23 January 2013

4 Tips to Take Advantage of LinkedIn's Changes

Being in front of your audience has always been important to business leaders and their companies. For the past few years now, LinkedIn has been seen as the premier network for professionals to connect with one another to network, share ideas, and see what their competition is doing. Through a series of upgrades to the network, LinkedIn has positioned itself to continue to be a great place for you to be. One often overlooked advantage of LinkedIn as a social network is the ability for companies to introduce their products and services, as well as the company, to a broad audience through the use of “Company Pages”.

In one of our previous posts, Are You and Your Company LinkedIn?, we discussed some of the benefits of a company page. Here are 4 tips based on LinkedIn’s new updates that can help you optimize your company page:

1. Ensure you meet the requirements for a company page – LinkedIn has specific requirements for creating a company page. The most important of these is being listed as a current employee of the company on your personal profile and having an email address with your company’s unique domain name (e.g. @powerteninc.com).
2. Complete your company profile – Often we view the company profile is basic housekeeping and it falls down to the bottom of the to-do list, this is not the time to be brief. Share as much as you can about your company, being careful to use accurate information about the company including website information, email addresses, and statistics. A brief scan of the company profile will help determine whether your audience will engage or move on.
3. Use a banner graphic for the page – LinkedIn has followed Facebook with the inclusion of a banner image opportunity for your company page. This will be the first thing a visitor will see, so tie the banner in with your website and social branding to make it easier for your company to be recognized. Images should be under 2MB in size and need to fit a 646px X 220px space, failure to fit these dimensions will result in your banner being cut off.
4. Add “Products and Services” that you provide – LinkedIn has placed links to your “Products and Services” prominently in a sidebar on the company page. Take advantage of this great marketing tool that allows product information, website links, contacts, video, recommendations, and much more. Take advantage of this opportunity for showing off what you specifically have to offer.

The changes made for company pages offer great opportunity to engage with your intended audience in a targeted and far more relevant way. You can offer content and optimized information to attract more followers while providing finely customized information.

LinkedIn is still making tweaks and changes to the social network based on the experience of others using features that combine some of the best parts of Facebook and Twitter. The big difference is that LinkedIn has a distinct business focus that could make this especially valuable for B2Bs who may not have had the success on Facebook as their B2C counterparts.

What is working for you? Share your successes and failures, visit Power Ten, Inc. on Facebook or Twitter to share your thoughts.

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