Are you ignoring your LinkedIn company page? Image courtesy: Flickr
For the most part, LinkedIn is a well-designed, easy-to-navigate platform. One area that isn’t the most nimble is the lack of integration between company pages and personal profiles. Even for page administrators, company pages on LinkedIn are essentially separate from personal pages.
Your personal connections must independently elect to follow your company page to receive your updates; driving traffic to your company page requires activity distinct from promoting your personal profile. And requesting people to follow your page — like begging for Facebook likes — is neither compelling nor productive.
For a large company, this distinction makes sense. For smaller firms or bootstrapped startups, it presents a bit of a marketing disconnect. It’s easy to ignore your company page, even if you’re proactive about leveraging your personal profile.
Want to mend your wayward ways? We’re offering a few tips to help you cross-market your company page and your personal profile. Key to remember:
Whenever you have a unique URL, you can share it either via
your company or your personal profile.
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- Post on your company page first: Post on your company page first; then share to your personal profile. To do so, you must capture the link to your company post, which is accessible from your company page analytics. After posting the status update on your business page, click on the analytics tab and find the post you wish to share in the Preview column. Right-click the post teaser to copy the link destination. It’s a long ugly link, but you can use a URL-shortening site like bit.ly to make it less unwieldy. Then paste the link in a personal status update to reach all those personal connections you’ve carefully cultivated.
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- Share your company page status update in your groups: Share the same business page update URL (see above) within your personal groups to increase visibility of your company brand.
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- Add groups to your company page: Select up to three of your groups to add to your company page, enabling your company updates to automatically be shared in the news feeds of group members.
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- Share a blog post to company page: If you use the blogging platform on LinkedIn, share the blog post on your company page. After publishing a blog post, copy the unique URL (starting with www.linkedin.com/post) that appears in your browser window (see the screen shot below). As with any social media post on any platform, always accompany the link with an introduction to offer context.
Share past blog posts to company page: Are your past blog posts still relevant? Share previously published posts from your personal profile through company page updates. Access your past articles from your personal page navigation: Home > Write An Article >More > Articles. Then click on the article you want to share and capture the link in your browser window. Another approach: Simply share blog posts from your website to your company profile to drive traffic to your website.
Once you stop ignoring your Company page, periodically dig into your analytics. They’ve been enhanced to include stats on interactions and new followers acquired as a result of your activity. Even if you can’t make time to actively participate on your company LinkedIn page, take a look at it now and again to ensure it’s still accurate. As your business evolves, so should all aspects of your online presence.
You may also be interested in these posts:
LinkedIn Analytics: A Quick Tutorial
