Create a LinkedIn Profile and Gain Recommendations on Company Pages

LinkedIn – Relationships Matter

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have seen huge growth in the past few years but LinkedIn was first founded in December 2002 and launched during May 2003. Since then, it has become known for professional networking with it currently stating it has more than 90 million members in over 200 countries.

LinkedIn Company Profile Pages

Many small businesses and large companies have company profiles on LinkedIn where they provide information on their business and showcase their product and services. This represents an authoritative page on the web that can be controlled by employers as potential employees and people interested in the company may complete initial research here.

Company pages can be followed and detail any changes in employees whether it be a promotion or new starter. They also display analytics based on employees careers and age range compared to the average in the industry.

New Recommendations for Products & Services

The relationship between personal profiles and company pages has recently become much closer. A positive aspect of professional networking between people was the ability to receive recommendations from others. With LinkedIn recently enabling the “Products and Services” tab on company pages, it now allows people to make recommendations of a company’s products and services.

The above image was taken from the LinkedIn blog post announcing the extra features with a further post showcasing the Dell LinkedIn Products Page which makes use of these new features and have received over 80 recommendations of their products.

Personal Profiles and Group Discussions

Professionals are able to create their own personal profile where they can make connections with people they know and trust in business. Naturally, this can be used to gain introductions to other people through their trusted connections.

LinkedIn Applications enable users to feed their blog feed or Twitter to their profile page, which can be added into the personal updates. Another benefit is adding links to websites which are followed by search engines, providing some link love to personal websites or company website to assist with SEO – the custom text links have recently become “nofollowed”, other options like “personal website” are followed by search engines.

Groups can also be created which allow for discussions, news, job postings, asking questions in LinkedIn Answers, and networking on a wider scale within an industry. It adds further interactivity and a more social side to LinkedIn – they have even created a LinkedIn share button for keen bloggers.

5 Recommendations For Using LinkedIn

1. Fill in the profile page completing as many sections as you can even if it lacks in quality as you can always return to it – for personal profiles LinkedIn shows a progress percentage bar
2. Enable sections of your profile available to the public if you would like the page to appear within search engines for your name or brand, using a customised vanity URL
3. Join in discussions and contribute within groups in your industry – create a group if you have something niche to offer to the industry
4. Use your company page to publish job opportunities, obtain recommendations for products and services, whilst including your blog feed on the profile page
5. Network with previous contacts by adding them as a connection building your connections network and get introduced to other people

This type of networking and relationship building can allow people and companies to benefit from word of mouth marketing. It can also build personal or company brands, with LinkedIn profile pages available to search engines resulting in profiles ranking for their name – helping to manage the information that’s publicly available whilst assisting in SEO and social media marketing. Read the full company page guide from LinkedIn and build an online presence that grows and engages your followers.