Boss complaining about LinkedIn performance but won't post

[Anonymous]

I'm by no means a marketing pro, but a client I do graphic design for asked for some help with social media (I've done it casually for a nonprofit on a pro bono basis) and I am wondering how to better approach the issues it is causing.

The client is a small consulting firm and has a LinkedIn company page with about 500 followers. The company owner has a LinkedIn following of about 5,000. The other employees have small contact followings and are not too active on social media.

I write, design, and post to the business page and let the owner know when the content is live so she can repost. She never does. I remind her once or twice and she either doesn't reply or says she will get to it and doesn't. Then, at our check-in meetings, she laments how there is no good engagement on LinkedIn and we need to rethink the strategy to even use it because it is a waste of time. I remind her that it is kind of a necessary evil and can be worth the while for brand awareness and staying current and top of mind and also that most people want to interact with a person, not a company page, and that is why her resharing the posts with commentary is important. Engagement will not be high on a static corporate page, but if she takes the time to engage with her followers on her personal page by sharing the content she might see more traction. She does post and reshare things on LinkedIn in general, just for some reason refuses to share the marketing pieces, which are blog posts, longer form articles, general announcements, sharing statistics. She reviews all of the work product in advance so it is not like she dislikes the messaging. I have offered to get proxy access to her account to post on her behalf and she declined. There are times I feel like she is purposefully wanting this to fail.

Is there better wording or an approach I can deploy to get it through to her more? It is pretty much a waste of time for me, though I am billing for the work, and annoying to put good work in, she says its great then she won't share it to her audience and complains about poor engagement, which makes me feel like what I am doing is not valued or helpful and can easily be stopped since it's "not doing anything." The design work I do is easy (and so is this social media stuff too, though I am not a pro) so I am not looking to shed this client but may need to.

Any advice?

[Anonymous]

You need to train the boss and the client that people don't want to see that on LinkedIn. Look for other social media outlets for that gladhanding/circle jerk validation they want.

NOBODY cares about stupid LinkedIn updates. They are cringe and they are mocked. You need to train them away from thinking this is valuable.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Ask her if she'd be willing to share her login information with you so you can do these posts on her behalf. The executives of my org (professional services) seldom do their own postings. Offer this service.

If she's not open to that, and is holding you accountable for the results she wishes she were getting, you should probably stop working with her. She's hampering your success.