With LinkedIn home to more than 380,000,000 professionals, who are 50% more likely to buy from a company page they follow, is it time for your organisation to start utilising & managing LinkedIn more effectively?
Below we have compiled a short guide on how to propel your company page to success and effectively showcase your products and/or services.
LinkedIn Company Page
What is a company page:
A company page is your organisation’s home on LinkedIn. It is an effective channel for your audience to learn more about your business, giving you a great opportunity to share your organisation’s story, engage with your customers, drive brand awareness & highlight job opportunities through the company updates posting functionality.
Enhancing your Company Page:
With LinkedIn celebrating over 3,000,000 company pages back in 2013, and with a growth rate of 500,000 pages in 12 months, how can you ensure your company page stands out from the crowd?
A key element of every company page is the description. LinkedIn provides you with 2000 characters to describe what your organisation does best!
However the description is cut to approximately 300 characters when viewing a company page at first glance. Therefore, it is essential that your description’s lead paragraph clearly communicates what products or services your organisation provides. By utilising keywords from your SEO strategy throughout your company description and specialties section you can also improve the chances of your company page showing up in LinkedIn’s internal search functionality, ultimately helping potential customers find your brand.
LinkedIn’s interface has changed significantly since it was launched in 2003:
In comparison to the early versions of company pages, you now have a lot more ability to customise the visuals on your page. Considering the banner image is the first element visitors see when landing on your company page, make sure you get it right!
Tip: Make sure your company page banner is the correct size, LinkedIn recommends 646 pixels wide by 220 pixels tall.
Updating your company engagement
As with all social networks, content is the pinnacle of success. However, with the clear differences in philosophy from the more common networks such as Twitter and Facebook, does LinkedIn abide by the common rules of content?
Here are our top tips to drive engagement on your company page:
1) Adding Value — As with all content across social media, the most important element is to add value. Whether it is a guide to help your followers choose the right car for their family or to promote employment opportunities within your organisation, it is essential to consider your audience.
2) Timing — With the highly professional positioning of LinkedIn, it is important to review the times at which you send your company updates, especially in comparison to other social networks. LinkedIn’s recent advice highlighted that updates posted in the morning usually earn the highest engagement, with a slight bump occurring again after business hours. However, this may change slightly depending on your audience. (See tip 3 for more detail.)
3) Tailor to your audience — You wouldn’t buy clothes that don’t fit, so why would your audience engage if it’s not right for them? Whether you’re trying to target the 41% of millionaires on LinkedIn or the 39+million students, it is vital that you consider key variables when posting. The times in which your audience is most engaged can vary from those that are recommended, or the language used in certain posts may grab more attention than others. However, through extensive experimenting and reporting you will be able to highlight what works best for your organisation!
4) Experiment & Report — To achieve further understanding of your audience it is crucial to experiment, measure and report on what works best. Building a comprehensive LinkedIn content plan will allow you to schedule in advance and experiment with different times of posting. Once you have delivered several months of content, effective reporting tools will provide you with a league table of results, which will allow you to draw comparisons between best times to post or most productive calls to action.
LinkedIn Showcase Pages:
What is a showcase page?
Showcase pages are an extension of your Company page; they are located on the right hand side of a company page where applicable. They’re designed to allow LinkedIn members to follow a specific aspect of your business, whether it is a product you supply or a service they want to be updated on.
Utilising showcase pages allows you to concentrate your audiences, depending on what element of your organisation they’re interested in. For example LinkedIn utilise showcase pages for their range of solutions, including marketing, talent acquisition and sales. They also enable your organisation to personalise content based on your different customer profiles. For instance if you have two distinct audiences one showcase page could cater for a certain persona and your company page could cater for the other.
Optimising your Showcase Page:
Although similar in appearance to the company page, showcase pages have some key differences due to their different purposes, which include:
- Distinct design including a larger banner image.
- Two-column feed design to highlight the most relevant content.
- Directing a concentrated audience to a dedicated product/service page.
In addition to your company page, it is essential that your showcase page clearly outlines the purpose of the product or service which you are providing. Here is some information to help you, when setting up your LinkedIn showcase page:
1) Naming your showcase page — When naming your showcase page, LinkedIn provides a maximum of 100 characters. However, when viewing the showcase pages from the company page, LinkedIn shortens the name to 22 characters. Therefore it is essential that your name fits within this limit or is easily recognisable in shortened form.
2) Showcase Page Description — Similar to your organisation’s company page it is vital your description clearly communicates the purpose of the showcase page and gives readers an insight into what to expect when following the page. However in comparison to the company page LinkedIn enforces a character restriction between 75 – 200 characters and therefore it is vital to be concise yet informative.
3) Banner image — With more space than the company page header (Showcase banner dimensions: 974 pixels wide x 330 pixels tall) make the most of this added space to complement your page description and further inform your audience of what the page is about. There are many great examples of how brands are utilising this space to project their message. Some choose to let the product do the talking or use the extra space to drive followers/engagement. Whatever option you choose ensure it gives a great impression!
Conclusion
Ultimately, multiple departments within your organisation can utilise LinkedIn whether it is HR to drive recruitment, Marketing to engage and understand customers, or customer service to reply to comments and feedback. However it is essential to fine tune your message based on the desired result and be able to keep track of what is being said across multiple pages from multiple departments.
In the time you have taken to read this article there are approximately 1,200 more LinkedIn members that you could be engaging with. So what are you waiting for?
Lewis Jones – Digital Manager
SoCrowd is the UK’s leading social media risk management & compliance platform, providing effective management & oversight to all of your LinkedIn Company pages and showcase pages, with comprehensive analytics and reporting to help optimize your delivery.
