But in order to unlock LinkedIn’s potential, it is first important to ensure that your company page is optimised and all the important features are being taken advantage of. This guide will take you through the process of creating the perfect LinkedIn company page, whether you are creating a new one from scratch or want to optimise your existing one.

Getting Started

If you already have a company page set up on LinkedIn, DON’T skip ahead, as the chances are your company information section and images may need to be freshened up.

Overview

So the first stage of creating your company page is to fill in the overview section, in which you can go into great detail about your company, more so than on any other social media channel. It asks you to provide details such as company size and type, operating status, location, etc. All this should be filled in with as much detail as possible, as it gives potential leads an insight into your company, something which is attractive when looking to do business with a new company on both a B2B and B2C level.

About your company

Then there is the company description and specialities section. The company description is where you should go in depth about your company’s main aims, goals, background, etc. but NOT services and products. There is a separate area on the page especially for listing every product and service in detail, which we will discuss later, so simply give an overview of the work you do, and if needed just enough information about the services/products to give a better understanding of the business.

When describing your business, try to break the text up with bullet points, paragraphs, etc. as so many business just rattle off their whole history in one long chunk of text, which is not attractive to the eye nor is it easy to read. And make use of the specialities section, as this allows you to take a keyword or small phrase and have it highlighted/standing alone from the description, and will ensure your company is more search-friendly when these specialities are typed in by a potential lead.

Use imagery

And last but not least, the images. There are three separate areas in which you can upload an image on a company page. There are the standard and square logos, and there is the header image, a fairly new addition to LinkedIn which works similarly to the Facebook cover photo. The logo images are self explanatory; simply upload a version of your logo into both boxes. The header however can be anything you choose. Some companies use a promotional image that is different from their logo but highlights what they do, where as others who are looking to attract new potential employees might have an image of the team to show they are an employee driven brand. This header image can be changed at any time, and you may want to swap and change the image as different things are happening within the company.

A great example of this in practice is the BP company page, who have uploaded a simple logo and used the header image to paint a picture of their business as THE brand to work for:

Company Status Updates

Just over a year ago now LinkedIn threw company pages a lifeline by adding the Status Updates feature, which was, until last year, reserved for personal profiles only. The reason these company status updates are such a lifeline is because these updates are delivered not only to followers’ news feeds but also directly reach a more targeted audience.

Keep content fresh in order to keep your followers up to date with your company’s exploits and to keep your brand appearing in their news feeds, and also show new potential followers that your page is active and interesting to follow.

Unilever’s company page is a prime example of using their status updates, as they link to external sites to show off their recent achievements:

Products/Services Tab

One of the main purposes of the LinkedIn company page is to generate leads and promote your products and services, which is why there is an entire tab and section devoted to this purpose. As mentioned earlier, the products and services tab allows you to add each one with its own title,  logo or image, and description, with the option for people to recommend each one (which touch on in more detail later in the article). You can also use the ‘spotlight’ function to highlight any product or service, which is great for highlighting any new products/services, offers, trials, etc. Just make sure you are constantly updating and refreshing this tab as out of date offers can clutter the tab and do not give a good impression.

PepsiCo use their products and services tab to max by promoting each brand they hold under the PepsiCo umbrella, and using the descriptions to go into more detail about each brand’s product ranges:

Recommendations

Everyone knows that in today’s tough market reputation is everything to a company, and that is why LinkedIn offer the chance for other LinkedIn users to post a recommendation about your company and their products/services. It is important to encourage people (but not push) to not only follow your brand but recommend the products and services they buy from you. Add links to your email marketing campaigns directing people to your company page, and when sending out follow ups to people who have used your products and services ask if they would mind taking a moment to go on and write a recommendation.

Microsoft have had some very happy customers, with almost 2,000 recommendations for their 18 products and services:

So there we have it: some great examples of how to do company LinkedIn pages well. Make sure you’re logged in to get the best view of how they’re using LinkedIn…

 How To Create The Perfect Corporate LinkedIn Company Page

1. Blogs

Blogging is a B2B marketer’s best friend, and is fast becoming one of the most useful social media tools available. The reason blogs work best for B2B marketers is because you can guarantee the audience already have an interest in the industry, so as long as you post relevant and interesting content on your blog then it should be a fool proof lead generator, and at the very least promote brand awareness.

2. Micro-Blogs

People in the millions have flocked to Twitter, the best known micro blog, over its so far short life span, and although many people still don’t completely get why or how to use it, they still do. It is one of the easiest channels to build a following on, and is great for creating brand awareness and attracting visitors to your blog. Do not however use direct product plugs on there. Your company will lose its value and reputation on Twitter very fast if you do this, as people don’t go on there to have adverts shoved down their throats.

3. Social Networks

Social networks are vast and varied, with both open ones such as Facebook, and niche ones, the most popular being LinkedIn, built for business people to network. LinkedIn is the natural leader when it comes to B2B marketing, because it’s the one place you will find all the employees of companies, from the CEO and Director down to the Execs, and you can target them directly depending on their business related profile information. Another added bonus of LinkedIn is Slideshare, a presentation and document sharing application that is great for B2B use. Chemical company BASF have made use of both LinkedIn and Slideshare for their B2B marketing needs.

I wouldn’t rule Facebook and Google+, etc out just yet, as they do have their benefits, but they tend to attract a younger more consumer-based audience, especially Facebook, and therefore work far better for B2C marketing. If you are deciding on only one social network for your company to use, I would suggest LinkedIn.

4. Video Sharing

Video sharing channels such as YouTube have been an instant hit for B2C marketers, and this has somewhat put off many B2B companies. But in actual fact, YouTube can be just as successful for B2B if used correctly. A good example of how to make it a success on a B2B level is asking clients to record a case study, stating what their requirements were and the solution provided by your company. BASF have utilised their YouTube channel to give insights into the brand and their values, as well as the services they offer.

5. Image Sharing

Image sharing site Flickr is a well-established and valued social media channel. Although it isn’t considered to be as engaging as video sharing, image sharing is still a great way to promote brand awareness, and works well as a fast and easy option when used alongside other social media strategies, but should not be used as your company’s sole channel. Enel Group have utilised their Flickr photostream to give an insight into what the company is backing.

 Top 5 Social Media Channels for B2B Marketing

1.       Google+

A largely misunderstood channel, Google+ hasn’t got off to the best start in life. But as people begin to give it a chance and understand the mystery of ‘Circles’, it is fast becoming a very useful channel for B2B marketers. If the fact that Google have integrated Google+ into their search algorithms isn’t enough to sell it to you, they have also integrated AdWords and the unique Circles feature allows for social and geo targeting in a much easier format (once you get to grips with it) than any other social network

2.  Foursquare

Foursquare is another social media channel that everyone has heard of but no-one really dares to use, mainly because they don’t know exactly what it does. And for those who have already used it, it tends to be for B2C marketing, meaning B2B marketers are instantly put off. But Foursquare is actually very useful to B2B marketing, not only for the company’s social media presence, but for researching into your audience. You can use it to find out where your B2B clients regularly check in and consider those companies and places as potentials for sponsorship and advertising, and you could also use this information to generate incentives and rewards based on their genuine interests

3.        BranchOut

Many of you will have probably received requests for BranchOut via Facebook already, but still aren’t sure what it is exactly. It is very similar to LinkedIn in that the overall use is professional networking, but the advantage people are beginning to see with BranchOut is that many people who are on Facebook are finding it easier to access than LinkedIn, allowing you to connect with those people who wouldn’t normally use a networking site, as well as those on LinkedIn who have also joined BranchOut. Therefore there is the potential to reach new audiences and almost double your connections compared with LinkedIn. Not to be used as an alternative to LinkedIn just yet, but definitely worth setting up on the back burner as it has the potential to knock LinkedIn off many people’s top spot.

4.       Mashable

Mashable is the latest craze in news consumption, and they allow just about anyone to submit news. Think of it as a secondary to your blog as there is no guarantee you will get everything you send in published, but send in relevant news, reviews or advice articles with mentions of your products and services with the potential of getting them seen by a worldwide relevant audience via social media.

5.       Pinterest

As with Flickr or any other image sharing tool, Pinterest is not recommended as one of your company’s core channels, but it is still worth consideration as a secondary channel for promoting brand awareness and creating blog and website traffic. Pinterest is, after all, the 3^rd largest social network in the world…

There are plenty more new and old social media channels and tools where that came from, and if you have any opinions on the ones mentioned or any I didn’t mention that you feel should be on there, please comment!

 Top 5 New Social Media Channels for B2B Marketing

Once upon a time…

Everyone loves a story, even as an adult (though you may not all be old enough, or British enough, to recognise my introduction).

Maybe there’s less oral story-telling these days; maybe fewer people read stories in print. But we often watch people enact stories on a screen or a stage, and it may be that story-telling will be taken up by other media, or many media-streams simultaneously, in the future.

I recently received a review copy of Tell to Win by Peter Guber (out this week, and Kindle edition available now from Amazon – if you want a physical copy and live in the UK, you’ll have to wait).

Just like my introduction to this post, the book is culturally specific, and as a Brit I had to work harder to get the point in some places, but it is a quick and easy read. His key message is about the importance of story-telling, and he certainly has a wide range of stories to tell – many, but not all, from the entertainment, sport and media sectors.

Naturally, you’d expect stories from these industries, which stereotypically contain strong, creative characters. However, some of these stories are business-based and highly relevant to corporate communications, whatever the type of story being told:

• internal – perhaps conveying the corporate culture
• external – maybe conveying brand messages
• small-scale – one-to-few stories, perhaps presentations
• large-scale – one-to-many stories, such as via the corporate website.

And this is, of course, what we’re interested in here at Corporate Eye.

Several aspects of the lessons Peter teaches through his many stories correlate with themes that our criteria are designed to tease out of a corporate website, such as how to communicate transparency and trustworthiness.

Corporate storyboard

Of course, some companies are more explicit in telling stories about themselves than others. But company stories are more than just stories about their company origins, or about individual products. They can be used to convey something of the company culture and values, of the corporate behaviour and vision. And every story told about a company adds something to the skein of stories, whether it is a CSR case-study of a community programme undertaken by the company or a video profile of a new graduate employee talking about their first few months at the company – or a customer-service story told by a customer on Twitter.

For me, the most interesting chapter comes right at the end, when Peter talks about a Papuan storyboard.

This is literally a board, decorated with pictures which make up an outline of the story: of the core message and impact to be conveyed. Stories change as people tell them, each adding variants and emphases according to their own interests and back-story; the storyboard is an aid to keeping the core story and messages consistent.

Consider the corporate website, and its relationship to the many and various aspects of the corporate story as told by the company’s social media outposts. The corporate story is told by many voices in many places.

We’ve talked before about the importance of the corporate site as the hub (or repository): perhaps we can see the corporate site also as an equivalent to the Papuan storyboard, keeping the stories consistent, being the stable reference point in a series of overlapping and entwined stories.

Mark Hill of The Group, in our recent interview, talked about the authenticity generated by many voices telling related stories (go and listen, if you haven’t already). The essence of a company, after all, could be revealed in the common strand of story.

Of course, the company doesn’t have control of all the stories told about it, but if it isn’t listening to the stories told, or trying to tell its own stories, then, according to Peter Guber, it may seem to lack credibility or authenticity. He argues that credibility and authenticity can be enhanced by online engagement – and assessed by quantifying your social capital.

Peter quotes Bran Ferren:

“the Internet represents the greatest story telling technology since the development of language. It will be far more important than reading and writing as a purposeful tool. Everything that is enabled by story telling will be enabled by the Internet.”
(Bran Ferren – Applied Minds)

Interesting. What do you think?

 Story Matters

Long-standing readers will remember that I’m a fan of the Social Media in a Corporate Context conferences organised by Communicate – and have been to several of the UK-based ones. The next one is coming up on June 2, in London, at The Grange St Paul’s Hotel (between St Paul’s Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge)

The programme seems to get stronger every time. Though the programme this year offers case studies in multiple stakeholder areas – investor relations and corporate social responsibility, for instance – and a panel discussion of crisis management, it also focuses on considering some of the ‘meta’ aspects of social media in a corporate context:

• regulation by the ASA – and a case study on influencing other regulators
• relationship between social media and the business strategy
• using social media on extended platforms and technologies
• and the future of social media.

Last year, highlights for me were:

• discussion of SEO, story-telling, and the relationship between journalists and corporate comms at the October conference
• discussion of social media newsrooms during the April conference.

This year? I’m looking forward to finding out. Speakers come from a wide range of companies, including TalkTalk, Tata, BBC, Microsoft, Pepsi, Unilever, Visa…

Book now: there’s a discount available for friends of Corporate Eye. That’s you!

 Social Media in a Corporate Context