LinkedIn has passed 1.4 billion members. Most universities still leave their people's presence there to chance.

LinkedIn now has more than 1.4 billion members. It’s where many of the people who decide a university’s reputation spend their working lives: academics weighing up where to collaborate, employers deciding where to recruit, and policymakers, funders and journalists deciding who to listen to.

Edelman and LinkedIn have tracked how these professional audiences form judgements for several years. In their 2024 research, 73% of decision-makers said an organisation’s thought leadership was a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities than its marketing materials.

Universities aren’t B2B companies, but the parallel is close. The audiences that matter most for reputation are professional, sceptical and short of time, and they trust people far more than institutions.

Why your people have become your reputation channel

Global rankings ask thousands of academics and employers which universities they rate. Those judgements aren’t formed by advertising. They come from research people have read, talks they’ve heard, collaborators they’ve worked with and, increasingly, what they see from a university’s people online.

In the channel workshops I run with universities, LinkedIn comes up every time, and the strongest voices are rarely the official ones. Institutional pages post regularly to a modest audience, while a handful of academics and leaders, often with no support at all, reach far more of the people who matter. Very few universities have mapped who those people are.

A university’s reputation is built by its people, one conversation at a time.

What I’d ask every vice-chancellor and director of communications to do

Help leaders show up authentically. Give senior leaders a light-touch plan: a few themes, a realistic rhythm and help with the mechanics, in their own voice. Ghost-written posts are easy to spot and quickly undermine trust.

Back 20 to 30 academic voices. Identify academics in your priority subjects who are willing to share their work and views, then give them training, time and visibility. They’ll reach peers and employers your corporate channels never will.

Make your priorities easy to talk about. You can’t script academics, and you shouldn’t try. But you can make sure the university’s research, partnerships and ambitions are easy for them to share.

Measure the right audience. Likes are a poor proxy. Track who’s engaging: academics at peer institutions, employers in priority sectors and policymakers. That’s the audience that shapes reputation.

Protect people who speak up. Visibility brings criticism. Give staff clear guidance, a named contact and support if a post attracts attention they didn’t expect.

The opportunity

This is the cheapest reputation channel a university has, and one of the most underused. It needs time, trust and a little coordination rather than a large budget.

I’ll be talking to vice-chancellors and academics who do this well on Season 2 of the podcast, because the universities that support their people to be visible will find their reputation travels much further than their own channels could take it.

Jonathan Sabarre FCIM MBA is Principal Consultant at QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a keynote speaker and host of Marketing Greats in Higher Education. Get the weekly email or invite him to speak.