Learn how to grow your audience and showcase your agency’s goals, values, and achievements by creating your own LinkedIn Page.
LinkedIn is a winner when it comes to marketing on social media for government agencies.
With that in mind, we’ve rounded up LinkedIn Page best practices for government agencies and picked out real-world examples of high-quality government LinkedIn Pages.
10 Best Practices for Government Agencies on LinkedIn
Whereas LinkedIn Profiles represent individuals, Pages are for collective organizations.
According to LinkedIn, members view Pages more than 1.5 billion times a month, so they’re a highly effective way to connect with and engage your audience.
Now, let’s dig into five best practices for building a high-quality LinkedIn Page:
1. Complete Your LinkedIn Page
Let’s start with the obvious stuff.
Completed LinkedIn Pages perform better, with LinkedIn’s data showing that they generate 30% more views than incomplete Pages. So your first port of call is to ensure your Page contains all the following elements:
Now, let’s dig into some quick best practices for those elements:
- Logo: If your agency already has a logo, add it here. If not, use a tool like Canva to create one. Keep it to 300 x 300 pixels.
- Cover photo: Also known as a “background photo”, your cover photo should be 1,584 x 396 pixels. Make sure it relates to your organization. What do you do? What do you want your audience to take away?
- Information fields: LinkedIn offers various organizational information fields to explain who you are, where you’re based, and what you do. Fill in all the relevant ones.
- Overview: Your overview text lets you spell out your purpose and goals. The section has a 2,000-character limit, but as you can see from the above example, the text truncates at around 280 characters.
- CTA button: LinkedIn allows you to create several types of custom calls to action, including Visit website, Contact us, Learn more, Sign up, and Register. Choose the option that’s most relevant to your marketing goals. Bear in mind that if you don’t pay for a Premium Company Page — more on them later — your CTA will only be seen by people who click the More (three dots) button.
2. Make Your LinkedIn Page Visible
You’re not just making a LinkedIn Page for the sake of it; you want people to see and engage with it.
That means making it as visible as possible.
LinkedIn data shows that Pages grow faster when they have more than 150 followers. This shows the importance of momentum. Once you start growing your follower count, your audience size can really snowball. Use the following tactics to boost visibility:
- Engage with your community. Get into the habit of liking and commenting on posts from your followers and members of your brand community who don’t currently follow you.
- Tag thought leaders in your posts. That way, there’s a better chance they’ll share the posts with their network.
- Share other people’s content. Not only is this an easy way to engage your audience, but it might also encourage those people to share your content.
- Share your Page via external platforms. Add your LinkedIn Page to your email signature and other social channels to get as many eyes on it as possible.
- Publish articles on your LinkedIn Page. People are following you for a reason: because they have some interest in what you do. So be sure to share your own content, such as publishing press releases, promoting upcoming events, or posting progress updates on current projects.
3. Create Thought Leadership Content
Thought leadership content can be a powerful marketing tool.
According to LinkedIn and Edelman, 52% of decision-makers read thought leadership at least an hour a week. So it’s definitely in your best interests to publish stuff like:
- Industry trends-based articles
- Original research
- Market reports
- Unique insights (e.g., predictions of your sector)
- New takes on existing issues and conversations
LinkedIn is uniquely well-suited to a thought leadership strategy among social networks because it’s the only platform that allows you to publish long-form content straight from your Page.
Follow these steps to create high-quality thought leadership content for LinkedIn:
- Strike a balance between informative and concise. Sure, you want to educate your audience. But this is still a social platform, so brevity goes a long way. Keep your copy to 500 – 1,000 words, use short sentences, and add bullet points where relevant.
- Add hashtags to boost visibility. Tools like Hashtagify can help you find relevant options.
- Ask readers to engage. End each post with a CTA to respond in the replies, tag a colleague, or share your content.
4. Expand Your Reach Through Employee Advocacy
Remember, your Page isn’t your only LinkedIn resource. Most, if not all, of your employees will have their own LinkedIn Profiles.
Combined, those Profiles can massively increase your reach. Indeed, LinkedIn says employee networks have 10X as many connections as their employers. Encourage your team to share your content and point their followers toward your LinkedIn Page.
Pro tip: Educate employees on accurately citing your agency in their Work Experience section. That way, every time they make a new connection, the person they connect with will also be prompted to follow your Page.
5. Build Targeted Ad Campaigns
LinkedIn is a fantastic option if you have a budget for ad campaigns.
In the next section, we’ll share a couple of high-quality examples of LinkedIn ads from government agencies. However, nailing your targeting is one of the most important elements of a successful LinkedIn ad campaign. Get it right with these best practices:
- Choose the right location. This is the only required targeting field. You can target a whole country, a single town, or anything in between.
- Use demographic targeting. Hopefully, you know a little about your audience — what interests them, how old they are, what job titles they hold, and more. Use these targeting criteria to hone in on exactly the right people.
- A/B test different audiences. Consider running the same campaign to two different audiences to see which drives the best engagement and results.
- Create tailored ads. Your ad content should speak to your audience. For instance, if you’re targeting tech companies, try discussing an issue they care about.
6. Consider Upgrading To a Premium Company Page
In the summer of 2024, LinkedIn launched Premium Company Pages. While predominantly aimed at small businesses, it offers some exclusive features that could be useful to government agency users, including:
- Custom CTA buttons appear at the top of your page, next to posts in the LinkedIn feed, and in search results.
- The ability to add a custom testimonial and “credibility highlights” (like awards, certifications, and rankings) to your page.
- AI-powered post-writing assistance within the platform.
- A premium gold LinkedIn logo to add credibility and help your page stand out.
- Automated follow invitations for anyone who engages with your content.
LinkedIn hasn’t publicly shared any pricing information for Premium Company Pages, but they reportedly cost $99 monthly, with a discount for annual subscriptions.
So are they worth the money?
Well, the premium logo feels like a bit of novelty, and there’s no shortage of generative AI tools — many of which are free.
(Speaking of which, you should check out our roundup of top ChatGPT Prompting Techniques for Social Media Marketers.)
But the automated follow invites sound like a genuine time-saver to help you grow your page following, and the custom CTA buttons and trust signals are undoubtedly nice to have.
If you’re eligible for a Premium Company Page, you can subscribe via the CTA at the top right of your existing page:
7. Tag Thought Leaders and Organizations in LinkedIn Posts
One of the most effective ways to boost your LinkedIn presence is to encourage people (and organizations) with big followings to engage with and share your content.
Rather than waiting for them to come to you, get proactive by @mentioning them in your LinkedIn posts, just like King County, WA does here:
The pages they tagged in this post have a combined ~110,000 followers, representing many potential extra eyes on King County’s content.
8. Promote Affiliated Agencies Through Showcase Pages
Showcase Pages are an underutilized resource that can help you promote your agency’s full range of activities and programs.
At first glance, they’re pretty similar to regular LinkedIn Pages: they have the same posting options and analytics, and the URL structure looks identical. Lots of regular LinkedIn users wouldn’t even realize they were viewing a different type of page.
So what’s the point?
Showcase Pages are great for highlighting all the stuff you do. And they’re also an excellent way to share relevant content with specific target audiences.
For example, the City of Seattle has created Showcase Pages for the Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Finance and Administrative Services, and several more:
That way, the city can post niche updates on its various Showcase Pages and save its main feed for content with a broader appeal.
9. Share Your Agency’s Specialties
The Specialties section is an often-overlooked piece of LinkedIn Company Page real estate.
Because it sits right at the bottom of your About section, it’s somewhat easy to ignore:
However, specialties play an important role in LinkedIn SEO because they allow you to add a bunch of keywords related to the services you provide.
When you add a service to your specialties section, and people search for it on LinkedIn, there’s a chance you’ll show up in the results, helping you generate more page traffic and grow your following.
You can add up to 20 specialties by editing the Details section of your agency’s LinkedIn page:
10. Grow Your LinkedIn Community With a “Follow” Button
Technically, this best practice is about your website rather than your LinkedIn Page, but it involves growing your following — so it’s still relevant.
LinkedIn has created a handy “follow” button that you can add to key pages on your website:
That way, visitors can easily click to follow your LinkedIn page. And because they were already on your website, there’s a good chance they’re exactly the types of people who you want to see your content.
Follow Microsoft’s guidance to add a follow button to your agency’s website.
7 Examples of High-Quality Government Agency LinkedIn Pages
Now that we’ve covered some general best practices for government on social media, let’s look at seven examples of agencies that are getting it right.
1. Environmental Protection Agency: Set Out Your Mission
Okay, so we know that a fully completed LinkedIn Page can help you generate more traffic.
But remember, this isn’t a tick-box exercise.
Just having something in every section won’t automatically get you a bunch of views. And it definitely won’t turn those views into loyal followers who are engaged with your messaging.
So what, specifically, should you be adding to your LinkedIn Page?
One of the best approaches is to clearly spell out your agency’s mission, vision, and values, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does here:
This is a smart approach. Not only does it help potential followers better understand what you do, but it also affirms your organizational culture.
Values and culture are closely intertwined. Indeed, more than half of employees say they experience company culture most strongly through their organization’s values and mission.
And a positive organizational culture has myriad benefits. According to Gallup, culture helps you to:
- Attract world-class talent
- Build alignment between teams
- Engage employees
- Drive performance
2. Department of Labor: Engage Professional Audiences
By 2028, LinkedIn is expected to have over 209 million users in the US. With a user base of 1+ billion members in more than 200 countries and territories, it’s one of the world’s largest professional networks.
That makes it the perfect platform to reach a professional audience.
The US Department of Labor uses this to its advantage, regularly running employer events featuring corporate, advocacy, and labor leaders:
3. MEDC: Amplify Organic Posts With Paid Support
Building a LinkedIn ad campaign from scratch takes a little effort. Before you’ve started writing engaging copy and designing eye-catching imagery, you need to figure out your strategy and objectives.
It makes sense to start small by using your ad budget to amplify an organic post or two. Even a relatively small budget can get thousands of additional eyes on your posts, helping build your audience and generate leads.
But how do you decide which posts to amplify?
The key for Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) is to take a customer-centric approach. Michelle Grinnell, the agency’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications, explains:
“A small business owner may need access to capital or help expanding into international markets. A site consultant or C-suite executive may be looking for a location for a new manufacturing facility or corporate HQ. A local municipality might be looking for new ways to ignite growth in a downtown business district. Understanding their path ensures we can connect them with the best ‘front door’ to MEDC’s suite of programs and services.”
This enables the agency to pick out posts that best align with its goals at any given time.
In this example, MEDC leveraged insights from industry leaders to position Michigan as an attractive location to grow a business:
That’s a strong message for any organization focused on economic development.
4. Customs & Border Protection: Reach a Diverse Talent Pool
Talent attraction is a longstanding challenge for government agencies.
Indeed, the public sector has comfortably the lowest hiring rate of the 10 major economic sectors tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So it pays for government agencies to reach the widest possible candidate pool. At the same time, however, you don’t want your targeting to be so broad that it doesn’t resonate with your target candidate(s).
The US Customs & Border Protection gets the balance right by regularly running recruitment ads that target specific audiences. For example, in this ad, the agency is targeting existing law enforcement professionals…
…whereas in this one, it’s speaking to fitness fanatics in any profession:
5. Lubbock Economic Development Alliance: Reach Young Talent
Continuing the talent attraction theme, it’s important to remember that LinkedIn isn’t just a platform full of senior professionals.
In fact, three-quarters of users worldwide are aged between 18 and 34, while one-fifth are 24 or younger:
Find more statistics at Statista
So it’s no surprise many government agencies leverage the platform to reach younger audiences by hiring talent and also promoting their cities or states to young job seekers.
For instance, the Lubbock Economic Development Alliance ran this ad highlighting how Lubbock was recognized as one of the best cities in the US for college graduates:
6. TSA: Create a “Life” Tab
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is often recognized for its whacky Instagram persona. However, the agency is also happy to push boundaries on LinkedIn.
Unlike most agencies, the TSA has taken advantage of another lesser-known LinkedIn feature — the Life tab, which sits alongside the other standard tabs (like About and Posts) in your LinkedIn bio section.
The TSA uses the Life tab to showcase its latest innovations, reach out to students, and generally provide a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to work for the agency:
Naturally, this content has a ton of value from a talent attraction perspective.
But it’s also a highly effective way to build a connection with your target audience by spotlighting the valuable work you do.
Bear in mind that, at the time of writing, the Life tab is only available to organizations paying for a Career Page. The price of a Career Page varies depending on your organization’s specific needs, so you’ll have to reach out to LinkedIn for a quote.
7. City of San Diego: Share Your Commitments
Plenty of government agencies discuss their agency values and mission statements in their LinkedIn About tab.
But the City of San Diego has taken things a step further by adding a dedicated Commitments section:
LinkedIn describes the Commitments section as a way to “showcase values along with more meaningful content, including reports, certifications, articles, blogs, and video.”
You can add up to five Commitments to your Company Page, covering areas like:
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Career growth and learning
- Work-life balance
- Social impact
- Environmental sustainability
However, you must be able to provide documentation — such as progress reports or a performance dashboard — so people can check in on whether you’re delivering against those pledges.
Interested in more content like this? Sign up for our next virtual government social media conference and learn how social media can help humanize your agency and engage your communities.
