Social Signals by Social Hills: LinkedIn Collaborative Posts for Brand Advocacy

Collaboration posts have mostly been associated with influencer marketing. A brand works with a creator, both names appear on the post, and the content reaches both audiences.

LinkedIn's new Collaborative Posts take that mechanic into a very different environment. On LinkedIn, the most valuable audiences around a business often belong to its executives, employees, experts, customers, partners and industry networks. That makes collaboration much more interesting than simply putting two names on a piece of content.

Think about how most businesses currently distribute a single story. The company publishes an announcement, and an executive posts their own version. A partner shares it, employees repost it and speakers are tagged. The same moment ends up fragmented across multiple posts and audiences.

Collaborative Posts create another option: the people and organisations involved in a story can share the same piece of content. This is where I think the feature moves beyond influencer marketing and into advocacy.

Most businesses already have strong networks in and around them. Executives have professional audiences, and employees have expertise. Customers bring credibility, while partners have communities of their own. Event speakers and industry experts already hold authority in the conversations a brand wants to join.

A research report could be published with the experts who contributed to it. An event organiser could collaborate with a keynote speaker on an idea from the event. Two organisations could launch a partnership together, or a company could share an announcement with the executive responsible for it. A customer and a business could even tell the story of a project from both sides.

Each of these brings something beyond extra reach: shared credibility.

There is also a strong thought leadership opportunity here. Thought leadership often comes from more than one person. A company may hold the market view and a CEO the leadership perspective. A technical expert may understand the detail, while a customer may see the issue from another angle. Collaborative Posts give these perspectives a way to sit together when a story genuinely belongs to more than one person or organisation.

The strongest collaborations will be the ones where the connection between the people, organisations and story is clear. Rather than asking who you can add to increase reach, ask who genuinely owns part of the story. That question separates collaboration as advocacy from collaboration as a distribution tactic.

For businesses, this is another reason to look beyond the company Page and map the wider social ecosystem around it. Who are your recognised experts? Which executives have established networks, and which employees are active on LinkedIn? Who are your strongest customers and partners? Who contributes to your research or speaks at your events? Who already has credibility in the conversations your business wants to be part of?

The feature gives businesses a new way to connect those existing relationships. The bigger opportunity lies in knowing who should be connected, when and why.

On LinkedIn, collaborative posts can be much more than an influencer marketing play. They can become another way to amplify the advocacy, expertise and thought leadership already sitting in and around a business.

Want to understand how the people, expertise and networks around your business could strengthen your LinkedIn strategy?

By Christina Vetta
Director, Social Hills | Board Member, Surry Hills Business Precinct
Founder/Editor, SurryHills.Sydney Instagram

Social Hills helps brands identify and activate the expertise, audiences and brand advocacy already in and around their business as part of a broader social strategy.