Leveraging LinkedIn Recommendations on your Company Page
Company pages on LinkedIn are relatively new to the social network. They allow a company to have a profile, followers, showcase products, and even embed their RSS feed for news. However, unless you want to advertise, company pages can do little to generate a following, the way normal users (people) do on LinkedIn.
With one exception: Recommendations. Below we illustrate what kind of exposure a company page can get when it receives a recommendation.
When you set up your product/service pages, you can request recommendations from your own contacts, pointing them to the individual product page itself, where they can recommend the product or service, and optionally write a testimonial. That recommendation, like all recommendations, becomes a "story" in the person's profile, and shows up in 2 places:
1. The news feed of all that person's contacts
Much like sharing a link, the person recommending your product or service generates a story on their profile about your product. The product thumbnail is brought in, and both the service AND the company page are linked to within the post. THOUGHT: LinkedIn should really start off the story with "[Name] Recommends [Company]" which is the same format as their personal recommendations. Then they would be more easily identified as such, and that would add credibility to the company.
2. The "Recent Activity" on that person's profile
Let's say the person recommending you gets a high number of visits to their profile each day. On their profile page, under "Recent Activity", you'll see a link to your product page and the recommendation story. As you can see, the same story appears here as in the news feed, and links to the same places. If the user isn't very active, that story could stay in the Activity box for quite some time.
Why is this important?
- If you have an eye-catching graphic for your product or service, it will capture readers' attention when shown in the news feed.
- The link to the full recommendation points to your actual product page, not a "story" page within the person's profile. This gets new visitors to your page instantly.
- The recommendation keeps the visitor "in-app" versus taking them off-site, a preference of many social network users, especially mobile users, who wouldn't have to leave their app, launch their browser, then try to get back to the app.
- Other than advertising, there aren't many other options to gain exposure for your company page. The treatment of recommendations by LinkedIn, coupled with the fact that recommendations are held in such high regard on this network, makes for a powerful, yet free, alternative to advertising.
How are you using recommendations and other features of LinkedIn company pages to grow your audience? Share in the comments below! And for more tips on how to use LinkedIn to grow your company following, check out this article that has tips to drive traffic to your company page from other parts of LinkedIn.
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About the Author - Stephan Hovnanian owns Shovi Websites, a company that manages websites and email marketing campaigns for small businesses & non-profits. Connect with Stephan on Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn.
