LinkedIn Gets Serious With Company Pages

Social network LinkedIn beefs up company profile pages

Aside from improvements to the user profiles and implementing Groups half-way through this year, Techcrunch have posted about the beefed up Company profile page, a feature originally launched back in April this year. Now with over 1 million company pages already, LinkedIn is clearly seeing the value and creating new ways in which to members and companies can interact within the network.

The expansion appears to not only make the network a more social place but to also provide meaningful data to users about the company, to really start opening up and provide new ways to mash-up the 75 million+ members"€™ data. We can only assume that this is something that we are going to see more of from LinkedIn.

So - what's interesting in the update?

• Company profiles are getting more social. Admins can publish blog posts, job vacancies, news and Twitter feeds into a the profile, visitors can see all that in addition to other LinkedIn members they know that work at the company
• You can view company data such as the staff make-up - for example, is the company employing more marketers than admin staff, how many went to university and which one. You can even see how many are leaving to join a competitor business. Ouch  🙂
• HR information is impressive, giving vistors insight into the companies hiring process, listen to content from employees, see how current employees came to be there (previous jobs, education and qualifications) and understand the company structure all under one tab
• As of this week you can also have the ability to recommend a company, or product or service. Company admins can not only add products and services but they can be tailored to whoever is viewing them - so accountants in one industry get to see different data to designers in another. Content can be added to the products and services offers and therefore create feature products or services
• It will be no surprise to you (though still cool) that members can recommend and review any product or service on a company profile, with recommenders and raters listed on the company's profile page

What could it mean for us?

• The good and less inspiring companies will stand out much more to LinkedIn members
• For companies on LinkedIn, there's not going to be much by the way of over or understating what you are, even insights into company culture will be increasingly apparent - being open and having to work hard to come across well to new potential employees will be a real opportunity for David vs Goliath businesses (or even David vs David businesses) - not having a Company Profile will equally say a lot?
• Being able to mash up the data like this pretty much negates the need for a conventional resume ever again (I guess LinkedIn had already nailed that one anyway) it significantly alters the potential research work that can now be done by a potential employee - pretty remarkable
• In short, good companies will love this (good HR processes, with happy customers and great products and services people are more likely to rate) whereas poor companies are going to have to work harder to catch up, here's another network enabling members to rate and review, another place for riffs, rants and raves in regard to what it's like to work there and the quality of the company's products and services

Recommended links from LinkedIn here and from Techcrunch here