It is your organization’s public storefront on the oldest and biggest social network for business, with over 277 million people in 200+ countries.
It’s a LinkedIn Company Page, and too many of them are sad, pathetic, ignored bits of online real estate.
(Update Feb 2019 – we just did a big post about this on Tourism Currents – building a successful LinkedIn Page for tourism.)
In tourism and hospitality, marketers fall all over themselves to build up Facebook Pages, but its B2B and sales equivalent – the LinkedIn Company Page – is usually ignored. This is a major missed opportunity; meeting and event planners are quite active on social media including LinkedIn.
Fortunately, there is a sea change afoot as more and more CVBs (Convention and Visitors Bureaus,) DMOs (Destination Marketing Organizations, ) hotels and others in the tourism and hospitality industries wake up to the extraordinary networking opportunities in social media for their B2B and convention sales teams.
If you’re ready to spiff up that Company Page storefront, take care of these basics:
1) Add a nice big banner photo to your Page, plus use photos and video on each of your Products and Services sub-tabs. You could have one general video on the front page, then a different video AND photo for each of your products or services.
2) Write a compelling business/organization description rather than leave the default one in place. Keep in mind that your text’s keywords will help your SEO (Search Engine Optimization.)
3) Fill out your Products & Services sub-tabs. What do you offer as a DMO? How about meeting services? Destination weddings? Group tour services? A convention center? Each of these could be its own tab, complete with photos, video, descriptive keywords, links to the LinkedIn profile of the staff member who handles each area AND links back to the relevant landing pages on your website.
—->> Update 20 March 2014. When LinkedIn introduced Showcase sub-pages recently, I suspected that they might replace Products & Services tabs because the recommended Showcase content seemed to duplicate what those sub-tabs were already supposed to do for a brand/organization’s Page.
In fact, as of 14 April 2014, LinkedIn is removing Products & Services tabs from all Company Pages, and they suggest that you use Showcase pages or targeted Company Page updates as alternatives. I’d recommend downloading your current Products/Services write-ups, photos and videos and use them as a basis for new Showcase pages. Carefully think through the natural subdivisions of your market and you may find that you need fewer – but still focused – Showcase pages.
4) Put out Company Page updates regularly (just like you do for your Facebook Page) but focused more on straight news and things of interest to your meetings, events and tours markets. You can include links, photos, YouTube video URLs and SlideShare URLs. Your updates go out into the LinkedIn news feeds of all of your Page’s followers.
Bonus Tip: you can get more visibility in people’s LinkedIn news feed by paying for Sponsored Posts on LinkedIn that are similar to those on Facebook, with very good ad targeting, but they are expensive.
Some tourism-related LinkedIn Company Pages that do a fine job:
** The Fredericksburg, Texas CVB. Proof that a small organization can have a rocking presence on LinkedIn.
** Our own Tourism Currents Page. Once we put real effort into it week after week, we started picking up followers regularly at about the 6 month mark, and saw our updates getting a lot more visibility and interaction.
** It’s always tough to market a county, but Hamilton County, Indiana is doing a fine job on LinkedIn.
** Visit Philadelphia. Recently started to put major emphasis on their Page for B2B purposes, and it’s coming along quite well (disclosure: I did some LinkedIn training for their staff.)
So, take charge of your LinkedIn storefront – here’s how to become an Administrator for your LinkedIn Company Page – and put it to work for B2B and sales.
Did I miss your favorite LinkedIn Company Page or tip? Please share down in the Comments.
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