Strong employee buy-in is big for keeping social media campaigns on track.

A. Stucki Company, a leading supplier of parts and services for the rail industry, delivered substantial growth on LinkedIn with a campaign to increase engagement on the platform.

Created with the support of Pecchia Communications, the campaign was launched in July 2023. At the time, Stucki had about 2,000 followers, and 132 employees had personal LinkedIn accounts.

Today, Stucki has about 9,000 followers, and more than 350 employees have personal accounts. 

So what changed?

“We hadn’t been consistently active, so we established an initial goal of posting at least once a week,” said Anne Kocher, Stucki’s director of marketing.

“We solicited input from company leaders and employees and soon had enough ideas to post two or more times per week.”

Topics included company news and announcements and employee milestones and achievements. Many posts provided links to longer articles published in the company’s online newsroom.

“That enabled us to share shorter summaries on LinkedIn and had the added benefit of increasing traffic to our website,” said Anne.

Impact of employees on social media visibility   

Encouraging employees to create personal LinkedIn accounts contributed to Stucki’s rapid growth on the platform.

“We asked team members to share our posts, which exposed the information to even more LinkedIn members, which also helped expand our follower numbers,” said Anne.

LinkedIn experienced a resurgence in the late 2010s and early 2020s when it transformed from a job platform to a space for thought leadership, community building and engaging content.

The platform now has about 250 million users in the United States and more than 1 billion worldwide.

Tom Delamater, senior consultant with Pecchia Communications, worked on the campaign with Anne and Stucki’s marketing team.

“LinkedIn users are looking for business leads, supplier information and industry updates, which has obvious benefits for any B2B marketing effort,” Delamater said.

“The fact that a basic membership is free to use makes it even more of a go-to marketing tool.”

It also delivers results. Research shows that audiences exposed to brand messages on LinkedIn are six times more likely to make a buying decision in favor of that brand.

Advantages of being intentional on LinkedIn

There are several other benefits companies can experience from a consistent LinkedIn program, including: 

• Engaging customers and employees where they’re already spending time. The average LinkedIn user spends between seven and eight minutes on the site per visit. If they follow your account or are connected to someone who does, odds are they’ll see your posts.
• Expanding awareness of products and services. Customers and prospects who follow your account will be among the first to know when you share news that could benefit them.
• Providing thought leadership and enhancing the company’s reputation. Regular posting adds credibility, especially when company leaders share things like blog posts, white papers and other articles that shed light on your industry.
• Providing recognition to team members, customers and suppliers. Solutions strengthen business relationships. Sharing news about employee accomplishments or collaborations with customers and vendors creates goodwill and solidifies trust.

It can take time to see results on social media – sometimes, as much as 18 months to two years – but the results of a sustained communications plan on LinkedIn can pay big dividends for your business.