So you have got Facebook Business Page up and running and you are collecting Likes and you have a Personal Profile on LinkedIn. But the world of social media does not stand still. All of the main social media networks, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn and now Google+, are constantly updating, learning and copying from each other. So now you need to consider creating a LinkedIn Company Page and whether to gather LinkedIn Followers, just like Twitter or Facebook.
Although LinkedIn has always been a great networking tool, especially among professional types, it has not really tried to compete with Twitter and Facebook as a tool to build engagement and then a community. The result is that some businesses – particularly those in the Business to Business market – have chosen to launch Facebook Business Pages, when really they might more obviously have been better served using a version of LinkedIn with community building features. Well now you can.
LinkedIn Company Pages have been around for a while and LinkedIn have set up templates to make production relatively straight forward, Typical ingredients include:
- A company overview
- A description of products and services
- A careers section
But until recently they were not dynamic in a social media sense. Now, you can set up your Company Page and post status updates as a company that will appear on your Followers LinkedIn homepage- just like your personal profile updates already do. The posts can be up to 500 characters long and include a link to a URL or photo. Your followers can do exactly the same things as they would on Facebook. For example by Liking or Sharing or Commenting. This will of course be seen be other people in your followers stream, raising your brand profile and eventually leading to more business. If you think this is beginning to sound a lot like Facebook or indeed Google+, then you are absolutely right!
To post a LinkedIn Company Status Update you must have administration rights and your Company Page must be set to, “Designated Administrators Only”. Then you will be able to see usage information including number of views (impressions) and engagement for each post. You can learn more about LinkedIn Company pages by following this link: http://learn.linkedin.com/company-pages/
Already the bigger brands are starting to post more and more content to LinkedIn Company Pages, but this is still quite new for smaller, local brands. So the field is wide open for those who make even reasonable effort to engage.
For those running social media networks, it is turning into quite a battle and there is much more to come. How you choose which social media network to major on and which to ignore, or perhaps just dabble with, depends on your particular business and where your customers tend to congregate. But for the moment, more competition between Networks is ultimately a good thing for the average UK business. So best not to over-think this and just make sure you have a live and active LinkedIn business page as a minimum.
