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When you’re scrolling through your LinkedIn feed, do you ever see a company page pop up – unless it’s an ad? Me neither. (The only company pages that I do see are the ones I also manage.) They are basically invisible, which makes me wonder – what’s the point of a LinkedIn company page?
The cynical answer is to generate ad revenue. I just scrolled through my feed and saw six ads from companies.
According to LinkedIn, ads work. One company that ran ads shared that they’ve gotten 150% new customers in one month, and another said they got 3x more lead form fills.
Cool.
But what if you don’t want to spend money on expensive ads (and LinkedIn ads ARE expensive) that may or may not help you generate more leads or close more sales?
Should you still bother creating and maintaining a LinkedIn company page?
It depends. Let’s break down the pros and cons.
Pros of having a LinkedIn company page
You will be findable in LinkedIn search – as long as your company name – not your name – is top of mind. Your page just needs to contain the right keywords people use in search.
It is a credibility builder. A completed page confirms that your company is real.
If you have employees, they can link back to your company page when they post on LinkedIn. They can also share company posts.
Cons of a LinkedIn company page
It’s one more thing on your to-do list. Because you can’t do it all, most business owners focus on keeping their individual profile active and up-to-date.
If you have a strong personal brand, people will do a search for you – not your company. This is true for me, too. People associate my company with me. They think “Monika Jansen” not “Jansen Communications.”
If you don’t have employees, you don’t benefit from that extra reach or exposure.
As a marketer, here’s what I say about it:
It doesn’t take much time to set up a page and complete the profile, so you might as well do it.
But if you want to make the page work for you, you need to do more than update it once a week.
And I will fully admit that I do not love on my company page. It gets updated once a week with the same post I publish on my individual profile. And as I’ve said a million and one times, if a marketing channel is going to work for you, you need to put work into it.
But how much work? LinkedIn suggests posting once or twice A DAY! That is far too much for a small business owner.
However, there are other, easier things you can do to show your page some love. The rest of this article is very much “do as I say, not as I do.”
How to make your LinkedIn company page work for your brand
Decide on its purpose
Do you want to use your company page for thought leadership, hiring, company news? Something else?
One of my clients uses their company page for company news. We just got started handing their LinkedIn page, so in the first month, our posts for them include:
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A photo of a branded spork they were giving away during an upcoming chili cook-off
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A report on how the chili cook-off went (they were an event sponsor)
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A customer story
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A little write-up about an environmentally-focused program they created
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An employee spotlight
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A new project they’re working on
The CEO is sharing all of these posts on his profile, and we’re encouraging employees to do the same.
Complete the profile
According to LinkedIn, fully complete profiles get 30% more views. I would guess that’s because complete profiles are more useful, so they’re more likely to show up in a news feed or at the top of search results.
Take 10 minutes this week to review your company page and add in any missing elements. (If you have a virtual assistant, you can assign this task to them.)
Share PowerPoints, PDFs, and Word Docs
LinkedIn strongly suggests sharing assets on your company page: “Upload visually rich documents to help your followers dive deep on your organization’s offerings.”
So, if you have a brochure, case studies, or capabilities statement, share them here, too. It’ll make your page a lot more professional looking.
Use hashtags to find conversations
Because you likely won’t have a ton of post comments to respond to, go in search of conversations by using the hashtags you also want to be found for. It only takes 15 minutes a week to do a search, click on a reaction, and leave a short comment.
If your comments are thoughtful and helpful, you could get followers in return, thus growing your page’s reach.
Invite personal connections to follow your page
This is such a great idea, and I doubt most people do this. Each page has 250 invitation/connection requests per month. Might as well use them.
Post video
LinkedIn says that “video is 5x more likely to drive member engagement than other media types.” But it’s gotta be custom.
If you’re going to devote your page to hiring, I’d do short interviews with current employees. You could ask, “Why do you love working here? What’s the company culture like? What kind of professional growth opportunities do you get? How’s work-life balance?”
And then you could break up those questions and answers into individual videos to maximize the content.
Will you pour some time into your page?
After writing this – and thinking about what we’re doing for our clients’ LinkedIn pages – I think I should be a good marketer and pour some more love into my page. I’ll write a follow up article in a few months to report on what I did and what kind of results I am seeing.
So, will you join me and pour some time and effort into your company page? Why or why not?
Related: One Step at a Time: Improving Your Small Business Marketing Strategy