Optimize Your LinkedIn Presence With a Company Page – Part 3 – Promote Your Products and Services

Don’t Forget Your LinkedIn Company Page

Setting up your Company Page helps people find it when they do company searches, but LinkedIn also allows you to promote your company’s branding messages, products, and services.  If you really want to maximize your LinkedIn marketing opportunities, you need to optimize the services page within your Company Pages.

It’s important to take full advantage of the Services tab for two reasons: it helps potential customers get an overview of your company’s offerings (for more detail they can go to your website); and it also provides a platform for customers to recommend your products and services.  Real people giving recommendations can be quite persuasive.

LinkedIn doesn’t limit the number of products and services you can list, but this may not always be the case, which is a good reason to set your page up NOW.  When you add a product or service, you have to provide a great deal of detail.  Although currently, “products” and “services” are not in the LinkedIn search options, I think it’s only a matter of time before they are.  Get your Company Page optimized now and you’ll be ahead of the game when that happens.

When adding a product or service, keep the following things in mind:

Images convey an instant impression

The majority of LinkedIn’s content is text.  That’s why the ads they place on the right side of many pages are so attention grabbing.  The eye is naturally drawn to a visual, and away from a lot of text.  Be SURE to include images for each product and service.  If you don’t have a visual (many services don’t) use stock art.  There are plenty of stock art sites with reasonable costs for royalty free pictures (unlimited use.)

Consider a custom landing page for each product or service

Since social media marketing is still considered suspect in many industrial circles, ROI is a huge factor. Look at it this way:  someone who has already gone through the effort of searching for, finding, exploring your services page, and then clicking on a link to your website is as close to a qualified prospect as you can hope for.  Create a custom landing page on your website that will resonate with the average LinkedIn user (not TOO technical!)  This allows you to see who’s coming to your site from LinkedIn and gives you the opportunity to offer more targeted information and possibly gather contact information.

Don’t forget to add the right contact people

You can add 3 contacts for every product and service on your company page.  It’s a good idea to use all 3 slots, since you never know who may be unavailable at any given time.  You could include product managers, sales personnel, customer service or inside sales.  Just be sure that the contacts you list are knowledgeable about the product or service for which they’re listed.

Take advantage of banner ads

Besides showing pictures and text that highlight unlimited products and services on your services page, LinkedIn also allows you to upload 3 “banner ads” with links.  These larger images will appear above the complete listing of your products and services, so if you have a lot of products, put some thought into how best to use the banners.  Just upload the image at the appropriate size (6450 x 220 pixels), insert the URL in the appropriate space, and LinkedIn creates a rotating spotlight module to display on the page.

If you have a video, be sure to add it

In social media marketing, nothing is more powerful or persuasive than video.  LinkedIn gives you the option of uploading one video to your services page.  If you already have a corporate video, be sure to upload it.  If you don’t have any video, consider creating one.  It doesn’t have to be long (in fact, about 3 minutes is the attention span of most people.)  Ideas?  How about a customer testimonial; a message from someone most knowledgeable about your most important product or service; a demonstration of how one of your products works; a message from your CEO.  With video recording equipment so affordable today, even an amateur can put together a 3 minutes video with a little forethought about lighting, backgrounds, wardrobe, and a good script.

Ask for recommendations

Unlike the recommendations on individual profile pages, Company Page recommendations show the picture of the individual giving the recommendation.  I personally find this more convincing – don’t you?  You not only see the text, but a real, live person who is making the recommendation.  Most people like to help others if they can; especially if they are a satisfied customer.  So don’t be afraid to ask for those recommendations!

Right now, the importance of the Company Page feature on LinkedIn is developing.  With the potential for additional advertising revenue, I can only assume that LinkedIn will continue to make the Company Page platform more prominent and more searchable.  As with all technology, get in on the ground floor so that you’re not trying to catch up to your competition down the road!