Not so long ago, LinkedIn’s redesigned brand pages were offered exclusively to big-name brands like CitiGroup, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, and HubSpot. Now, LinkedIn is making these revamped pages available to all its corporate users, more than 2 million companies.
For companies, LinkedIn is a social platform to tell backstory, share news and updates, promote products or services, advertise job opportunities, and engage with current and future customers, over 175 million of them. Individuals seek out company pages to get industry updates, research new products and services, and scout career opportunities.
The redesign is meant to improve engagement between companies and individuals in a number of different ways.
What’s in the Redesign?
The most obvious change is a large cover photo, Facebook style. This is an important asset as it’s a visual representation of the company’s brand and is a strong way to connect to potential customers and/or employees.
The news feed has also been updated and placed in a more prominent place on the page. Users now get customized information on companies based on what is present on their profile pages. Navigation has also been streamlined and presents companies’ products, services, and career openings more prominently.
On the mobile side of things, users can now search for companies as well as people on-the-go. Considering there are around 82 million potential customers who access social networks from their mobile devices (eMarketer), that’s one more huge advantage.
Overall, the redesign is a big step forward in terms of user experience and visual appeal. Some have made the case that it’s similar to Facebook, perhaps too similar. Nevertheless, LinkedIn has received largely good press for the redesign and even a glance will tell you that from both a corporate and individual standpoint, information is more accessible than ever before.
Why Your Company Should Have a Brand Page on LinkedIn
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest: these platforms should have a special place in your social media strategy, and they each bring something different to the table in terms of current and potential customer relations. LinkedIn brings something unique as well.
As a business-centered organization, LinkedIn’s primary focus is on just that, business. Social networking sites that are purely social don’t give companies the opportunity to fully showcase products and services.
With the new redesign, company brand pages will be getting extra attention on LinkedIn, as well as on search engine results pages. As such, it’s more important than ever to make sure that your company is presenting a consistent brand across all of your owned, earned, and paid media outlets. If you have questions about branding, check out Dawn’s recent FAQ blog post or give us a buzz!
