Are you using LinkedIn’s Company Page?
I’m a big fan of LinkedIn. They have a clear focus on professional business networking and they’ve created an extremely effective tool that every business owner should be using. In fact if you’re not using LinkedIn, now’s the right time to create a profile and start linking!
One of the things I really like about LinkedIn is the steady pace of innovation they’ve had over the years. They don’t score a hit with everything they roll out, but they are constantly improving and adding new useful functionality. Considering LinkedIn is a free site that offers a ton of value for business professionals, that’s a pretty good deal!
Just in the last year or two, they’ve made changes to groups, the advertising functionality and even some minor profile changes, but what you should really check out as a business owner is how they’ve been quietly adding stuff to the Company page functionality. It started when LinkedIn added the ability to follow companies and more recently they’ve added several other worthwhile capabilities worth checking out.
New Company Page capabilities from LinkedIn
– A Careers tab that allows you to centrally post for jobs at your company along with lots of other customization and capabilities (some of which cost money).
– A services tab which allows you to create detailed descriptions of the services you offer (and allows people to post recommendations / testimonials for those services directly.
– An analytics tab that gives you a breakdown of page views, unique visitors, and a trend on followers. (We would love to have more followers at Aspire…here’s what our page looks like. We’re still adding some things to it).
Finally – LinkedIn also just added the capability to do Company Status updates. Note – you have to edit your company page and specify who is allowed to make an update in order for the field to show up.
Kind of unrelated, but LinkedIn also just added a Classmates feature which helps you find anyone who went to your college at the same time you were there. There was always a way to do this via search, but they’ve done a nice job giving you information and the ability to filter a lot of different ways. Check out LinkedIn Classmates
Have you created and updated your Company page lately? People are looking for you and the more positive information they can find, the better off you’ll be. What do you think of Company Pages? Any success stories or concerns? We’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.
Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach