Most people define LinkedIn as a digital resume. This definition fails to underline the power of LinkedIn for highlighting your company. Having a fully functional company page on LinkedIn will act as a resource to anyone interested in working with you or your company. LinkedIn will assist you in creating your company page, by giving you a step-by-step walk through.
This blog post is the first of two that will provide you with tools for leveraging LinkedIn for your company. Below is a list of seven steps to complete and optimize your company page within LinkedIn, along with tips on which applications will help you leverage your company’s page listing.
Steps to Complete Your LinkedIn Company Page
- Have all employees listed under your company (on their personal profiles)
- Fill out company description (use same company description used on other social mediums)
- Add your company logo
- Build a following
- Ask for and receive recommendations for your company
- Create a Products and Services page – This will allow you to highlight your companies products or services, and link to websites, videos, registration pages, brochure downloads and more.
- Ask for recommendations for your products/services
An example of the Construction Marketing Association LinkedIn company page is below:
- Company Description
- Services Offered Section
- LinkedIn Ads
- Number of Followers, Services, Recommendations
- Main LinkedIn Navigation
Utilize LinkedIn Applications
LinkedIn has a number of powerful applications that allow you to maximize the effectiveness of your personal profile on LinkedIn and help promote your company page. Such applications include WordPress, SlideShare, Google Presentations, Behance (portfolio display), Events, LinkedIn Today and Amazon Reading List. All of these applications have their strengths. There are more applications on LinkedIn than listed below, but these are the most business friendly, useful applications.
WordPress – As we’ve mentioned again and again, having a blog is cruicial for getting the word out about your company. A blog lasts forever, where a social post lasts only 48 hours. So, advertise your blog as much as you can! WordPress has an application that will allow you to embed your blog in your profile. This way someone can easily see what you are writing about when the visit your profile page, and then move forward to connect with your company.
SlideShare – This robust application allows you to upload any size Powerpoint presentation you want to your LinkedIn profile. However, PDF’s can also be uploaded to SlideShare (their orientation can be either portrait or landscape). This is a great application to show off presentations you’ve given, and a way to highlight your expertise through a presentation. You can also show off the company you work for by uploading a presentation that they’ve given in the past, a PDF of a brochure, or a capabilities sheet.
Google Presentations – This application is just like slideshare, however it gives you the functionality to add video to your profile on LinkedIn.
Events–Do you have a lot of live events at your company? If so, this is an excellent way to get the word out to others. You can advertise any kind of event, even if it’s just a live webinar!
LinkedIn Today– LinkedIn Today aggregates content from around the internet. This is a great source to find industry articles, relevant industry information, and what the people within your professional network are interested in. The best articles that are shared the most, and have the most comments are elevated to the top of LinkedIn news, so you see only the most important articles first. The first time you go to the LinkedIn News portion of the site they will suggest industries that have news that is relevant to you. Be sure to follow these and tell LinkedIn what industries you are interested in. These news articles are aggregated primarily from twitter, so you will see a 140 character format for article descriptions. This is a great resource for anyone that is interested in real-time news.
Stay tuned…the Construction Marketing Association will soon post another blog on how to leverage LinkedIn for your company. We’ll cover the importance of groups and how you can use groups to build your network! If you are interested in LinkedIn and are currently utilizing it to build your company presence, share your experiences below. Be sure to retweet, facebook like, and share this post with others!