I wanted to discuss an issue that keeps coming up for my clients that may also be happening for some of you. This involves when someone from a company has administrative rights to a LinkedIn company page who no longer works at their company and that former employee is the only administrator of the page.
How to become the administrator of a LinkedIn company page
Designated administrator rights are automatically granted to the creator of a LinkedIn Page. Designated administrators can add all types of admins to a Page. LinkedIn can’t provide Page admin information to members or replace or remove administrators. LinkedIn recommends keeping a record of your page admins and sharing this information with your organization’s HR department. To request LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page admin rights:
- List your current position with the organization on your profile.
- Go to the Page you’d like admin access to.
- Click the More icon and select Request admin access from the dropdown menu.
- Click the checkbox to verify that you’re authorized to become an admin of the page.
- Click Request access. You’ll see a notification indicating that your request was successfully sent. Note: This grants all current Designated Admins access to your public profile information.
- You’ll receive an email notification once you’ve been granted page admin access.
In order to become a company page admin, you must fit the following LinkedIn criteria.
- You’re a current company employee and your position is on your profile.
- A company email address (e.g. stefanie@companyname.com) is one of the confirmed email addresses on your LinkedIn account.
- You associate your profile with the right company. You must click on a name from the company name dropdown list when you edit or add a position on your profile.
- Your company’s email domain is unique to the company.
- Your profile must be more than 50% complete.
- You must have several connections (usually a minimum of 10)
- Next, visit your company’s LinkedIn page. If someone has already claimed the page, you should see messaging at the top of the page that says “ask an admin for access”
- If the person in charge is no longer an employee of your business, you need to connect with this admin. If they accept you as a connection, send them a message asking them to give you ownership of the page. You may want to share LinkedIn’s instructions for adding a company administrator.
- From there, you should be notified when you have successfully been added as an admin of the page.
But what if you can’t connect with them or if they don’t accept your invite or give you access to the page? Let’s say the current company page administrator is a former employee and won’t accept your request to connect (awkward) – well you do have alternative options. In cases like this, it’s best to reach out directly to LinkedIn support. Visit the LinkedIn Contact Us page and fill out the form. LinkedIn is good about responding to these types of requests quickly. In addition, you can reach out to LinkedIn via its Twitter account specifically for questions and support requests: https://twitter.com/LinkedInHelp/.
Whatever you do, try and recover the page or else you will need to start a new page and it will be confusing to your employees and you will have to start from scratch.
Good luck and let me know how it goes.