LinkedIn company pages have been available for quite a while. Like a profile page for your business, these ‘pages’ are really a series of pages with tabs and images, allowing you to create a mini website right on LinkedIn. There are multiple formatting options, allowing you to feature Services and/or Products including a short description and image of each. As I have said in the past, LinkedIn values recommendations so they have made it easy for you to get recommendations for each of these as well. There are links to all employees’ LinkedIn profiles and you can post, for a fee, any job openings available.
And starting this week, you will be able to add status updates to these pages. This is an EXCELLENT addition to an already well designed application. Read on to learn more about how to take advantage of this valuable free opportunity to showcase your business and increase your online visibility!
LinkedIn profiles are an effective way to establish your expertise, keep in touch in with your existing connections and grow your network, personally. LinkedIn Company Pages help you do this for your business. Rather than ‘link’, someone is able to ‘follow’ a Company Page. Unlike a link, where you must invite someone and they must accept, anyone can follow any page with a single click. Once someone is following your page, when changes or updates are made to the page – in the number of employees, a new or revised product or service – that information is sent to their newstream. Now, with stauts updates, those too are pushed to the follower’s stream.
Above is an example of a Company Page Status Update option and the Services and Analytics tabs. Note, the analytics tab is only visible to Company Page Admins.
Use status updates to help your clients, and potential clients, learn more about your business without ever leaving LinkedIn!
UPDATE – as of April 2014, Service and Product Pages will be eliminated, replaced by Showcase Pages.
Another excellent perk you get when you create a company page is that LinkedIn provides ‘analytics’. Clicking on the tab marked ‘Analytics’ will show you data on the number of pages views, unique visitors, clicks on products and services and demographic info on your visitors. Most importantly, you will be able to see which posts get the most ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ – helping you determine which posts are most valuable to your followers.
You also have the option to pay to promote (or ‘sponsor’) your post, to extend visibility beyond your network connections.
Sharing this data is VERY generous on LinkedIn’s part and I have a bad feeling that this may become a membership only option sometime down the road, but for now, it is part of any free account so do be sure to monitor it!
Here are a few more examples of effective LinkedIn Company Pages:
IBM has a company page with almost 500,000 followers. http://www.linkedin.com/company/ibm
They have been quick to take advantage of the status update option and always do a great job with their products and services descriptions.
On a smaller scale, Traction has a page worth visiting. http://www.linkedin.com/company/traction
Their page has a good number of employee profiles, a concise, keyword rich company description and a selection of Products and Services. Extra points for having some Product and Services recommendations! They include a six minute documentary but unfortunately, it gets lost in the sidebar, looking like a paid ad – which is not so much a function of their submission but the LinkedIn formatting. Hopefully LI will address this in the near future, allowing us to add this type of content into the body of the page.
Click here to see my own Company Page – http://www.linkedin.com/company/lisamarie-dias-designs and please take a moment to share YOUR company page on my Facebook Business Page wall at http://www.facebook.com/LisaMarieDiasDesigns
Here is a short video to learn more about the new LinkedIn feature.
Company Pages are a FREE and easy way to grow your business – if you have one, now is the time to make sure it is fully filled out and to take advantage of the new status update feature. If you haven’t started one yet, call or email for help setting up your own LinkedIn Company Page today!
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