We have been doing a lot of talking about creating great personal LinkedIn profile pages. This is all well and good but what if you have a business you want to have on LinkedIn as well? If you want a LinkedIn company page then this article is written for you. A company page helps others learn more about your business, brand, products and services, and job opportunities.
You can read the LinkedIn profile posts below if you haven't already read them.
Getting Started
The first step in the creation of a LinkedIn company page is first establishing what you want to achieve with your LinkedIn company page, who you will have maintaining your company page and like a blog what will be the posting frequency of the content on the page. If the person you've designated to create your LinkedIn Company page doesn't already have a LinkedIn account that will be the very first thing that a person needs to do as that is a requirement to creating a page.
Notes
- You do not need a paid account to create a company page!
- Your LinkedIn profile must be at least 7 days old
- Your LinkedIn profile must be listed as Intermediate or All-Star status
- You must be a current company employee and your position is listed in the Experience section on your profile.
- You must have a company email address (e.g. john@BusinessYETI.com) added and confirmed on your LinkedIn account.
- Your company's email domain is unique to the company. You cannot use @Gmail.com, @outlook.com, etc. for your company email domain.
Company Pages - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
As LinkedIn evolves and updates their system with more capabilities and functions they update the frequently asked questions within their website for company pages. The link to this information is located at https://help.LinkedIn.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1561 and is a great source for additional information if you wish to go beyond the basics of setting up a company page or need additional information while working on your company page.
Create Your Company Page
To create a company page you will navigate to https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/add/show. You will enter your company name (e.g. JM2 Webdesigners, LLC), next enter your company email address. This needs to be your company address (e.g. john@BusinessYETI.com) as this helps prevent people from other companies from creating your company page and writing all kinds of bad things about you. The last step is affirming that you are authorized be creating this company page for the company. With all of that information complete you can click on Continue to move to the next step of the process.
Editing Your Company Overview
The first step in editing your profile is to determine how you wish to optimize the display for your readers. You need to have a great narrative and story about your company. This is your company's primary language of choice. For those in the United States this would be English. Your company name and the description of your company is next. The description you choose needs to be a minimum of 100 characters and the maximum is 2,000 characters.
Although you've set your optimization to say English you can also choose a default language. For many this will be the same as the optimized language but not always and is why LinkedIn gives you the option to set your default language for your company page.
As you continue to fill out the information you need to choose your company type (public, private, educational, government, etc.), the number of employees you have in your company, the URL to your website (e.g. www.BusinessYETI.com) as this gives a nice backlink from a highly reputable source to your website for search engine optimization (SEO), your main industry, whether you're open for business, and what year the company was founded in.
Company Addresses
For the company address you are allowed to enter up to 5 different locations of where you are. Start out with your primary address (e.g. corporate office) and then expand from there in order of what priority you want.
Designated Administrators
For your designated administrators of the site we always recommend in having the owner of the company as an administrator so that they have control over any final details that they may need. This also lets them know where the LinkedIn Company page is as well. They may not do anything with the site but it will also give them access if they so need it.
Direct Sponsored Content Posters
Direct Sponsored Content gives marketers at your company the ability to share content to the LinkedIn homepage feed without publishing it on your Company Page or Showcase Page. You can personalize your message, test variations of your content, and control the content that shows up on your Company Page.
Direct Sponsored Content will be seen by members on their LinkedIn feed on the homepage and look the same as a Sponsored Update from your company. They won't be visible on your Company Page or Showcase Page and Direct Sponsored Content also won't be sent to your followers.
Images
Whenever you upload images there are a few things to always think about. The first is the proper or recommended size of the image in pixels. This is the width and height. The next is the file format type of the file and the last is the overall size of the file. The smaller the file the faster it will load for users that are viewing the image. You want to balance the size with the quality of the image. We recommend saving the images that you want in all of the formats that is allowed and then viewing them to see which one works best not only in the size of the file but the clarity/quality of the image for the people visiting your page.
Cover Photo
The top most image that you upload will need to be a JPG, PNG or GIF image with a maximum size of 2 megabytes. The cover photo image needs to be a minimum of 646 pixels wide by 220 pixels tall.
Once you've uploaded the image you will be given a preview of the image where you will also see a yellow box. This box is a "cropping" box that allows you to set what portion of the image you wish to use. The yellow box you can resize by using the box in the lower right corner. The box will stay proportional so that you get the best possible quality from the image.
Standard Logo
Like that of the cover photo your company's logo needs to be a PNG, JPG or GIF file with a maximum file size of 2 megabytes. The size for your standard logo needs to be a minimum of 100 pixels wide by 60 pixels tall.
Square Logo
The square logo is a square version of your logo. This can be either your entire logo, part of it or an icon that represents your company. The minimum size for both width and height is 50 pixels for the square logo.
Company Specialties
The company specialities is where you can put some emphasis on what makes your company great. These are the core items your business specializes in. Put in as many specialities that define to a visitor of your company page what your company does.
What else can I do with a LinkedIn Company Page?
We've only covered a brief part of what a LinkedIn Company Page can do. With your page now setup you are ready at the most basic level. Below are a few of the main items that we help companies setup and configure for their business.
Add a Job
From here you can work on adding job postings for available positions. As LinkedIn is geared toward business professionals this is a great place to find qualified candidates for your business. According to LinkedIn statistics (https://business.LinkedIn.com/talent-solutions/products/jobs) 80% of professionals are open to job opportunities, but only 20% are active looking. With LinkedIn having millions of active users this 20% is still a very large marketing opportunity.
Note: This is a paid option on LinkedIn. The cost will vary depending upon how many jobs that you are posting.
Showcase Pages
You can also create a Showcase Page to put emphasis on a product or service that your company has. On a Showcase Page you will start off by giving it a name as well as defining the administrators of the page.
Promote your LinkedIn Company Page
Once you have your LinkedIn Company page created and setup the way that you want the next step will be informing your employees and customers about your page so that they know you exist on LinkedIn. Your employees are your company's most reliable advocate. This notification can be through a newsletter, another social media outlet (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.), your company blog if you have one, local news sources that are either print or digital, flyers, snail mail (people still use this), radio, television, part of your email signature or another method you've thought of.
Engagement
We see constantly people that are engaged in the creation and building of their social media sites and then "boom" fall off the planet. They believe that if you build it they will come. That is true to a small (keyword: small) degree. People will eventually find out about your site. They may even ask a question or be looking for answers to a question they haven't asked. You need to engage and participate in social media. Not only on LinkedIn but all social media outlets your company is in.
At the most basic level, it's helpful to think of every update as a chance to convey your brand promise. But it's also important to think of what LinkedIn members expect to receive from status updates. As a rule of thumb, all content you post to LinkedIn should help members become more successful professionals. When you build a reputation for wanting to help your followers, you'll be more likely to convert them into loyal customers.
Like all social media outlets there is a specific posting frequency to achieve maximum results. Your posting frequency will also vary from the recommendations based on your audience and you will need to taylor your posts to meet what your audience asks for. Where Facebook they recommend 2-4 posts per week, Twitter multiple times a day, LinkedIn recommends that posting daily updates is the most effective way to start a conversation and create word of mouth for your business. Every businesses results will vary based on their industry and their audience. Be prepared to be agile and change your posting frequency to meet the requests of your client base.
Data Analytics
Now that you have your page setup, promoted and are ready to engage and create content you may want to know who is using your page and whether your current efforts are meeting the goals you set to determine the success of your LinkedIn company page. Thankfully at the top of your LinkedIn company page is a tab called Analytics for your administrators. For every post your put onto your company page you will see the date, audience (e.g. All Followers), impressions, clicks and interactions of your post. You can see how many people "Liked" your post, Shared, any new followers because of your post and much more.
Knowing how you compare in your industry is also a beneficial part of analytics. It's great knowing what you're doing and how you're comparing against your goals but what about your peers? Well, LinkedIn has you covered here as well. They give you a "How You Compare" option at the end of the analytics screen for those in your industry.
Conclusion
Developing your LinkedIn Company page does not require as much to get started to be considered great compared to an individuals personal profile page. This doesn't mean you should take it any less as the company page is a primary way of getting information about your company to those who use LinkedIn. Having a LinkedIn company page will also benefit your primary website as well as LinkedIn is a credible source and you can link from LinkedIn to your company's business website.
