We’re continuing our series on using LinkedIn for business. Today I thought I’d answer a question I’m often asked which is “Should I bother with a LinkedIn Company page?”.
LinkedIn has over 772 million users spread in over 200 countries and territories around the globe. Apart from the private users, LinkedIn boasts of having over 55 million companies listed.
That makes it the perfect place to build networks and connections. Anyone can like your company page and see your posts. They can share, like and comment on your posts and those actions then appear on your company’s page. Users can tag your page in their posts, so their followers can visit your page and follow you, giving you even more prospective connections.
The LinkedIn Company Page
The Company page helps you add more credibility to a personal profile.
• You can add your company logo and a link to your website or a landing page;
• The company page has a more professional appearance than a personal profile;
• It lets you use advertising like sponsored content to build your connections.
There are a few more places to optimize as well. You can use your company logo in place of a headshot, for instance. Another option is to share valuable content through documents (PDFs, PowerPoint), videos, SlideShare presentations and other media on your Company page. Also, you can now write articles directly as your Page rather than use your profile.
Another valuable feature of a company page is the built-in content suggestions.
Recent Company Page features
Here are a few useful and interesting features that used to only be available on your Profile that you can now use from a LinkedIn Company Page:
LinkedIn Live
Live videos are one of the best ways to engage with your audience. You can use it for interviews with experts, hosting Q&A sessions, hosting virtual events, or just showing off your expertise. This feature is not available for everyone and you must apply to get access to it. Only Members or Pages that have over 150 followers and/or connections are eligible to be evaluated for access.
Polls
You can create polls to engage with your audience and find out what kind of content they would like to see more of. Polls are a great way to get to know and understand your audience better and find out how you can help them.
Events
If you’re organizing a virtual or a live event it’s always a good idea to advertise on several channels, and this is where LinkedIn Events comes in. You can easily create an event and either make it private or public and you can also send individual invites to the people in your network.
Carousel Posts
The LinkedIn Carousel post is another way of sharing documents and presentations without leaving LinkedIn. These posts combine text with attractive visuals in an engaging way compared to the usual static text. They can be interactive and stand out from the feed as they take more space on your screen.
Showcase Page
Showcase Pages are highly-customizable pages that act as tailored news feeds on specific aspects of your organization. They are a zoom-in on the day-to-day activities. These pages give LinkedIn members another way to follow you, even if they don’t follow your main page.
Career Page
A Career Page is a great way for a business to promote its culture online and it can also help with the recruitment process by showing your company culture to potential employees. The ‘Employee perspective’ section is really helpful as it lets your employees write and publish articles and you can also collect and share employee testimonials.
Company Page Content
Company pages are always visible, even to those who don’t have a LinkedIn account. This means it’s important to have consistently current content available so you have content for new potential prospects to see.
It’s important to have consistently current content available because you don’t know who will see your LinkedIn pages. Share on XAlways use images for your posts as LinkedIn data suggests that posts with images receive 98% more comments compared to those without. Video posts are becoming more popular. Videos see five times more engagement compared to other types of posts and live streaming is becoming the most popular post type for engagement.
Another useful feature on a Company Page is that you can notify employees/associates when you post content and then they can comment and share the post.
Anyone can like your company page and see your posts. They then share, like and comment on your posts and those then appear on your company’s page. Users can tag your page in their posts, so their followers can visit your page and follow you, giving you even more prospective connections.
