6 reasons why you should have a LinkedIn company page
Image from LinkedIn

6 reasons why you should have a LinkedIn company page

Many businesses, I believe, are missing a trick by not having a LinkedIn company page. Whether you have a number of employees, who have personal LinkedIn profiles or you are a self employed, owner-driven business, a LinkedIn company page serves a number of very different functions, compared with your personal profile.

To create a company page, you are required to have an email address from that business, you can then choose designated admins to help manage the page - they must be connected with you on LinkedIn. Be aware that an admin has full editorial rights on your page and can also add or remove other page admins.  

First, let's briefly list the benefits of having a company page:

  1. It showcases your company, not just a single employee. 
  2. Your employees act as indirect company ambassadors 
  3. You can measure the effectiveness of your updates
  4. Be alerted when some mentions your company
  5. Promote your most important news
  6. Showcase your specialist services

1. It showcases your company, not just a single employee

LinkedIn's foundations are built upon individual personal profiles, which usually showcase the user's skills, not those of the company they work for. LinkedIn members use the site for numerous reasons, two of which include; following and networking with other professionals or following companies to hear of news and developments from that organisation.

Take a look at the computing giant, Dell's company page. It has more than 940,000 followers, who are interested in receiving technology based updates. Their news tends to be a mixture of industry developments and their own technology announcements. What industry news or developments within your own business would be of interest to your target audience?

Whenever you share content via the Share an update status bar feature, not only is that content shared in the Home news feeds of your page followers, if they comment or like your update, it is then shared in the news feeds of their connections also. Therefore, the more engaging your content, the further its reach. Consider attaching a PDF brochure or slide presentation to your updates or include a website page link that contains an image - in each case, the brochure cover, presentation or web page image will be visible and will stand out when your post is seen in the news feeds of your page followers. 

Unlike your personal LinkedIn profile, your Company page is publicly visible by default. This means that content shared from this page is ranked on the web - it impacts on your brand's SEO ranking. Share key word rich content from your company page frequently and in turn, you increase your firm's presence on the web. Also ensure that the Summary explanation of your company page includes plenty of relevant key words so your page appears in website search results. 

2. Your employees act as indirect company ambassadors

When one of your employees updates his/her current 'Experience' section, on their personal LinkedIn profile, with your company's name, they are automatically attached to your company page. This is identified by a clickable image of your company logo, which allows a profile viewer to move seamlessly from the employee's personal profile to your company page.

Simply by ensuring that everyone of your team has correctly Linked their profile to your company page, increases the chances that their connections will click the link and be sent directly to your company page. All you need to do now is ensure that your employees become well connected in the industry sectors you want to do business in.  

3. You can measure the effectiveness of your updates

Whenever you post a news update from your company page, LinkedIn provides you with analytics, which amongst others statistics, tells you; how many impressions your post has received (the number of times your post has appeared in front of a follower on their desktop browser, mobile device App); the number of clicks your post has generated (whenever your post is opened or someone clicks from the post onto your company name or logo); the number of Interactions your post has received (likes, comments, shares), expressed as a number and as a percentage of impressions.

Analytics are not available when you post an update from your personal LinkedIn profile, although you will see how many likes and comments the post has received and who has done so.

 4. Be alerted when some mentions your company

In March this year, LinkedIn introduced 'Notifications' to company pages. This is a powerful feature, which sends you an email alert and a notification to your company page, whenever someone mentions your company in their personal LinkedIn status updates. 

When your company name is typed into a post, LinkedIn displays it in a drop down menu, providing the person posting with an opportunity to tag your company in the post. It's a double whammy - you are alerted to this happening and other members, viewing the person's post, can click on the link and go straight to your company page. 

5. Promote your most important news

One of the challenges with posting updates, on social media generally, is that unless you're going to post frequently, your most important information is going to be lost in the vertical time lines of other members, very quickly, as posts from other members arrive. Not a problem with a Company page, as you can select your most important post and pin it to the top of your page's news feed and it will remain there until you choose to unpin it. Promoting a company event or a success story? Pin it! 

6. Showcase your specialist services

In April 2014, LinkedIn replaced the option of including a Products & Services page on your Company profile, something, which personally, I think was a mistake. This page was replaced by enabling company page admins to create showcase pages. A showcase page functions just as described in the 5 points above, with the exception of the Notification feature. If your company is large enough or offers a diverse range of services, you may want to showcase these individually, using the main company page as a landing page to showcase your business generally.

So, should you have a LinkedIn company page?
As I've described above, there are numerous benefits to creating one and I would recommend having one set up so your company can be found easily on LinkedIn and therefore, you and your team members.

To really benefit from having a company page, you need to build a following and frequently post and monitor content from your page. In truth, this has not been a major strategy for my business, well not yet possibly the reason why we have just 350 followers on our page, compared with my own personal following of more than 4600 LinkedIn members. We do maintain a regular presence though and post to the page several times a week, although this is low compared to our personal profiles.

It is clear that there are many things you could do to raise your brand profile and create more business opportunity using LinkedIn and you must select the options which are likely to present you with the easiest and most useful returns, unless you are fortunate enough to have sufficient resources to delegate LinkedIn projects, which promote your business, to other team members, whilst you focus on engaging with your personal network. 

Have a great rest of your week and I look forward to hearing from you, please leave your comments and if you liked this post, would you share it using the social media buttons provided.

PS - Check out our new subscription service the Linked2Success Achievers Club. For details - click here

Steve Phillip is Managing Director and co founder of Linked2Success, specialising in measurable social media sales & marketing support for businesses.

Want more tips like this? Sign up to our weekly news-brief here or follow Steve on Twitter @linked2Steve

 

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Others also viewed

Explore topics