How to Make Best Use of LinkedIn Company Pages in 2024

This article is based on a LinkedIn audio event in which the co-authors of Business Gold – Building Awareness, Authority and Advantage with LinkedIn Company Pages edition 2, Michelle J Raymond and Lynnaire Johnston discuss the changes to pages in the past 2 years.

It includes video snippets from a similar discussion on the podcast LinkedIn for B2B Growth which you can listen to here.

What has changed with LinkedIn company pages in the two years between Edition one and Edition two of Business Gold?

There have been some fundamental shifts, one of which is people's mindset. Just three years ago, people thought talking about company pages was absolutely crackers. Why would anyone want to pay attention to company pages? Now that question has shifted to how to make better use of pages.

As well, LinkedIn have changed how they view company pages. One of the upsides to COVID was every brand took money and advertising money off other platforms and spent it on LinkedIn. And at record levels! That meant more revenue for LinkedIn to put into pages. For example, the LinkedIn Pages team has increased from half a dozen people to around 40 now.

Another change is that it's easier to manage a page. The layout, functions and inviting people to follow the page are much easier.

?? How do we get the best out of pages now? (Click image to view video.)

As most people know, organic reach on posts is difficult at best. It can feel deflating when a personal post goes further than a company page post but that’s comparing apples and oranges. People originally didn't quite see the difference between pages and profiles, that they're two completely separate entities, and they wanted to get the same kind of results from pages that you get from profiles. Which isn’t possible.

Building the personal brand of your employees has been a strong message over the last couple of years but this shouldn't be at the expense of the company brand. If you put all your eggs in the personal brand basket and those people leave, as a business owner you can be in a lot of trouble. Instead, use the company page to build up your employees and your employees to build up the company page.

Is there an upswing in events from pages, whether LinkedIn lives or audio events?

Events offer an amazing marketing opportunity but not a lot of companies are yet using them really well. Of course, audio events do not have the replay functionality of Lives but we hope they will before too long. LinkedIn have got the capability; they're doing it now for trust and privacy purposes but whether they release it to all users is the question.

Companies should be looking more closely at the value of audio events. Brands could really lead the conversation. They need to build trust with their community, and having their leaders holding conversations is a really great way to do this.

Recent stats show that video (possibly LinkedIn lives) on company pages have the highest engagement of any form of content. They are such great opportunities to have conversations with people. Say, for instance, you have 50 people all interested in one topic, you could create an audio room and encourage them to come up on stage or ask questions. But businesses don’t seem to be taking advantage of them.

We encourage companies to use them because they offer so many opportunities. For instance, CEOs and senior leaders could talk directly to their customers or audience to grow trust, promote what they're doing in terms of the company, talk about industry issues or what's going on in the market, and topics specific to them. This is a great thought leadership opportunity for senior leaders.

One of the great things about events hosted by company pages is they have their own sub-page. Events past and future sit there in perpetuity so people can go back and look at previous events and watch them, if they're lives, and see what's coming up.

??The Power of LinkedIn for Businesses Unlocking Your Competitive Advantage (click image to play video.)

What is employee advocacy and are companies doing it well on company pages?

If you want to get the most out of LinkedIn, it's no longer a question of company page brand versus employee brand. Everyone has to play together. There's often a misconception that employee advocacy is how to get employees to only talk about the brand. Rather, it's how do you give employees a voice to share what’s important to them? AND that reflects well on the brand.

Not everyone wants to be a content creator. Employees might not be confident or have no interest in writing posts. But now with the My company tab marketing teams can create content that other people can share to their own accounts. It’s also an opportunity for employees to support their colleagues but is largely untapped and not leveraged much.

Organisations want to get the best out of everybody and company pages are a good opportunity to create content that puts the spotlights on their employees. And wouldn’t this make you feel ten foot tall?.

Are pages being used to help companies attract good talent?

Some businesses are not using LinkedIn and their company page to attract new business per se, but to address a talent crisis they've got. We’ve seen companies having trouble attracting new hires who change the content on the company page when roles are advertised. If a person interested in working there does their research, they hopefully get a positive impression of that particular company.

Plus, we've seen the arrival of the workplace commitments feature in which companies can highlight their policies on issues like sustainability to attract better candidates. We’re going to see more and more of that as the age of members on the platform increases. Currently, 60+ percent are 25 to 34 and companies have to talk their language. Dinosaur-like behaviour is not going to work with them.

What have been the best new features for company pages in the last two years?

There been many new features, including messaging pages, increased follower invites and audio events but key among them are LinkedIn Lives and newsletters. Both are game changers for pages. One builds subscribers and the other allows us to interact. Also, there are many different ways you can reuse LinkedIn lives. One of them is to include them in different ways in our newsletters. Make sure you engage with the newsletter and build up your subscribers.

?? The importance of newsletters on pages (click below to view)

Summary

Since the launch of Business Gold - The Only Company Pages Book in 2021, there have been many changes to LinkedIn company pages. New features, a new layout, increased follower invite allowances and other improvements by LinkedIn make them better and easier to use. But more than that, the conversation around pages has changed from why have pages to how to get the best from them.

Business Gold edition 2 reflects both the platform changes and those in the general LinkedIn narrative. Now, no self-respecting company can afford to be without a high quality company page to establish their brand presence on LinkedIn. If this is something you want to know more about, grab your copy of Business Gold at Amazon.

To talk with Lynnaire Johnston or Michelle J Raymond about LinkedIn company pages, pop over to their profiles and drop either of them a message. They're always happy to talk about LinkedIn!