Larissa Padden 00:06

Hello and welcome to Cogcast, Cognito’s podcast, where we talk to journalists and media pros on everything that’s happening in the world of media and PR. I’m Larissa Padden, your host and a former journalist turned PR professional.

 

Today we have a very special episode featuring my colleague Hannah Porritt, Vice President on our Digital Team, and Leslie White, Global Head of Digital Channel Performance and Strategy at Aon.

 

Hannah, welcome.

 

Hannah Porritt 00:34

Thank you.

 

Larissa Padden 00:35

Now, I don’t want to give the episode away, but can you tell us a little bit about what we can expect to hear?

 

Hannah Porritt 00:40

Yeah. So I chatted to Leslie on all things LinkedIn—from company page strategy to how to encourage team members to post on LinkedIn. Leslie is also an expert on marketing measurement, so we touched on that area as well. Personally, I love nerding out on these topics, so I think it’s a great discussion, but I’m of course a little biased.

 

Larissa Padden 00:59

Great. Well, we know that LinkedIn has become such an important tool for companies. I know on the PR side, we’ve seen it evolve into an actual news source, and we have some clients that value mentions on LinkedIn just as much as they value mentions in articles. So what are some of the ways that your clients are using LinkedIn today and to what end?

 

Hannah Porritt 01:18

Yes, so corporate page visibility has sharply declined in recent years. Current stats put company page posts at about 1% of an average LinkedIn feed. So a lot of companies are still running social media the same way they’ve done for years, but for many, staying visible on LinkedIn and reaching new audiences has meant doing something different.

 

We’ve had countless conversations with clients about ramping up employee advocacy and how to align strategic paid amplification. Basically, what used to be kind of a nice-to-have is now table stakes for visibility on LinkedIn. And that doesn’t mean ignoring your company page completely, but rethinking its role. So more like a shop window or a website versus a content distribution channel.

 

Larissa Padden 01:59

Interesting. So I want to get to the episode and leave this conversation to the experts, but if someone were just starting out on their LinkedIn journey, whether it’s to build up their profile themselves or showcase their company thought leadership expertise, what are some basics that you would advise to get them started?

 

Hannah Porritt 02:17

Yeah. So Leslie talks about this in the episode, but definitely developing a good policy is a great place to start. Outlining what you can and can’t say gives people confidence to start publishing when they haven’t really done this much before. And then my advice would be to find a few topics you’re interested in and have an opinion on it already, and then start by participating in the comments. And then once you’re comfortable there, you’re good to go.

 

Larissa Padden 02:37

Great. All right. Well, thank you, Hannah, for bringing us this episode, and I’m going to let you take it away.

 

Hannah Porritt 02:42

Hi, Leslie. Thanks so much for joining us today.

 

Leslie White 02:44

Hi, Hannah. Great to be here.

 

Hannah Porritt 02:46

So I wanted to start with asking a little bit about your background. What do you do today? And so how did you get there?

 

Leslie White 02:53

Sure. And first, I want to thank you for having me on. I feel like it’s going to be like one of our LinkedIn conversations that we like to have. So happy to be here.

 

Hannah Porritt 03:02

Definitely.

 

Leslie White 03:03

So today I work at Aon. Aon is a global professional services firm that provides risk capital and human capital solutions. And we help our clients be better informed, better advised, and make better decisions to protect and grow their business. So I love that, by the way, the framing of Aon, because it’s really what I love to do in terms of digital marketing.

 

So at Aon, I am Head of Digital Channel Performance and Strategy. And so what that really means, because I know that might not be clear from the title, is I work with teams within Aon, our marketers and our communicators, to really help them do better digital marketing. That’s the most succinct way I can put it.

 

So I lead a global team. We are specifically focused on paid search, paid social, display, organic social strategy. And we operate like an internal consultancy. So we partner with these teams to help drive performance. We provide governance. And we help upskill and train and educate our colleagues on specific best practices and what works well, what doesn’t. And we sit within the digital marketing center of excellence at Aon.

 

So if I take it back now, and I’m not going to go too far back, but before I got to Aon, I’ve had pretty much a career always in digital marketing, but before digital marketing was a thing. So I’m going to continue to age myself. So let’s just leave that there. When I was a kid, I loved AOL. And we were like one of the first, you know, households to have AOL. So I was addicted to the internet. I’m just going to say it. And then as I got older, I started seeing the connection between the internet and business and marketing.

 

So when I was in college, when people were in their partying phase, I was in my dorm room being a nerd. I was reverse engineering websites. I was learning how to do affiliate marketing, using Google AdWords. And so that really gave me a passion for what is now digital marketing. So from there, I moved on to my first actual role after college. And that was more of a generalist marketing role. We did fax broadcasts. So that’s how long ago it was. But also we did email marketing. We did CRM.

 

And from there, I moved through nonprofits for the most part until my last firm, Alex Partners, which is a consulting firm where I had the opportunity where I started as an individual contributor, being the only person doing digital marketing for the firm. But I really grew up in that firm and really got a lot of my digital marketing and leadership chops because I moved across that time span to become then a digital marketing director, leading digital marketing for the firm.

 

So after about seven years there, I wanted to change. I did learn what I love the most about digital marketing. And so I joined Aon because I realized it was advising and enabling others to succeed in digital marketing. So that’s really how this all came about and why I’m at Aon today and what I do today.

 

Hannah Porritt 06:16

That’s amazing. I love what you said about being a nerd. I feel like that really resonates, especially in digital marketing where channels are changing all of the time and new things are coming up and you have to have this kind of curiosity to learn new things in order to keep up with all the changes all the time.

 

Leslie White 06:32

Absolutely. Yep.

 

Hannah Porritt 06:33

And I think that kind of leads us nicely into the LinkedIn discussion. As you said, that’s something that we both can get kind of nerdy about. So reports are now saying that company LinkedIn posts make up just 1% of the average LinkedIn feed. So I’m interested in how this shift has affected your approach to company LinkedIn strategy at Aon and what that looks like for you and your team.

 

Leslie White 06:55

Yeah, sure. So this stat doesn’t surprise me. LinkedIn has been shifting this way towards human first content for years now. I know it might be new to some folks and very startling, but it’s really the wave of how most social media channels are going and in certain industries. So for example, my industry and professional services, there’s often—how do I put it—an over-reliance on the company page.

 

And I fully understand. It’s not that it’s wrong. It’s just some of this is going to require a mindset shift. And it’s really about understanding that yes, while the company page does hold credibility and oftentimes it has probably the larger audience fully understand that that is all understandable. But with networks like LinkedIn saying, “Hey, we want to focus on the individual and human-first content and not just have logos being what you see in your feed all day,” that really does require taking a step back.

 

And if you think about also—I know you’ve seen this—the Richard van der Blom’s Algorithm Insights Report but also think about Edelman’s Trust Barometer. These types of reports continue to tell us and remind us that people trust and engage with people more than brands. So at Aon, we are definitely in this moment of evolution. We still invest in the company page. Absolutely. And we still think about how we can differentiate across our showcase pages, but we’re now putting increasing focus on enabling our colleagues to show up more on LinkedIn. So they share and they amplify the brand from their own voices.

 

Hannah Porritt 08:41

Yeah. There’s a couple of things that you said that I think are really interesting, I’d love to dive into. Where do you think that over-reliance on company pages has come from? Or what is it that people think is going to happen if they post on a company page?

 

Leslie White 08:55

Yeah, that’s a really great question. So if I were to put myself in the shoes of people who think this way, I would think that they feel like because of the company page, everyone’s going to see it. But we know that not to necessarily be true. We do know, like you just said, that’s that 1%, which it is getting smaller and smaller each year. But it doesn’t mean that if you put something on the company page that everyone will see it.

 

I do think there are some folks who are being actually tactical when they do that, though. They do think of, ‘Hey, if we put it on the page and then we just get people to go to the page and share it in terms of colleagues and employees sharing, that’s another way to leverage your page.’

 

So I think it’s a multiple things going on here. It is the thought process of thinking that, ‘Hey, if it’s on the company page, people must see it,’ right? And it’s also, ‘Well, let’s just use this as a hub so that we can get other people to share and at least we can just have content being shared from that page.’

 

I think that’s part of it. And we’ll probably talk about this more, there are just people who don’t understand how LinkedIn works or the value of LinkedIn. So they rely on at least the brand page in that way, not knowing that there’s so much more that we could be doing.

 

Hannah Porritt 10:12

Yeah. And you also mentioned showcase pages. For any listeners who don’t know what a showcase page is, can you just explain a little bit how that works and how it sort of integrates with the main page?

 

Leslie White 08:55

So you have your LinkedIn company page. That’s your main page. That is typically your brand marquee page. But LinkedIn does allow you to have what they call showcase pages, which are essentially extensions of your brand.

 

So at Aon, the way that we use showcase pages is that for our risk capital and our human capital solutions, we have our underlying offering and solution pages. So we make those showcase pages because they’re very specific and they have very specific audiences. So we want to be able to tell our marketing story on those pages and not necessarily have to put all of it on our main global page where that page is a little bit more corporate comms focused. So it allows us to achieve different things and it allows us to reach more specific audiences that way.

 

And then when you go to your main LinkedIn company page, you’re going to see related pages—I forget the terminology, but you’ll see the related pages to that main page. So it definitely keeps it as a bit of a LinkedIn ecosystem.

 

Hannah Porritt 11:32

Yeah, that’s interesting. And I think it kind of goes back to that idea of audience-first, as opposed to sort of, well, we’re the company and what we want to say and tailoring the message and the sort of channel almost based on who it is that’s going to be engaging with the content.

 

Leslie White 11:47

Exactly.

 

Hannah Porritt 11:48

So what metrics do you track then? I know that you’re particularly passionate about measurement and tracking and things like that. And that’s something that when you’re talking back to your internal stakeholders and team members, I’m sure that they’re asking you questions about what’s working and how do we know? So how do you kind of tell that story and has that shifted as well?

 

Leslie White 12:09

So anyone who has worked with me in the last 10 years, they’re going to know the question that I’m about to ask. What is your objective? It all starts with what is your objective? What are your objectives? What’s the goal? What does success look like to you?

 

Because to be honest, I don’t know unless we know what we’re trying to achieve here. So once we define that, then we can go and look at what are the relevant metrics to look at? Because across the board, it’s not going to always be the same metrics. So let’s say we just want engagement. Let’s just say that, “Hey, we’re creating this content. We want on-channel engagement. We just want to know if people are interested in it.” Right. Fair enough.

 

For me, I’m not focused on absolute numbers like total likes or impressions or reactions because context matters. So I focus on contextual metrics for something like engagement. So engagement rate, click-through rate, that’s how I understand whether or not it’s a meaningful interaction. Because you can get 50 likes on a post that has a million impressions or you can get 50 likes on a post that has 100 impressions. Which one performed better? So I always try to remind people if they’re reporting with just absolute metrics, that doesn’t tell the full story.

 

So in terms of, let’s say you want to make sure people are going to the website, click-through rate is going to be the most important. But sometimes you need to look at two different channels as well. So if you’re driving people to the website, that means you need to also be looking at Google Analytics. So can you tell how much traffic you have received from this content? So you can look at your on-channel and understand your click-through rates. And yes, you still look at your clicks. But when you get to your GA4 or your Adobe Analytics, do you know how much traffic has been driven to the page?

 

So sometimes it’s just on-channel, just LinkedIn metrics. Sometimes, depending on your goal, you’re going to have to look at different channels. So in terms of reach, though, because LinkedIn is prioritizing people over pages now, you just have to also start thinking about how do we get employees to also start sharing and looking at those metrics in totality. So it becomes less of just your metrics and your performance on the company page. But what is the full story? And how are all the channels contributing to that?

 

Hannah Porritt 14:34

Yeah. So I think let’s shift into talking about people and how we help them to do more of what you’re talking about, share on LinkedIn. How have you seen that work successfully? Have you got any success stories or case studies from the companies that you’ve worked for where you’ve been able to activate and empower employees to make the most of sharing more on LinkedIn?

 

Leslie White 14:57

Yeah, definitely. So at my last company, that was mostly my first foray into really helping individuals, whether it’s leaders, managing directors, or people at all levels in the firm, start to post more on social media. And then we had an internal comms program that allowed us to have a tool that had external amplification, which was great. So then we were able to create an employee advocacy program from there.

 

So it really does start with education. It really starts with making sure people understand the why and the how, giving them resources, training, live sessions, how-to guides, real examples. And I think this one is also a little bit underutilized, making sure you have a clear and encouraging social media policy.

 

When I came to Aon, and one of the first things I was asked to do was update our policy. And I realized, wow, I think we have an opportunity here to make this a bit more colleague-friendly. I think sometimes social media policies can be very much so focused on policy and what you can’t do, and not necessarily giving permission and guidance to use social media to help build their brand and help amplify the brand.

 

So I would say those are some things. And then the next thing is as much as possible, if you can have a tool or even something makeshift that you build internally, something proprietary. It could be spreadsheets. It could be just different mechanisms. How do you enable your colleagues, your employees to share? How do you potentially help create more curated content for them to find and share? And how do you keep them energized and involved?

 

So a lot of those different things have really helped. I do think, like I said, most people just want to know that it’s okay and how to do it. So once you have that clear guidance and that training, it starts to come together.

 

Hannah Porritt 17:05

Yeah, I think that definitely resonates with a lot of the things that I’ve heard and seen as well, where people feel nervous about posting. Like, is my company going to get mad at me? Is there things I shouldn’t say? So it sounds like the policy and the kind of guidelines in place to help people know what is okay and what’s not, and that this is something that is encouraged, kind of helps overcome that challenge.

 

And then I think you’re definitely right with the what do I say? Like, once I’ve kind of got to the idea that saying something is fine, then sometimes I think people can get a little bit stressed or nervous that they might not have anything interesting to say. So thinking about how you help people to do that is also really interesting.

 

What are the kind of biggest challenges that you found when trying to get employees active? I guess trying to overcome a little bit of that inertia of maybe not really knowing what to say and how to do it?

 

Leslie White 17:58

Yeah. Well, if I were to speak to the biggest challenge overall, I think it’s time. Time is the biggest hurdle for everyone. People are very busy and posting feels like extra work, especially if it’s not something that they typically do. It’s a new muscle that they have to start to build and flex and maintain.

 

So that is one thing to overcome, and that’s why it’s really important for companies to, like I said, create these mechanisms, these programs that helps enable their employees to get this more into the rhythm of their day-to-day or even their week-to-week, depending on their roles.

 

And because time is a hurdle, and then second, you mentioned it, confidence, they worry about what to say and if they’re saying the wrong thing or whether their posts will matter or if someone will care. It’s also important that we create resources that help people understand, well, what can you say?

 

Sometimes it’s as simple as, ‘I read this article, and I think X, Y, Z. What are your thoughts?’ Something as simple as that. We have to make sure that we are helping to build that confidence in our employees, especially when they’re SMEs. If you’re an SME, you have a lot to say. You’re an expert. It’s just, how do you translate that to LinkedIn?

 

We have to also consider, how do we get people who don’t feel like they’re SMEs? They are maybe working in a department where it’s not as close to the business or the client-facing part. We all play our part. We all contribute in certain ways. Maybe there’s other ways that they can share content. Maybe it’s not so solution-specific. Maybe some of the more brand-focused content. Maybe it’s the announcements. We all have something to say.

 

So helping to develop that confidence, again, that training, that upskilling, and I would also say finding ways to incentivize and reward for this behavior. It really does help, and it makes people feel excited and happy about what they’re doing. They’re really making a difference, and they’re learning a new skill set.

 

Hannah Porritt 20:05

Yes. I was actually going to follow up on that because you said sometimes this feels like extra work, another thing that’s on people’s checklist, another duty that they just have to do. I wonder if there’s been anything that’s been particularly effective in changing that mindset from ‘Ugh, this is something that my social media team want me to do’ to something that people actually enjoy and look forward to doing.

 

Leslie White 20:27

Yeah. I mean, it’s a hard one, and I joke about this a lot. I’ve been literally asking and advising and begging people to post on LinkedIn in all different companies, whether it’s within a company, whether I’m consulting for someone to post on social and be active. And oftentimes, I’m not even active because I don’t have time.

 

So no one is immune to this. So that’s, first of all, again, making that connection that, “Hey, we understand. I can’t post all the time either, and I understand how valuable it is. I fully understand that you can’t do this all the time. How do we make it easier for you?”

 

So it is really building in those mechanisms again. It’s also thinking about how do we get metrics in front of people? A lot of firms, especially if you work in a financial services firm or a professional services firm, they’re data-driven. What I’ve really seen get people excited and really keep them active is, of course, a leaderboard.

 

So we do use an employee advocacy tool. We use Hootsuite Amplify. Part of it has been making sure that we go beyond the tool. I’ve started to build a comms program, an onboarding program that is activated through a marketing automation tool. We send out once a month a very specific leaderboard email that people really seem to love and react to. And you get to see the top shares. You get to see the top potential reach.

 

And those are motivators. We have people who are seriously sharing. They’re not playing games about it. They want to see their name on that email every month. And sometimes, my colleagues and I, when we look at that, we’re like, “How do you even have the time to share all that?” So it really is encouraging meeting people where they are. Also, how do you find ways for them to see the value or just get excited about it?

 

Hannah Porritt 22:22

Yeah, definitely. Is there a role that leadership play both in supporting a rollout of a program like this and then also as the experts and the people who have the voice on LinkedIn as well? How do you see that playing out?

 

Leslie White 22:36

Absolutely. Leadership is critical. So when we started this program, we only started this program in spring of 2023 at Aon. And it really was just a test. It was just me saying to my supervisor at the time, “Hey, I think this would be a good idea for us to test this out.” We were using LinkedIn, my company, and we did want something that was a little bit more data-driven and something that we could control a little bit more. So I wanted to test that out.

 

It was a very, very small pilot, but my supervisor was on board. I presented it to our executive Marcom committee, and everyone was on board. I got the investment. So great. That was spring 2023. We’ve moved a long, long way. And it’s been very critical to have leadership buy-in.

 

So we do have sponsors, especially for regions because my role is global, but then, of course, we have regions within the firm. We want our regional leaders to be bought into this. We want them to be talking about it. We want them to be selling this program like how I sell the program.

 

And so it takes getting those leaders up to speed, getting them on the tool itself, getting them involved, getting them using the tool. If you’re not using a tool, it requires them just posting. So people want to follow what they see. When leaders model the behavior—posting, sharing, being visible, others feel like they can do it too. Like, “Okay, all right.”

 

So I’ve had some solution-line-specific leaders that I gave a 15-minute demo of the platform and they just got up and running. I was able to point to them, like, “Hey, look, he’s doing it, and he’s doing it himself, and he’s super senior, and he’s very busy.” So it just means, like, “Hey, look, you can do it too.”

 

So beyond just the buy-in to make sure that the program is running and is in a mainstay, also that behavior from leadership is quite important, and the last thing I would just say, it is important for your employees to hear leaders say that this is a priority, to hear them say that it matters. That also changes mindsets and behavior.

 

Hannah Porritt 24:48

Definitely. I think you make a crucial point there about people following what they see. And that again is something that I’ve really seen work well, is once you get a few people on board, and then you almost get a snowball effect. And the people who are early adopters are starting to see the benefits of this. They’re talking about it, they’re excited about new connections they’re making, and great responses they’ve had on their posts. And then you often do get other people, whether that’s leaders or more junior staff, saying, “Oh, I want some of that too.” And I think that is, yeah, such a powerful way to increase adoption of a program like this.

 

So you mentioned in what you just said about you started out with a small pilot, kind of a test program. How long did it take to see results?

 

Leslie White 25:28

Great question. I would say a few months. I’ll be very honest, I had a bit of like a failure-to-launch type mindset, because I had this idea and I think it made sense, but then I was like, “Oh, wait, this is actually happening.” And I was a little bit afraid to move it beyond the first set of maybe 35 people. And so it did give me time to really look at what was working, what wasn’t, how much content did we need, what were people sharing.

 

But the people who were involved, and I will say this, as long as the content is flowing, you will have activity. Anytime that you start to get shortened content, people aged and had enough of the right content to share, absolutely were making an impact, and they were sharing, or we were seeing—which a metric that I love, of course, is when these tools show you what is, essentially, your potential ad value spent. Like, so if you were to run ads, how much would you have spent to get this type of reach, which is always a nice metric to show.

 

So I really felt like that was a great metric, and then even with 35 people seeing the amount of potential reach that we had, it was very satisfying and helpful to show so that we can continue to grow the program.

 

Hannah Porritt 26:46

Let’s kind of shift focus a little bit again. We’ve talked about company pages, we’ve talked about employees posting on LinkedIn. I also want to just touch briefly on measurement and attribution as a whole. You share a lot about these topics on LinkedIn, so I know it’s something that you’re particularly passionate about, and you’ve already touched on, starting with that why and what is the objective. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit more about why it’s so important to get this right.

 

Leslie White 27:11

So I’ve been focusing a lot on that lately, really because of what I see and hear and what I’ve been seeing and hearing pretty much most of my career. And I think in 2025, we’re at such a critical moment in terms of digital marketing and digital channels, where we really have the ability to understand how our marketing activities are driving business or driving our goals. So when we don’t have the right tools, the right infrastructure, the right practices in place, we’re just doing ourselves a disservice.

 

So one of the things that I often see and I start with is UTMs. Every company I’ve worked for or worked with, UTMs seem to be a bit of an enigma. And at the end of the day, they’re one of the most straightforward ways to start seeing data about how your efforts are driving activity on your website, are driving conversions, and how your activities are influencing your pipeline and actually leads. Or if you’re e-commerce, literally you can see how they’re driving purchases on your website.

 

So it’s something that’s foundational. And if you want to know what’s working, it’s definitely a first start. So I’ve been talking about that just to help try and remind people how important it is, if they don’t realize how important it is, and how they can make it a part of their natural way of doing their activities.

 

Referral traffic, for example, I’ve heard people say, “Well, why do I need to put UTMs on a LinkedIn post?” Because it will come up as referral traffic. And actually, sometimes it could be misattributed to direct. I’ve seen that happen too. And UTMs just give you precision. It also helps you isolate the actual activities that you are doing yourself as a brand, as a company, as a marketing team, and understand which of your campaigns are working and which ones are not, which ones are influencing and which ones are not.

 

So that’s one of the examples of why UTMs are important. They’re a good start. Now, attribution can get tricky. It is not perfect. But it really is how you start to connect your marketing to actual results. And I’ve trained teams. I’ve built systems. I’ve piloted tools when it comes to UTMs. But something as simple as not using them consistently or even using the naming conventions in different ways will help you miss key insights. So I would say, attribution is important, but your infrastructure and how you do things is even more important.

 

Hannah Porritt 29:52

Yeah. It sounds like you can get really complex with things. But if the fundamentals and the basics aren’t in place, then you might as well not even start with all of that complicated stuff.

 

Leslie White 30:03

Exactly. Spot on.

 

Hannah Porritt 30:04

Well, I mean, at the beginning, Leslie, you started by saying you lead a team that does multiple different channels and all sorts of different things. And I feel like this discussion has been emblematic of that. I feel like we could do three or four different podcasts just diving into each one of these areas. But given time, we will probably have to wrap it up there. Just to finish, is there one trend or one thing you’re kind of seeing or excited about in the digital marketing space in the next few months ahead?

 

Leslie White 30:31

Great question. I’m going to say what everyone’s thinking. Yes, AI. Of course. I mean, you can’t get away from it. If we go back to talking about LinkedIn and you go on LinkedIn, everything’s about AI. But it’s important and it cannot be ignored.

 

And AI is a very broad category of technologies and methodologies and tools. But at the end of the day, we need to make sure that we’re looking at how we use AI to create content. How do we use AI to improve performance? How do we use AI to be more efficient at how we upskill and train our teams? But also remembering that the human element cannot be removed from it. So I would definitely say how do you use AI to support these efforts would be the trend that I’m most interested in.

 

Hannah Porritt 31:23

Yeah, amazing. We almost made it through a whole podcast without talking about AI.

 

Leslie White 31:30

I know. I just realized that.

 

Hannah Porritt 31:31

I think you’re totally right. We can’t ignore what’s happening and thinking about ways that we can use it to our advantage and to make us more efficient, whilst also retaining that creative spark is definitely top of mind for a lot of people.

 

Thanks so much, Leslie, for your insights. I’m sure there’s a lot in there that is going to be really useful and helpful to different companies at different stages of their LinkedIn journeys. We’ll have to have you back to talk in more depth about some of these topics. But thanks again.

 

Leslie White 31:56

Thank you so much, Hannah.