeying with its algorithm. They have to give something for their engineers to do. The company says that it seeks to maximize users’ networking abilities and to ensure that the proper content is seen by the target audience.

What does that really mean? For starters, LinkedIn places a premium on sharing true expertise and insight with followers. CEOs should remember that self-promotional and sales-y content will generally perform poorly. Meanwhile, practical insights, useful nuggets and specific industry insights will get the most reach.

Recent algorithm changes also ensure that valuable posts continue surfacing for weeks, or even months, on the platform.

“Right now, content lives and dies on the newsfeed very quickly,” says Tim Jurka, a senior director of engineering at LinkedIn. “We’re trying to collect the sum total of professional knowledge on our platform, and make sure it surfaces whenever you need it.”

So, for example, a social media influencer’s post about how publicists should approach them about sponsored content would normally be seen for a few days before fading away. Under the new algorithmic regime, the same post might see a second life weeks or even months later on the feed of someone looking for just that information.

For CEOs, this means prioritizing evergreen content and limiting ephemeral or time-sensitive posts. Examples of evergreen content include case studies, original research, statistic collections, how-to guides, and resource lists (i.e. a list of 50 sources for free images, or even “30 Post Ideas and Examples for LinkedIn,” by LinkedIn expert Shay Thieberg).

Leveraging thought leadership

Sharing knowledge is also a great way to drive industry conversations. And driving industry conversations lets you position yourself and your company as leaders in your field.

Rather than concentrate on self-promotion, look for opportunities to show your unique expertise and contribute to a larger dialogue. Along with sharing your knowledge and experience, post about trends and milestones in your industry. Ask your followers what they think of this information. Draw your peers and colleagues into the conversation.

For example, Anastasia Volkova, cofounder of regenerative agriculture company Regrow, consistently posts news relevant to her industry, while weaving in her own insights.

One side note on thought leadership content: Companies can now also boost someone else’s post—for example, a post by a third-party praising said company’s product or service. For a fee, these “thought leadership ads” are available to organizations with a company page.

Engaging with and growing your network

Too many leaders forget that social media is a two-way street. It’s not just about your posts and your views. LinkedIn is a social network, so like, comment on, or share other people’s posts. Initiate connection requests with colleagues and industry peers. Join relevant groups and associations. Tag and mention other participants. Respond to the challenges that face others in your field by offering suggestions or solutions.

And when posting, invite engagement from others, don’t just give opinions. Polls and other interactive features are easy ways to initiate a dialogue and boost your engagement. This in turn lets you position yourself and your company as  contributing to the larger conversation, and perhaps taking the lead as well.

CEOs should also use LinkedIn to bridge the gap between their offline and online worlds. After industry events and conversations, reach out to new colleagues on LinkedIn to keep the momentum going and continue talking about that possible collaboration that was mentioned. Follow up meetings and calls with thank-you messages, questions, invitations, recommendations, or referrals.

Monitoring and responding to feedback

For CEOs, there’s arguably no worse look on LinkedIn than leaving comments from followers unacknowledged and unanswered.

Monitoring and responding to feedback shows that you and your company are listening. Some best practices for appropriately responding include timeliness—aim to respond within 24 hours or less—and respect. Be polite, no matter how negative the feedback may be. Disarm the trolls by going out of your way to be helpful—provide answers, suggestions, or resources to address their issues or questions.

Doing this right can reap real dividends. Through comments and replies you can learn more about your audience’s needs, preferences, challenges, and expectations. You can also measure the sentiment about your company or product and use that info to evaluate and adjust your social media strategy and tactics. Monitoring your LinkedIn feedback also helps you improve customer satisfaction, increase brand awareness, and generate leads.

Of course, busy CEOs may not have time to sift through all this feedback. This is where tools can help.  Social media listening tools such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social and sentiment analysis outfits like Brandwatch enable you to track and analyze mentions of your brand, products or services across various channels and analyze emotions and attitudes of your audience’s feedback.

Tracking metrics and performance

We’ve already touched on monitoring feedback. The same tools that you use to keep track of audience response and sentiment can also be implemented to measure reach, impressions, clicks, shares, comments, mentions, leads, conversions, or sales.

Engagement rate will tell you how often people interact with your posts. Conversion rate will tell you if they take the desired action after seeing or engaging with your posts. By comparing these metrics to benchmarks or industry averages you can adjust your content accordingly. This will help you assess the effectiveness and ROI of your social media strategy and tactics.

To find the best LinkedIn analytics tool for your purposes, consider such factors as whether you are working with a team, what tools give you the clearest understanding of their measurements, and whether you need tools that measure more than engagement and new followers. Premium offerings include LinkedIn-centric analytics tool Shield, while the native analytics available inside LinkedIn’s own platform is a great no-cost alternative.

Utilizing an agency

The most effective CEO LinkedIn strategy? Hire someone to do it for you.

Few CEOs or execs have the time or resources necessary to plan and implement a social media strategy. But a full-service thought leadership agency like CSuite Content can do the work for you, from drawing up a plan to seeing it to fruition to tracking the results.

In the end, your LinkedIn strategy may be too important to your business and thought leadership goals to be left in the hands of anyone other than experts.

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