how to optimize your company on linkedin

415-962-5800 www.tractionco.com

A LinkedIn Companies Strategic Toolkit

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Traction :: www.tractionco.com :: [email protected] :: twitter.com/traction :: 415-962-5800

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About this document.

The new capabilities of LinkedIn Companies makes it a potentially powerful tool in your digital marketing arsenal. Traction

has created the LinkedIn Companies Strategic Toolkit as a tool to help our clients be strategic and enable them to harness

the power of that tool.

The following pages contain a series of templates and worksheets organized in a step-by-step process that you can use to

plan an effective presence for your brand in LinkedIn that makes the most of its enhanced new features. This document was

initially introduced in conjunction with an article on Mashable.com called How To Optimize Your Company’s LinkedIn

Profile (http://mashable.com/2011/01/28/optimize-linkedin-company-profile/).

We are happy to share it with you and hope you find it valuable.

Companies Strategic Toolkit

http://www.tractionco.com


mailto:[email protected]


http://mashable.com/2011/01/28/optimize-linkedin-company-profile/

http://mashable.com/2011/01/28/optimize-linkedin-company-profile/


Step 1. Why are you doing this?

Before you create your enhanced LinkedIn Companies page, we suggest that you define your objectives. Why are you

doing this? Write the answer in the space below. As you make decisions about the content of your page, make sure they

map back to the goals you define.

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Step 2. Create an Overview

The top-level page of your LinkedIn Companies is the Overview. Gather the following information about your company.

You will also want to collect a 50x50 pixel logo for your page.

Manage Admins. Who in your company will have administrative access to manage your page?

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Company Description. Write a paragraph describing your company.

Website URL.

Twitter Handle.

RSS Feed.

Company Specialties. List the things your company does best here.

Do you want LinkedIn to display stories about your

company when it is featured in the news?

Yes. No.






Step 2. Create an Overview (continued)

Company Type. Choose One.

Public Company

Educational

Self Employed

Government Agency

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Nonprofit

Self Owned

Privately Held

Partnership

Company Size.

Main Company Industry.

Operating Status.

Year Founded.

Company Locations. Up to five.






Step 3. Who are your customers?

Once you’ve created a “default” LinkedIn Companies page, you can create up to 15 alternate versions of your Products &

Services based on data in their profiles. We believe you should do this exercise first, so you can be thoughtful about how

you’ll define your products and services later. Create titles for each of the target audiences you would like to build a unique

version for.

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

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Step 3. Who are your customers? (Continued)

Make copies of this page and gather the following information for each audience title you created on the previous page.

Audience Title.

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Note. LinkedIn Companies allows you to get very granular when targeting by Industry or Geography. If it makes sense

(for example if you are a local small business), you should take advantage of this.






Step 4. Define your Products & Services

Now that you know your audiences, be mindful of them as you define your Products & Services on the following pages.

You’ll first create a “default” version of this section and then make adaptations for each of your audiences, adding, deleting

and editing services as appropriate. Make copies of the appropriate pages for each Audience Title you defined earlier.

Audience Title.

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Overview of your Products & Services. Write a headline and then a paragraph describing your products and services.

Marketing Carousel. You have the opportunity to present three 640x220 pixel banners on your overview page.

List the image file names (ex. “myImage.jpg) and the URLs they will link users to on your site.

Image Name: URL:

Image Name: URL:

Image Name: URL:

YouTube Video. You can also embed a video. Create a title for yours and include the YouTube URL below.

Image Name: URL:

Disclaimer. LinkedIn also has space for a disclaimer on this page. If you have one, include it here.






Step 4. Define your Products & Services

Now that you know your audiences, be mindful of them as you define your Products & Services on the following pages.

You’ll first create a “default” version of this section and then make adaptations for each of your audiences, adding, deleting

and editing services as appropriate. Make copies of the appropriate pages for each Audience Title you defined earlier.

Audience Title.

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Overview of your Products & Services. Write a headline and then a paragraph describing your products and services.

Marketing Carousel. You have the opportunity to present three 640x220 pixel banners on your overview page.

List the image file names (ex. “myImage.jpg) and the URLs they will link users to on your site.

Image Name: URL:

Image Name: URL:

Image Name: URL:

YouTube Video. You can also embed a video. Create a title for yours and include the YouTube URL below.

Image Name: URL:

Disclaimer. LinkedIn also has space for a disclaimer on this page. If you have one, include it here.






Step 4. Define your Products & Services (Continued)

List the Products & Services you want to create for your company. If you want to present a particular product or service

differently to one of the Audience Titles you’ve defined, this would be a good time to write that down. You are going to be

soliciting recommendations for each item you list, so volume is not necessarily a benefit here. Remember your objectives!

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2.

3.

4.

5.

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15.

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Step 4. Define your Products & Services (Continued)

Make copies of this page and define the following for each of the individual items you listed on the previous page.

You will also want to collect a 100x80 pixel image to represent each product or service.

Product or Service Name.

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Product or Service Description. Write a paragraph describing it.

URL for this Product or Service.

List Key Features. Identify key benefits or use cases.

List Contacts. Who in your company are the appropriate contacts for this product or service?

Promotion. You can create a special offer from this page that links back to your website.

Promo Name: URL:

Description:

YouTube Video. You can also embed another video here. Create a title for yours and include the YouTube URL below.

Image Name: URL:






Step 5. Ask for recommendations.

The reason LinkedIn Companies will become such a critical component of your digital presence is the ability to have

recommendations for each of your products and services. Make a copy of this page for each product or service you’ve

listed and identify the customers you plan to request a recommendation from. You’ll want to edit LinkedIn’s default

recommendation request message, so add some notes on how you’ll personalize your request.

Product or Service Name.

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Customer Name.

Notes.

Customer Name.

Notes.

Customer Name.

Notes.






Step 6. Upload your content

Now that you’ve thought through and gathered all your content, you’ll want to create your LinkedIn Companies page.

This has been the hard part. The admin tool LinkedIn has provided is very intuitive, so we won’t cover that here. You’ll

want to create a default page and then adapt it for each of your Audiences. Once you’ve done that, you can use the

Analytics to measure the performance of your page and how it compares to similar companies to your own.

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About Traction.

Traction is an interactive agency and innovation consultancy in San Francisco. We were recognized as one of the top two

interactive agencies in the U.S. by BtoB Magazine in 2009 and 2010. We’ve been named one of “five agency blogs you

should be reading” by iMedia Connection. We create ideas that work.

We hope this document was one of them. If you found it useful, we’d love to hear from you.

tractionco.com

[email protected]

twitter.com/traction

facebook.com/tractionco

slideshare.net/trendsWithTraction

and of course... linkedin.com/company/traction

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2009 AND 2010TOP INTERACTIVE AGENCY

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Contact:

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415.962.5810

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how to optimize your company on linkedin

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