How to Manage Someone Else's LinkedIn Profile

Managing someone else's LinkedIn profile is more than just scheduling posts, it’s about becoming a trusted custodian of their professional voice and reputation. It requires a blend of strategy, clear communication, and impeccable organization to do it well. This guide will walk you through a step-by-step process for managing a LinkedIn profile authentically and effectively, from initial access to ongoing engagement.

Getting Started: The Crucial First Steps

Before you write a single post, you need to establish a solid foundation built on trust, clear goals, and secure access. Rushing this stage often leads to misaligned expectations and content that feels disconnected from the person you're representing.

Step 1: Secure Proper Account Access (Forget Password Sharing)

Never, ever ask for or use someone’s direct login credentials. Sharing passwords is a massive security risk and a violation of LinkedIn's terms of service. It exposes their personal information and puts both of you in a vulnerable position. Instead, use a professional and secure method.

For a Personal Profile: The best method is to use a social media management tool. Many platforms allow you to securely connect a client's LinkedIn account without ever seeing or storing their password. The profile owner authenticates the connection once, granting you the ability to draft, schedule, and publish posts on their behalf through the tool's interface.

For a Company Page: This is much more straightforward. The person who owns the company page can grant you administrative access with varying levels of permissions. They can make you a:

• Super Admin: Full access to manage the page, admins, and integrations.
• Content Admin: Can create and manage all content on the page, including posts, events, and jobs.
• Analyst: Can monitor page performance and access analytics but cannot post.

For most management roles, Content Admin is the perfect level of access, giving you everything you need to post content and review analytics without the risk of accidentally changing core page settings.

Step 2: Conduct a Deep-Dive Onboarding Session

This is arguably the most important step in the entire process. Your goal here isn't just to understand what to post - it's to understand how they think. You need to absorb their voice, perspective, and professional philosophy. Schedule an hour-long call and come prepared with questions like these:

• The "Why": Why do you want to be more active on LinkedIn? Are you looking for new clients, building a personal brand for speaking opportunities, attracting top talent, or positioning yourself as a thought leader?
• The "Who": Who is your target audience? Be specific. "Business owners" is too broad. "Early-stage SaaS founders in the FinTech space" is much better. What are their challenges? What do they care about?
• The "What": What are the 3-5 core topics or "content pillars" you want to be known for? Examples could include "Product-Led Growth," "Team Culture in Remote Work," or "Sustainable Investing."
• The "How": How do you communicate? Are you formal and data-driven, or are you casual, witty, and story-oriented? Ask them to share a few LinkedIn posts they love and a few they despise. This gives you a clear sense of their taste.
• The Stories: Ask for career anecdotes. What was their biggest professional failure and what did they learn? What's a contrarian opinion they hold about their industry? These personal stories are the raw material for authentic, engaging content.

Record this call (with permission) so you can refer back to it. This conversation is your bible.

Step 3: Create a "Brand Voice" Style Guide

Don't let the insights from your onboarding call fade away. Create a simple, one-page document that summarizes everything you learned. This becomes your go-to reference before writing any content.

Include sections for:

• Voice & Tone: A few keywords (e.g., "Insightful, direct, optimistic, slightly witty").
• Pillar Topics: A list of the 3-5 approved themes.
• Common Phrases/Jargon: Do they have specific terms they always use? List them.
• Topics to Avoid: Are there any sensitive subjects, competitors, or internal matters that are off-limits?
• Formatting Rules: Do they prefer short paragraphs? Do they use emojis? How do they feel about specific hashtags?

Share this guide with them to confirm you’ve captured their voice accurately. This single document will prevent countless future misunderstandings.

Creating a Content System That Works

With a strong foundation in place, it's time to build a content creation and approval process that is efficient, consistent, and stress-free for both of you.

Develop Your Content Pillars

Using the pillar topics from your onboarding session, brainstorm a list of specific post ideas for each. This structured approach prevents you from staring at a blank screen wondering what to write next.

For example, if the pillars are Team Culture, Market Trends, and Product Innovation, your ideas might look like this:

• Team Culture: A post about a new remote-work policy, a spotlight on an employee anniversary, a story about a recent team-building success (or failure).
• Market Trends: A short analysis of a recent industry report, a contrarian take on a popular business book, a question for the audience about an emerging technology.
• Product Innovation: A behind-the-scenes look at a new feature being developed, a thank you to customers who gave helpful feedback, a story about the "aha!" moment that led to the product's creation.

Establish a Content Creation Rhythm

Consistency is everything on LinkedIn. Decide on a content schedule that feels sustainable. Three high-quality posts a week are far more effective than seven rushed ones. A good approach is to mix up your content formats to keep the feed interesting:

• Text-only posts: Great for sharing opinions, stories, and asking questions.
• Image/Carousel posts: Excellent for visualizing data, sharing step-by-step guides, or compiling quotes.
• Video: Simple, phone-shot videos talking directly to the camera can perform extremely well by building personal connection.
• Polls: A quick and easy way to spark engagement and gather audience insights.

Also, don't forget to repurpose. That internal talk they gave last quarter? Break it down into five different LinkedIn posts. Their company's latest blog post? Turn the key points into a carousel.

Set Up a Clear Approval Process

No post should ever go live without their final approval, especially when you’re starting out. This builds trust and protects them from any inaccuracies or miscommunication. A shared content calendar is the best way to manage this. You can use a simple tool like Google Sheets, a project management app, or a dedicated social media scheduling platform.

Your calendar should include columns for:

• Publish Date
• Publish Time
• Post Copy
• Visual Asset (link to the image/video)
• Status (e.g., Draft, Pending Review, Approved, Scheduled)
• Notes/Feedback

Agree on a service-level agreement (SLA) for approvals. For example, you’ll deliver the next week of content every Thursday, and they will provide feedback or approval by Monday morning. This keeps the content machine running smoothly.

Engaging Authentically (As Someone Else)

Posting content is only half the job. Real influence is built in the comments and direct messages. This is the most sensitive part of managing someone else's profile, and it requires strict guidelines.

Crafting a Commenting and DM Strategy

First, define what your role is. In most cases, you shouldn't be responding to DMs or comments with personal opinions. Your job is to be a community manager and a filter.

• For Comments:
  • You can "like" all positive and neutral comments on their behalf.
  • For simple comments like "Great post!" or "Thanks for sharing," you can use pre-approved responses like, "Thank you for reading!" or "Glad you found this helpful."
  • For any comments with complex questions or sensitive feedback, your job is to flag them. Tag the profile owner in your approval sheet with the comment and ask how they'd like to respond. You can then post their reply for them.
• For DMs: Tread very carefully. You should have a clear rule: Do not reply to DMs. Your only job is to check the inbox daily and alert the person to any urgent or important messages (e.g., from a major potential client, a valuable networking contact, or a job inquiry). Acting as their personal secretary here is overstepping.

Networking and Building Connections

Growing their network is another powerful way to add value, but like DMs, it must be done with direct oversight. Work together to create a strategy. Identify a list of 10-20 ideal people to connect with each week (e.g., industry peers, conference speakers, potential clients). Then, work with the profile owner to draft a personalized connection request template that you can use. They must approve every connection request you send on their behalf.

Measuring What Matters

To show your value and refine your strategy, you need to track your performance. A simple, insight-driven monthly report is all you need.

Key Metrics to Monitor on LinkedIn

Don’t get lost in vanity metrics. Focus on the numbers that align with their goals.

• Impressions: The total number of times the posts were seen. Good for tracking overall reach.
• Engagement Rate: (Likes + Comments + Shares) / Impressions. This tells you how resonant your content is.
• Comments: A high number of comments is a strong signal that content is genuinely sparking conversation.
• Profile Views: Shows that your content is compelling enough to make people click through and learn more.
• Follower Growth: Are you attracting the right people to their network?

Creating a Simple, Effective Monthly Report

Keep your report to one page. No one has time for a 20-slide deck. Your report should clearly show:

1. Top 3 Performing Posts: Include screenshots and briefly explain why you think they worked. (Was it the topic? The story? The format?)
2. Monthly Metrics Overview: Show the growth in impressions, engagement rate, and followers compared to the previous month.
3. Key Learnings: What did you learn this month? (e.g., "The audience responded really well to posts about X," or "Carousel posts drove the most profile views.")
4. Recommendations for Next Month: Based on the data, suggest one or two strategic adjustments. (e.g., "Let's double down on short-form video and create more content about Y.")

Discuss this report together each month. This regular check-in keeps you both aligned and demonstrates the clear impact of your work.

Final Thoughts

Managing someone else's LinkedIn profile is a deep responsibility that hinges on clear systems and genuine collaboration. By focusing on an in-depth onboarding, creating a transparent workflow, and defining strict rules for engagement, you can become an invaluable strategic partner who authentically amplifies their voice and achieves their professional goals.

At the end of the day, managing clients’ social accounts can quickly become chaotic without the right tools. We've wrestled with clunky spreadsheets for approvals and jumped between countless browser tabs to manage DMs, which is why we built a better way. With our visual calendar, you can plan, share, and get content approved in one place, while our unified inbox brings all your comments and DMs from every platform together, making community management feel orderly instead of overwhelming. If you’re looking to streamline your workflow, we built Postbase for you.