For those of you who may not be familiar with Company Pages on the professional networking site LinkedIn, they are a great tool to share information about your brand and the individuals who represent it. If you’re researching companies, these pages also provide you with a way to familiarize yourself with others with whom you may want to work or even those that represent your competition.
The process for setting up your Company Page is pretty straightforward and you can begin here.
The best strategy when creating your Company Profile is to remain consistent with the keywords and phrases you have used in your print collateral and online marketing efforts. If you are using terms you uncovered via comprehensive keyword research (please don’t take keyword research lightly), that accurately represent phrasing used by your target audience when searching for what you offer, then you should stick with them.
Consistency is always important for best results.
The Products & Services tab offers some powerful features that not only allow you to list your Products and Services but also to associate links, relevant information, and even promotional offers. For example, you can associate links to videos on your YouTube.com channel. You can also specify your product/service related web page address. If your employees are listed in LinkedIn, you can add the relevant one(s) to the Contact section. You can also create a Promotional offer to entice new users. And remember to continue using your keywords as you fill out the Profile title, description, image text, and disclaimer.
Additional marketing tools are available to upgraded account holders only. The first is a simple admin tool that enables you to upload up to three static banners (JPEG, GIF or PNG), 640×220 pixels in size, that link to the url (web page address) you specify. This powerful internet advertising feature can be used to sell, promote, and inform, or even to generate donations, registrants, attendees, or fulfill any number of targeted objectives.
For best conversion results, make sure your landing page (where the respondent will arrive after clicking the banner link) is focused exclusively on the message communicated in the banner.
Another great feature is the Recommendations tool. You’ve seen this in the personal LinkedIn accounts. Soliciting comments and recommendations from customers and colleagues is of tremendous value. People are influenced by what others say. And in this case, the user has the opportunity to learn something about the person making the statement so the recommendation or comment carries more weight.
This next tool takes a little strategic planning because it has to do with how you want to target your various Audience groups. Developing unique content for each of your targeted audience groups will always produce the best results because it is not diluted in any way that detracts from what is engaging to them. Before you create an audience segment, identify and plan how you want to approach each one. Then select the criteria and edit your company profile to ensure the strongest response.
If you are interested in paid advertising on LinkedIn you can do that here as well. The Campaign tool is pretty straightforward and allows you to advertise any web page you like, which may or may not be your Company Profile.
Lastly, I want to mention the Analytics tool. It is to your advantage to spend some time to learn and understand your performance in terms of page views, visitors, and clicks on content by industry and followers so you can make informed ‘next step’ decisions. The tool also offers you a benchmark comparison with companies similar to yours.
Once again, you can click here to set up your Company Page on LinkedIn. Click on the Upgrade My Account link at the bottom of the page for additional marketing tools and features.
