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Does your business have a LinkedIn company page?
Keep reading for tips to create and grow a following for your LinkedIn company page.
Why LinkedIn Pages?
LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network. The network has 150 million members worldwide, and is adding 10 new members every 5 seconds!
LinkedIn is a publicly traded company now (symbol LNKD), which means that information about their revenues, operations and earnings are publicly available.
You can gain a lot of insight about a public company by following their investor relations communications to better understand how the business is growing, and what the areas of focus are for the company.
For example, 50% of LinkedIn's revenues come from hiring solutions, and 30% are derived from marketing solutions. This means that a total of 80% of revenues for LinkedIn come from brands, corporations and businesses. The remaining 20% of revenues come from premium member subscriptions. All areas of the business are growing very rapidly (triple-digit growth).
Also, keep in mind that LinkedIn has a more educated and affluent audience than some of the other popular social media sites for business.
Given that the majority of LinkedIn's revenues are derived from companies and brands, LinkedIn company pages are going to continue to grow in importance and relevance for the network.
Jonathan Lister, LinkedIn's VP of North American sales for marketing solutions, was recently interviewed on Business Insider and had the following to say about LinkedIn company pages:
“The product we are most bullish on is a product that allows members to follow companies, and companies to message members.”
Also referring to LinkedIn company pages, Lister says,
“We're seeing some of our highest engagement rates across the board on status updates to members.”
Bottom line? Build a LinkedIn company page for your business now! Invest your time and resources where LinkedIn is investing their time and resources.
Building Your Company Page
To build your LinkedIn company page and take advantage of all of the features offered, review this article: 5 Tips for Using the New LinkedIn Company Pages.
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The newest feature of company pages is the ability to post a status update. That status update can be viewed in the streams of your followers. If you don't have followers for your company page, your status updates won't get any visibility outside of your company page itself.
In order to build followers for your LinkedIn company page, you will have to run some campaigns such as:
- notify your employees to follow your page,
- send out an email to your existing contact database to follow your page,
- place a Follow button on your website or blog, and
- cross-promote your page on other social channels, including LinkedIn Groups.
For the purposes of this article, I pulled together a few examples of best practices on companies that are using LinkedIn company pages to grow their visibility on the network and engage followers.
Best Practices for LinkedIn Company Pages
#1: Maximize the Overview Tab on your LinkedIn Company Page
On your company page Overview tab, only the top portion of your company description is visible. You need to make the most of this real estate.
HubSpot has done an awesome job of this. Not only do they give you a reason to follow their company page, but they also provide a call to action to keep you on the company page by driving you over to their Products tab.
On the Products/Services tab of the HubSpot company page, you will find a “Free Demo” call to action for HubSpot software, and you will find a list of free eBooks and webinars. These are all calls to action that generate qualified leads for the company!
#2: Create Interesting LinkedIn Company Page Updates
Status updates that either create dialogue (grow your visibility) or contain a call to action (generate leads) are the most effective forms of updates.
Sure, company news updates or blog posts are great from time to time, but the updates that get the most visibility are going to get members talking. For every like, comment or share by your page followers, that update has the potential to go viral and provide your business with significant exposure!
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FIND YOUR NEXT FAVORITE TOOLHere are a couple of examples of LinkedIn company page updates that created dialogue or contained a call to action:
A recent “engaging” status update from LinkedIn's own company page:
Here's a “call to action” company page status update from HubSpot:
Here are some additional suggestions that have worked well in helping company page status updates “go viral”:
- Donate to charity in exchange for followers
- Hold a contest or a drawing
- Showcase compelling stats or data
- Ask for a “like” or a “share” with the update
- Use catchy images and/or videos in your updates
#3: Encourage and Showcase Your Products or Services
When LinkedIn members visit your company page, they can see which of their network members have recommended your products or services.
When a member recommends your products or services, their network connections are notified and the recommendation also lives on your page (you can control which ones are visible).
You can easily ask your best customers to recommend your products or services through the LinkedIn “Request Recommendations” module. This can be found on a specific Product page. See the example below.
- Navigate to the specific Product page and click the “Request Recommendations” button.
- Fill in the “To” box with names of your connections (this field will prepopulate, and the message can be edited).
#4: Use LinkedIn Ads
You might consider utilizing LinkedIn social ads to build company followers and/or recommendations for your products or services.
LinkedIn's social ads are still affordable, and can be very powerful for driving visibility. You can run a LinkedIn social ad to ask members to follow your company or recommend your products or services, and you can strategically target these ads. (You can also run targeted ads to build group membership.)
In reviewing company case studies on LinkedIn, much success with LinkedIn company pages is a function of Followers + Engaging Updates + Product/Service Recommendations.
In addition, evaluate whether an investment in social recommendation ads or follower ads is worthwhile and appropriate for your company and has also contributed to the success of the companies in the case studies.
Use LinkedIn Company Pages
Right now I believe there is a tremendous window of opportunity for small- to medium-sized companies to significantly grow visibility and market share on LinkedIn because there is little competition. Many companies are not yet utilizing LinkedIn company pages to their full extent, and many more have not begun to consistently update their company page status. The stream is not yet crowded. Think of the early days of Facebook pagesânow almost every business has a Facebook page and it is very difficult to get into the news feed of your fans.
It makes sense to invest where LinkedIn is investing. LinkedIn company pages are only going to grow in significance, and if your audience is there (influential, affluent, educated members), you must build and activate your company presence!
What do you think? Are you using LinkedIn company pages? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
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