LinkedIn has 175 million individuals and 2 million companies who have maintain profiles on their business focused social media network, but there has been little connection between those individuals and companies other than the that of the employer/employee. In an effort to bridge that gap, LinkedIn launched new Company Pages on September 6th. A few companies have already been given access to the new pages, including Philips, Citigroup, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell, if you’d like to get an idea of what they look like. So the question is, what exactly are these changes and how can you use them to benefit your company?
LinkedIn has made four major changes to the Company Pages. The first, and most obvious change, is the addition of a large image toward the top of each company’s page where they can display a picture of their choosing – something that visually represents the company and brand.
Each company’s news feeds have also been updated. They’ve been streamlined so that a user will see information about the company that is relevant to them personally based on their own profile. The page navigation has been generally updated to improve experience and allow companies to showcase their products, services, and career opportunities.
Lastly, for select companies, like American Express, LinkedIn will offer a means to showcase the company’s employer brand through a Career Pages section of the Company Page. This features information and a video about employer experience, and a “What Employees are Saying” section.
So, what does this mean for marketers? You need only compare the old text-heavy layout to the new one to see that the new design is much more visual. In fact, there has been a lot of press comparing LinkedIn’s new company pages layout to Facebook’s Timeline profiles, including this article at Adweek. It’s true that the similarity is undeniable, but also understandable considering the attention visual content marketing has been getting recently in social media marketing circles.
That said, what exactly does differentiate LinkedIn from all the other platforms? If LinkedIn is just copying Facebook in the end, why you should split your resources? Why not just focus on your Facebook page?
Well, there are several reasons. While Facebook can draw a lot of traffic, there’s no way to feature products or services. As HubSpot points out in their “Step-by-Step Guide to LinkedIn’s New Company Pages,” LinkedIn does a much better job at product awareness than Facebook does.
Plus, it doesn’t take as much effort to grow a following as you’d think. Your employees themselves, as they update their profiles and job titles to show where they work and what they do, act as links to your company’s profile. Every person who connects with one of your employees on LinkedIn has the potential to click on your company and visit your company page.
LinkedIn brand pages can also help to improve you SEO. Jobs listed on LinkedIn are featured in search results, plus LinkedIn has it’s own search engine, so having a LinkedIn profile can increase your visibility on the web. Not to mention the fact that your profile can help to draw traffic back to your website.
LinkedIn will be slowly rolling out the new Company Pages design to select companies, so the shift will not be immediate. They’ll also be adding new features during the transition.
One last thing! LinkedIn has also updated their mobile app so that now mobile users can now not only search for people, but also for companies. Great news for on-the-go marketing!
Tags: Learn LinkedIn Nashville, learn social media nashville, LinkedIn
