LinkedIn Newsletter Tip: company profiles

By Ritchie Pettauer

The biggest social business network´s mission statement is to create an extensive digital representation of the business world. Last week, the number of German speaking users made the 7 million mark, and LinkedIn still keeps growing rapidly: Since January 2015, one million new users have registered their accounts. While most users focus on personal profiles, company pages play an increasingly important role as they enable organizations, brands and corporations to not only present themselves via a static profile, but to publish interesting content on an ongoing basis. This activity supports various goals such as employer branding, recruiting and lead-generation. 

How to create your company page

In general, any employee with access to a valid corporate e-mail address can create a company page on LinkedIn. Setup and publishing features are free, only (optional) ad campaigns are charged a fee. In order to keep the number of company pages from skyrocketing, the following requirements apply:

• The creator’s profile strength has to be "intermediate" or "all star." Intermediate status is reached by populating at least 50% of your profile.
• The profile must be at least 7 days old and have at least 10 contacts.
• The profile must include a verified corporate e-mail address including a unique domain. (e.g. name(at)companydomain.com)
• The creator must be a current company employee and have his position listed on his LinkedIn account.
• There is no existing company page.*

If the creator meets these five requirements, the new company profile is ready for setup. Hover your mouse over “interests” in the main menu and click “companies.” On the right side of the screen there is a box labelled “create a company page.” Click the yellow “create” button.

On the following screen, enter the company’s name plus your corporate e-mail address and confirm that you are an official representative with the right to create and manage the new page.

If a company page with the chosen e-mail domain or a very similar name already exists, LinkedIn refuses to continue the setup process. Otherwise you might have to verify your e-mail before LinkedIn takes you to the final steps. The following information must be provided before publishing a company page:

• Description: a short text about the company. Maximum length: 2,000 characters.
• Default language: Just like with personal profiles, you can add various language versions to your company page.
• Admins: additional page managers. Please note that you can only invite users who you are connected to via your personal account.
• Direct sponsored content users: Relevant only in combination with ad campaigns – more on this topic in the next newsletter.
• Graphic elements: The most eye-catching element is the header image. LinkedIn recommends uploading a 646 by 220 pixel jpeg/png file. The company logo should be uploaded in a square format.
• Company specialties: up to 12 products or services.
• Additional required fields located in the right column: company type, size, website URL, industry and current status. Optional: year founded.

After populating all required fields you can publish your new company page by clicking the “publish” button. Please note: There is no preview, the page goes live instantly. But of course you can edit all fields and add additional language versions any time later by clicking the “edit” button. Your newly published company page features three tabs: “Start” prominently displays your header image and chronologically lists all status update. Company updates work just like regular status update. They turn up in your followers’ news feed on LinkedIn’s front page.

The “Analytics” tab displays various statistics about your page and update reach, “Notifications” is an overview of all social actions (likes and comments).

My company page is online – how to get followers?

Employees who enter their current company on their own profile will automatically become followers. There are various ways to further increase this number – either via cross-promotions on third party channels or via targeted ad campaigns. More on paid views and ideas for your corporate content strategy will be talked about next time.

 * If a company page without an administrator exists already, you can take this page over by verifying your corporate e-mail address. In all other cases you should contact LinkedIn’s support to discuss further steps.