The brief
Paul Wagstaff has been with Houghton Hams for 27 years. He and his family own and run the business and they’ve been producing artisan meats in Northampton since 1983.
The company now employs 100+ people and produces 60+ million slices of ham a year, being stocked by many known retailers, foodservice businesses and hospitality brands.
Social with Ryan has managed the Houghton Hams LinkedIn company page since late 2023 – if you want the detail on that work, the Houghton Hams case study covers it in full.
This case study is about Paul and how we used his industry experience and expertise to grow his online presence, in turn driving attention, traffic and enquiries to Houghton Hams.
Success at a glance
The starting point
Paul was a lurker. He had a profile, he read what he came past, but nothing went the other way – he didn’t post. He sent a few connection requests here and there, and he’d get regular messages, but nothing consistent of note that progressed into opportunities.
That may seem like an odd position for someone to be in when they’ve been within an industry for 20+ years. But it’s a familiar story for many founders and directors, with the company pages historically carrying the weight.
And, two years ago, a strong company page could carry a LinkedIn social media strategy on its own.
But then the feed got busier, new features and formats were introduced, reach became more challenging, and personal profiles became drastically favoured by the LinkedIn algorithm.
We could see it in the Houghton Hams data. The posts that consistently outperformed everything else were the stories about people, by people.
So the strategy shifted. We took the stories that were already working, and let the people they belong to, tell them. And we expanded the narrative beyond the company page, giving the people within the business a purpose and a voice too.
↳ The result: Introducing two personal profiles to the strategy, and increasing the business’ touchpoints on LinkedIn, saw us add more than 500,000 impressions per year onto our content.
Building around a director who didn’t want to get it wrong
Like many business leaders, Paul is not a natural poster. He runs a busy operation, he works very hard in the business, and is thoughtful and analytical in what he says.
LinkedIn is full of stories of people who have got personal branding wrong – the LinkedIn hustle bros or the business preachers, for instance – and nobody wants to be one of them. Paul included.
His style and positioning comes up regularly in conversations between us, and we make sure it stays aligned with his thoughts and feelings – consistently.
Sometimes that takes explaining our thinking behind some posts and topics.
In June 2026 we wrote a post about the first day Houghton Hams produced Deli Style Ham for Aldi. Paul stood on the line in the factory from 4am to 4pm, without eating, drinking or even nipping off to the loo.
Paul challenged whether it needed editing. “Do we have to include that specific detail?”, he questioned. We pushed back, discussed the importance of the detail, explained our thinking, and we ran with it – with his approval.
The post hit 68,000 impressions and became his best performing post to date. That’s the power of having an expert on your side who instinctively knows what works – and it’s why business leaders partner with personal branding agencies like Social with Ryan.
↳ The result: A best performing post to date, that hit 68,000 impressions, 267 engagements and 369 profile viewers from the post.
What Paul actually talks about
Paul owns the operation – the investment, the innovation, the processes, the people on the factory floor, and the detail of how Houghton Hams’ high quality products are made. Not just the positives, either – we feature the ups, the downs and the learnings in between.
Take the made without nitrites ham range, for example. Paul’s post wasn’t a simple launch announcement. It was about the years of work behind it, why the project kept sliding down the list, and how consumer demand and conversations across the industry eventually pushed it back up.
That’s the key to strong personal brand content. Considered, genuine and grounded in something only you could say.
His second and third best posts of the most recent quarter follow the same pattern. One on the Aldi forecast being 25,000 packets a week and the line now running over 70,000 (at the time of writing), and one on shutting the factory down for 10 days, the longest planned closure since 1983.
None of them are about ham – they’re about what it takes to make it; the story, the challenges, the learnings, the people.
↳ The result: Paul’s profile is one that reads like a director thinking out loud, rather than a business talking about itself, and his impressions increased by 659% in 12 months.
Two LinkedIn profiles, one business
Paul is not the only personal brand we manage at Houghton Hams. Joe Nicholson, National Sales Manager, runs alongside him, and the split between them is deliberate.
If it’s in the factory, it’s Paul. Out on the road? It’s Joe. One is operations, one is sales.
On that same made without nitrites ham launch, Joe’s post covered the relationships and the buyer conversations that got it onto shelves. Paul covered the process that got it produced. The company page did the news, plus a video of someone going to buy it in Booths.
Three accounts, three angles, with little overlap.
The one thing running through all of them is family. Houghton Hams is a family business, so family is fair game everywhere, and it ties the three accounts together without making them repeat each other.
↳ The result: Houghton Hams has three active LinkedIn presences covering the same business – giving them a strong range of marketing touch points – but none of them saying the same thing twice.
The results
In the 12 months to July 2026, Paul’s profile generated 349,487 impressions – a 659% increase on the year before.
He reached 150,000 people+, and 78% of them were outside his own network.
The compounding is the part worth looking at. 192,527 of those impressions came in the final 90 days, which is 55% of the entire year. Out-of-network reach in that window rose to 88%.
Engagement over the year came to 5,812 social engagements, including 415 comments.
All of it off one post a week.
What that visibility opens up
A dashboard full of green numbers is a nice thing to look at, but what a personal brand changes is who knows who you are before you walk into a room.
Paul and Joe have both been to events and sat in meetings with clients, and prospective clients, where their social media presence and LinkedIn activity has been mentioned.
↳ The result: Their LinkedIn activity has directly supported significant business development, with the company growing 63% over the last three years.
Where could your personal brand take you?
Paul was already respected in his industry before any of this. What he didn’t have was a way for people outside of his regular calls and emails – beyond his immediate circle – to hear from him.
He gave us his time, roughly 90 minutes a month, and eventually his trust, then we did the rest.
We can help you use your personal brand to get more visibility and opportunities on LinkedIn. Get in touch for a discovery call.
