LinkedIn says it has improved its Company Pages and rebuilt the Pages “from the ground up.” While the changes may not be earth shattering, the network for business professionals has introduced new tools and enhancements that PR and marketing professionals – or and anyone who manages a Company Page — should know about. To begin with, LinkedIn has renamed Company Pages to simply Pages.
Here’s a rundown of significant changes the network announced and expects to introduce over the coming weeks.
Content discovery. Page administrators can now pick hashtags to monitor in order to stay abreast of industry news and find content that’s relevant to their industry and target audience. The new Content Suggestions listing reports content related to selected hashtags. That can help find conversations about a brand, industry topics or issues and guide content creation strategies.
Content sharing. LinkedIn has expanded the types of content companies can share. Until now, page administrators, or “admins,” could post images, native video and text on Company Pages. They can now share PowerPoint presentations, Word Documents and PDFs.
Employee advocates. New sharing options help companies discover and share their employees’ LinkedIn posts from their personal pages. Employees can be superb brand ambassadors. It’s not clear how employees may feel about their companies resharing their personal posts, but companies can only share posts that are shared publically. A new “Share with employees” option lets Page admins post content to employee feeds.
Mobile upgrade. LinkedIn Page posting and management functionalities are now fully integrated with the network’s mobile app. Admins can manage the pages from their phones.
Third-party integration. LinkedIn enhanced its API to improve integration with third-party social media management tools. Admins can now receive notifications within Hootsuite about activity on their LinkedIn Page. Also, LinkedIn users can view funding and investment data from CrunchBase directly within LinkedIn pages.
Engagement. New tools will help Page admins respond to and reshare posts when the company’s Page is mentioned, such as customer testimonials and product reviews.
Analytics. Analytics will now include aggregated data from all Pages so that admins can compare their Page engagement metrics with overall engagement levels for LinkedIn Pages.
LinkedIn Gets More Users and More Use
“These are some interesting innovations and additions, and while they might not necessarily ‘change the game’ on LinkedIn, they certainly provide new considerations to help build and enhance your company presence on the platform,” comments Andrew Hutchinson at Social Media Today.
The network’s ongoing enhancements have apparently helped boost membership and, perhaps more importantly, engagement. The network revised its LinkedIn Groups earlier this year and previously implemented other upgrades, such as adding native video, enhancing its search features, and improving its news feed algorithm to show more relevant content.
LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft, says it has more than 590 million active LinkedIn members, up from 575 million in August. They share 2 million updates, videos and articles a day. The network reported, “record levels” of engagement and noted that sessions increased 34 percent over the previous period.
Bottom Line: Enhancements to LinkedIn Pages may make the network more useful to PR and marketing professionals for corporate and brand communications. New and improved options can help Page administrators better promote their organizations on the professional network.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
