Make It Easy to Find Your Company Page
As you develop your LinkedIn Company Page, don’t feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to set up a simple page and claim your space on LinkedIn within a few minutes, but to create a comprehensive Company Page, you need to invest some time and thought into developing the best page possible. Once your Company Page looks just the way you want it to, it’s time to spread the word about it!
Search and Discovery
There are many ways that LinkedIn members can find your Company Page through their daily LinkedIn activities or through specific searches. Your goal should be to make your Company Page as easy to find as possible so it is seen by as many people as possible.
As you create your Company Page, be sure to include as much information related to your industry and specialties as you can. Write with keywords in mind, so people have a greater chance of finding your Company Page when they conduct searches for companies with your products and services using the LinkedIn company search feature.
At the same time, you need to stay active on LinkedIn to ensure your Company Page pops up in as many places as possible. For example, people can stumble on your Company Page when:
• They hover the mouse over your company name in one of your employee’s personal LinkedIn profiles, and a pop-up preview of your Company Page appears onscreen.
• They receive a notification that one of their LinkedIn connections recommended one of your products or services.
• They see your company in the list of Companies You May Be Interested in Following provided automatically by LinkedIn.
• They see your company in the list of Jobs You May Be Interested In when they’re searching the jobs section of LinkedIn.
• One of their connections shares a link to your content.
• Your company is mentioned or you participate in a group that a member belongs to and that interaction appears in their news feed.
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All of your activities on LinkedIn provide potential ways for people to hear about your company. This indirect way of raising awareness of your LinkedIn Company Page is an essential component of social media marketing that can be a powerful form of word-of-mouth marketing and brand building. Don’t underestimate its reach.
You can also promote your Company Page off of LinkedIn. For example, include a Follow Us on LinkedIn button on your website, blog, email signature, business card, and so on. You can even create your own Company Profile plugin using the LinkedIn developer network plugins at: developer.linkedin.com/community/plugins.
Figure 4.11 shows what a Company Profile widget with a follow button can look like. It’s perfect for a sidebar or footer—particularly on your company blog.
Just choose the button layout that you like and click on the Get It button to open the Build a Company Profile plugin page shown in Figure 4.12.
Figure 4.12: Enter the requested information to create your Company Profile plugin.
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Complete the form by providing your company name, selecting the layout you prefer for the button, and whether or not you want people’s LinkedIn connections to be shown. Then click the Get Code button to get your personalized embed code, which you can copy and paste into your web page. That’s all there is to it!
Recommendations
Product and service recommendations do more than provide testimonials to boost your company credibility and sales. They also help people find your Company Page on LinkedIn. You can click the Request Recommendation link on any product or service listing on your Company Page to send recommendation requests to people in your LinkedIn network.
Any time a customer buys from you, why not send a recommendation request? Even if you’re not connected to that customer on LinkedIn, you can send an email inviting them to follow your Company Page on LinkedIn and write a recommendation. To boost response rates, you can offer a discount on a future purchase. Don’t be afraid to get creative in encouraging people to follow you and recommend your products and services. Those testimonials are meaningful, and research shows that consumers trust recommendations over any form of advertising or marketing. Make it a priority to get them.
You can also solicit recommendations from your own website using the product or service recommendation button that LinkedIn offers to web developers. You can create a recommendation button for each product or service listed on your LinkedIn Company Page and add each unique button to the corresponding product page on your website. With a single click of the button, visitors to your website can recommend a product or service on your LinkedIn Company Page (of course, they have to sign in to LinkedIn to write their recommendation).
Through the LinkedIn developer network, you can easily create your own product and service recommendation buttons. Just visit developer.linkedin.com/community/plugins, scroll down to the Recommend with LinkedIn section, and click the Get It button beneath the button you want to use on your website.
The Build a Recommend Button page opens; here you enter your company name and product ID (which is the numeric part of each specific product’s page URL), and choose the orientation for your button. Click the Get Code button, and copy and paste the provided code into your web page where you want the button to appear. Now people can recommend your product or service on LinkedIn with a click of the button!
Ads
If you have money in your budget to advertise your Company Page, you can do so with LinkedIn Ads. There are four primary types of ads to choose from: text, display, recommendation, and recruitment ads.
LinkedIn Ads vary in price depending on the type of ad you run and your targeting criteria. You can learn all about LinkedIn Ads in Chapter 11.
The Least You Need to Know
• If you have a company email and a LinkedIn account, you can create a Company Page for your business.
• Basic Company Pages offer space for you to publish company, product, and service information. More features are available with sizeable price tags.
• LinkedIn members can publish recommendations on your Company Page for each product or service you list.
• You can promote your Company Page to increase awareness.