If you're a regular LinkedIn user, you may have noticed that the company pages has underwent a significant redesign. Following the redesign of the main LinkedIn page and LinkedIn Today, the company pages has experienced the same facelift and have given them much needed vibrancy.
While there are obvious changes such as the introduction of a cover photo, other changes mightn't be as obvious. So now that all page owners have had access to the new layout for a bit, it's time to start finding out exactly what they have to offer.
Contents
1) Company Profile Overview
- Cover photos
- Status Updates
- About Section
2) Brands Using Profiles Effectively
3) Careers Page
4) Products & Services Page
5) Page Tips
Company Profile Overview
Over the last few years, there have been many different places for companies to interact like groups, profiles, company pages and the stream itself. However, just as Facebook moved all brands and businesses to pages as the central presence, LinkedIn is now doing the same.
While it may be annoying for any marketing efforts that you have carried out on other parts of LinkedIn in the past, you should now focus all your energy on the company pages. Think of the company profile in exactly the same way you do your Facebook page although you'll almost certainly be using LinkedIn differently. The pages are a great hub for pushing out company updates, sharing new positions in your company and showing off your products and services.
Cover Photos
One of the major features that LinkedIn has introduced is the addition of cover photos for brand pages. The dimensions for cover photos are 646 x 220. This is smaller than Facebook's cover photo, but it follows a very similar format. There is the opportunity for multiple cover photos, as they are allowed on the ‘Home', ‘Careers' and ‘Products' Pages.
Speaking of which, LinkedIn cover photos for your products and services page is a feature brands often overlooked. The Products page allows for three different cover photos that can be clicked through as a slideshow, and allowing you to highlight a specific cover when a user lands on a page. One nice feature of the LinkedIn cover photos is the ability to insert links for each photo, something that Facebook lacks.
Post Updates
When you're posting a link onto your company page, you'll notice that you have one or two extra options available to you before you hit share. As well as being able to edit the heading and intro blurb, you're now given the option to include a photo and select one to use. Granted, this is a feature that's been available for a long time on Facebook and Google+, but it does emphasise how LinkedIn is improving the visual aspect of the site to ensure more people will visit and stay on the site.
A small, but useful addition is the character count which appears underneath the text box. While you already have an idea as to what's a long message, this will help as you try to make non-link updates short and succinct.
Something else that's also worth reminding about is the targeting functions underneath your status. This was a feature of the old company pages, but it's given greater importance with the redesign. If you have a significant number of followers and only want to target a specific industry, location or demographic, you can do so here. The targeted audience function is only useful if you have a diverse audience and want to ensure people only see content that's relevant to them.
What about when you post something and you want to see how well it did? Thankfully, within a day of posting an update, you will be provided with statistics relating to its performance underneath the photo of said post. Not only will you get figures for impressions, clicks and shares, but you will also be told what percentage of followers engaged with a post. It's a great way to see how certain posts do and better understand what your audience is looking for.
About Section
The About section, which was placed at the very top of the page, has been moved to the very bottom. This is a little odd as visitors will have to scroll down past a maximum of ten updates to see it. However, the pages are designed to promote multimedia content (cover photos, connections, links, careers, etc.) and chances are that those who are really interested in your company will seek it out anyway.
Remember that the first thing people will see is your cover photo and your posts so that will need to catch their attention first.
Brands Using Profiles Effectively
Although all the functionality is there, not that many of the biggest brands in the world are using the pages effectively yet. One of the main reasons for this is that many companies are dubious about grouping all their employees into one easy to find page where their competitors could easily sift through them and poach them.
Having said that, considering the fact that you can gain followers on your page in the same way you would on Twitter, it does offer a great way to build a community and have a group of people that you can push your content out to. Here are some brands that are doing it right.
AT&T
One of the largest phone companies in the world has an excellent page and over 170,000 followers. It clearly puts a lot of emphasis on its page because it has all the tabs properly designed, including their products and services.
Salesforce
One of the biggest enterprise tools in the world is becoming increasingly social in its offerings. It's leveraging LinkedIn as a recruitment tool as it continues to build a large following on its page.
Zipcar
Not one of the biggest companies, but Zipcar is showing how LinkedIn company profiles can be used effectively and regularly for staff recruitment. The tabs on its page provides good information on the company such as videos, and there's a constant stream of jobs being posted. 
Hubspot
The marketing software company was one of the first to get access to the new layout and it's clear to see why. A cover photo that stands out, regular blog content with standout images, and a clear tone means it's works well.
Dell
A comprehensive careers page, some great content from both its own and external sites and regular interaction from its 335,000 strong followers shows that Dell knows what it's doing with its company page.
Careers Page
Another section that has gotten a new lease of life, career pages are simply a place for your company to advertise new jobs on the site. For normal company pages, you will be greeted by a snapshot of employees and the opportunity to post positions for a fee (more on that later).
However, if you're a larger brand, and you can afford to spend a bit of cash, you can upgrade to a fancier and more comprehensive page. You only have to look at a company like Dell, for example, to see how much brighter and how much content features to understand the benefits.
For one it has a significant cover image covering the length of the screen. Scrolling down you can see that everything is clearly presented as connections and vacant jobs are given prominence. A brief summary about what the company does with accompany video and some testimonials showing that the company is to be trusted.
Saying that, its main function is to advertise job opening in your companies and to target professionals in the demographic you're looking at. Prices vary per region and demographic aimed, but using Ireland as an example, the price for posting a job on the site is €139.95 for 30 days. There are also 5-job packs for €110.99 per job and 10-job pack for €89.50 per job.
Products & Services Page
If the main company page shows your social media efforts, then the products and services page is where the real company details are. The tab allows you to add all the important information about your company and what you offer.
While most people will still look for that information on your website, it's important to remember that some potential customers might be finding you for the first time through LinkedIn. The page can be a very useful way of driving traffic and even sales via your LinkedIn page. You can make the tabs and individual products link through to your website or places where customers can actually buy from you.
Adding products and services is easy and you can add as many as you wish. Customisation is rather simple and along the usual details that you can add in key features, URLs, company contacts, YouTube video and promotions if you have one running.
What's also of value is the recommendations section. Here, you can see how many people have recommended your services and any recommendations from your networks of connections. You can also place video content here too, locating it on the right-hand toolbar.
Page Tips
1) Videos On Products Tabs
Videos are a great way of showing off what you can offer clients and customers. If you have any of your own content hosted on Youtube or other video sharing channels, we recommend you get it into the sidebar.
2) Use Advertising To Drive Audience
While you will pick up followers for your page organically, LinkedIn does offer some very targeted advertising options that can help you build a following. It can be broken down by location, job title and there are many other advanced targeting options. It is fairly expensive, but that is because it is both focused and effective.
You can have a look at all the advertising options, but if you're serious about using this as a company page where you share the best content, you will want to start spending a little to build your audience.
3) Use LinkedIn Buttons On Your Site
We keep talking about the benefits of social buttons, but they really are a great way of getting content shared. Yet you know you could do the same for your company page? Adding a share, follow, endorse or recommend button can help drive views and gain you some new followers so choose the ones that you feel are most important and add them in.
A list of LinkedIn plugins can be found here.
4) Create Multiple Product Pages
Chances are you might have offices based in different countries and you want to direct certain visitors to them instead. Simply go into 'Edit' on the services tab (located on the top right-hand corner) and it will be the first option presented to you. Click create new audience and fill in the details. This is also handy if you offer more than one service and you want to target different sectors.
5) Add Cover Photos For Products Page
You could do this with the old company profiles but since cover photos have taken greater prominence, it's worth adding in or updating them. Simply scroll down the edit product page and you will be presented with three blank banners. Add your images (640x220 pixels) and the URL and you will get a rotating spotlight module displaying all three.
This is handy if you're promoting different products, sections of your company or simply trying to provide a call to action for visitors. For example, mobile network AT&T uses its cover photos to promote new products, offers and events, all of which can be seen below.
6) Use Insights To Your Advantage
LinkedIn's insights are comprehensive in comparison to similar first-party efforts so be sure to use it to your advantage. You will be given a breakdown of follower demographics, engagement, impressions. This is important if you're using targeted status updates as you need to know your audience if you want to effectively target them.
7) Use Description Tags
Scrolling down the edit page, you will see the option to enter in your company specialities. This is important if you want people to find you so make sure you fill in as many as you can. Think of it as SEO for LinkedIn and use relevant keywords to ensure the best possible chance.
8) Update Regularly
Nobody is going to visit your page or follow you if you rarely update so make sure you get into the habit of posting content regularly. If you have a blog, post content from that, but you can also mix it up with interesting articles from other sites too. The key is to provide value so build it up.
9) Add Different Services
Vary your content in your products page and when adding a new service in, ensure that the image is unique from the other services you have included. When someone first sees your page, the first thing that will catch their eye are distinct images so making sure they're different is a good way of getting the unique qualities of your company across.
10) Control Your Page
Depending on the size of the company, you may want to dedicate one or two people to managing LinkedIn duties. You have the option to allow anyone with an email registered to the company's domain name to be an admin, but this should only be the case if you have a small company. If it's medium sized or bigger, it's better to just have one or two people managing it instead.
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