Social media is continuously evolving and expanding. How do marketing executives, especially in electronic high tech, choose the right shared media channel? Facebook with 1 billion members is the largest social media site and a proven marketing channel for consumer goods. Twitter is the king of microblogging with 200 million active users. While a boon for journalists and celebrities, it’s use for technical marketing is doubtful. Google is integrating their social network (Google+) into all aspects of their business, including search. The usefulness for business isn’t clear, but companies cannot ignore Google+. According to HubSpot, LinkedIn Lead generation is 277% more effective than FB or Twitter.
LinkedIn Is For Companies Too
With over 200 million members, LinkedIn is the leading social networking site for professionals. People join LinkedIn to showcase their career, work expertise and find content and information to make their professional lives better. Businesses who target other businesses (B2B) will naturally find a higher concentration of their target market on LinkedIn. A LinkedIn visitor is more likely to be in a business-focused mindset, so business’ content will perform better. Two million companies have a page on LinkedIn. A LinkedIn Company Page provides a fantastic opportunity to promote products and services, recruit top talent, and share important and useful updates. LinkedIn provides a product and services focus, absent from other social platforms. Recommendations and the details of products and services a company offers gets the attention of a targeted audience looking for a specific product. A typical LinkedIn company page can contain Overview, Products, Insights, Careers and Updates.
Overview
A compelling overview section can yield great results by luring a potential customer to your website. Apart from the description of your business in “About Me”, this section offers New Updates, Job Openings, New Hires, Product Launches, ebooks, Documents, Webinar information and any key news related to the company or industry that can become an instant lead generation tool. Though not all queries may turn to leads but it is worth a gamble. From the cover picture to all the other sections ‘Overview’ has unlimited choices of what you want to project. Always write the “About Me” effectively with prominent product related keywords so your page can be found in relevant searches.
Updates
Authorized representatives (admins) can post corporate updates directly from the page. They can define specific updates as “featured” to highlight at the top of the Company Page. For example, you can promote an event by making it a featured update for more people to view it. You can also monitor comments, likes, shares, and clicks. The “target update” feature restricts specific updates to targeted members of your follower audience (by employee or non-employee, company size, industry, function, seniority, or geography). Keep the content on your LinkedIn Company Page fresh and meaningful, and actively engage your followers. Metrics depicting impressions, clicks and the visitor engagement level will help you measure effectiveness of content and updates.
Products and Services
LinkedIn members can write reviews and recommendations of your products and services. Recommendations have a powerful influence. Displayed immediately after the banner they reinforce your company’s product value. Request reviews from customer members and display them with pride.
Choose the way you display your products
You can choose to list your most important product first and then follow with others to attract potential customers. The first product is also displayed as featured content in the sidebar of your home page. So, naturally you should make it the one you want to promote on home page too.
Career tab
The Career section is a paid service and can be an effective part of a company’s hiring strategy. You can post job openings, map your company’s growth, mention awards, and add images and employee or client testimonial videos. Tailor your content for the candidate in the right context. According to LinkedIn, using your employment brand to target the best people for your company reduces the cost per hire. You can build an ongoing rapport with candidates through this tab’s multiple touch-points.
Employee engagement
Encourage your employees to create personal profiles and join relevant groups. They automatically become members of the company page, effectively sharing company page content with their individual networks.
LinkedIn Advertising
LinkedIn offers paid advertising for your Company Page with cost per click (CPC) and cost per impression (CPM) options. Targeted ads allow you to reach beyond personal networks to select visitors. For instance you can target VPs of Engineering in select industries in select geographic regions.
Links and Page promotions
Adding the Follow button or LinkedIn Badge to your website makes it easier for the visitor to connect with you and stay updated on company updates. You can employ other marketing techniques like promoting your page through email newsletter, blog, via twitter, FB, G+ and other networks to make access easy for people who wish to know more about your company.
Managing Insights
LinkedIn company page provides two types of insights which can help you fine tune your messages and increase your engagement. Use Follower Insights to gain a deeper understanding of your follower base, community growth, and engagement levels. Use Page Insight to access valuable information which can be useful for your HR manager who can utilize this data to find out how many prospective candidates are looking for employment opportunities with your company.
Summary
All media channels require management. Persistence, experimentation and measurement are the keys to get the most out of your LinkedIn company page. Are you benefiting from the new features on Arasan’s LinkedIn Company Page ? Do share your experience with us. Written by Tikuli Dogra