How to Create Your LinkedIn Company Page and Grow Your Corporate Brand on LinkedIn

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Many businesses begin their journey on LinkedIn by utilizing the Personal Profile services, which helps professionals grow their network and focus on career development. However, you may be pleased to know that LinkedIn offers its users the ability to create company-specific pages that provide additional resources not available on a Personal Profile. LinkedIn calls this free feature a "LinkedIn Page."

While a Personal Profile represents you as an individual, a company page represents your brand. Currently, more than 57 million companies utilize this powerful tool, so if you're a business owner looking to expand your brand's reach, it may be time for you to create a LinkedIn Page.?

What exactly is a LinkedIn Page, and how does it differ from your regular profile?

In 2018, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Pages, allowing consumers to discover and evaluate businesses they may be interested in. This feature also provided businesses, schools, and non-profits a platform to connect with their audience and share updates, job opportunities, company news, blog posts, and other content delving into an organization's core values, mission, vision, and products or services offered.?

Compared to a personal profile, LinkedIn Pages allow their users to:

• Run paid ads
• Link employee profiles
• Know and grow their audience through visual analytics
• Customize a Page-specific call-to-action (CTA) button
• Share your own LinkedIn articles
• React and comment on hashtag feeds that are associated with your LinkedIn Page
• Create "showcase pages" to highlight specific departments and more.?

Essentially, a LinkedIn Page operates as an extension to your brand's website and increases your searchability and visibility, vital elements to brand growth.?

On its own, a LinkedIn Page won't grow your business significantly, as it does not offer the personal touch and lead generation that your Personal Profile provides. However, it is still an important step to add to your business plan if you are looking to maximize your ROI. When you combine the network of your Personal Profile (and those of your employees) with the power and available resources of a Company Page, you increase your visibility and searchability. As well as build equity through organic content and targeted campaigns, which is necessary for company growth. A company Page creates additional credibility to what you have to offer.?

Pro-tip: We recommend commenting on and/or reposting updates and essential postings from your Company Page to your Personal Profile. We'd advise your team to do the same. This increases your visibility and chances of getting in front of key people who can take your business to the next level. Rather than sharing each company post verbatim, you can reword the post to add your personal touches and personality, appealing to those on your personal connections list.?

To begin, we will walk you through the steps of creating a winning LinkedIn Page.?

Creating a LinkedIn Company Page is quite simple. You will want to log in to your Personal Profile first, go to the top right, and click on Work. You can also go to the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions site and click Create a LinkedIn Page under the LinkedIn Pages tab. Once you have done this, click Create a Company Page. LinkedIn will then direct you to choose one Page category.?

The categories are:?

• Small Business (Less than 200 employees)
• Medium to Large Business (200+ employees)
• Showcase Page (Listed as an "Affiliated Page" under your main profile – Employee engagement features are not available here.)
• If you are interested in highlighting "your unique brands, business units, or initiatives," this category may be a good fit.
• Educational Institution (Schools & Universities)?

After choosing your Page category, you will begin personalizing your LinkedIn Company Page. It is essential that you complete your Page in its entirety and that you're thorough, as LinkedIn Pages with complete information receive 30% more weekly views.

We will break down each Page section below.?

Section I: Page Identity

1. Your first step is to type the name of your company. You will want to write your company name in its entirety. If you abbreviate your company name, you risk decreasing your ability to be found if someone were to type your company name in the search bar. If you need to customize your title to something not already in use, remember LinkedIn's rules state that you cannot include special characters, so consider adding your geographical location.?

Example: Linkability Boise or Linkability ID

You are limited to 100 characters or less.?

Note: The company title you choose will also become your customized URL. Although you can change this, we suggest keeping it uniform to improve your searchability.?

2. Your next step will be to add your company's URL under the "Page Identity" section. This provides direct access to your website, making it more user-friendly for those interested in learning more about the products or services.?

Section II: Company Details

This next section provides LinkedIn with the details they need to better serve users in their advanced searches. Here you will be asked to:?

• Select Industry
• Add Company Size
• Select Company Type?

Section III: Profile Details

1. Upload your logo. If you do not already have a logo made, you can use a service such as Canva or Adobe to design a logo that will represent your business well. If you do not possess the creative gene, you can hire a graphic designer to render one for you. This service varies in price greatly by complexity, region, and company. Each individual/company will offer different artistic vibes, so you will want to do your research to find the best fit.?

LinkedIn recommends that your logo's pixel size be approximately 268 (w) by 268 (h). You can upload your image in either JPEG or PNG format.?

2. Next, you will want to add your tagline. Like the headline section on your personal profile, you will want to describe what your company does in 120 characters or less. For your company, we suggest formatting the wording as a sentence, rather than individual keywords broken up by a backlash, slash, or vertical line symbol, as a sentence looks more professional.?

You will want to remain conscientious about your word choice, including popular industry-related keywords so that you once again appear in searches.?

Example: Powerfully Positioning Your Business and Personal Brand on LinkedIn?

In Linkability's tagline, you will see that we capitalized each word sans the conjunction in addition to our inclusion of industry keywords because the tagline or "headline" is similar to a subtitle.?

3. Your last steps will be to check the box that verifies you are an authorized company representative and click Create Page.

Similar to your personal profile, you will want to add or edit your Page to represent your company in a positive, professional manner. This begins with personalizing your company banner to showcase your company's values and professional identity while setting yourself apart from the competition.

To add or change your banner, you will click on the pencil icon in the top right corner.?

When creating your company banner, here are a few things you can include and some tips to consider:?

• Use a professional photo of your workspace, employees, tools of the trade, or something else that represents your company.?
• Include contact information.?
• Utilize colors representing your brand, keeping in mind that different colors create different vibes.?
• Think about if you want your banner to be modern, abstract, etc.
• Think about your primary profile image placement when designing your banner. You don't want valuable information to be covered.?

Once again, Canva is a great resource to use for your graphic needs. When creating your banner, you will want to set your dimensions to 1584x396 pixels.?

Next, you will begin editing the rest of your Page by clicking the Edit Page button located to the right of your company name. Although you will notice that not all of these sections are required, as we mentioned earlier, a complete profile receives more views. You will find a helpful checklist of actions to complete if you are starting from scratch. More features will be unlocked as you finish these actions, such as Invite to Follow and Content Suggestions.?

Here are some of the tasks that you will need to complete:

Description: You will add your company summary (LinkedIn now refers to this as the About section as of January 2022). In this section, you want to share your company's skills and experience while providing a sales pitch without sounding pushy, dull, or over-the-top.?

Here are a few questions we ask our clients before creating their summary:?

• Who is your company, and what do you do?
• Who are you trying to target?
• How are you making life easier for your clients?
• What are you most proud of in your business?
• What do your clients think of you, and why do they have this perspective?
• What are you trying to accomplish?

This is only a snippet of the questions we ask, but by answering these questions, we begin to understand who our clients are and their goals, which allows us to create compelling and well-thought-out summaries in 2400-2600 characters. Writing a summary can feel like a daunting task because you want to speak to your audience, drawing them in to reach out and learn more.

You can hire a company such as Linkability to do this for you, or you can do it yourself. If you choose to do it yourself, keep these tips in mind:

• It's easiest if you start with an outline. Write down notes of the things you want to include and how you will lay it out. Be sure to include your company's mission, expertise and skills, and any notable accomplishments. Then, you can fill it in, making sure to get as close to that 2600 character count as possible without going over.?
• Do your research. There are a variety of techniques, voices, and styles you can use to write a summary. Look through a few examples and see what you like best, but be sure that it looks and sounds professional.?
• Hook your readers with a strong opening sentence.?
• Provide data and statistics to build your credibility as a company.?
• Break up large blocks of text.?
• End with a call to action. Do you want them to contact you? Go to your webpage? Schedule an appointment??

Hashtags: Add up to three hashtags that describe what your company is about using industry-related keywords. This is a unique way to connect with followers of your chosen hashtags and engage with posts that include those keywords. LinkedIn will add these as Community Hashtags on your LinkedIn Page.?

Specialties: This is similar to the skills section in your Personal Profile. You can choose up to 20 specialties to represent your company's offerings and skillsets.?

Now that you have your LinkedIn Company page created, you will want to expand your brand presence, build trust and increase your brand awareness. Below is a list of a few Company Page sharing tips to maximize your ROI.?

• Designate at least one person to be your LinkedIn Company Page Admin. You will want someone who can regularly check on the Page, share, and interact.?
• Keep an eye on your Page analytics. These tell you who is engaging with your posts, how well your posts are doing, and who is visiting your Page. You can then take this information and decide which areas you need to focus on.?
• Have your team interact and share your company posts. This helps to drive traffic.?
• Keep your information up to date.?
• Share engaging content weekly. LinkedIn reports companies that post weekly see 2x the engagement, and posts that include an image double the comment rate. LinkedIn statistics additionally show that collages with 3-4 photos have performed exceptionally well.?
• Customize your CTA.?
• Involve your employees.?
• Share or mention content written by your company executives and partners.?
• Include significant professional accomplishments related to your employees.?

Keep in mind that people remember the person behind the brand more than the brand itself, so you can't focus all your energy on your company's LinkedIn Page. You will want to spend an equal amount of time on your personal LinkedIn profile, interacting and fostering relationships with your current network, continuously growing your network, and sharing the updates your company's LinkedIn Page shares to your personal profile so that you can continue to spread your company's reach. And don't forget to stay consistent, remain true to your brand, and have your employees do the same to get the best results.

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Kim Peterson Stone is a three-time business founder, keynote speaker, and leading?LinkedIn strategist?that has amassed a global following of over 225,000 on LinkedIn. Not only has she authored hundreds of articles on LinkedIn and became a verified thought leader, but she has helped her clients do the same.

Her B2B digital marketing agency,?Linkability, Inc., has?helped a multitude of clients ranging from Intrapreneurs and Entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies?work smarter on LinkedIn by leveraging the art of surviving disruption. Armed with her intimate knowledge of thought leadership, entrepreneurship, and global business communications, Kim uses creative and purpose-driven solutions to?develop a strong brand presence, generate targeted leads, and maximize online visibility for their clients.?

Kim has changed the lives of many not by selling products but by?solving?problems, and she can teach you to do the same.