LinkedIn company pages give your brand a space to build community and engagement.
There are over 30 million companies on LinkedIn and 675 million members. In a new report from Sagefrog Marketing group, LinkedIn is a preferred social platform for most B2B marketers: 86% of respondents say they use it more than any other social platform.
Any brand can start creating a LinkedIn company page and sharing content quickly — but your content won’t get anywhere if two things don’t happen first.
- Your employees need to share the content.
- Your content has the right level of professional zest.
Here we discuss what you need to know about creating a LinkedIn company page and LinkedIn company page best practices. (Plus, examples of award-winning company pages.)
Laying the Groundwork: Linkedin Company Page Best Practices
According to LinkedIn, there are over 9 billion impressions on the platform.
This means that people on LinkedIn are looking for interesting ideas, reports, webinars and connections.
For your content to get in front of future leads, you need to understand LinkedIn’s algorithm and what it favors.
Senior Director of Product Management at LinkedIn, Pete Davies, says that LinkedIn has a saying: “People You Know, Talking About Things You Care About.” Davies says that there are three main factors that determine if your content will get attention:
- Personal connections: Your content must be shared by real people (i.e. your employees) who know real people.
- Relevance: Your content must be relevant to the people you want to see it.
- Engagement probability: Engagement is a snowball effect. The more traction a post gains, the more probability it will be shown to other people, be clicked on again, create more impressions, etc. The quicker a post starts getting reactions, the more people will see it.
Essentially, LinkedIn wants organic marketing to work for your brand.
Content that is shared only by brands, but not by real people, will not likely show up for your intended audience. That is why creating engaging company pages is twofold: you first need to create awesome content and secondly to have an employee advocacy plan in place.
B2B Companies with Excellent LinkedIn Company Pages
LinkedIn puts together an annual #BestofPages award to honor the companies that have created inspiring company pages on the platform.
Here are three of the winners.
1. Teleperformance
Teleperformance is a leader in outsourced omnichannel customer experience management. Its LinkedIn company page is full of beautiful, consistently branded content. There is a variety of infographics, informative videos and business announcements.
2. Hays
Hays is a professional recruiting group that works in Europe, Asia and Latin America. The company helps other businesses reshape their workforce and overcome talent shortages. Hays’s company page on LinkedIn is regularly updated and maintains a balance of video, guides and long-form journal publications.
3. Cvent
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform. This brand maintains an active company page that feels professional, while also authentic. It has regular updates about company events, Q&As and fun questions to ask their followers.
5 Ways To Increase LinkedIn Company Page Engagement
You know the basics already: your company page needs great visuals, videos, blogs and other content. Content needs to be regularly and frequently posted.
But what are you missing to take your company page from a few hundred followers to thousands?
1. Consider your specific audiences and don’t overly self-promote
Narrow in on your target audience.
Your LinkedIn content should not be all about you. It should be relevant to potential buyers. If you only create content strictly about your product, service or brand, you are not likely to get more clicks, reactions, comments or shares. Your page is not a space for advertisements trying to be organic. This is a space to create value for your audience.
Remember to think about other lifestyle or demographic factors of your buyers.
Things to consider are:
- Is your ideal buyer typically younger or older?
- What education do they have?
- What are they interested in outside of work?
- What do they value?
- What other industry topics might be relevant to them?
A portion of your posts should be dedicated to self-promotion, while the rest should be resharing thought leadership pieces, content from other brands or influencers. The popular 4-1-1 rule suggests that for every piece of content you share about yourself, you should share four pieces written by others.
2. Experiment with the new LinkedIn Live
In January 2020, LinkedIn expanded its live video streaming features to company pages. This is an exciting opportunity for companies to humanize their companies and stir up conversations within their communities.
Select companies that had first access to this feature saw 7 times more reactions and 24 times more comments than standard video posts on LinkedIn.
This new type of video can be used in a variety of ways:
- Showcasing new products
- Promoting an event
- Big celebrations
- Recruitment
- Interviews
- Tutorials/Demonstrations
3. Use Relevant Hashtags
Similar to other social media platforms, LinkedIn has a hashtag system to help categorize posts. When you add a hashtag to your post, it is more likely that your post will get in front of the appropriate audience.
Hashtags are more nuanced on LinkedIn than other platforms. There is a more professional tone towards the choice of words and the amount of hashtags that you attach. Keep the number of hashtags to 2 or 3 a post. Be authentic, but not overly witty. Questionable jokes should stay on Twitter.
4. Feature Your Staff
Celebrate the people who work at your company by featuring them on your company page.
You can feature employees by using:
- Personal stories and quotes
- Testimonials
- Celebrating an achievement
- Showcasing staff at events
Employee shout-outs attach real faces to your brand. A great way to make this type of post more engaging is to add a question to spark conversation. As an example, you could have a catchy line like “Coffee and 90’s pop music keep Susie going on her long days. What is your fuel?”
Employees may feel more inclined to share these posts because they theoretically appreciate their colleagues and want to express their gratitude in a public and professional way.
5. Plan and create ongoing content
One of the most important things about creating engagement is simply creating content, pushing it and staying on top of the details.
The Hinge Research Institute’s 2020 High Growth Study of Professional Services Firms found that the top priority for B2B marketers is creating content. This priority tops brand differentiation, social media marketing, SEO and website performance.
Content creation itself is a feat. You could go in any direction with your strategy:
- Blogs
- Vlogs
- Video
- Infographics
- Case studies
- Research and thought leadership pieces
- eBooks
You have limitless options when it comes to creating content. Decide on the right strategy, put the right people in place to execute and get the work done. Without consistency and frequent posts, you won’t have anything for your audience to engage with. After you have the right content in place, it is time to get active on LinkedIn and engage your community.
