LinkedIn has become well known as a tool to market your company, network with colleagues, build relationships with potential clients or employees and highlight your expertise. Communique PR actively uses LinkedIn for a variety of purposes from networking to recruiting, and we recommend it to businesses and job seekers alike. As a heavily used recruiting tool, one of the most important features of LinkedIn is its ability to connect companies with people. You may have noticed that the look and functionality of LinkedIn has changed in the last few weeks. Based on user feedback, LinkedIn has changed tweaked the company page interface in an effort to improve experience for both companies and LinkedIn users. Here are a few of the changes:

For Companies:

• The company page, similar to member profiles, now has a “profile picture”.
• The update stream is now customized to LinkedIn users; status updates and job opportunities are shared with specific categories of users.
• The new company page allows companies to highlight the company’s products, services and career opportunities in separate sections.
• For select companies, LinkedIn is offering a more visual way for them to display their employer brand through the Career Pages section of the company page.  The intent for this feature is to allow the companies to tell their employer story and to help personalize the job-seeking process.

If your company is actively recruiting, or looking to improve on its LinkedIn presence, make sure to use the new company page design to the fullest. Add a profile picture, create language for the product, service, and career sections of your page, and frequently update any corporate news.

For Members:

• The new layout for company pages is designed to make the user experience as easy and manageable as possible. When a member looks for news, information, products, opportunities or insights, it is a more streamlined process.
• The updates made by the company are centered, making them easy to see, comment on, or “like”.
• Access to the company pages has now been added to the LinkedIn app, so pages can be seen from an iPhone, iPad, or Android.

The new design of company pages can help members and job seekers learn more about what a company does, who works there, and what a company might be looking for in an employee. Furthermore, through the updates feature, members are able to see the day-to-day activities a company is engaging in, giving LinkedIn users a better idea of what working for a brand will entail.

To see a few examples of how companies are making use of the new LinkedIn company page design, check out:

• AT&T
• Dell
• McKinsey & Company

For more information on setting up a company page on LinkedIn, look to LinkedIn’s guide for company pages.

Finally, for more on LinkedIn from Communique PR, see the following:

• Using LinkedIn Advertising to Pitch Media
• Best Practices for Company Pages on LinkedIn
• Making Use of LinkedIn Applications
• Four Tips to Maximize your LinkedIn Profile
• The Latest in Brand Marketing from LinkedIn

How does your company use LinkedIn?