Step-by-step guide to using LinkedIn for public affairs

In last week’s blog, I highlighted why LinkedIn should be taken seriously as part of the strategy for public affairs and communications professionals. Here’s how you do it. 

Define your strategy: who, where, what and how 

Before diving in, it's crucial to determine the key aspects of your LinkedIn strategy. 

• Who - Decide who will manage the LinkedIn presence. LinkedIn engagement can be channelled by individual public affairs professionals, CEOs or through an organisation’s official account. If individuals use their accounts to support their employer's public affairs goals, it adds a personal touch but can blur the line between their personal and professional branding if not done properly. CEOs using their profiles can be powerful, especially if they have strong policy knowledge or political acumen. However, it’s generally advisable to complement, not replace, the official organisation account. 

• Where - Choose whether the organisation’s official account will be the main channel or if separate accounts for specific functions like lobbying will be used. An official account offers a holistic view of the organisation, which may enhance credibility but can lead to content overload. 

• What - Clearly defining what you want to achieve will guide the content you share. Are you looking to highlight industry expertise, showcase services, or focus on policy advocacy? A consultancy may want to highlight its niche industry expertise to clients while a trade body might want to showcase the breadth of business support services it provides.  

• How – Devise a strategy  

Using LinkedIn’s features for public affairs

Utilise LinkedIn features to advance your public affairs goals of relationship building, gathering insights, and influencing key stakeholders.          

Build and nurture relationships - LinkedIn is an excellent tool for developing relationships, nurturing them and harnessing them especially in the long term.  

• Stakeholder mapping - Use LinkedIn’s search function to identify key stakeholders, such as policymakers, CEOs, and industry experts. This would enable you to connect with your key targets and broaden your reach within an organisation (or where necessary help you to find the roles and names of people whom you can direct correspondence). It can be helpful not only in reaching the decision makers you are ultimately after such as MPs but the gatekeepers such as parliamentary assistants.  

• You can search for specific people or organisations or find them indirectly through searches. To find the employees of an organisation, search for the company, view the page and click on its people tab which will show you, its employees.  

• You can also connect with people or pages who follow or are associated with profiles or organisations you have viewed as well as those who are in related fields. These could become like-minded networks or stakeholders that could be collaborated with.  

• Leverage mutual connections. Utilise LinkedIn’s display of mutual connections, school alumni and shared employment history with an organisation to request introductions or to better understand your target audience’s influences. 

• LinkedIn’s (paid) Sales Navigator feature allows you to find people and their contact details and to email them.  

• Connection requests: After identifying key individuals or pages, you can send connection requests or follow. It is advisable to follow up with a message to express pleasure in connecting and mention mutual interests. Avoid pitching immediately; instead, focus on building rapport and engagement with their posts.  

Gather insights and evidence 

LinkedIn is a valuable resource for gathering evidence and gauging opinions. This can strengthen your arguments and support your positions with real data. 

• Posts: Monitor reaction to posts through likes, comments, reactions etc, as well as the analytics of engagement with posts. The analytics tool can be found underneath your posts.  

• Polls: Use LinkedIn’s poll feature to get quick insights on specific issues and stakeholder sentiments. The ability to see who voted and how can be especially helpful for getting a breakdown.  

• Pro: You can reach a wider base beyond your immediate client or stakeholder list 

• Con: Size and demographic features of sample will affect results.

• To create a poll, access the post button and select poll from the options.  

Influence and inform 

Use LinkedIn to build a steady stream of content that informs and influences your network. You can use it as a seemingly passive but effective complement to letters and emails and get around the possibility of correspondence competing with others for attention, being forgotten if not immediately relevant or irritating recipients due to their regularity.  

• Written text – Enhance these posts with graphics, storytelling, and clear calls to action. Be mindful of reputation and avoid clickbait, humour and references which might be considered offensive.  

• Carousels – Use these slide-share documents to create visually appealing and professional posts that share key information in a digestible format, stand out in the feed and allows users to skim through without leaving LinkedIn. Use them for quick updates eg five government announcements that were made this week or to draw attention to policy recommendations eg three policies the government can implement at the next budget.

  Tips  

• Tools like Canva or Photoshop can help design these 

• It is advisable to upload them as PDFs to LinkedIn.  

• Start with an eye-grabbing image or first sentence. 

• Add a title. 

• Include a call to action such as like or share.  

• Documents – Share in-depth information such as policy papers, reports, or white papers directly. Use the post button and select documents to upload.

  Note: Sensitive documents such as submissions for select committee inquiries which are posted before the committee finishes the inquiry lose their privileged status.  

• Media - Share photos from events, meetings, or other organisational activities. This visual content helps position your organisation as a leader in the industry and showcase its work.  

  Note: Be mindful of confidentiality and security issues when sharing updates.  

• Utilise LinkedIn’s creator tools, such as newsletters, to distribute content directly to your network and maintain an accessible repository of information. LinkedIn Live also offers the ability bring people together virtually and to utilise the power that lies in that.   

Plan and schedule content  

• Create a content calendar and use LinkedIn’s scheduling feature to stay organised and plan your content in advance. Use it to balance proactive and reactive posts, utilise different post formats and ensure regular updates while anticipating key events and leaving room for unexpected issues.    

• Be mindful and not tone-deaf: review scheduled post in the light of unexpected occurrences

• You can access the schedule feature and scheduled posts (clock icon) at the top right hand when you click the post button. The edit button is reportedly being rolled out.  

• Ahead of key calendar events such as a budget, a planned posting schedule could be amended for focus and could look like: 

• a carousel highlighting key asks,  

• a reflective written post talking about what has changed or not  

• a document upload highlighting policy submissions  

• a draft reactionary post in response to the budget itself.  

Measure, tweak and communicate  

To ensure your LinkedIn strategy is effective, regularly measure and tweak your approach. 

• Analytics: Use LinkedIn’s analytics to track engagement with your content.  

• Adjusting content: Consider doubling down on similar content to well performing posts. Reassess your approach for less performing ones.  

• Reporting results: Communicate the results of your LinkedIn activities to internal stakeholders. Use this data to justify your strategy and make informed adjustments.

  

  
  Esenam Agubretu is parliamentary and regulatory affairs manager at London Chamber of Commerce.