Last week we discussed some of the ways Social Media can help with your search engine optimisation (SEO) by increasing your search footprint. This week we were going to go into a bit more detail about Social Media and SEO, but we will be making a small editorial detour as LinkedIn have recently introduced company updates!This week's blog will now be on the new functionality on LinkedIn Company pages, and then next week "we'll return to our regular broadcast"!
LinkedIn Company Updates
LinkedIn company updates work in the same way as their personal updates, and are functionally the same as Facebook Pages status updates.Company Status Updates are posts made by the company to share anything from company news to product releases to promotions to relevant industry articles. Company posts can be seen on the company’s Overview tab by any LinkedIn member. This means that anyone who follows the company will see the posts directly on their homepage. All LinkedIn members have the ability to view posts, click on embedded links or view videos. They can also comment, like, or share a post.
What does this mean for professionals?
By professionals, I mean the people following your company's page - and you, who should be following other companies to stay on top of industry news.Someone who is following specific companies will now start seeing status updates shared by the companies they follow in their homepage news feed. This will not only keep them informed of insightful content from companies they love and follow, but will also let them to engage with the content by commenting on it, liking or sharing with their own professional network.
What does this mean for my agency?
With this new functionality from LinkedIn, you (as the agency Principal or Director) and anyone you have assigned as an administrator of your company page will have the flexibility to share the latest and greatest information (you know, all that great content that adds value to people's lives) directly to all of the followers on your company's LinkedIn page.Your status updates can be up to 500 characters long and can support URLs (links) with multimedia as well. This is a great way to build engagement with customers, potential employees and prospects alike given that any LinkedIn member can comment, like or share your Company’s status update. To learn more on how to turn this feature on for your company go to LinkedIn's help page.
The Dilemma With LinkedIn Company Status Updates
In his article, Ian Smith raises an interesting dilemma that you may face using LinkedIn company status updates: Are you giving away information to your competitors via LinkedIn. Some of you might be. Hopefully your competitors are giving you good insight into how they are doing business.Read the full article above for a better grasp of what I'm about to write: You must have a social media strategy with clearly defined parameters for the information you post out. You want to be engaging with your customers without giving too much away to your competitors.I will come back to this point in a few weeks time, as I think it is important to cover it in more detail!
Next week...
We will return to our regular broadcast next week and come back to Social Media and SEO.
