Written by Paige Dawson
If your company has been leveraging LinkedIn as a marketing tool, you’ve probably seen positive results. LinkedIn is a terrific (and free) way to generate business, boost search engine rankings, attract potential employees and more. But if you’re an advanced LinkedIn user, a few upcoming changes to the site will require some housekeeping to ensure you don’t lose any content you’ve built and recommendations you’ve gathered.
So what’s happening? According to LinkedIn’s announcement, they are eliminating all “Products” and “Services” tabs for Company Pages as of April 14th, 2014. Unfortunately, that also means any recommendations that have been added to your Products and Services Pages will also go away.
Going forward, LinkedIn is directing users to take advantage of its new Showcase Pages to highlight “prominent products and services” as well as make better use of Company Updates Pages to share content. LinkedIn describes Showcase Pages as “extensions of your Company Page, designed for spotlighting a brand, business unit, or initiative.” These pages are targeted and aimed at cultivating unique audiences, so some thought should go into which, and how many, Showcase Pages you set up and maintain.
Copy and save any content you had on the Products and Services Pages. Content will be deleted by LinkedIn, so be sure to preserve anything you want to keep.
Copy and save any recommendations you had on the Products and Services Pages. Personal recommendations are extremely valuable, so if you only do one thing, do this! You can simply copy and save recommendations to your own document or request a copy from LinkedIn. (NOTE: If you plan to use these recommendations in other promotional or marketing material, be sure to request permission from the individual).
Determine which areas of your business would benefit from a Showcase Page. The size and complexity of your business will determine the number of Showcase Pages (you can have up to 10). Read more about Showcase Pages here.
Reformat any old content and update to fit into LinkedIn’s Showcase Pages format. View details on creating Showcase Pages here.
Revisit your strategy for posting on Company Updates Pages. If you’re not using Company Updates, take a look at what content you could be sharing in this area. Company Pages are a great way to engage with followers and extend your reach.
If you need guidance on how to best use LinkedIn or want help reformatting your content for the new page structure, please contact us.
