LinkedIn for architects
Best practices and tips to make the platform a success
When we work with architects to develop their digital strategies, the first response we usually get to the mention of LinkedIn is that “it’s such a dry platform” and it was something that came up again when we recently presented at the Architecture Marketing Forum too.
With teams being so creatively attuned and used to visual cues, the platform can often be difficult for architectural firms to understand its value and see it as a key component of their social media marketing mix.
The platform started out as a way for a job seeker to find a new role, scrolling through each job posting in the news feed to find the right fit. However, the platform has evolved into a powerful professional networking tool that can provide really high-quality leads and potential clients and not just your next job.
So how can you maximise your LinkedIn profile?
First and foremost, the platform works principally from personal profiles rather than company ones. Whilst you can react, comment, or share activity on your LinkedIn Page as an organisation, it can be quite cumbersome to do this and the platform has yet to make this process as slick as others have.
The first golden rule before you think about using your LinkedIn company account is to make sure you and your employees all have up to date information in their profile. It’s so important people don’t neglect this aspect of the platform as it’s a key component of personal and company success.
Make sure your resume summary has an accurate job title and job description for each piece of work experience, that the current company is correctly added to their current role and all aspects of your profile are complete.
The next step is to apply the same to your company profile. Ensure you have completed all sections of your LinkedIn summary including tagline, overview, specialities and key hashtags you relate to which allows you to see and respond to trending posts from the hashtag feed.
And consider whether you should join groups relevant to your industries or areas of interest, or those that might include your target audiences too.
The importance of a good LinkedIn strategy
As a starting point, you may have to consider platforms that don’t necessarily feel familiar to you. Instead, you might have to choose those that are appropriate for the audience you are trying to reach. LinkedIn might be one of these so having the right plan in place for success is vital.
Ultimately, you could have the most high-quality product or service in the world but if you’re wanting to grow your profile, whichever channel you choose, you need to be sharing content that will appeal to those people you want to connect with.
For example, an architecture practice may be targeting:
Property owners looking for an expert to oversee their renovation
Property developers looking for a trusted practice to bring their idea to life
A property owner might be using Instagram and Pinterest, newsletters and design magazines to source their recommendations.
A developer might be keeping up with market activity on LinkedIn or Twitter, business and industry press for their references.
Setting your objectives
Every business has its overarching objectives but how do your communications objectives support these?
Examples might include:
Achieve XX 'contact us' conversions via organic search traffic by the end of the financial year
Increase social media engagement by X% over 6 months, paid or organic
Increase sign-ups to the newsletter by X% over 6 months, building a database of potential customers
Laying the groundwork for your strategy by clearly defining those objectives is a first but important step.
You need to ensure they are not only realistic and measurable objectives but that they reach your target customers if you are successfully going to achieve them.
Social media, and often LinkedIn specifically will play a vital role in helping you achieve those objectives.
However, LinkedIn can be a great place not just to connect with industry peers but to demonstrate your credentials both individually and as a firm.
So what types of content might work on LinkedIn?
One of the big challenges for practices is creating content when you have long lead times or limited site access. It does require you to be creative in the types of content you share and you shouldn’t be afraid to test different things to see what does and doesn’t work. Your insights on this platform will be invaluable in helping you understand this and when we develop content plans for clients, these are very useful for us to see what is proving popular and driving engagement.
We work closely with clients to understand their company and their vision for it both internally and externally. Demonstrating that you value your employees’ input and contribution, that you put sustainability at the heart of all your projects, speaking about knowledge or expertise in a particular specialism such as tricky planning applications, complex builds or particular techniques all build your corporate profile on LinkedIn.
If you are writing long-form content such as thought-leadership pieces, work with the team to find topics they are passionate about and can write comfortably on. Ask them to post as an article (not a post) on their personal page and tag you, then share to the company page with comments. It adds value to their personal profile and gives you valuable content for the company page too.
Fairly obviously, it’s also a great recruitment tool and will allow you to attract the best candidates who are job searching on the platform. If they can see the value you place on your team, that will appeal to them.
Don’t forget to consider curated content to demonstrate your understanding of the wider industry. Architecture firms can often shy away from the more controversial debates, which is understandable but with the help of hashtag tracking, you can pick up some really interesting and insightful debates and discussions to be part of.
And finally, although LinkedIn Stories have been quietly retired, LinkedIn Live is becoming more popular and we have tapped into some really interesting debates recently including this one on how design can help tackle climate change.
Employee engagement and how to encourage it
As a platform, LinkedIn thrives on peer to peer engagement. However, one of the biggest hurdles for achieving this is getting employees to engage with your company profile.
Whilst there is no magic bullet, encouraging them to get involved in the content you create may help improve that engagement. If each employee wrote one or two short articles per year, think of the content options you could have. It might be a case study of a project they worked on which used a particular technique or gave them a particular challenge but it all adds value to someone looking for a trusted partner to work with.
There is a function after you have posted on a company page to ‘Notify employees’. If you have successfully encouraged everyone to add your company to their profile, they will be told when you post and it might help to promote the post and remind them to interact.
And a simple notification in your team communications e.g. weekly round-ups, Slack chats etc may be enough to prompt a comment or two.
Hopefully, the above gives you some thoughts and ideas on where to start when planning your content. However, if you’d like some help putting these plans together, then do get in touch with the team and we’re always happy to help.
