How a Fortune 100 Tech Company Turned Its Executives into a Global LinkedIn Growth Engine
Services
Client
Executive LinkedIn Program
Industry
Year
2025
Executive Summary
A Fortune 100 technology company headquartered in Palo Alto engaged Manhattan Strategies (MHTN) in 2019 to offset a shrinking earned‑media footprint with direct‑to‑audience influence. Over five years, MHTN transformed eighteen C‑suite and regional leaders into LinkedIn power users who now outperform the brand page on reach, engagement and clicks—while advancing sales, recruiting and reputation goals.
Business outcomes at a glance
- Annual organic reach. Executive posts reached about 13 million people in fiscal year 2025, compared with approximately 8.25 million reached by the corporate brand page the same year—roughly one‑and‑a‑half times greater organic visibility for the leadership cohort.
- Engagement efficiency. Average reactions and comments per executive post climbed from around 161 in early 2020 to more than 555 in fiscal year 2025, representing a 245% improvement.
- Follower growth velocity. The flagship division president’s follower base expanded from about 10,200 in mid‑2022 to just over 27,000 by April 2025—a compound monthly growth rate of roughly six percent sustained well beyond the “new‑program bump.”
- Cost efficiency. The cost to generate one thousand organic impressions through the executive program is approximately 35% lower than the client’s agency‑of‑record (AOR).
1. Client Snapshot
A Fortune 100 technology company headquartered in Palo Alto engaged Manhattan Strategies (MHTN) in 2019 to offset a shrinking earned‑media footprint with direct‑to‑audience influence. Over five years, MHTN transformed eighteen C‑suite and regional leaders into LinkedIn power users who now outperform the brand page on reach, engagement and clicks—while advancing sales, recruiting and reputation goals.
Who was helped?
- Industry: Technology.
- Scale: Over $50 billion USD in annual revenue and more than 50,000 employees serving 170 countries.
- Decision makers engaged: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Commercial Officer, Chief People Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer, Chief Communications Officer, ten regional managing directors, four global division presidents and the Head of U.S. Federal sales.
Why LinkedIn?
- Channel influence. Channel partners generate roughly three‑quarters of the company’s revenue—and those partners live on LinkedIn.
- Declining earned media. Executive voices needed a direct distribution channel to maintain thought‑leadership share of voice.
- Operating uncertainty. Rapid market shifts, geopolitical tension and supply‑chain pressure required leadership to communicate quickly and credibly with global teams.
- Talent competition. As the company pivots from transactional hardware sales toward software‑driven services and AI solutions, it competes fiercely for top engineering, data‑science and cloud‑platform talent in EMEA, India and Latin America.
2. Objectives & Initial Challenges
A Fortune 100 technology company headquartered in Palo Alto engaged Manhattan Strategies (MHTN) in 2019 to offset a shrinking earned‑media footprint with direct‑to‑audience influence. Over five years, MHTN transformed eighteen C‑suite and regional leaders into LinkedIn power users who now outperform the brand page on reach, engagement and clicks—while advancing sales, recruiting and reputation goals.
Primary objectives
- Increase executive influence among partners, customers, employees and opinion leaders.
- Replace one‑size‑fits‑all employee‑advocacy posts with persona‑driven storytelling.
- Establish clear success benchmarks and a governance model suitable for a publicly traded enterprise.
Pain points at kickoff
- Content silos among business units caused redundant or conflicting posts.
- The organisation lacked an agreed definition of “success” for executive LinkedIn activity.
- Periods of heightened uncertainty strained morale and internal communications, underscoring the need for authentic leadership voices.
3. Strategy
Four strategic pillars
- Executive positioning and SEO‑optimised profiles. MHTN audited each leader’s audience keywords and rewrote headlines, “About” sections and featured content to maximise discoverability.
- Persona‑based editorial and visual storytelling. Annual narrative architectures guided monthly themes, while a mobile‑first design system—carousels, subtitled video, quote cards—maximised dwell time.
- Real‑time data intelligence. Weekly Vector pulses and monthly/quarterly Quant dashboards surfaced outlier performance, SSI shifts and content whitespace.
- Tiered governance framework. A three‑tier risk matrix plus fifteen‑minute Monday micro‑syncs reduced approval cycles from more than a week to fewer than 48 hours. A pre‑approved “quiet‑period bank” kept the feed active during financial blackout windows.
Technology and AI stack
Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Rev AI transcription and proprietary MHTN Quant analytics delivered rapid creative iterations and granular performance insights.
Program governance model
The engagement operates on a governance playbook that balances speed, compliance and authenticity:
- Program Purpose & Scope – Defines whether a post advances thought leadership, brand elevation, or relationship building, and clearly notes what falls outside the program.
- Executive Swimlanes – Personalized swimlanes align each leader’s priorities, business objectives, and target audiences.
- Approval & Review Workflow – Content creation, review, and executive sign‑off are tailored to each office’s cadence.
- Engage‑to‑Own Ratio – A mandated mix of original posts and value‑adding comments keeps leaders visible in ongoing conversations.
- Rolling Four‑Week Content Calendar – Major milestones are locked four weeks out; agile inserts ride timely trends without derailing cadence.
- Dynamic Visual Standards – Photo‑led or motion assets featuring the executive wherever practicable.
- Success Metrics – KPIs map directly to executive OKRs (impressions, engagement rate, lead quality, speaking invites).
- Data‑Based Feedback Loops – Weekly dashboards plus ad‑hoc performance memos translate insights into next‑week tweaks.
- Comms‑Team Enablement – Ongoing training sessions arm corporate comms with the latest LinkedIn best practices.
- Risk Management & Escalation – Negative‑comment triage and customer‑follow‑up paths agreed in advance.
- Regulatory & Compliance Filters – Quiet‑period and public‑official engagement rules embedded in the pre‑publish checklist.
4. Execution Highlights
Content at scale
- 2,047 executive posts published between April 2024 and April 2025, reaching audiences in ten priority markets.
- The “American Innovation” campaign delivered targeted visibility with U.S. federal and education buyers seeking trusted domestic suppliers.
High‑impact formats and why they work
- Carousel documents. Multi‑frame PDF carousels boosted dwell time and accounted for about 28% of total reach and 34 percent of comments in the first quarter of fiscal 2025.
- Native subtitled video. LinkedIn now prioritizes rich media; fully captioned clips doubled watch‑time versus link‑out videos.
- Polls and interactive posts. Lightweight interactions grew the follower base by roughly 11% year over year.
- Behind‑the‑scenes imagery. Authentic photos—team selfies, workplace tours, throwback shots—earned two‑to‑three times the engagement of traditional link posts.
Partnership amplification
Content co‑created with Deloitte, Intel, NVIDIA, Microsoft, WWF, Ferrari and others broadened reach into adjacent networks. Select Thought‑Leadership Ads targeted IT decision makers exploring AI and future‑of‑work solutions, supplementing the primarily organic program.
5. Results
Content at scale
- Reach. Executive posts reached about 13 million unique viewers in fiscal 2025, while the five‑million‑follower brand page reached approximately 8.25 million organically.
- Engagement. Average reactions and comments per post rose from 161 in 2020 to over 555 in 2025, confirming that content quality—not paid distribution—drove interaction.
- Influence increase. The company’s top executive moved from roughly 102,000 post reach per month in early 2020 to about 936,000 per month by late 2024—an increase of nearly nine‑fold sustained over time.
- Followers. The division president added more than 16,000 new followers between mid‑2022 and April 2025.
Qualitative impact
- One division president earned LinkedIn’s coveted Top Voice badge in 2025.
- Senior leaders were invited to keynote global industry events and appear on high‑profile podcasts and YouTube series.
- Internal advocacy. Program analytics show employees reshared executive posts at approximately four times the previous rate (from an average 0.3 cross‑shares per post in Q2 FY23 to 1.2 in Q2 FY24), generating authentic, non‑duplicative amplification across regions
Return on investment
- Compared with the AOR, MHTN delivered equivalent creative volume at around 35% lower cost per thousand impressions.
- Post‑engagement surveys indicate that clients working with senior‑led partners like MHTN report 28% higher satisfaction and over 35% lower coordination costs.
6. Biggest Hurdles & How We Solved Them
Return on investment
- Compared with the AOR, MHTN delivered equivalent creative volume at around 35 percent lower cost per thousand impressions.
- Post‑engagement surveys indicate that clients working with senior‑led partners like MHTN report 28 percent higher satisfaction and over 35 percent lower coordination costs.
7. Five Lessons for Enterprise Marketers
8. Ready to Transform Your Leadership Bench?
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