Content is everywhere right now. I’m not telling you anything new. And you know you’ve got to produce good, actually remarkable, content that differentiates you from your competitors to stand out in the marketplace, right? But no one will even notice you’re out there if you don’t do a good job marketing that content. You have lots of options for how to do that, but are you just skimming the surface with what you’re doing?
Today I’m going to get you into one channel a little deeper so that you can get more use out of it: your LinkedIn Company Page. I know you probably thought that Company Page was one of those things you just had to put up there because everyone has to have one. Not so. Sharing your content via your LinkedIn Company Page will both differentiate your business and help you stand out in today’s crowded content market. Really.
This applies to you, whether you are:
- the CEO, ultimately responsible for your company’s reputation and bottom line
- the marketer, whose budget has been steadily cut over the last several years but are charged with generating new and better leads
- the business development person, who has a daunting quota, a new territory and a mature product
- or the HR recruiter, who needs to hire new people after months of layoffs.
Regardless of title, you have a job to do and you likely have limited resources and budget. On LinkedIn—through your Company Page—you have an audience of more than 225 million like-minded business professionals who need to find people and opportunities, to network and do business.
There are now almost three million LinkedIn Company Pages. Your Company Page is the collective view of your business, and it offers an opportunity to showcase your company’s products and services, give viewers the latest company news, or post open positions (the addition of LinkedIn’s Career Page does require an additional fee). Informative, useful updates receive the highest engagement rates because that’s the information members expect from companies they follow on LinkedIn. Your followers are active on LinkedIn because they want to be more productive and successful professionals. LinkedIn says that:
- 60% of members are interested in industry insights
- 53% are interested in company news
- 43% are interested in new products and services
Here are 5 things that will help make your LinkedIn Company Page a powerful content channel:
1. Complete it! If you don’t complete your Company Page, it reflects poorly on your brand, and represents a missed opportunity to communicate with your audience – it’s the equivalent of leaving your LinkedIn individual profile incomplete.
With the exception of the Career Page, the Company Home Page and Products & Services Page are complimentary, so there’s no reason not to use them.When you add Products & Services, LinkedIn will intuitively name that tab based on what you describe: only Products, only Services, or both. Make sure to keep this section refreshed and updated—don’t just load it and walk away.
2. Add video. Video is great content—add it to your LinkedIn Company Page and use it as anchor content for Products & Services you feature.
3. Create versioned Company Pages. You probably have different audiences you are trying to reach with your content, right? You can target them through LinkedIn by creating different versions of your company pages. LinkedIn then serves up the right version based on what is in a viewer’s profile. Hubspot’s post on how to set up these versioned pages is worth looking through. It’s not hard to do.
Think you don’t need versions? Do you have different divisions within your company or different geographic areas? It’s a great way to target your content to the right reader.
Below is a screen shot of what you will see when you create your company page.
Creating versioned Company Pages
Once you have created a “default” version (that’s the general audience), create a different version by clicking “New Audience” (in the upper left corner). Name your target, choose your targeting characteristics and click “Save and Exit” to edit your targeted page.
4. Include a LinkedIn “Follow” button on your corporate website. Once your company page is complete and you’re pumping content into it, you want people to actually “Follow” it so they receive any new content you add.
Encourage these groups of people to follow your page:
- Employees—turn them into ambassadors, brand evangelists.
- Clients, customers, and prospects—having them follow your page feeds them content that helps them better understand who you are and what you do.
- Strategic partners, influencers, and connectors—they potentially extend your reach to more people than you have direct exposure to.
5. Share from your Company Page. Here’s how:
Go to the top of your LinkedIn Company Page Home Page and add your blog post, press release, etc., as a status update. Updates can have text and a link to a website, image or YouTube video. You can also post all text, an announcement or update as a shout-out, but remember, we are always trying to take people to our website so providing a link is helpful. Here are some more tips from LinkedIn.
Sharing from your Company Page
Before you hit “Share” you can consider Targeted Status Updates (different from versioned Company Pages above) to send your update to specific groups of people that are following you. Choose whether your updates go to all your followers or just subsets. Targeted Status Updates give you an easy way to engage company followers with content that’s tailored to their personal interests.
Specifying a target audience
To bolster your LinkedIn sharing strategy even more, distribute your company’s content through your own network from your individual LinkedIn profile (and encourage all employees to do so). Sure, some of your connections may be following your Company Page and will receive your updates more than once, but that’s ok. A headline lasts about 20 minutes these days so it’s ok if someone sees your content both because they are following your company and are connected to you. Consider letting your employees know when you are posting to your Company Page and then plan when you will share with your network. Maybe it’s three hours later or the next morning.
Want to go even deeper? Check out a recent post from the Content Marketing Institute on using LinkedIn to personalize content.
Use LinkedIn to support your content marketing efforts and build a pathway to and from your individual profile to your LinkedIn Company Page to your company website. Let us know how it works for you. For more information on marketing your content, download “How to Grow Your Business with Content Marketing.”
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