30 Oct Executives Using Their LinkedIn Presence to Promote Democracy

In light of the upcoming U.S. election on November 3rd, over 50 business leaders in the U.S. across several industries have signed a statement shared on Leadership Now Project’s website. The statement is a public call to action about the importance of democracy and voting, even during a period of crisis. In today’s article, we take a look at three different executives who participated in this project and examine how they have used their LinkedIn presence to discuss the upcoming election.

In analyzing their posts, we have observed that executives have talked about the election by sharing different content types with their followers in three primary ways: sharing a post from a business page, sharing a post from another LinkedIn user, and posting original content.

Georgie Benardete, Co-Founder and CEO of Align17

On LinkedIn, executives have a variety of options for the type of content they can share in their main feed. From linking to third-party articles to posting image galleries, sharing valuable content with followers is a critical way to improve engagement.

The first example comes from Align17’s co-founder and CEO, Georgie Benardete.

She shares a post from Leadership Now Project’s business page, which itself includes many features of high-quality posts, such as using correct tags and formatting the link on its own line to give it more visibility. Benardete makes her own comment which not only reiterates the purpose of the project but ends on a positive note and call to action.

In terms of her own post, there are ways to further optimize it, such as using additional hashtags to improve the post’s reach. The four hashtags used in the original post are not very effective in terms of increasing reach since many of them have very few follower counts.

When using hashtags, we recommend that executives do some quick research into which ones feature a lot of followers. #Business or #Leaders would have been more effective in reaching a larger audience as these hashtags have significantly more followers. This means there is a higher chance that someone following one of these hashtags will see the content on their feed.

John Pleasants, CEO of Brava

Instead of sharing from a business page, our next example shares content from another executive on LinkedIn. Take a look below at John Pleasant’s post which shares content from Leadership Now Project’s CEO, Daniella Ballou-Aares.

Brava’s original addition to the post features a short one-liner that speaks to the importance of having a fair election. While he does not reference the Leadership Now Project, the post he shares does offer more insight into the project. His post does not include hashtags, which executives should take advantage of to help other LinkedIn users find relevant content they are interested in.

Recently, Brava has used his LinkedIn presence to promote voting by sharing several posts about the topic, such as linking directly to the project or sharing content from other brands who are urging citizens to vote. This type of consistency, especially when discussing social issues, is seen as more authentic (to learn more about being an authentic ally on social media, take a look at our article, #BlackLivesMatter: The Importance of Action and Authenticity).

Daniel Lubetzky, Founder and Executive Chairman at KIND

Last but not least, original content is another example of a post type that can effectively build an executive’s LinkedIn presence. This post from Daniel Lubetzky is an example of how he has used his content to urge people to vote.

By including his own photo and the “I Voted” sticker, Lubetzky puts words into action and puts a more personal spin to his LinkedIn content. In our analysis of executive content on social media, we have found that original content—such as photos—tend to be among the highest-performing content in terms of engagement and views.

In Lubetzky’s post, he ends with a poll asking users how they will be voting this year. This type of question would be better suited as a LinkedIn Poll, but this feature currently does not allow for both images and a poll to be included in a single post. That being said, his poll is well-formatted and does help improve engaging by getting other users to participate in the comments.

While he has not shared any content related to Leadership Now Project, he has posted about another initiative called Civic Alliance which has been signed by many other business leaders. When executives are engaged in these types of activities, we recommend sharing it on social media as a way to promote it and increase the project’s reach.

Promoting Democracy Through Their LinkedIn Presence

While all of the executives in this article are part of the Leadership Now Project, all three promote democracy and the voting process differently, whether it is sharing content made by others, highlighting other executives, or creating an original post.

Social media is an effective way for executives and other business leaders to promote social good, whether it’s speaking out against racism, supporting other women, or promoting the democratic process.

Whatever an executive’s goal is on social media, our marketing experts can help. From developing an online strategy to full content creation and management, click the button below and learn more.

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