Opinion

Do you just have to work for a multinational to become a LinkedIn Power Profile?

Chris ReedIn this guest post, Chris Reed suggests that LinkedIn’s Power Profiles, recently launched for marketing and advertising in Hong Kong and Singapore, are designed to promote their association with executives who work for multinationals, and ignore SMEs and entrepreneurs who are more engaged with the platform.

Why aren’t more LinkedIn Power Profiles from small companies?

When I look at the recent list of LinkedIn Marketing Professional Power Profiles for both Singapore and Hong Kong all I see are people who naturally get views just because they work for a large multinational, even if they have terrible and incomplete profiles.

Surely LinkedIn should be rewarding people who punch above their weight and generate views through content engagement, blogging, social selling and clever employer branding not just because they are the CMO of a massive chain of hotels or bank or FMCG or technology platform?

And no I don’t have sour grapes because I wasn’t listed. I have been a LinkedIn Power Profile for five years running in Singapore, and despite the fact that they listed me last time round I actually had the most viewed profile of all other Power Profiles before the list was published.

Simon Kemp

Simon Kemp

Of all the Power Profiles in Singapore, 10 were for marketers at multinationals and only two for smaller marketing agencies, myself and Simon Kemp.

In Hong Kong, the number was even more skewed towards multi nationals with none being from smaller companies and 11 being from multi nationals.

I wouldn’t mind if the CMOs that made the list actually engaged on LinkedIn. But take a look at their profiles and you’ll see most of them are incomplete, most clearly do not know how to use LinkedIn (for example many have no background profile, no summary, no keywords, no blogging or are even connecting).

Most are not even sharing/liking/commenting any content at all about either their own company, their industry or anything else.

I’m not sure how many of these qualify for being a LinkedIn Power Profile when they’re clearly not even using LinkedIn.

Here are a few examples of what I mean.

Chris Leong, CMO of Schneider ElectricThe CMO of Mandarin Oriental [Michael Hobson]: No summary, no experience, no background picture, no sharing. It’s virtual ghost town of a profile.

Scott McBride [chief digital officer of IPG Mediabrands]: The same… no summary, no experience filled in, minimal groups, minimal sharing apart from the Mumbrella story about being a Power Profile (irony).

CMO of Schneider [Chris Leong]: No background picture (just the default LinkedIn blue, which basically means you don’t know how to use LinkedIn), a summary but no description under experience or links to her work/brand/website.

Guilet Libby at Dentsu Aegis Network [concept creative copywriter]: Ironically for a copywriter, has no summary section and doesn’t talk about what he does at Dentsu. He has one word on his projects section which links to his website, which doesn’t work.

Scott [Spirit, chief digital officer] at WPP: Has no background picture, minimal summary, experience and groups, and only shared one thing in two weeks. Nothing happening at WPP?

Nicole Seah [channel strategic, VML]: Only has 152 connections! Need I say more. (she does at least blog to them…)

I believe that to be fair to everyone, LinkedIn should rank Power Profiles based on views and engagement rather than just being a CMO of a multinational multimillion dollar operation as they appear to now, where the sexiest brands are featured first.

Professionals like youIn the interests of transparency, why aren’t the views of their pages given?

Surely that’s easily done, and in any case everyone can see in the “professionals like you” section how you rank on LinkedIn, hence why I know I beat everyone on the Power Profile list.

Could they be hiding the real figures so they can promote the profiles of people who work at MNCs?

Surely it should be a more democratic and open ranking system.

Chris Reed is the founder and CEO of Black Marketing

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