LinkedIn have just announced that as of 14th April, they will cease to support their Products & Services Pages, suggesting that you replace them with LinkedIn Showcase pages. On first thought, this may seem like a bad thing, especially if you have spent time putting together content for this area of your LinkedIn profile! However, take a bit of time to think about it, and it becomes clear that it is an obvious move for LinkedIn, and actually throws up some opportunities.
Why is losing products/services pages not such an issue?
In practice these pages ended up simply clones of the product information areas of your website. This resulted in you having 2 sites to keep updated. It also meant the content tended to be pretty static – not really encouraging the engagement which is at the heart of the LinkedIn philosophy.
So what are LinkedIn Showcase pages?
Showcase pages are LinkedIn pages that allow you to “showcase” a specific area if your business. The page can be branded with a banner image plus a short description (200 characters). The purpose of a Showcase page is to allow updates targeted at a specific area of your business, allowing you to build and engage with followers who have a specific interest in that part of your business. Updates can easily be posted on multiple pages, so posting them on your main company page and the relevant showcase page is simple. The result is that rather than having a static clone of sections of your website, these pages become constantly updated, engaging showcases for what you are doing in specific areas of your business. Although it may require a little more thought to keep these pages fresh with new updates. They will definitely be more dynamic and engaging for visitors. We will be converting our Product pages to showcases over the next couple of weeks, so follow BSA Marketing on LinkedIn to see how we handle the switch.
