Does your business have a LinkedIn company page?
Company pages on LinkedIn have been around for some time, but other than making your business logo visible on personal profiles, I never saw much value in investing time in them.
But, in 2023 LinkedIn started getting serious about company pages, rolling out more functionality. I now strongly recommend business owners actively build their company page alongside personal profiles.
WHY DO YOU NEED A COMPANY PAGE AS WELL AS A PERSONAL PROFILE?
Put simply, LinkedIn company pages allow you to showcase your business and team, while personal profiles are all about your personal brand.
The benefits to business owners of building a Company Page include:
- Increased business reach and awareness.
- Greater professionalism and increased credibility.
- The ability to showcase your products, services and team.
- Nurturing existing and potential customers more easily.
- Enabling employees to display your business logo on their profile.
- Opening up paid advertising opportunities for your business.
But don’t focus on your company page at the expense of your personal profile. Build them in tandem as personal profiles have distinct advantages also:
- Effectively your personal brand landing page.
- Great for connecting with peers, potential clients or partners on a personal level.
- More appropriate for sharing personal content alongside business content.
- Personal profile content will typically be seen by a wider, more engaged audience.
START WITH A CLEAR OBJECTIVE
There is no cost to setting up a company page, so they are attractive to businesses of all sizes. As with any marketing activity, approach the development of your company page with a clear objective in mind.
Do you want to:
- Get your business more widely known by your ideal customers?
- Make it easy to get in touch with you?
- Attract high-calibre talent to your team?
- Increase your reach and audience beyond just your personal profile?
- Help your business be found more easily on Google?
LinkedIn company pages can help you achieve all these objectives and more.
SETTING UP YOUR COMPANY PAGE
Setting up your company page is simple - log into your personal LinkedIn account on a desktop computer, click the ‘For Business’ icon in the top menu bar and select ‘Create a Company Page’.
It’s useful to think of your company page as you would your website landing page, especially as it will be even more dynamic once you start sharing content and engaging regularly. It’s worth putting effort into completing each section, making sure they are clear, compelling, and consistent with the company branding you have established on your website and other online channels.
If you do nothing else, ensure you have a compelling header image and call to action, a clear and compelling about section, contact details and consistent brand logo. Then make sure you, and everyone in your company, link their personal profile to the company page by updating their Experience section.
HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR COMPANY PAGE
Develop a content strategy and regularly share new content
You want people to engage with your company page, so it’s vital to breathe life into it via an appropriate content strategy.
While your company content will typically be more business-related, don’t fall into the trap of being impersonal or overly salesy. Give prospective customers a sense of your organisation through your page and don’t be afraid of sharing behind-the-scenes content – It’s human and engaging.
Grow your company page followers
With engaging content underway, you can invite people to follow your company page. LinkedIn gives each organisation 250 invite credits each month. Bear in mind you can only invite personal connections to follow your page, so continue to build them on your personal profile.
Employee advocacy & amplification
Employee advocacy is vital to gain real traction for your company page on LinkedIn. Employees who willingly comment and reshare your company’s content are your best ambassadors. Their activity will also vastly expand the page reach across their personal networks.
Only company page admins can invite connections to follow a company page, so we recommend adding multiple admins to widen the pool of potential connections.
Amplifying the reach of your company page
To accelerate growth further, your page admins can like, follow and engage with others - both personal and company content - as your company page. This allows you to widen your reach and impact further, engaging with others in your industry as well as prospective customers while demonstrating your expertise.
Reviewing performance
It’s easy to ignore performance metrics or swamp yourself in data when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of your company page.
We recommend identifying the metrics that matter to you - these should be selected to demonstrate whether your company page is delivering against your objectives. These could simply be audience growth, more focused on lead generation, or clicks and traffic to your website.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT RESOURCES
Developing your LinkedIn strategy, producing regular content, and assessing performance regularly to optimise your approach requires a level of expertise and can be time-consuming - especially as LinkedIn continually evolve the platform, adding new features.
If you’d like the weight of social media management lifted off your shoulders, consider outsourcing it to a specialist agency who can develop a bespoke plan focused on delivering results to achieve your objectives.
For more support, follow Dan Ince on LinkedIn or visit brandworkssocial.co.uk