How To Use LinkedIn's Revamped Company Pages To Grow Your Business
LinkedIn has revamped their company pages - so how can you benefit?
LinkedIn's latest initiative - its redesigned 'Company Pages' - is helping more businesses to showcase their products and services, attract great talent and get their marketing messages in front of potential buyers.
Might this free promotional opportunity be suitable for your company?
LinkedIn's recently redesigned 'Company Pages' could help you get more out of LinkedIn
Are you a business owner who wants to get more out of LinkedIn - the world's largest professional network?
If so, LinkedIn's recently redesigned 'Company Pages' could be of interest to you. Perhaps you have considered creating a Company Page before but haven't yet got around to it?
Because LinkedIn now allows your Company Page to have a 'personality', this could be the perfect time to take a closer look at what the networking site has to offer as part of youronline marketing strategy.
Currently LinkedIn has:
161+ million users in 200+ countries and territories.
Professionals signing up at a rate of two per second.
2 million companies with LinkedIn Company Pages.
So what is a LinkedIn Company Page?
It is a free opportunity to showcase your business by sharing your company story, highlighting your products and services, and connecting with your followers and visitors.
There are basically five main components or 'tabs' which make up the latest LinkedIn Company Pages.
The five tabs are:
1. Overview
This is the place to introduce your business and begin a dialogue with potential followers. What is your brand story to date? What is your mission statement? What is the latest news from your industry? What business developments or insights would you like to share with your audience?
If you already post company updates on Facebook or Google+ you will now be able to extend these to your LCP also, giving you the potential to drive huge amounts of traffic to your website. You can also include offers for ebooks, webinars, courses and other marketing 'calls to action' in your updates.
Unlike with the previous version of Company Pages, you now have the option to inject personality into your LCP by customising your Overview page with a cover-style image or banner. Whatever content you choose to include in your Overview be sure to create a dynamic first impression that draws your visitors in.
2. Products and Services
This is your 'shop window' - the place to highlight your main products or lines. You can also add an image for each product which will be resized to 100x80 pixels. As well as listing the main features and benefits of your goods or services, you can also opt to add a URL which your visitors can click on to learn more (for example a link to a YouTube video).
3. Careers (full option available through paid subscription only)
Want to extend your reach to 175 million professionals worldwide? This is the section where you get to explain a bit about your office culture and the kind of careers opportunities your company offers. You also have the option of posting vacancies as they arise and targeting suitable candidates through an automated job matching facility.
4. Employee Information
This tab allows you to display information about your key personnel such as a photograph and profile.
It is highly likely that at many of your employees will have a profile on LinkedIn already, in which case you can ask them to edit their profiles so that the Company Page links to them. The benefit to your company in doing this is that when someone clicks on an employee's LinkedIn profile they will have the opportunity to connect with your Company Page also.
5. Analytics
The 'Analytics' tab will allow you and your designated administrators to measure your visitors, followers, engagement levels and overall effectiveness of your Company Page, so that you can tweak elements of it as you wish.
What to do next . . .
From September 3, 2012, Philips, Citi, HP and Dell were afforded early access to the revamped LinkedIn Company Pages, which will be rolled out to companies worldwide throughout the remainder of this year.
For more information on setting up your LinkedIn Company Page check out the LinkedIn Learning Center. The website includes video tutorials, plus downloadable user guides and case studies from companies who are already using LinkedIn Company Pages to grow their businesses for free.
How about you?