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April 9, 2014

LinkedIn: Your New B2B Publishing Platform?

linkedin-showcase-hero

LinkedIn company pages have long served as a valuable brand outpost to share leadership, team members, services and basic background information with prospective employees, clients and customers. It’s been a fairly passive social channel, mostly focused on networking, but recent changes to LinkedIn are moving the platform toward a newsfeed publishing model like that of Facebook. And we think its potential is huge.

linkedin-oldvsnew

The trusty tabs we’ve all been using for years (such as services and products) with basic marketing information have retired and are being replaced with a new feature called Showcases Pages. Showcase Pages are extensions of your Company Page, designed for spotlighting a brand, business unit, or initiative.  The example below is the Microsoft Office Showcase Page under the Microsoft brand.

linkedin-microsoft-showcase

What do Showcase Pages mean for your business? 
Showcase Pages, and the prioritization of content publishing, opens a whole new world of opportunity to tell your story, engage new audiences and mature your marketing approach on today’s most influential B2B platform. This sounds the siren call: If you don’t have a content strategy in place for the LinkedIn channel, it’s probably time to do something about that.

Important Showcase Page Features:
  • A distinct design with a hero image and two-column feed for posts
  • Works on desktop, mobile and tablet devices
  • Has a dedicated URL so you can direct campaigns and traffic to the showcase page
  • Analytics! Calculated separately from the Company Page, each Showcase Page has detailed analytics
  • Hero Image (974 x 330 pixels)
  • Feature a LinkedIn Group, such as a user group or fan group related to your Showcase
  • Allows users to subscribe to the Showcase Page
  • Up to 10 Showcase pages per 1 Company Page


Consider adding these ideas into your LinkedIn strategy:

  • Targeted posts to reach specific audiences using criteria like company size, industry, job function, seniority, geography, or by including/excluding company employees.
  • Multiple Showcase Pages, such as case studies, portfolios, product lines or business units
  • Sponsored posts (paid advertising) to promote your message to targeted LinkedIn users
  • Sponsored InMail (paid email) to deliver your custom message to targeted LinkedIn users
  • Incorporating Showcase Pages into your long-term customer relationship campaigns
  • Crafting a content strategy for the channel. How will you talk to potential recruits? Clients? Customers? How prepared are you to get more personal on this previously semi-passive social channel?