LinkedIn rolled out some new features for company profiles last week. The new features allow you to do more than list your company location, description, Twitter ID and recent blog posts. The is a new link at the top of the companies page called “Services and Products” where you can list your company’s specific product and/or services.
While creating a service listing for my consulting practice I noticed some areas that can stop you in your tracks if you do not think ahead and came up with these tips.
- Have a thumbnail image ready if you want to include an image. LinkedIn will re-size the image to 100 x 80 pixels so I suggest you re-size the image yourself to avoid any klugey resizing and image distortion. Also when resizing down to thumbnail size you can also trim out unnecessary white space and determine if the image will work at smaller size. If you do not re-size your image your file size limit is 2MB.
- For each product or feature you can add a bulleted list of features. Each bullet item is limited to 45 character so trim the fat and keep your bullets short and to the point. You can add more features but the limit is 10. So plan out what you want to communicate in less than 450 characters.
- There is an option to include a landing page for the product or service so if you have a large website go ahead and find the link before entering the form. I also noticed that short links don’t work here so have the full URL address.
- You can add contact names from your company but you must be linked to that person to include them on the form. So make sure you have identified the proper contact(s) and that you are connected to them on LinkedIn. Also communicate to them that you are listing them as a contact so they are aware when requests are sent to them from the site.
- The coolest feature is that you can add a YouTube video to the listing. You have the option to list a title and the video URL. Again short links won’t work here so have the full URL and create a title that not only reflects the subject matter but also has keywords for search optimization.
- As much as I don’t like the level of litigation that exists in our society, you can also add a disclaimer about the product/service. If yo have specific language around your company’s offering make sure you include it here to cover yourself. Better safe than sorry.
- After you have created the listing you can ask for recommendations from customers. I wish this feature allowed you to share existing recommendations on LinkedIn but if you have good relations with your customers take their existing recommendations and tailor it for the product or service.
- What would a social media site be without sharing? LinkedIn allows you to share your new product/service listing on your status and you can push to your Twitter account. The one thing I noticed is that it will create a tweet with the title and a short link to your new page. Below is what I pushed out when creating my first page. It’s very basic and ideally I would add more text and call to action in the tweet.
I hope these tips help you update your company’s product or service offering pages on LinkedIn. Below is a screen shot of what my first service offering looks like. You can see the page on my company’s LinkedIn Profile.
LinkedIn Company Services Page
