Suit Up for Social Media
It may be casual Friday, but this Slice is all business. Welcome back to the world’s biggest office, LinkedIn! You already know how to up your personal profile’s game (like the boss you are), so get ready to take the next step: making your company page professionally awesome.
You may be thinking to yourself, well, I just got my personal page set up! Do I really need a company page too? We’ll keep our answer short: yes, it’s worth the time.
While your personal page is a place for you to highlight your own accomplishments, your company page is a different ballgame. Think of it like a polished one-pager about your company, highlighting what you do and what your company is all about. It’s an opportunity to make a powerful (and professional) first impression. Your company page can:
Increase brand awareness: Remember how there are over 400 million professionals on LinkedIn? Having a page gets your company instant access to these professional social media networkers. They’ll be able to look you up, see your updates, and decide if they should connect with you.
Connect with your audience: And by audience we mean new customers (cha-ching!), potential recruits, and other companies. Once you start posting content, you should ideally see more traffic to your page, and then your website, and then your products and services.
Engage influencers: There are a lot of important thought leaders and influential companies on LinkedIn, sharing everything from business tips to updates on their professional journeys. By following your colleagues as well as your heroes and engaging through likes and comments, you’ll hopefully get a few of these influencers’ eyes on your company.
Recruit new (and qualified) employees: Ultimately, LinkedIn is a huge tool for recruiters and job seekers. Whether you’re currently hiring or will be in the future, a company page is prime real estate for sharing professional opportunities as your company grows. They’ll be able to see what you’re about and you’ll be able to see who they are and what they have to offer.
Are you ready to start your own company page and get in on the professional action? Go to your LinkedIn feed (that is, the first page that comes up when you’re logged into LinkedIn) and click on the “Work” button located on the far right of the header. Scroll down through the options offered and click on “Create a Company Page” and follow the handy prompts. Keep these things in mind as LinkedIn walks you through the process:
Images: Similar to Facebook and Twitter, your company page has both a profile picture (or in this case your company's logo) and a banner image. If you’re feeling lazy about uploading your logo, don't; according to LinkedIn, companies with logo images getsix times more traffic to their pages. For your banner image, consider highlighting a recent campaign or a visual that adds a little more personality and interest to your company. (Need inspiration? Check out Coca-Cola’s.)
Company Details: These are the quick and dirty facts about your company so your audience can know your company’s size, location, specialities, and how they can learn more about you! Check, and then double check, this section to make sure you add in your website so your audience can easily navigate off of LinkedIn and into your company's territory.
About Us: This is your time for your company to shine. Take your core About language from your website and modify it to appeal directly to the people checking out your page. Whether you’re targeting customers, new recruits or partners (or maybe all three!), think about what they want to know about your company and use this text to humblebrag about all your company has to offer. While you’re drafting your language, make sure to sprinkle in keywords to optimize your page for search.
Who is in charge? In order to make changes to your company's page or post updates, you need to be an administrator. If you create a company page, you'll automatically be an all-powerful administrator. But if you're not a one woman (or man) show, you might want to add someone else to keep the company updates flowing. Follow these steps to add admins to your company page.
Now you’re ready to start sharing content! If you remember anything we've told you before about content, this will sound familiar: Be useful and interesting, not sales-y. Think about your updates like a networking conversation. You don’t go right up to a potential new customer, yell at them to buy your products and services, and leave (or at least we hope you don’t). You start a conversation about what the customer might need, and as you engage with the customer you offer them something that can solve their problem.
So, for your first post, think of a helpful tip or resource related to your product. Bam; you officially have a company page AND your first update! Now ask your team to share your company's update (and keep sharing them regularly in the future), so more professionals can learn just how great your company is and your audience can grow.
Next week, we’ll give you more content ideas and an intro to how you know how well your updates are performing. If you have more questions about your company's page check out this handy FAQ by LinkedIn or reach out to us with questions. We're always down to chat.