September 13, 2016
This post is to encourage you to get ready for LinkedIn’s newly designed LinkedIn Company Pages. Rethink, re-write, and re-focus your LinkedIn Company Page, so it conveys the message and brand you’ve spent a whole lot of time, money and energy building.
The time is coming when your leadership team may not be able to hide on LinkedIn. The number of C-suite executives, business owners and non-profit leaders who say they are NOT interested in being ‘seen’ on LinkedIn has diminished over the years but still exists.
Let potential clients, business partners, investors, potential employers, or board members view, vet, and get to know you through your LinkedIn profile. It’s often the precursor to a next step—conversation, connection, meeting, etc. Who doesn’t see the value in that?
LinkedIn is getting ready to release an update to Company Pages—thank goodness. They have needed updating for quite some time. The last update was 2013 when they launched Showcase Pages.
I have not seen the new LinkedIn Company Page layout but based on Arik Hanson‘s article What the New (Upcoming) LinkedIn Company Page Format Means for Brands in Business 2 Community and Tim Peterson’s Adweek’s article LinkedIn Looks to Get More Facebooky, LinkedIn will begin releasing this update in September (2016). Remember, LinkedIn rolls out updates randomly and over time. By the way, both of these articles are worth reading.
LinkedIn Company Pages are going to be much simpler and more visual than ever. I will wait for the rollout to write about the features; Arik’s post shares great insight and good screenshots.
Two new features on the beta version of the new Company Page include “Meet Some of our Leaders at ” and “Employee Perspectives.”
Meet Some of our Leaders
LinkedIn will highlight leaders at each company and they will be visible on the Company Page. I can’t tell you how many Company Pages I look at, and I see “LinkedIn Member”, no photo or no content on the profile beyond the most basic information.
It’s now time to hand-off the LinkedIn Company Page to a person in your company who understands and will be attentive to updating executive profiles and posting appropriate, compelling content about the company’s culture, job postings, community service, announcements, press announcements, events and hopefully, great original content.
“Employee Perspectives”
Within the new “Life” tab there will be an “Employee Perspectives” section. This section will feature employees who may have published long-form content using LinkedIn’s Publishing tool. The focus is not on shared updates. Are your employees posting original content on their LinkedIn profiles? A quick look at your employee’s profile will show you if they are publishing. If there is a Post Section above the Summary, they are publishing and may be featured on the company page.
If you don’t have employees publishing, you may want to reconsider this strategy. Publishing is particularly effective for your sales team, technical support or specialists, and your thought leaders. If you are currently publishing blog content, and it’s from the company, not a person, reconsider this too. You are likely to build greater credibility with content authored by an individual.
7 questions to prepare for the upcoming LinkedIn Company Page redesign:
- How does our executive team look on LinkedIn?
- How do our client-facing employees look on LinkedIn?
- What is our LinkedIn strategy?
- Can someone discern our culture, employment opportunities on LinkedIn?
- Can they apply for a job through LinkedIn?
- Are we promoting relevant content to potential Followers? Clients? Prospects? Talent? Investors? Partners?
- Do our employees know how to maximize their LinkedIn profile and our LinkedIn Company Page to share our updates with their networks?
Consider your LinkedIn Company Page a tool to promote your company and employees, showcase expertise and leadership, feature your culture and attract new talent, not a shiny new object to set up and forget. Once again, don’t hand this off to someone who doesn’t care, isn’t creative and doesn’t get the bigger picture.
Check out our LinkedIn Company Page for updates and articles we find interesting and relevant or our Tools Page for complimentary resources.
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