LinkedIn™ Company Pages . . . How To Use Them To Your Advantage!
Since like forever, I’ve been banging on about how important your LinkedIn™ profile is.
Not least because it’s your shop front on LinkedIn and people will quickly make a decision about you from how you present yourself and what you say.
But . . . more and more I’m banging on about LinkedIn Company Pages – AKA LinkedIn Pages as LinkedIn now calls them.
Why?
Because LinkedIn has been busy beefing up its company page offering, introducing new features and functionality to make them a much more interesting and attractive proposition.
For companies, large and small, having a LinkedIn Page is a no brainer. They're great on many levels from raising brand awareness and recruiting new talent.
But some solo business owners are dubious about the benefits of having a LinkedIn Page and one or two I know have even decided to delete their LinkedIn Page.
But before you do anything drastic, there is more to LinkedIn Company pages that could really work for your business than you realise.
So in this article I want to outline why I think you need a LinkedIn Company Page, review what’s on offer and how you can use them to your advantage.
Do I need a LinkedIn™ company page?
This is probably one of the most common questions I have been asked over the last 10 years as The LinkedIn Lady!
My answer has always been YES. If only because it adds branding to your profile and replaces the boring old grey square on your profile!
It’s another FREE online presence that gets you found. For example, I get found on Google by people looking for LinkedIn training because they find my LinkedIn company page!
So why not have a LinkedIn company page? It’s free to host and the SEO is done for you!
But isn’t it just another thing to manage?
This is another objection I've been hearing recently, especially from solo business owners who feel they already have enough on their plate without having to manage yet another ‘social media’ presence.
As a solo business owner myself, I can totally relate to this. But having a LinkedIn company page doesn’t have to be ‘yet another thing’ for you to manage.
Of course, it does depend on whether you’re a marketing manager for a company as your objectives and goals will be different to solo business owners.
But what I think it boils down to is . . .
Issue 1: What do I write on my LinkedIn™ Page? ☹️
The thing to remember is your LinkedIn company page works in the same way as your personal LinkedIn profile and website. Both need to be optimised and focused on your audience.
Which means if both your personal profile and/or website are optimsed you already have the content for your LinkedIn Company page. It’s not about recreating the wheel and having different wording or content. It’s just about tweaking!
Issue 2: I don't have time to grow company page followers! ☹️
If you're a solo business owner, growing your company page followers is not a priority. It's the features and functionality that are available to you that are exciting and you don't need to have masses of followers to take advantage of them.
For companies, growing followers is a key objective for marketing managers and their teams, but the good news LinkedIn’s new features help achieve this goal.
Issue 3: It's more content to create ☹️
Posting is a big issue. Most struggle with posting to their personal profile let alone their company page.
BUT, it doesn't need to be different content!
Actually your content on LinkedIn doesn’t have to be different to any other content you create for your website, blog, Instagram etc, etc. It’s about using your LinkedIn Page to share the same content giving people another opportunity to find it and you.
What I do: I always post to my personal profile first. I then either share my personal post to my company page OR create a post on my company page using the same content that was on my personal post.
➡️ Check out my LinkedIn Company page here to see what I mean
Does it not matter if your post is repeated? 🤔
NO! As far as I am concerned I put my content everywhere I can. Plus, I believe it's better to have some content on your LinkedIn Page for when someone does find it on a Google search.
How To Use LinkedIn™ Company Pages To Your Advantage
First, we have to remember why we are on LinkedIn and what is it we want it to do.
For me LinkedIn is a key part of my overall business development activities and I want people coming to my personal profile for sure.
As a person-to-person platform, you engage on LinkedIn as a person. You build a network of people. You like and comment on other people’s posts and generally not as a company.
So, it begs the question where does it fit in your overall LinkedIn strategy?
The answer does depend on you and your business.
If you’re a marketing manager looking after your company's LinkedIn Page your objectives for using LinkedIn Pages will be around growing the reach and visibility of your company on LinkedIn.
As a solo business owner, it’s looking at how you can use LinkedIn Pages to grow your business.
If you're a business owner, I recommend you have at the very least a LinkedIn company page linked to your personal profile, for the reasons described above in 'why you need a LinkedIn company Page'.
💥 If you want to know how to link your company page to your personal profile check out my post here on how to do it, as it’s not that obvious until you know how!
💥💥 If you’re a marketing manager and are looking to use LinkedIn better for your organisation, then check out my LinkedIn Company Page training that is specifically geared towards how marketing teams and company page admins can build an online presence that helps connect with their target audience and attract new opportunities.
❣️ Why I Am Loving LinkedIn™ Company Pages❣️
So here are my reasons for 'loving' LinkedIn Company Pages and why I think they're worth a rethink!
✅ It gets me found on Google! LinkedIn Company Pages are like mini websites that if you optimise them right can get you to the top of the search results and in front of your audience who are looking for the solutions you offer.
✅ It’s helped me grow my email list. One of the things I talk about is getting people who know what you do off LinkedIn, and my LinkedIn Page has effectively helped me achieved this by building an email list of people who are interested in what I talk about.
✅ It’s increased the numbers of registrations and attendees to my events! LinkedIn Events help you promote an event you’re running whether it’s online, offline event or a LinkedIn Live. Not only that but LinkedIn promotes it for you as well!
✅ For marketing teams in particular, LinkedIn Newsletters. As a company you can create a LinkedIn newsletter and it will invite your company page followers to subscribe and then tell them every time you publish a new article – via LinkedIn and email!
✅ It’s now easier to grow followers. Follower growth is one of the biggest challenges but admins AND also individual employees can now invite connections to follow their company page.
✅ You can see who is following your company page. This is a great opportunity to connect with those that fit your ideal client profile AND generate those all important conversations.
✅ Increase the visibility of you and your company . . . by following other LinkedIn Pages and having the right hashtags associated with your page you can also raise the visibility of your page by engaging as your company, which in turn raises the visibility of your company and helps to grow followers.
✅ It increases brand awareness. As a solo business owner whose brand is very much around me (Judy Parsons, The LinkedIn Lady) I have branded my Company Pages as me as well.
NOTE: I said 'PAGES'. You can only have 1 personal profile but you can have multiple company pages.
✅ I use it to support my networking efforts. I follow and interact with the LinkedIn Company Pages of the networking groups I am in - giving me double whammy in getting in front of my network.
This is also super exciting for Marketing teams as it helps raise your visibility with key clients.
Is Now The Time To Think Differently About LinkedIn™ Company Pages?
I really hope this has given you some food for thought and inspired you to think differently about LinkedIn Company pages and what they can do for you.
I'd love to know what you think. So please do let me know in the comments below.
Plus,
💥If you want to do more with your company page I'm always open to chatting. Book a virtual brew and let’s make LinkedIn work for you . . .
💥If you're a marketing manager responsible for your company's LinkedIn presence the and really want to get the most of the fabulous new functionality then check out my LinkedIn Company Page Training specifically for Marketing teams and company page admins.
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💙 If LinkedIn isn’t working hard for you or you’re not sure where to start with using LinkedIn, email judy@judithparsons.com or connect with me on LinkedIn to chat about how I can help.
Or book a virtual brew here and let’s make LinkedIn work for you . . . ⭐
JUDY Parsons, Celebrating 10 Years as an Independent LinkedIn Expert
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