Changes are on the way for your LinkedIn Company Page. Recommendations will be disappearing on April 14th, when LinkedIn discontinues the Products & Services tab from company pages. If you’d like to save those recommendations, you have two options.
#1 – You can copy and paste them into a document file. Be mindful though, if you want to use the recommendations in promotional or marketing materials, you should ask permission from the individual who made the recommendation.
#2 – You can also request a copy of the recommendations that were present on your LinkedIn Company Page as of March 4, 2014. LinkedIn says the recommendations will be available through Customer Support until Friday, May 30, 2014.
It’s a shame that LinkedIn is getting rid of the products and services tab. They’re suggesting that companies get more visibility for their products and services by using Showcase Pages and Company Updates as an alternative. Linkedin says, “A Showcase Page should be used for building long-term relationships with members who want to follow specific aspects of your business, and not for short-term marketing campaigns.”
I have mixed feelings about Showcase pages. On the one hand, I think they will be useful for large companies that have a dedicated marketing staff. Why? You have to post status updates to the Showcase pages, just like you do on your main Company Page. If you market to more than one distinct target audience, this will be a good strategy to follow. Your content should be tailored to these different audiences anyway. The format for Showcase Pages is actually better than the main company page, because your updates are displayed in a two column format, as seen in this example of Adobe’s Showcase page:
But what if you’re a small business owner who has multiple products? You could create a Showcase page for each product. But you’re going to have a lot more work to do to maintain it. For one thing, you have to generate a following for the page. And then you’ll have to post content there on a regular basis, just like you would with your main LinkedIn company page. If you have the staff to help you, great. If not, I recommend staying with the main LinkedIn company page.
If you’d like some tips on how to improve your company page, check out this article by my good friend Julia Borgini: 10 Ways to Improve Your LinkedIn Company Page.
How do you feel about the changes to LinkedIn company pages? Please share your comments below.
