What are the most common mistakes on a LinkedIn Company Page?

I’ve been working with companies on their LinkedIn strategy and content now for over 15 years. I’ve done countless audits and been asked “what are we doing wrong?” more times than I can remember.

Nearly all of the pages I’ve ever audited have shared the same challenges when it comes to reaching stakeholders, engaging audiences and demonstrating value.

Most fall down for the same reason - not because of bad photos or self-serving lengthy posts (though they certainly don’t help). The most common reason is that no-one actually sat down and decided what the page was actually for in the first place.

Mistake 1: Too many objectives, or none at all

Think about your business, or marketing department. At any one time it probably has 2 or 3 key objectives. Why so few? Well, once you have more than that, you start to get pulled into many different directions. A LinkedIn Company Page works in the same way.

If you want to use it to drive sales, attract talent, engage current talent, reach investors, showcase your thought leadership, and also your CSR, well, you’re just chucking too many ingredients into the pot. It’s hard to focus on all of those things at once - you can, but you’ll likely see diminishing returns.

The real question you should ask yourself is what is the main thing you need LinkedIn to do for your business. Is it attracting talent? Is it reaching prospects? Is it building credibility via thought leadership?

Whichever of those or other answers it is, you’ll want to focus on that as your primary objective. Sure, you might have a couple of secondary objectives, but the more secondary and tertiary objectives you throw into the mix, the more that original purpose will become diluted.

Fundamentally, the more objectives you assign to the page, the more resources it needs to work. If you’re in the top 1% of businesses, you might be able to find a way. If you’re in the other 99% of businesses, you need to work smarter. If you have one clear objective and post twice a month with genuine focus, you will outperform a page that posts daily without one.

Mistake 2: Not thinking about content buckets

Once you have that key overarching approach, then you can think about the content buckets that help you get there.

For example, if your main goal is to nurture prospects, then you’ll want categories that focus on your product’s hero points, the problems it solves, case studies, and potentially one that focuses on new launches/developments.

Having this list of buckets gives you a genuinely great starting point tactically when planning out content. For instance, you can do 1 post per bucket per week - that helps you when framing what you need to find and to come up with, rather than just starting with a blank document..

The test for any piece of content: does this post contribute to one of my stated objectives? If the honest answer is no, it shouldn’t be there. If you can’t articulate which bucket a particular post belongs to, then that’s another sign that your approach isn’t strategic enough.

Mistake 3: It’s Social Media, not Broadcast Media

When you post on LinkedIn, you are simultaneously talking to people who already know you and to people encountering you for the first time - because every comment and share puts your content in front of new networks.

Most businesses forget this and default to broadcasting: buy now, we’re hiring, look at this award we won. It can often all be treated like an email newsletter to People Who Care, when you need to think instead about what you would say if you had someone useful in the room for five minutes. You wouldn’t hand them a brochure. You’d tell them something interesting.

Mistake 4: Not dedicating enough resources

The uncomfortable truth is that LinkedIn done properly requires actual investment - time, creative thought, someone with both the capability and the capacity to own it. Handing it to the youngest person on the team because they use TikTok is how you get a page that drifts.

Good visual identity and slick video help. But they don’t fix a weak strategic foundation. Format follows strategy, not the other way around.

The good news is that diagnosing and getting this right isn’t complicated - if your LinkedIn page has more than three objectives, no single owner, and a mix of content from whoever asked nicely - that’s the problem. Fix the strategy first. The content will follow.

That’s it for this week! If you found this interesting, I would hugely appreciate it if you shared with your friends and colleagues.

If you’re feeling particularly generous and enjoyed this edition, I won’t stop you from buying me a coffee. Otherwise, I’ll see you next time 🫶