Let’s be honest, LinkedIn company pages get mixed reviews. Renowned for being hard work, slow to grow and even tougher to gain engagement on, B2B marketers often shrug and pull faces at me when I ask them how it’s going. BUT, there’s a boat load of reasons why it’s worth gritting your teeth and knuckling down on them, and even more so in understanding how to actually make them work for your business. Read on for multiple reasons why company pages are worth the slog, and why engaging your leadership team and employees in using LinkedIn might also be worthwhile too…
LinkedIn Company Pages Deliver Brand Awareness For Your Business
The really obvious one is of course, that LinkedIn company pages grow brand awareness. Marketers – I know that you know this! There are a boatload of statistics that back up why LinkedIn deserves a place in your marketing mix, and I know I also don’t need to tell you that growing your audience by attracting relevant followers to the page should be part of any B2B marketing strategy.
Of course, as we all know, the bigger and more relevant your audience, the more opportunities you gain to convert them. In order to do this successfully though, your content must of course resonate with your target audience, attract them enough to want to follow along with it, and you must have the tactics and knowledge in place to know how to start converting them.
LinkedIn Can Bring Both Your Brand And Business To Life
Having a LinkedIn company page gives you the opportunity to humanise your brand. The age old saying “nobody does business with a logo” is (annoyingly for marketers) a true fact. Before you shout “we have a website for that!” at me, I’d encourage you to think about how LinkedIn really works.
Company pages can share content in real time in a variety of engaging formats, and leaders from your business can also be active too. Sharing their own voice and position from their personal profiles will travel far through the LinkedIn network, helping to increase the overall company brand awareness alongside company page content.
In publishing regular pieces of short form (and low cost) content in interesting formats on the company page you can also easily keep audiences entertained, interested and up to speed with what’s happening in your business. What’s more, your content can showcase the personality, values and culture of your business in a way your website definitely can’t.
A Consistent LinkedIn Presence Keeps Your Business “Top Of Mind”
Having a company page well optimised with regular pieces of content being shared means your brand stays top of mind when someone needs your product or service. Repeatedly showing up in feeds with your content is a consistent reminder of your brand presence, and what you do for people. What’s more, seeing leadership teams actively sharing their business day to day on LinkedIn also builds trust with your audience in the business and it’s employees.
It will also be a key driver of people mentioning your brand if and when you might be needed by someone they are in conversation with, and what brand or business doesn’t benefit from a word of mouth referral?
Consistency doesn’t have to mean posting multiple times daily either, unlike content requirements on other platforms. It can be as easy as posting a couple of times a week, which should be doable for any B2B business or organisation.
LinkedIn Company Pages Drive Website Traffic
One of the main benefits of doing social media well for any marketer is to drive website traffic. As you will only know too well, your website is the shop window for your products and services, and should be your first priority to keep updated with long-form content.
Once fresh content is in place, LinkedIn company pages and personal posts from leadership can successfully drive traffic across using links and calls to action in posts, all of which can be tracked through Google Analytics reporting. The variety of content formats available to you on LinkedIn is also really helpful – for example, blogs can be shared as articles, and your email content can be shared as newsletters, both of which can contain links driving people back to your website.
LinkedIn Can Generate Leads And Boost Sales
Activated well, LinkedIn company pages can deliver leads for your business. Granted, the work does need to be done to build an audience first, but we now also have exciting and engaging content tools such as LinkedIn lives, events, and newsletters, which can all be used to build interest and excitement around your product or service. At the very least, your page should be sharing great content, with calls to action and links to core products and services.
There are also huge gains to be made in training leaderships teams and employees on how to use LinkedIn. Leadership profiles can build relationships with existing and prospective clients, and potentially with influencers and key stakeholders in your space. Genuine and authentic interaction from your business development and sales teams will drive deeper connections with your target audiences, build business relationships, and open doors to more collaborations and business opportunities.
LinkedIn Company Pages Can Highlight Your Company Culture To Potential Employees
If you’re recruiting staff regularly LinkedIn offers you the opportunity to showcase your company culture through the page content. By putting the spotlight on your employees and how you support them, visitors to your page can quickly see and identify with the culture of your business.
You can highlight their success stories, career journeys and learning, as well as advertise jobs you have available. Young people especially now turn to social media platforms to research businesses and brands they want to work for.
Looking for inspiration? Check out the Amazon LinkedIn page for great examples of shining the spotlight on their employees. At the time of me writing this blog they are regularly sharing this style of content. Why not review your own page content and ask yourself this question – does your business look like a great place to work?
Use LinkedIn Company Pages To Gather Audience Insight
Established company pages can also benefit from the content formats LinkedIn makes available to gather audience insights. The poll content format can be used to gather audience feedback on your products and service ideas, sector hot topics and more. The opportunity to run LinkedIn Lives can also enable you to gather audience input in real time.
Polls are such a useful and easy to execute content format, and I do not see enough of them on company pages! Why not try brainstorming some questions you could share to gather useful data for your business or marketing strategy?
Find Collaborations & Partnerships Through A LinkedIn Company Page
The rise of social media marketing has massively driven the collaboration opportunity. We all want exposure to new audiences to increase brand awareness, and collaborations are a great way to do this. However, every collaboration begins with building genuine relationships first – right?
Great company page management allows you to build relationships with other brands through online engagement, as well as LinkedIn profiles giving your teams and employees the ability to build relationships through their own personal presence on the platform – as long as they know how to credibly and confidently show up there!
I hope this summary of reasons has given you a little bit more motivation for your company page execution, and maybe even some new things to think about in your overall approach to using LinkedIn? Of course, if you need a bit of support in that area, you know where I am. You can find out about my LinkedIn training packages and services for larger businesses here, and for smaller businesses here.
