Leveraging LinkedIn Company Profile for Online Promotion

As the second most-visited social network in the U.S., just behind Facebook, LinkedIn is a great tool, and you can use both your personal business profile and a company profile to share about your business online.

In the world of small business and entrepreneurship, the lines between personal and company branding are faint – sometimes nonexistent. Success is about constantly using your personal network to reach new partners, customers, and talent on behalf of your company. All the while, you’re managing your company’s online properties to create a coherent and trusted brand identity. When people research your company, they look at your LinkedIn profile, and those of your team. The concepts of brand and identity are intertwined.

So, are you using LinkedIn as a tool to promote your local business online? In part one of LinkedIn profiles, we shared tips for completing a personal profile. Next, you’ll want to create and optimize a company profile for your business so you can share information about your company, open jobs, and products and services with LinkedIn users.

Managing this dual identity is challenging, but when done well it can deliver breakout opportunities.

You might asked yourself why I need a company profile if I already have a website or I already have a personal profile , well let us examine the difference :-

1- Personal page

A “personal” page is a LinkedIn member account, which is reserved for only “natural persons” (Section 10.2.3. of the LinkedIn User Agreement). Any LinkedIn member account created with a company name would be considered a “fake name” account and subject to removal without notice or remedy.

A legitimate LinkedIn member upon meeting qualifying requirements may create a company page on LinkedIn.

A legitimate LinkedIn member qualifies to be a company page admin when they can satisfy all of the requirements as follows:

1. They’re a current company employee and their position is on their profile.

2. A company email address (e.g. john@companyname.com) is one of the confirmed email addresses on their LinkedIn account.

3. They associate their profile with the right company. They must click on a name from the company name dropdown list when they edit or add a position on their profile.

4. Their company’s email domain is unique to the company.

5. Their profile must be more than 50% complete.

6. They must have several connections (usually a minimum of 10

2- Company Page

A Company Page helps LinkedIn members learn about your business, brand, and job opportunities. Any LinkedIn member can follow a Company Page. For example, here’s the Company Page for LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s company page feature sets the stage for your organisation’s presence on the platform. At present there are over 3 million company pages representing over 148 industries on LinkedIn!

A Company Page has 4 main sections:

1. Home: Provides a friendly introduction to your business. It’s a place where companies can start spreading their message and engaging with members.
2. Careers: This tab is a way for companies to interact with millions of passive and active job seekers on LinkedIn. The Careers tab requires a paid subscription by the company.
3. Page Insights: Click the dropdown arrow next to the Edit button to find this page. It shows page views, unique visitors in the last 7 days, and page clicks over the last 7 days. It also displays charts showing data on page views by tab.
4. Analytic: Provides companies with metrics and trends about their own company page. Data is consolidated into specific sections: Company Updates and Follower Insights.

Note: Page Insights and Analytics are only visible to Company Page administrators and employees associated with that Company Page. Any Company Page can have up to 50 administrators and admin rights are given to individual accounts (so there is no separate login for Company Pages).

For more information, please check the FAQ about Company Pages:

With company profile your wider link to the Professional world……

With having your company (or the company you are working for) on LinkedIn with a Company Page, you are seriously giving people the opportunity to now not only see who you work for but also what they do – isn’t this a great marketing opportunity? Plus with specific Content Marketing too!

The advantage gives you a greater advancement with professional searching. Certainly, yes people can search for you on Google for example, but they don’t know you or the company when they get the results.

Whilst, when people search on here via the “Search for people, jobs, companies, and more…” facility, they can search and get results which show people you may know who follow the company that are 1st, 2nd or 3rd within your network. That way, you could seek their opinion as a pre-qualification – something you can’t do on Google! Plus, with the roll out now of Showcase Pages, you can “Showcase” a specific division, services or product your company offers.

Can LinkedIn company profile be more powerful than a Website with high ranking in Google …..

With you providing details on your company, division, services or products, people are able to follow your Company Page or Showcase Page. By having people follow your page, those that search and find either the Company Page or Showcase Page, they can see where the people who follow the page are within their network. This can, and then adds greater credibility for you, than where you rank on Google!

Just because your website maybe on page one of Google, what credibility does this give you? Nothing compared to endorsements from people within your network can give you…….

Will it help my business growth …..

In deed , otherwise how often do you seek advice from people you know directly (your 1st layer) or indirectly (your 2nd or 3rd layer)?

Fairly often no doubt!

This is also better than reading reviews or recommendations! Because through your network, you can actually obtain feedback from people you trust more than people you don’t know who has written something….

Over to you…..

So now, you need to make sure that you’re Company Page or Showcase Page is either on here or up to date, so you can really place your business in front of over 300 million Professional business people across the world…..

Grab your content and make sure you are marketing and showcasing your business to ultimate audience…….

Company profile tips

1- No matter what your company does, never leave the Products & Services section blank. All your company products and services should be listed. This will enables users to learn more about your company and is a place for customers to leave reviews.

2- From time to time always add variety of cover images to reflect a range of business priorities, products launch, marketing campaigns, or future events., fresh contains will be the key to reach out your audience and be connected to your followers.

3- Before you post anything ask yourself,. Would I want to read this story? Would I want to share this with my connections?

4- Request for product and service recommendations from your followers or connections – Just as you can request for happy customers to leave reviews of your business on sites like Yelp or Google Places, ask for product and service recommendations on your company profile. Simply provide a link to your company profile, or ask customers to search for your business on LinkedIn.

5-Sync your Twitter and Blog Posts – Add a stream of your company’s latest Tweets and Blog posts to the Overview Tab to keep your page fresh and engaging.