My most recent guest on the show was Glenn Patterson – former client of Propel’s and CEO at the City of Casey. Casey is the largest local council in the Australian state of Victoria with over 400,000 residents – a number that continues to grow, as Glenn told me in our discussion. It’s episode number 39 in the YDR catalogue, and well worth a listen to get a genuine insight from a CEO driving a LinkedIn program across their senior leadership team.
I first met Glenn earlier this year when he asked for my help supporting 20-odd Casey leaders to get more confident and competent on LinkedIn as a way to connect and communicate with their key audiences in amongst a broader transformation program. It was a fantastic opportunity for listeners like you to get under the hood of a LinkedIn for Leaders program, and hear from the CEO themselves why he made the investment.
And it got me thinking. Reflecting on Glenn’s experience and the value his perspective provided to our listeners, I thought I’d take the opportunity in this practical episode to go even that little bit deeper. To pull back the curtain so to speak, and take you inside a LinkedIn for leaders program. Because if that’s something you’re considering, hearing Glenn’s experience and then hearing what’s involved will help you work out whether it’s the right fit for you.
So here it is! A deep dive into Propel’s Your Digital Reputation program – our LinkedIn for leaders program – to learn what goes on behind the scenes. I’ll share some of the more common questions I get asked about the program, and then run through the details so you can hear how it would help you or your leadership team.
What is the Your Digital Reputation program and who is it designed for?
Think of the Your Digital Reputation program as a kind of ‘all the bits you need and nothing you don’t’ for leaders on LinkedIn. I developed the program on the back of 15+ years and more than 30,000 hours helping hundreds of leaders across the public, private and NGO sectors. And it’s intended to help leaders through three core phases – firstly to get clear on why they’re using LinkedIn, secondly to get confident on how it can work for them, and thirdly to help them get competent in what they should and shouldn’t do online.
It’s suited to individual leaders – a C-Suite exec, board member, aspiring leader, founder, or anyone looking to make full use of their digital reputation to stand out from the crowd. But it’s also great for leadership teams, like Glenn’s, looking to increase capability across the board, and access the very diverse stories, voices and networks they have to get cut through online today. It’s also a brilliant way for leaders and comms advisers managing brand channels to get alignment across the board so those diverse voices are still aligned and working together under the same banner.
What are the key phases of the program?
I mentioned those three phases of clarity, confidence and competence. Here is a quick overview of each before we dig a little deeper.
In the first phase, leaders gain clarity by:
- Defining their goals, key audiences and what they want to be known for online;
- We help them uncover how they’re seen by their key audiences today;
- And we then design a tailored roadmap that ensures every minute they spend online is time well spent.
In the second phase, leaders gain confidence by:
- Learning how other industry leaders get results, and debunking the many LinkedIn myths floating around out there;
- We then help them create an online presence they’re proud of, and that resonates with key audiences;
- And finally, we help them nail their narrative, so their messages get cut-through and impact online.
And in the third and final phase, leaders gain competence through:
- Expert coaching sessions, tailored to their needs and goals;
- Access to a host of best practice resources to continue improving performance;
- And we have regular performance reviews to track progress against priorities.
As I was discussing with another client recently, nailing these three phases can take a leader from LinkedIn obscurity to having an invaluable strategic communications tool in their toolkit. And we’ve structured it in a way that means even leaders who’ve never posted, or who have a few hundred connections… It doesn’t matter how active you are. Because I’m far more interested in your digital reputation than I am in you posting 13x a week on LinkedIn just for the sake of it.
Our whole program is designed around the leader, their goals and ambitions, and their target audiences. So every step forward they take is as relevant as it is valuable.
What are the specific activities for leaders?
Now, I know a lot of other LinkedIn programs dive straight in and rewrite your profile or jump straight to posting long form. Some leaders find this terribly uncomfortable or forced, and it can rub both them and their audiences up the wrong way. The problem here is you can create a fantastic-looking profile that speaks to the wrong audience. Or you may write posts that are never seen by the people who matter most to you. Clarity is crucial, and this phase of the program houses the single most important planning framework we’ve developed. You’ve heard me talk about it ad nauseum on this show – the Purpose Pyramid.
Our Purpose Pyramid asks leader three simple but vital question:
- What are you and your organisation working towards?
- Which audiences matter most to you on that journey?
- And what are you most passionate about?
Your goals, audiences and passions.
Defining these properly is the difference between a LinkedIn presence that ticks the boxes and a LinkedIn presence that makes you a leader worth following.
And it’s a critical step to ensure alignment across a leadership team. When a group of leaders each completes their own Purpose Pyramids, they can quickly see who owns what patch online. Which audiences, which issues and which outcomes. Rather than trying to create carbon copies of one another, or trying to shove every message down the one poor leader’s LinkedIn throat, unique-yet-aligned Purpose Pyramids are perfect to create a powerful digital coalition.
The Purpose Pyramid helps leaders get clear themselves.
Our next activity – our digital reputation audit – gives leaders clarity on how others see them. Our audit shows a leader what someone sees when they google their name, and how that translates to their LinkedIn profile. Often one of if not the very first search result in Google. Digital first impressions count, and our audit is used to help leaders see how they can take greater control of their narrative with the many thousands if not millions of people checking them out online. Armed with a clear purpose and a clear picture of where they are today, leaders are ready to start the journey towards where they want to be in the future.
The next key activity is our best practice masterclass, which is an absolute winner. Here we share the all-important five drivers of digital reputation with leaders – explaining how purpose, profile, listening, activity and network all shape the way you’re seen by others online – and then share relevant industry examples from known and respected leaders that bring the theory to life on LinkedIn. It’s amazing watching the ‘aha’ moment as leaders suddenly see why the examples that work so well. There’s real strategy behind them! And by learning the formula behind their efforts, they gain the confidence they need to then execute with their own voice and goals in mind.
This is beautifully complemented by our LinkedIn mythbusting activity. Now, I appreciate LinkedIn can feel like the ultimate black box at times. Why did that post work so well, why did that one flop, and why do I keep seeing that person in my feed?! These sorts of experiences can be unsettling and even a barrier to getting more active. Knowing some of the system fundamentals – how the algorithm works – gives a leader far more confidence when they set out to post, comment or engage. So our mythbusting component not only helps leaders crack the code, but also provides valuable guidance on the steps and practices they can implement to get a better result.
Finally, our 1-1 coaching sessions provide leaders the opportunity to form new, more effective habits on LinkedIn, tailored to the goals and audiences they’re trying to reach. It’s where they really get to flex their LinkedIn muscles. These sessions always focus on the most pressing priorities for leaders, whether that’s a major engagement like an AGM, a commercial opportunity, an investor push, or a campaign launch. It’s all tailored to their circumstances, and – by working together – they build that muscle memory they’ll need for the next activity and the next activity after that – this is all about helping them get clear, confident and then competent.
What kind of impact will the program have?
Regardless of a leader’s intended outcomes, everyone comes away having a much stronger understanding of LinkedIn, how it works, and how it can form a powerful part of the communications arsenal today. It’s not about meaninglessly increasing impressions. It’s about using LinkedIn as a strategic tool to achieve strategic outcomes. If that means reaching and influencing just one key person, that’s what we do.
From clients like Glenn and the Casey team, we’ve seen some fantastic results. One client saw a 25% uplift in candidates coming from LinkedIn as a result of our work with the team. Another saw their leadership team’s collective confidence in using LinkedIn increase by 36% following our program, while – importantly – they’re capability to execute also increased by 34%. That’s a massive difference in just a few months.
Leaders always tell me they have greater clarity and confidence as a result of our program, and that the Purpose Pyramid is a key driver of that. They tell me how it saves them time, focuses their efforts, and means they get a lot more value from their LinkedIn activities. As I remember one leader saying to me: “It changed my opinion on the value of using LinkedIn.”
This all sounds great for leaders – and it is! But what about the people who are often either leading or approving programs like ours?
Alongside their leaders, what do Comms teams stand to gain?
I’m often contacted by comms leads looking to help their leaders get more active online. In the case of Glenn and the Casey leadership team, it all started with Comms. Because they are often the ones on the hook for LinkedIn as a platform, and naturally responsible for all things digital reputation.
Any Comms team that focuses solely on managing their LinkedIn Company Page is fighting an uphill battle for attention – as we’ve heard on this podcast many times, every single Company Page on LinkedIn is competing for just 3% of a user’s LinkedIn feed, as Richard van der Blom reminds us. That means any strategy that is Company Page centric is missing 97% of the power of LinkedIn – a huge opportunity lost.
Likewise, any Comms team that encourages all staff to get online without proper training and guidance is setting themselves up for an ongoing governance battle – Comms teams don’t have the time to be LinkedIn fun police, so it’s important to find a better way. Our program tackles both extremes, so here are a few of the benefits Comms teams stand to gain through our program.
Firstly, unlike the example of Glenn Patterson at Casey, it can often be challenging to get more time from leaders for LinkedIn. Our program knocks this blocker on the head for Comms teams. We help leaders understand they have a digital reputation – whether they’re active or not, and even whether they like it or not – and that means their real choice is in how they respond. Do they choose to remain invisible or at arm’s length, and let others control their narrative? Or will they seize the opportunity like Glenn and his team, and actively influence how key audiences like staff, candidates, partners, or investors see them? Our knowledge and industry examples help Comms teams make the case for a better-performing and better-resourced LinkedIn program.
The second benefit is alignment. Comms teams often tell me they have one really active leader, but the challenge is getting others to join them. Or they might have a handful of leaders who are active but pretty much do their own thing online, without any coordinated effort or strategy. Both these scenarios present risk – participation and alignment are key. Our Purpose Pyramid is brilliant for this. Comms teams LOVE it, because it gives them a rich understanding of their leaders’ focus and passion areas, AND the ability to line all leaders up alongside one another to see who is engaging which key audiences, spot any gaps, and ensure they are then working with the best leaders on specific campaigns or initiatives vs spraying and praying. It’s almost like a masterplan to get the absolute most out of your leadership team while – crucially – allowing them to simply be themselves online.
And this connects to the third benefit for Comms teams – building capacity within their own ranks by building capability among leaders. Our program does not tell leaders to hand over the keys to their LinkedIn profiles or outsource everything to teams. That is an enormous risk, particularly when your LinkedIn profile carries on well after you leave any organisation – your reputation sticks for life. Instead, we help leaders find their own way online, with their own goals, audiences, voices and mannerisms. This kind of ownership – when underpinned by an agreed strategy with comms that aligns to corporate objectives – means leaders draw on their Comms teams for advice and input, not handholding. The last thing any Comms team wants is to encourage 20 leaders to get active on LinkedIn, only to multiply their content production and monitoring efforts by 20! Which is exactly why our program focuses on ensuring leaders feel clear, confident and competent themselves, and Comms teams avoid the unwanted outcomes of reactive content production, bottlenecks and dependence.
This links to the final benefit for Comms teams. One of the huge opportunities to emerge from the pandemic was the repositioning of comms from a tactical delivery arm to that of a strategic enabler. LinkedIn is no different. Rather than trying to be a proxy or ghostwriter for every leader across the business, our program helps Comms teams build their own skills and competencies to advise leaders into the future. Rather than labouring over what individual words and phrases a leader might use in their posts, our program helps Comms teams shift their focus to bigger picture agenda items that increase the value and trust leaders have in the Comms function. Leaders stop relying on Comms for what to post, and start seeking their counsel on why. The goals and objectives vs the minutiae. By building capability among leaders, Comms stakeholders are freed up to handle strategic matters, and the organisation is able to considerably grow its online presence – the diversity and depth of voices from leaders but then right through the organisation – without Comms having to considerably grow their team and resourcing levels. It’s a genuine win-win.
So there it is, folks – an in depth look at our LinkedIn for leaders program that has helped the likes of Glenn, his leadership team at Casey, and the many other leaders we’ve worked alongside. This program is honestly the absolute highlight of my work – particularly the all important Purpose Pyramid discussions up front – as nothing gives me more pleasure than seeing a leader discover their voice and passions. And realise LinkedIn is actually a superb place to share them. I hope this has been a helpful explainer for you, and that Glenn’s story from our episode last week shows what’s possible when it’s all done well.
I’d love to hear your questions or feedback as always, particularly if you’d like to hear more about the work we did with Glenn and Casey. So please feel free to reach out via LinkedIn and we can pick things up from there.
Feel free to drop Roger Christie a note with any thoughts from this conversation. If you want more on all things digital reputation, be sure to subscribe below to the Your Digital Reputation newsletter. Join hundreds of subscribers from around the world already signed up!
