I’ve been watching something develop on LinkedIn over the past few weeks called Showcase Pages that I stumbled upon when looking at Adobe’s Company Page – today LinkedIn appears to have released them to the rest of the network which could well be a very exciting development.
Company Pages, to recap, are where companies and organisations have their ‘home’ on LinkedIn. They have grown up massively since their launch back in 2010 and now are a very powerful tool which can be used by corporates and small businesses alike, bringing together employees, products & services as well as distributing news from the organisation. A mixture of information, ‘push marketing’ and social proof (via the ‘Recommendations’) that has huge power and potential for both the visibility and integration of company activities on LinkedIn.
Well, it appears that we can now add Showcase Pages to the mix. These are additional sections connected to the Company Pages and are designed to allow a company to spotlight a brand, product line, business unit or initiative – essentially, they allow you to provide a highlight these areas and, in doing so, allow you to better segment the audience that you wish to deliver certain information to, as well as be a focal point for both broadcasting the messages and also encouraging interaction around these specific topics or product sets.
If you want to see if a company has any Showcase Pages in addition to the main Company Pages, then you’ll need to look in the right hand side bar of the main Company Page. There, if you see something similar to the format to the right with the heading “Other **** pages”, then that means that the company has created additional Showcase Pages where you will be able to find and follow additional information specific to those areas or topics.
How do they differ from Company Pages?
The Company Pages are really the focal point on LinkedIn for all activity relating to the company and, as such, contain information about the employees as well as product and, optionally, career information. The key elements that they therefore display are highlighted below:
How do I set one up?
Well they look to be free at the moment and, because they are essentially sub pages associated with a company, they need to be set up by a Company admin for the company that owns them, although they can then be given their own administrators after that.
Once you have set up the page you can load the main image at the top (974 x 330 pixels) and also add the description of what the page is about for which you get 200 characters. You can have up to 10 of these pages as standard but start slow, I’d recommend, as the whole point will be to gain targeted followers and be able to communicate with them on a regular basis. I’d also suggest that you have at least 2 or 3 posts ready to share when you first set it up so that your new followers immediately have something to get their teeth into.
Lots of good opportunities here and there be another post shortly with some suggestions of how you might use them, something we will also be covering in the “Unlocking Company Marketing Opportunities on LinkedIn” session coming next month!
