How to manage multiple LinkedIn accounts for clients

To manage multiple LinkedIn accounts for clients, have each client connect their own profile to a scheduling tool through LinkedIn's official sign in, so you never hold a password, and keep one separate board of posts per client. The part most agencies miss is that LinkedIn access for third-party apps expires after 60 days with no automatic renewal, so you need a way to see which client has to reconnect, and when, before their scheduled posts stop going out.

Here is how each piece works and what to watch for.

Why you should never hold client passwords

Logging in as a client with their email and password feels like the quick route. It causes problems that grow with every client you add.

• LinkedIn's user agreement does not allow sharing an account with someone else. A login from your laptop in another city can trigger a security check that locks the client out of their own profile.
• Two-step verification sends codes to the client's phone. Every login becomes a message asking them for a code, often at a bad time.
• You now hold the keys to their inbox, their connections and their job history. If your laptop or password manager is compromised, so are they.
• When the engagement ends, the client has to change their password and hope nothing else was saved. That is an awkward way to part.

Each client authorises the app themselves

LinkedIn offers an official route for tools to post on a member's behalf. The member signs in on LinkedIn's own page, sees what the app is asking for, and approves it. The tool receives a token that lets it post to that member's feed and nothing else. The password never leaves LinkedIn.

1. Invite the client to connect. Send a link from your tool, or sit with them on a short call while they do it.
2. The client signs in with LinkedIn and approves the permissions.
3. Check that the profile shows as connected in your tool before you schedule anything.
4. When the engagement ends, the client can remove the app from their LinkedIn settings at any time, and your access ends with it.

This works for personal profiles. Posting as a company page goes through a separate LinkedIn programme that requires approval, so check what your tool supports before you promise it to a client.

The 60 day reconnect

Access tokens LinkedIn gives third-party apps last 60 days, and standard apps do not get a way to renew them without the member. That means every tool that posts for a client has to ask that client to sign in again about every 60 days. The rule comes from LinkedIn and applies to every tool.

With one client it is easy to remember. With eight clients who all connected on different days, the dates spread across the calendar and one of them will slip. Track it the same way you track invoices.

• Record the date each client connected, and the date 60 days later.
• Set a reminder at day 50 to ask the client to reconnect. It takes them a minute, but they need warning.
• Check again at day 55. If they have not done it, message them directly.
• Put the reconnect in the contract as something the client agrees to do when asked, so the request never feels like a favour.

The silent failure of a dead token

When a token expires, nothing breaks on the client's screen. Their profile looks normal. The posts you scheduled never appear, and LinkedIn sends nobody an alert. It is common to find out weeks later, when the client asks why they have been quiet, and by then the streak you were paid to keep is gone.

Ask any tool you use two questions. Does it warn you before a client's access expires? And when a token does die, does it pause that client's queue and tell you, or does it keep trying and failing post by post where nobody looks?

One board per client

Mixing clients in one calendar is how a post meant for one person ends up on another person's feed. Keep a separate board for each client, with their own ideas, drafts, approvals and schedule.

• Each board has its own themes, so one client's topics never leak into another's.
• Each board has its own voice notes, so a correction for one client does not change how another sounds.
• Each board has its own posting time in the client's timezone, which matters when clients sit in different countries.

Rate limits across many accounts

LinkedIn limits how many API calls an app can make for each member each day: 150 per member per day, reset at midnight UTC. Publishing one post takes a few calls, and a post with an image takes more, because the image is uploaded in separate steps. For a normal cadence of one post a day, this limit is far away.

It matters when something goes wrong. A tool that retries a failing post every few minutes can burn a client's daily allowance on one broken post. Good tools count calls before they make them and stop well before the limit.

How GoodSocials handles this

On the Agency plan, each client connects their own LinkedIn profile, up to 12 profiles, and each gets its own board, themes and principles. GoodSocials emails you on day 50 of a client's connection, shows a banner on day 55, and on day 60 marks the connection dead and pauses that client's schedule instead of letting posts fail one by one.

Every LinkedIn call is counted against the 150 per member per day before it is made, and the publish loop stops before the limit. A failed publish records the attempt and the error, so you can see what happened to each post.