Should an agency run your firm's LinkedIn presence?

Picture a managing partner at a 25-person accountancy practice who opens a proposal promising twelve LinkedIn posts a month. Under the price sits a line asking for “access to the partners' accounts for a consistent voice”. The twelve posts are easy to say yes to. The line asking for the accounts is the one that needs reading twice, because it asks the firm to do something the platform's own terms say a member should not.

The question underneath is narrower than it looks. It is not whether LinkedIn matters to a firm that sells expertise. It is which parts of the presence can be delegated without breaking a rule, and which parts have to stay with a named person at the firm.

What a Page lets an agency do, and what it does not

LinkedIn's help centre describes three Page roles, and the middle one is the agency's. The Page admin roles are super admin, content admin and analyst. A content admin creates and manages content, including posts and events, and can reply to messages and respond to comments as the Page. An analyst sees the Analytics tab and nothing else. The super admin holds everything, including the power to add, edit or remove other admins.

That last power is the one that matters at the end of a contract. The person who creates a Page is made its super admin automatically. If the agency set the Page up for the firm, it is the super admin and the firm is not, and removing the agency later depends on the agency's cooperation. The fix is a minute's work: the firm creates the Page or takes the super admin role before the agency is added.

Why a partner's profile is a different purchase

A personal account belongs to the person, and the User Agreement does not let them lend it. The agreement lists using or attempting to use another person's account, such as by sharing log-in credentials, among its prohibited conduct. A supplier who asks for a partner's password is asking the partner to break a term they accepted when they joined, and to put their professional reputation behind posts they have not seen.

There is a legitimate version of the same service. The agency interviews the partner, drafts the post, edits what the partner sends back, and the partner publishes it. That keeps the account in one person's hands and the voice recognisably theirs. It is also slower, which is the honest price of it.

Some proposals will say a partner's own profile reaches more people than a firm Page. This article does not make that claim, because we could not verify a primary source for it. If an agency makes it, the reasonable response is to ask for the source and to judge the proposal on what it can show.

The partner time that drafting still needs

Drafting for a partner's profile moves the work, and it does not remove the partner from it. Take an illustrative case: three partners each approve four drafts a month and spend fifteen minutes on each, including the edits they send back. That is three hours of partner time a month, before the interview that gives the agency something true to write. The figures are an assumption to be replaced with the firm's own. A proposal that implies the partners will spend no time at all is describing posts that nobody senior has read.

The approval trail matters as much as the hours. Ask the agency how it records that a named partner agreed each post, and where that record sits. If a post is ever questioned, a dated approval from the person whose name is on it is worth more than any explanation offered afterwards.

The automation line a supplier will be tempted to cross

The User Agreement bars bots and unauthorised automated methods for adding contacts, sending messages and posting or commenting. LinkedIn's help pages on automated activity and prohibited software and extensions add that using such tools risks an account being restricted or shut down. The tool that does the sending is not the one that bears the consequence. The partner whose name is on the profile is.

Regulated firms: sign-off comes before drafting

The FCA treats a financial promotion on social media as a financial promotion. Its finalised guidance FG24/1 replaced the earlier 2015 guidance, adds no new obligations, and covers authorised persons who communicate or approve social media promotions. For a UK financial advice firm that means somebody inside the firm decides whether a post is a promotion and signs it off, and an agency drafting to a content calendar cannot make that call. Law firms and accountancy practices answer to their own regulators and should check what those say about advertising.

What to ask the agency before you sign

Two requests of a supplier cost nothing and reveal how it works. Ask which role it expects to hold on the Page and why that role is enough, and ask what it does when LinkedIn changes a rule mid-contract. A supplier that has read the platform's terms will answer in specifics, and one that has not will answer in reassurance. Neither answer needs to be taken on trust, because the Page roles and the conduct rules are published for any member to read.

Count what arrives, and where it arrived from

A LinkedIn message is an enquiry, and it only counts if somebody records it. The agreement should settle what counts as an enquiry before the first post, since a direct message to a partner can be lost in a personal inbox. When the agency later reports results, the same discipline applies as for any other channel, and checking that the reported numbers are real starts with whether the firm can see the underlying messages.

Keep a simple dated log of every enquiry that arrives by LinkedIn message, written down by whoever receives it, with what it became afterwards. Without that log the agency's report is the only record, and a report written by the supplier is a weak basis for renewing its contract.

When not to buy LinkedIn management yet

Where no partner will stand behind the posts, there is nothing for an agency to run. A Page that publishes unsigned commentary on tax deadlines reads as wallpaper to the reader who might hire the firm, and a ghostwritten profile that the named partner has never read is worse. If no one senior is willing to be the voice, the money is better spent elsewhere.

The same applies when the destination is not ready. A post that sends a reader to a site missing the pages a buyer expects wastes the click, and what an accountancy practice website needs to include is the place to check first.

Saying any of this costs us the introduction fee, because we are paid by the agency and only when a relationship works. What we examine before recommending anybody is set out for accountancy practices, recruitment agencies, tax advisory and financial advice firms.