360DigitalInfluence

Last April, LinkedIn introduced the Company Follow feature in hopes of offering businesses an opportunity to further interact with their audience. By giving companies the ability to share profile updates, business developments and new job opportunities, how much value did this feature add to the site? Unlike social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, where you can make company pages and offer content as the business, LinkedIn still did not offer a way to directly communicate with its followers.

This was until early October when the site announced the launch of company status updates, giving businesses the ability to offer shareable, personalized content to its followers.

Because LinkedIn is a site focused on connecting professionals, this provides unique opportunities for companies to interact with their employees and customers. Whereas people primarily use Facebook and Twitter to interact with their friends, people are much more willing to seek out and interact with businesses and professionals on LinkedIn. In light of LinkedIn’s new feature, I have compiled my top suggestions on how businesses can best utilize company status updates.

• Set your goals – As with any form of social media marketing, it’s important to first set your goals and figure out what you want to achieve from your company page on LinkedIn. Will it be a place to better connect with your employees? Will you use it to reach out to current and prospective clients? The unique thing about LinkedIn is it will probably be a mixture of both. Make sure your goals are clear and figure out how you’re going to measure them.
• Create a plan – Come up with a content plan for how you will achieve your goals. This will likely take a little bit of testing. Companies have been able to publish content on networks like Facebook and Twitter for years, so it’s relatively easy to figure out how often it’s appropriate to post updates on those sites. Test the waters with LinkedIn and see how much content it takes to be most effective. Remember to always keep your audience in mind.
• Promote your page – Many of your potential followers might be unaware that companies can even post updates on LinkedIn, let alone that you’re doing it. Promote your LinkedIn page wherever you promote your other profiles and think about coming up with a marketing campaign to grow your followers. Make it clear to your potential followers what they’ll get out of following your page.
• Take advantage of the platform – People use LinkedIn with a business mindset, which is great for company profiles. Whereas businesses on Facebook and Twitter run the risk of seeming intrusive on their followers’ content streams, LinkedIn is a safer environment to keep things more strictly business. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be providing valuable content to your followers, just that you can do so more strategically with your actual businesses’ goals.

What are your thoughts on LinkedIn’s new feature? How do you foresee companies taking advantage of company status updates?

*Video courtesy of LinkedIn on YouTube.