There have been a whole raft of changes throughout the LinkedIn site over a number of months now … and they’re not finished yet!
One area that has seen a host of changes has been the Company Pages which have been continually developed in a variety of different ways. Having started out as a simple profile page for companies, it has now becoame a key tool for companies both large and small, providing an important additional resource from a marketing and visibility perspective.
Hopefully, you have the key elements of your own company pages in place already but here are some elements that I’d advise to take a quick check over to make sure that you are using them to best effect.
1. Get a banner in place on your Company Pages homepage
The whole Company Pages section has been given much more visual impact in its latest rework and one key element here has been the graphic that you can – indeed must – add at the top of the ‘Home’ page. What you put there is of course up to you but taking your website branding and imagery, and then re-creating here might be a sensible start point.
2. Use the Company Description field to full effect
This text area was extended when the ‘graphically enhanced’ profile came into effect last year and was also relegated to the bottom of the page, so you now have considerably more space to play with than before. Use it! Also remember that the first 25 – 30 words will appear in the pop up box on the individual personal profiles of your staff so make sure it delivers a punchy opening message.
3. Have more than one “Designated Admin”
The ‘Designated Admins’ are those people who are able to edit your Company Pages. I’ve had a number of companies recently who have wanted to update their pages only to find that the one person who had admin rights had now left the company. Don’t fall into the same trap and make sure you have at least a couple of people as editors – hey, you might even get an additional perspective in what you put out there.
4. Add both versions of the company logo
There are two images / logos that you can add onto your company page – one rectangular that appears at the top of your page and the other one square. Do make sure that you add in both – otherwise, if you are missing the default square one, then as you put out the updates from the company, you may find that LinkedIn has rather squashed the logo that sits alongside it.
5. Plan how to increase the number of Company followers
There are very few companies able to attract followers just by putting up a page – just like your website, it’s something to promote which will pay dividends when you start to benefit from the push marketing opportunities that it offers you. Get a plan together – this is a free targetted marketing opportunity you can’t afford to miss.
6. Introduce your Products and Services successfully
Use the two key elements on your products and services homepage present the items there to best effect – at the top, use the banner(s) (you can have up to three) to reinforce your branding and messaging before then letting the text introduction tell people what they are going to be seeing below and to introduce the benefits that your products / services can offer them.
7. Add contacts on the individual Products page
One of the calls to action open to us from the individual products page is to introduce the key contacts within our company to the people who have alreday been attracted by our product or service. So make sure that you have filled the three slots available to you with their names (and LinkedIn connects to their profiles) so they can be reached for further information.
8. Link through to the relevant landing page
The other key call to action is the link back to the relevant page on your website. Don’t just send them off to your homepage – make sure that you send them to the page on your website containing the information that they’re interested in and which backs up what they’ve already seen and been attracted to on LinkedIn.
9. Create custom homepages for key audiences
Remember that your Company pages offer an important customisation option allowing you to create up to 30 targeted versions of your products homepage. Focused introduction text, specific images, optimal ordering of individual products – all of these are available for you to define and automatically deliver to a series of defined target audiences, whether that might be according to job function, industry or geographic area.
10. Get and display Recommendations
Social Proof is at the core of getting your company’s credentials out there in front of the right people – having recommendations for your products and services from people who your prospects already know is key and hugely important. Make sure that you encourage people to recommend your products where appropriate – build it into your follow-up mechanisms.
We’ve only touched on the elements here that we can build into the company pages and perhaps the key element of integration with the other marketing tools that you have at your disposal. But for now, getting the elements above in place as a start point and then build from there.
