If you thought LinkedIn was just for job seekers, think again. Consider these five reasons your company needs a LinkedIn company page:
- LinkedIn is a portal to a marketplace full of current and potential customers. In fact, three million companies have LinkedIn Company pages.* LinkedIn estimates that people sign up at a rate of two people per second. In the time it took to read that sentence, two and possibly three of your new customers signed up for LinkedIn. Are you ready to meet them? Post an update about new hires or new products or services, invite comment and sharing, and see what happens next.
- LinkedIn allows your current and potential customers to interact with you. LinkedIn estimates that 1.5 million “unique publishers” use the “share” button to push their company’s content into the LinkedIn platform. Are you one of them? If not, your potential customers aren’t seeing what your company can offer, but they might see the competition.
- Going Viral. LinkedIn’s “share” feature allows your content to go viral, spreading across the Internet and the world. The more engaging or unique your content, the more it gets shared. LinkedIn lends its brand authenticity to your content, product, or service. It’s not an endorsement by LinkedIn — LinkedIn is a networking platform that allows its users to endorse each other, as well as companies’ products and services — but smart companies make it seem like one.
- No, you don’t need a degree in search engine optimization (SEO) to understand LinkedIn’s analytics. Using the “edit” drop-down menu, you can discover who’s following you and why. You might even discover a previously untapped market segment.
- Being a Knowledge Leader. Elevate your company’s profile, and your own, within your industry by participating in LinkedIn Groups. Groups are based around industry segment or interest. The savvy user posts links to stories of interest, or poses questions to the group at large, and otherwise facilitates discussions of interest to the group. Post an update about a recent conference you attended, or relevant books you’ve been reading. Every time you post a relevant update or comment, you are identifying yourself and your company as thoughtful and involved, and your peers will notice.
* All statistics pertaining to LinkedIn usage are from LinkedIn’s Press Center.