Building a Company-Wide LinkedIn Program: Insights from Michel Lieben 🧠

In a recent LinkedIn post, Michel Lieben 🧠, founder of ColdIQ, outlines a comprehensive strategy for transforming a company’s workforce into active LinkedIn ambassadors, detailing the significant business results achieved through such an initiative. Lieben 🧠 emphasizes that while many smart brands encourage their CEOs to post, and some extend this to their executive teams, very few have successfully implemented a company-wide LinkedIn program. He shares ColdIQ’s experience, where 24 team members published 581 times over 85 days, generating over 43,000 reactions, 28,000 comments, and adding more than 34,000 followers. This collective effort directly resulted in signing over 27 new clients and adding approximately $153,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

The Foundation: Leadership Buy-In and Internal Proof

Lieben 🧠 highlights that successful company-wide LinkedIn programs must originate from the top. He points to his own and his colleague Alex’s prolific posting records as examples of leadership walking the talk. According to Lieben 🧠, consistency from leadership is key to building conviction within the team.

“It needs to start at the top… When we talk about consistency… We walk the talk.”

Furthermore, Lieben 🧠 stresses the importance of leadership demonstrating success internally before expecting the team to follow. He argues that leaders must act as coaches for their employees, providing the proof and guidance necessary for them to build confidence in their own LinkedIn efforts. This internal validation is crucial, especially since employees may not have the luxury of hiring external coaches.

Streamlining the Process for Team Engagement

A significant barrier to team participation, as identified by Lieben 🧠, is the perceived difficulty of content creation. He breaks down the components of a successful LinkedIn post – a strong hook, a proven topic, a good visual, and readable writing – and addresses how ColdIQ makes this process easier for its team. Lieben 🧠 encourages his team to repurpose his content ideas and provides designers to assist with visuals, removing common roadblocks.

“There’s a recipe for “successful” LinkedIn posts: → Strong hook → Proven topic → Nice visual → Breathable writing … But, brainstorming hooks & finding topics can be hit-or-miss. → I encourage my team to re-use mines.”

Investment in Training and Development

Lieben 🧠 details the necessary investment in both unscalable 1:1 training and scalable team-wide sessions. The former involves personalized content planning, idea brainstorming, and post refinement, while the latter focuses on sharing best practices and bringing in external influencers. He provides a compelling example of Ivan Falco, who saw his engagement soar from struggling to get 40 likes to consistently achieving over 150 likes after the first team session, subsequently growing his following from 4,000 to over 18,000.

Motivation, Incentives, and Network Effects

The post also touches on the importance of fostering a genuine desire for growth within the team. Lieben 🧠 explains that ColdIQ actively asks applicants about their interest in brand building, noting that many are attracted to the company precisely because they found it through LinkedIn. He shares the story of Kenny, who began publishing on his second day and is projected to grow from under 1,000 followers to 10,000 by the end of the year.

To further motivate the team, ColdIQ implemented a scoring system based on engagement and follower growth, offering substantial monetary rewards. As Lieben 🧠 jokingly notes:

“Millie came up with a scoring system based on engagement & follower growth. With the opportunity to gain: 🥇 $5,000 🥈 $2,500 🥉 $1,500 4️⃣ $1,000 … & $500 for every person publishing 20+ times. My only beef with the scoring is that it places me second 😭”

Ultimately, Lieben 🧠 concludes that the process becomes easier and more convincing as more team members achieve success. The presence of eight team members with over 10,000 followers creates a powerful network effect, inspiring others and building collective conviction. He believes this trend will continue and is personally offering workshops to help teams replicate this success.