There won’t be videos of cute goats, endless photos of your friends’ children or 280-character updates. No, LinkedIn is designed to be a business- and employment-focused social networking site. And professionals and companies alike are taking advantage of its capabilities. With more than 530 million users, LinkedIn lands in the middle between Twitter (330 million users) and Facebook (2 billion users). Let’s break down some of the site’s other stats:
- 57 percent of companies have a LinkedIn company page
- There are 1.5 million groups on LinkedIn
- 94 percent of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content
- Use of LinkedIn company pages grew from 24 to 57 percent year-over-year
- More than 9 million companies can be found on LinkedIn
While you’ll find countless businesses on the networking site, a few companies managed to set themselves apart with the engaging content, resources, job tips and other information they share.
How to Have the Best Company Page
What’s going to make your page stand out and engage your audience? LinkedIn put together a list of best practices for company pages. Their advice?
- Finish your page. Leave no area behind blank and put your logo on your page—LinkedIn reported that pages with logo images receive six times the traffic than ones without a logo.
- Factor in SEO. The better profiles feature your targeted keywords in the beginning to catch Google’s and LinkedIn members’ attention when they search.
- Post engaging content regularly. When cultivating engagement, interactions and growing your followers, posting 3-4 times a week isn’t going to cut it. Post brand or industry-related content once a day
- See what’s working. LinkedIn offers analytics for company pages, so there’s no reason to not rack your results and see what type of posts are performing best.
- Customize your page. There are other options you can incorporate, depending on your specific company, like Career Pages, that highlights your company’s story, job opportunities and culture.
We’ll go through the companies that put these practices into action:
Hays
Hays is a global professional recruiting group with nearly 2 million followers on LinkedIn. Through their company page, post three or more pieces of content each day, helping to create continuous engagement with their followers. On their What We Do page, they highlight the company leaders, career opportunities, company photos, employee testimonials, cultural insights and a video about working at the company. That helps give jobseekers a real glimpse into the company and what it would be like to work there — exactly the types of things LinkedIn is designed to do. Oh, and they were also named the top company page by LinkedIn in 2017.
No one should feel that surprised that social media giant Facebook knows a thing or two about creating an engaging page. Facebook is just shy of 2 million followers on this networking site, and due to the following, they came in 3rd place on LinkedIn’s Top Companies List:
Facebook stays true to their brand, which is based on building relationships. The company’s life section features job openings, company photos of employees and their offices, cultural insights and organizations their employees support. They also have eight subpages on LinkedIn, including Facebook Marketing & Sales, Facebook Latin America, Building 8 at Facebook, Facebook Engineering, and more. They pair all of that with regular content posts and photos highlighting stories from employees, hiring updates, company news and other thought leadership posts.
Google does a good job of shining a spotlight on everything the company does through its LinkedIn company page. From a concise description of what they do — only they could put it all in one sentence — to regular posts about their jobs, employees and news, Google gives a full picture of their company. One of my favorite sections on their page is Employee Perspectives, which features first-person articles from Google employees and/or interns. Job seekers or interested followers won’t get a better look into a company than with posts like that. Google also features company photos, links to their YouTube channels and Showcase Pages.
DXC Technology
This IT services company has about 500,000 followers on LinkedIn and shares regular trend updates and thought leadership articles. And they don’t just throw content out into the LinkedIn abyss. They ask questions to encourage their followers to engage with them. All of their images are branded to match the company’s colors and styles, so it’s easy to recognize them in a news feed. DXC Technology also features the Meet Our Leaders section, along with a Leadership Spotlight, to provide even more information on who’s running the brand. Take a cue from DXC and put a face to the name for users.
IBM
IBM posts a variety of articles and updates on its LinkedIn page, and clearly, something is resonating with their 3.7 million followers. From videos and articles about the company to photos from their office and links from other brands, IBM offers a bit of everything. In their Life section, they also feature Employee Perspectives, Company Photos and information on career opportunities.
Start Growing Your LinkedIn Company Page
What these brands have achieved on LinkedIn is something any size company can do with their page. Once you’ve created all of the different sections, you just need to start sharing content and posts tailored to your audience.
If you’re providing regular, valuable articles and posts — and optimizing your content — you will gain those followers. So whether your goal is to expand your social reach or find interested job candidates, LinkedIn is the place to be.