LinkedIn company pages are more popular than ever. According to Meenakshi Chaudhary, LinkedIn company page adoption rose from 24% to 57% between 2015 and 2016. Your competitors probably have company pages already. Do you?
Even if you’re on the bandwagon, there’s more you can do to boost engagement with your organization on LinkedIn. Follow these 12 strategies and best practices to drive prospects and peers to your LinkedIn company page—and nudge them to take the actions you want them to take.
- Make Sure It’s Accurate and Up to Date
First, make sure your LinkedIn company page contains accurate, up-to-date information. This is a straightforward process that requires no special technical skills or expertise—well within the purview of an administrative assistant or marketing employee. Confirm that they’ve included accurate:
- Website and physical address
- Industry and company type
- Employee count range
- Specialty keywords (more on those below)
- Founding year and key people, including executives and advisers
- Link to Your Main Website
Confirm that the link back to your main website works and that it goes to your top domain, not an “About” or “Contact” subpage.
Linking to your main website lends your company legitimacy. Visitors to LinkedIn company pages without top domain backlinks are left to wonder why the page administrator chose to leave that part out. They’re likely to investigate, and they may come across something that gives them pause—a poorly constructed or outdated main website, perhaps.
The conspicuous lack of a link may forestall any planned engagement with your LinkedIn page. After all, if a company’s LinkedIn page can’t meet basic expectations, how reliable can the organization really be?
- Clearly and Concisely Describe What Your Company Does
Use the above-the-fold space to clearly and concisely describe your company’s mission and main activities. This company’s LinkedIn page is a good example: nothing but the facts, delivered in an upbeat, confident fashion.
Remember to pepper this description with the main long- and short-tail keywords for which you’re trying to rank. Search engines love LinkedIn; for many smaller companies, it’s among the top first-page results, second only to paid ads and corporate top domains. A well-optimized company description is a powerful traffic generator—and engagement booster—for even the most low-key LinkedIn company page.
- Encourage Your Employees to Follow Your Company Page
Engagement starts at the office, with employees who enthusiastically follow their employer’s company LinkedIn page. You can’t legally compel your employees to follow and engage with your company page, but it shouldn’t be a hard sell. Just frame it as a win-win: They raise their profiles by posting and sharing authoritative content on your company page, and you get the engagement boost of a well-trafficked, well-respected page.
- Network With Peers and Influencers
Identify the individual and corporate peers, competitors and influencers that your company really should get to know. Then, get to know them. Connect with individuals and follow organizations. Share and comment on influencer-posted content. Reach out on an individual, as-needed basis—though be careful not to come on too strong. When in doubt, follow LinkedIn networking best practices.
- Regularly Post Original Thought Leadership Content
Every thought leader has to start somewhere. Even if you’re not sure that you have anything useful to add to the conversation, the only path to developing a reputation for incisive thought is to start publishing it.
Tap in-house expertise or outside pros seeking to raise their own profiles. Ask them to produce original content about or relevant to your company’s core solutions or functions. Get into a regular publishing rhythm; one original, in-depth post per week is a good target. Those won’t be the only updates you post to your LinkedIn company page, of course—see below.
- Repost Company Releases and Announcements
The bulk of your LinkedIn company page’s content won’t involve detailed research or incisive missives from resident thought leaders. It’ll be more mundane updates and announcements: reposted press releases and original posts detailing milestones large and small, among other things. Your LinkedIn company page is a natural bulletin board—more visible than your main website’s blog and less cluttered than legacy press release publishing platforms.
- Add Compelling, Colorful Images
Draw your prospects in with compelling, engaging images that celebrate or at least align with your company brand. Choose active shots for your company page’s background wallpaper: candid working photos or slightly off-the-wall group shots play well.
- Optimize for Search
Optimization needn’t stop with your company description. Make sure all the longform content you post on your company page contains the main keywords for which you’re trying to rank, at appropriate densities. Use snappy, attention-getting headlines that contain short-tail keywords. And don’t forget to link out to your main website, and any other content you want to promote. Your LinkedIn page probably has higher search authority than your company’s main website; creating links between them raises your main site’s profile by association.
- Ease off the Self-Promotion
Always remember the 4-1-1 rule. Most of the content you post and share shouldn’t be overly self-promotional. Instead, it should lift up other thought leaders, touch on industry-relevant news and events, or celebrate the achievements of people you care about. Occasional self-celebration is warranted; just don’t make it the main focus of your page.
- Time Your Updates
The timing of your posts and updates matters. Posting late at night or during the heat of the workday is less effective than early morning or late afternoon, when the environment isn’t as chaotic. This point matters less for evergreen posts, but it’s still crucial for companies looking to juice the conversation around their posts with an initial flurry of engagement. For better or worse, even the most enduring LinkedIn posts become “old news” after a while.
- Engage With Relevant LinkedIn Groups
Don’t forget to join and engage regularly with industry-relevant LinkedIn groups. This raises your company’s visibility among peers—an especially crucial consideration for early-stage firms—and drives quality traffic back to your corporate page.
What are you doing to boost engagement on your company’s LinkedIn page?
