10 Ways to Leverage Your LinkedIn Company Page

10 Ways to Leverage Your LinkedIn Company Page

Your LinkedIn^® Company Page (now called LinkedIn^® Page) is an important branding opportunity that many businesses aren’t taking advantage of. There, you can develop thought leadership, share content from your company’s influencers, reveal your company culture to attract new talent, and increase your company’s visibility!

When used effectively, your LinkedIn^® Page can be your business’ content hub—the first thing that your target buyers see when they research your company’s products and services.

To learn how to optimize your page, watch the video below or continue reading to learn the keys to making the most out of your LinkedIn^® Company Page.

Stats That Prove the Value of Your LinkedIn^® Company Page

When it comes to B2B networking, LinkedIn^® has some significant numbers. A study done by Neil Patel states that LinkedIn^® is responsible for 97% of a business’ social media leads!

This data is backed up by LinkedIn^®, whose stats show:

• 91% of executives rate LinkedIn^® as their first choice for professionally relevant content.
• 30 million companies have LinkedIn^® Company Pages.
• 50% of B2B web traffic originating from social media comes from LinkedIn^®.
• 80% of B2B leads generated through social channels come from LinkedIn^®.

That means LinkedIn^® is crucial to your B2B success. So, you need to make sure that your LinkedIn^® Page and the profiles of employees have customer-centric messaging that addresses the needs of the modern buyer.

In fact, according to LinkedIn^®, companies that:

• Have complete information on their Company Page and Showcase Pages get 30% more weekly views.
• Post weekly see a 2x lift in engagement with their content.

But there’s more. Your LinkedIn^® Company Page can be the basis of your employee advocacy program. This is the perfect place to share the best posts from your employees (especially sales reps) because on average, employees typically have 10x the reach as the company. When they engage on a post, their connections will see it as well.

And don’t forget to share images and videos. Images generally see a 2x higher comment rate, and video is 5x more likely to spark a conversation than any other type of content shared on LinkedIn^®.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps you must take to ensure that your Company Page is fully optimized and becomes the content hub for your employee advocacy!

10 Steps to Maximize Your LinkedIn^® Company Page

Even if you know how important a LinkedIn^® Profile Transformation is for your sales reps, you may miss a great opportunity with your LinkedIn^® Company Page. Many still overlook the benefits your page can offer.

Don’t miss this opportunity! Follow the 10 steps below to maximize your impact.

(And, keep reading to the end! That’s where you’ll find some bonus content!)

Make sure to create banner images for your @LinkedIn Company Page. Consider creating different banners for your employees as well to highlight new products and services, and events. - @LinkedInExpert #SellingWithLinkedIn #LinkedInTips #BusinessClick To Tweet

Step #1: Take Advantage of Your Company Page Banner

Prioritize the branding of your Company Page. A visually appealing page that shows off your company’s branding will make your visitors more interested and encourage them to read more of your content and follow your page for the latest updates.

Similar to the LinkedIn^® banner for individuals, your LinkedIn^® Page background image provides the perfect opportunity to create a strong and branded visual. Here are some types of content to consider:

• A standard placeholder image with your company’s colors and branding—including a call to action or tagline.
• Contact information (email and phone number) unique to LinkedIn^® to help you track leads.
• Crafting a background image that your employees can upload to their personal profile as well. (See www.Vengresobanner.com for personal profile template.)

Just because you chose the banner once, doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it forever. In fact, you can create different background images for all types of events, such as:

• Holiday banners for different seasons
• Launching a new product.
• Inviting your audience to an upcoming event you might be hosting.
• Sharing recent accolades (Business awards, etc.)
• Promoting a new case study.
• Creating an “Employee Celebration Month” banner, and then highlight an employee every week in your updates.
• Making a “Client Celebration” banner where you promote a new client every day in your updates.
• Aligning banners reflective of your content calendar and monthly themes.

When it comes to the background image, you always have options. That is, as long as your banners are the right size. Here are the recommended image sizes:

1. Logo Image recommended size 300 (w) x 300 (h) pixels
2. Cover Image recommended 1584 (w) x 768 (h) pixels
3. Visible background area: 1584 (w) x 276 (h) pixels

Step #2: Create LinkedIn^® Showcase Pages

Showcase pages are subpages that highlight your products, services, or initiatives. For each Showcase page, you can add a unique product logo, banner, and description for that specific service. You can even share content on these pages.

Here are three easy steps to create LinkedIn^® Showcase pages:

• Step 1: Go to ‘Admin Tools’ in your Company Page edit mode, and click ‘Create Showcase Page’.
• Step 2: Add your product or service’s logo and banner images.
• Step 3: Share unique content on your showcase pages—treat it like an Instagram or Twitter feed.

Step #3: Optimize Native Content to Your LinkedIn^® Page

Make the “About Us” section about your audience. Don’t focus on your mission, years and business or even company story here. Instead, make it about your buyer. After all, they are the hero of this story. Let them know who you help and how you solve their problem(s).

Tip!!!! LinkedIn^® Pages are SEO-friendly, just like individual profiles. Google indexes 156 characters of your page text, so be sure that your description leads with powerful, keyword-rich copy. On LinkedIn^®, members can search for companies by keyword, so include words and phrases that describe your business, expertise, and industry focus.

Here are some keys to remember:

• You have 2000 characters to engage your readers and share a part of your company story.
• Many of your employees might go to the LinkedIn^® Page to grab information for their own profiles, so make sure you have the best branded copy possible.
• Write your description in a Word document first. Why? Because it will catch spelling errors, allows you to check for grammatical errors, and you can add special characters like bullets and emojis.
• Be very clear on your Buyer Persona. Who do you usually work with? What are their issues? How can you help?
• Provided there is enough room, you could even put a testimonial, a very short one, from a happy client in this section.
• At the bottom of your description, add your contact information. I suggest adding both a unique email address and phone number so you can track where your business is coming from.

Show how your #business can solve your target #buyers pain points through optimizing your native content. Use your #LinkedIn Company Page to position your company as an industry leader that's here to give a lending hand.#ContentMarketing @LinkedInExpertClick To Tweet

Step #4: Take Advantage of More Native Content

But wait, there are more ways for you to leverage native content! LinkedIn^® recently introduced Taglines and a new CTA button to drive traffic wherever you want. This is above and beyond in your description section and part of other updates to the LinkedIn^® Company Page.

Make sure to edit those two new features and think about your Tagline and Button as CTA’s for whatever the banner is promoting, whether it’s your company, new products or services, or events.

Other than that, you also need to add your company’s:

• Specialties (keywords; include up to 20)
• Address (add as many company locations as you have)
• Website
• Company size
• Date it was founded
• Type of company
• Affiliated groups (if you have any)
• Three relevant hashtags

If you have a Premium LinkedIn^® page, you can also add Career Pages and Culture pages, which gives you even more ways to provide information about your company. (More on this later.)

Step #5: Share Content Centered on Your Company Employees

When a prospect comes to your Company Page on LinkedIn^®, they can see all the employees who work for you. Ensure everyone has updated their LinkedIn^® profile to include your company in their experience section. Then, ask them to follow your Company Page.

Then, use your page to highlight your company culture. When you put outstanding employees in the limelight, you could create content by:

• Filming a short interview.
• Asking your employees for their favorite quotes.
• Creating infographics around them, which you share every month.
• Sharing your employees’ philanthropic works (as long as they’re aligned with your company values).

You could also post videos, images, or blogs that highlight your company culture. This shows viewers what it’s like to work at your company, and will increase positive sentiment.

Plus, if you upgrade to a premium account on LinkedIn^® and you’re focused on hiring, you could turn your LinkedIn^® Company Page to a lifestyle page. The lifestyle pages, as well as company photos, can help display an atmosphere where people will want to work, which can help your recruiting efforts.

Employees should also be stars of your #company. Share content on your #LinkedIn Company Page that are centered on them, says @LinkedInExpert, CVO and Co-founder of Vengreso #SellingWithLinkedIn #DigitalSelling #SalesLeadershipClick To Tweet

Step #6: Share Relevant Content

Speaking of content, consistently share relevant content that adds value to your targeted reader. Creating and sharing content on your Company Page is a great way to increase engagement and visibility.

When your current followers see your content on their main feed, they will engage with posts that resonate with them. Then, their connections might see your posts as well, increasing your reach.

Consequently, you must be thoughtful about the content you share, and share it with a purpose. To get the most out of your Company Page, you must share 3rd party content in addition to your content.

One mistake many companies make is to either share no content at all or only post job-listings. Those posts are like advertisements and don’t provide value. As a result, people don’t engage with them. And, similar to an individual, you want to focus on creating more engagement. That’s why not having an engagement strategy is one of the 7 Deadly LinkedIn^® Mistakes.

Some of the types of content to share are:

• Created content like infographics, images and videos.
• Repurposed content from your blog and other social feeds.
• Curated content – 3rd party posts that are relevant to your audience.

Some ideas for content are:

• Articles that your CEO, head of marketing, head of sales, or other influencers at your company posted on LinkedIn^® Publisher.
• @Mention influential people or companies your content references.
• Big infographics perform extremely well. Just click on the document icon to upload PDFs and PPTs to your Company Page. The “ideal” ratio is a 1.91:1 ratio (1200×627 px).
• Share your videos! If you have a company video, a product demonstration, a review, or a testimonial, share them. Use the Video icons to upload Native Video for more visibility. Videos will actually auto-play when people are scrolling through your updates on your Company Page.
• You can also pin a video to the top of your profile. That way, when people go to your Company Page, the first thing they see is that video.
• If you don’t have a video, pin any other important piece of content. If you have an event coming up, a company picnic, something with a timeline, you can pin and update about that event. (Just remember to unpin it once the event has passed.)
• Share often! While you should share an update at least once a week, I recommend daily updates. If you are using a scheduling tool like HeroicSocial, AgoraPulse, Hootsuite, Oktopost or others, you can add your LinkedIn^® Page to the tool and autoshare content. (Be aware in some cases there are limitations as far as mentioning people and adding images.)
• Post consistently! Share good content on a consistent basis (daily if possible) and then ask your employees to promote them as well. This will do a great deal to increase the visibility of your brand on LinkedIn^®.

Most importantly, don’t just share information about your company. Your updates should be 50% your company content and 50% 3rd party content that your audience might find useful.

And always make sure that 90% is informational and 10% or less is promotional. Otherwise, your followers will feel like you’re spamming them.

TIP!!!! When sharing, don’t just add the link. You have 1200 characters (including the link) to work with. Describe the post and tell people why they should read it. Ask them to comment or share it. Start a conversation! Engagement is a key to expanding your audience.

Step #7: Make Your Linkedin^® Page a Content Hub

Your LinkedIn^® Company Page is a “Content Hub” and a resource where you can point your employees so they can easily share your content with their networks.

A great resource is an eBook that LinkedIn^® created about Employee Advocacy. Unless your employees are also sharing your content, it’s unlikely that you will grow your Company Page following quickly without using sponsored content ads. So, make it easy for your employees to share your content!

Inform your employees of new content on your Company Page every week and encourage them to share it with their connections. Simply copy some links from Company Page posts. Then your employees can click and share with their own networks.

Other options for sharing your content is to put the links in a company forum or use some other kind of employee advocacy management system. Some options are LinkedIn^®’s own Elevate, GaggleAMP, EveryoneSocial, and other employee amplification and advocacy tools.

You might be 90% there with your LinkedIn^® Page and content, but without employee amplification, it’s almost like dialing into your favorite radio station: there’s only a lot of static and no satisfaction!

Step #8: Make Some of Your Team Members Administrators

Administrators can share content for your company, which can help amplify your reach through the content shared on your page.

To do this, just go to “Manage Page,” choose “Admin Tools,” then click on “Manage Admins.” Add the 1st level connections whom you want to be administrators of the page. You can then teach your new administrators how to share content on your Company Page by clicking on “Updates.”

Step #9: Make Use of Sponsored vs Targeted Updates

Get your company updates in front of a targeted audience with targeted and sponsored updates. Either way, make sure the content you promote has a call to action and form that can help you capture your viewers, such as an eBook download or event registration.

Targeted Updates: Once you have at least 1,000 people in each segment, you can target content specifically to that audience. This is GREAT when differentiating content for Investors, consumers or job candidates. Best of all, Targeted Updates are free!

Sponsored Updates: Sponsored updates are paid posts that allow you to reach a broader network. If you would like some content to get even more visibility, or if you want to get your content in front of people who aren’t following your Company Page (or your employees) you can pay to sponsor it.

It’s much easier to create your content on your Company Page, and then sponsor it, as opposed to creating new content to sponsor:

• If you’ve never created an ad for LinkedIn^® before, you will have to create an Advertising account.
• Once you’ve got your content and you’ve added it to your Company Page, you can click, “Sponsor now.” This will take you to the Campaign Manager.
• Click on “Create a campaign,” and name your campaign (probably something similar to the name of the content you want to sponsor).
• Choose whether you want to share content that sends people to your website or to the content itself. Once you’ve done that, go in and choose the content that you want to sponsor, and click on “Sponsor Selected.” Now you have an opportunity to create a new audience and pay for that sponsorship.

It’s always best to share content organically, via your Company Page, and employee amplification. But sometimes, you need to boost that visibility by using sponsored content with your LinkedIn^® Company Page.

Employee amplification can greatly help expand the reach of your Company’s organic updates. Ask them to share your #content to bring in more of your target audience to your #LinkedIn Company Page! @LinkedInExpert #EmployeeAdvocacy #DigitalSellingClick To Tweet

Step #10: Engage with Your Audience

The last step to maximizing your LinkedIn^® Company Page is to interact with the people who are engaging with your posts with likes, comments, and shares. As an administrator of your page, you have access to the analytics behind your page’s activity to see the people who are engaging with your posts and mentioning your company on LinkedIn^®. Take advantage of this and connect back. Start engaging with their content.

They have already shown an interest in your content. Perhaps you can forward the contact to a sales rep who can build a relationship to turn the connection into a sales conversation.

Step #11 (Bonus Tip!): Follow Through Engagement

Even if people conceptually know that you have a LinkedIn^® Page, they don’t always take the second step of following it. Sometimes, you need to make an extra effort to get people to follow it.

Some examples are:

• Proactively ask your clients, vendors, and network to follow your page.
• Let your audience know about your LinkedIn^® Company Page on other social channels, such as Facebook,
• Twitter or Instagram, as well as your website or blog.
• Send an email with the links to your company and showcase pages so that people can easily find and follow them.
• Give people a reason to follow your Company Page. Let them know that there will be promo codes, articles, or videos that they will only be able to see there.
• Make sure to embed your Company Page link in your email signature and consider using a call to action like: “Follow our Company Page for more discounts.”

Yes, you are basically asking people already following you to follow you somewhere else. But since some people spend more time on LinkedIn^®, they need to know about your LinkedIn^® Company Page, especially if you’ve properly optimized the page by following these easy tips.

Actively sharing your LinkedIn^® Page will increase your visibility. This, in turn, will increase your traffic, which will increase your followers, so that the next time you share a post even more people will see it!

Increase Your Company’s Visibility

Your Company Page is your gateway to boosting your business’s online profile. Whether you intend to build thought leadership, increase your leads, or acquire top talent, your page can help you.

Yet, your LinkedIn^® Page is not the only page on LinkedIn^® that you should optimize. You should make sure that your sales team’s personal LinkedIn^® profiles are optimized as well, with buyer-centric messaging the addresses your buyer’s needs.

Do your sellers have LinkedIn^® profiles with buyer-centric messaging that builds credibility? Read the Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn^® Profiles for Sales Professionals to learn how to transform your reps’ profiles from resumes to resources.