LinkedIn is known as a valuable networking tool to most businesses; it serves as a platform for building successful relationships online which in turn can lead to exciting business opportunities. Ultimately, the more you communicate with your network, the more they’ll communicate with you.
However many have jumped onto the social media bandwagon without fully understanding how LinkedIn can also directly benefit marketing objectives and brand culture.
Thinking outside the box and moving beyond your company page may not only benefit future employees, but will also enable prospects to think of you when they next choose to enquire about your services.
Showcase Pages
LinkedIn has introduced Showcase pages as a way of enabling you to engage with different members of your target audience. The pages highlight specific components of your business and allow you to differentiate content for your individual brands, products or employers. They serve as niche pages with specific messaging for effective audience augmentation.
Despite linking through to your company page, they also standalone as a unique feature; each showcase page has its own followers, status updates and functionality, meaning that people can choose to follow whichever page they’re most interested in. The concept of showcase pages enables you to generate more reach and spark interest with prospects searching for different components of your website. Once the content is published, LinkedIn also provides detailed analytics of each page, allowing you to track and measure their success.
How they differ
Showcase pages differ from company pages in the following ways:
– Showcase pages include a larger banner image.
– Similarly to Google+, they have a two-column layout to post your messaging, links and images.
– Businesses can advertise and buy sponsored updates.
– There are no careers, products, or service tabs at the top of the page like company pages, which is why the showcase pages should always link directly back to the business page for these details.
– Employee profiles cannot be associated with a showcase page.
Construction companies with showcase pages
Expanding on our post: ‘How the Top UK Contractors use Social Media Marketing’, the following examples demonstrate how construction companies have begun to integrate this tool into their business objectives.
Carillion have segmented their LinkedIn profiles by creating an ‘Advice Services’ showcase page. This keeps people specifically up to date on HR activity and is actively used to welcome new members of staff and to promote further vacancies.
Whilst including a link back to their company page, note how they’ve included a link directly to their website in order to make the user journey as simple as possible.
Although the Showcase page is still fairly new, with 70 followers so far, we hope to see Carillion continue to grow their audience and encourage more potential employees to join the team. A mix of friendly posts, images of new staff members and links to CV applications will help to attract a defined type of customer and create a positive emotional connection.
Whilst Carillion use their Showcase pages for recruitment opportunities and to build a strong brand culture, BAM Nuttall have created a showcase page based on their projects within the regeneration sector specifically.
They are yet to post updates to this page; however it now gives them the opportunity to demonstrate recent projects and form conversations surrounding these. It would also be an effective way of encouraging brochure downloads for each related project.
Willmott Dixon have created a showcase page entitled ‘Willmott Dixon North’ to share regional updates and news stories on their Northern projects specifically, whilst Balfour Beatty have created a showcase page for Dutco Balfour Beatty LLC, a sector of their business based in the Middle East. The page is used to focus on their interiors division, by posting updates surrounding different projects and sharing friendly posts throughout the day.
Kier Group also have ‘Kier Services’ as a showcase page; however despite their high number of followers they are still yet to post on this.
It is evident from our examples that Showcase pages are still a fairly new concept within the construction industry. However, the feature is full of opportunities for such company’s to both grow and maximize their business potential by promoting a new product range, creating campaigns, showcasing events, or even forming help centres and product training pages; they allow businesses large or small to gain even more exposure across LinkedIn.
Creating your own
Creating a showcase page is simple; simply click on the down-pointing arrow next to ‘edit’ on your LinkedIn company page and select ‘create a showcase page’ from the drop down menu.
Once you have your showcase pages set up these will be listed in the right hand column of your company page, as demonstrated below.
Optimizing your showcase pages
When creating your Showcase pages it’s also important to think of target SEO keywords for your company; just as Google ranks LinkedIn company pages, it will also favour fully optimized showcase pages.
Therefore, include your target keywords into the page name and in the showcase page description; the 200 word limit given should contain an engaging and compelling description of your product or service.
It is also worth bearing in mind that the URL for showcase pages is completely separate and not linked to your company page; this means that yours is entirely unique and cannot be claimed elsewhere. However, because of this, always be sure to link your showcase page back to your official website.
Once you are set up, invite others to share and follow your showcase page in order to encourage engagement; when you post status updates to the showcase page, ensure that they are focused and include target SEO keywords to further broaden its reach. The more followers you gain from these showcase pages and the more active followers to engage on the page itself, the higher you will rank and the easier it’ll be for potential prospects to find you.
Conclusion
The increase in construction companies beginning to engage with showcase pages across LinkedIn demonstrates a growing awareness for the social platform. Showcase pages are a way of heightening levels of engagement, interaction and as a result, gaining valuable business feedback and attracting potential prospects for your business.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on how the use of this feature progresses over the next 6 months.
For more information on how to integrate social media into your digital marketing strategy, please download our social E-book here.
Hey guys! Super interesting content this one! We’ll try it out this week at Printsome and will let you know how it works for us, but it seems a very useful resource… I’m glad LinkedIn keep improving their services, no doubt the best social network to find job opportunities and build relationships with partners, customers (real and potential ones).
Thanks for sharing your knowledge! Keep doing it!
Jorge.