7 Tips for Creating Impressive LinkedIn Showcase Pages

LinkedIn Showcase pages is a smart idea if your business wants to draw attention to a specific project, advertise something special, or target a particular audience.

It’s a good idea to highlight a unique aspect of your brand on your LinkedIn Showcase Page, especially if it has to do with business. LinkedIn is ranked by 90% of professionals as the platform of choice for professionals looking for professionally relevant content.

Your LinkedIn Showcase Page is displayed in the Affiliated Pages section of your primary business profile. Here are a few instances:

• IKEA has a Showcase Page specifically for its Italian customers.
• EY highlights women in the workplace.
• Portfolio promotes the non-fiction book section of Penguin.
• One is used by LinkedIn to highlight social projects.

LinkedIn users now have a new way to follow your brand, even if they don’t follow your business page, thanks to these pages.

A LinkedIn Showcase page is a smart idea if your business wants to draw attention to a particular project, advertise something special, or target a particular audience.

How to Create a LinkedIn Showcase Page

To create a LinkedIn Showcase page, you must first have a LinkedIn page for your company.

Here’s how to make a page from your company account.

• Log in to your Page admin center. If you manage multiple accounts, make sure to sign in with the one that will be linked to your Showcase Page.

• Click on the Admin Tools Menu at the top right corner.

• Select Create Showcase Page.

• Enter the name of your Showcase Page and your LinkedIn public URL.

• Upload your Showcase Page logo and add a tagline. 

• Click Create page.

You’ll be taken to the admin view where you can edit or complete your new Showcase Page.

• Add buttons to your page header. LinkedIn will recommend a Follow button for your parent LinkedIn Page. Custom buttons such as Contact us, Register, Sign up, Visit website, and Learn more are also made available to choose from. Be sure to click Save after each step.

In the About section, you can add a description of your organization and other details, workplace policy, locations, groups, and manage Page information.

• Fill in your Showcase Page overview. Here you can add a  2,000-character description, website, phone number, Company size, and other details. 

• Add your location. You may choose to include only the required details, or list multiple locations, depending on your Showcase Page needs.

• Choose three hashtags to add to your page. These will appear in a widget on the right side of your Showcase Page. You can also add up to 10 groups you may want to feature on your page.

• Upload your hero image. 1536 x 768 pixels is the recommended size.

Your LinkedIn Showcase Page will be listed in the Affiliated pages section of your main business page.

Related:  How LinkedIn Can Help You Find New Clients

7 tips for creating great LinkedIn Showcase Pages

A great Showcase Page is much like a great LinkedIn business page, but there are a few key differences. Here are our tips and tricks.

Tip 1: Pick an unambiguous name

If the name of your Showcase Page isn’t clear, there’s not much point in having one. Be specific with the name you give to your page.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Google, for instance, has several pages including Google Cloud, Google Analytics, Google Partners, and Google Ads.

Google does have the benefit of strong brand recognition. The smaller your company, and the more pages you have, the more specificity you may need.

A good bet is to include your company name upfront, and then add a short descriptor after it.

Tip 2: Tell people what your page is for

A good name will convince LinkedIn members to visit your Showcase Page.

A tagline to tell them what to expect. Use up to 120 characters to describe your page’s purpose and the type of content you plan to share there.

Twitter does a good job with this on its Twitter for Business Showcase Page.

Tip 3: Fill in all information

It may sound obvious, but there are a lot of Showcase Pages missing basic details. And while that may not seem like a glaring problem at first, LinkedIn reports that pages with all fields completed receive 30 percent more weekly views.

Tip 4: Choose a strong hero image

A surprising number of Showcase Pages skip this and stick with the default LinkedIn image. That’s a missed opportunity.

Make your company standout with a vibrant, high-res (536 x 768px) hero image.

True to brand, Adobe’s Creative Cloud Showcase Page features a bright image, enhanced with special effects.

Taking a different approach, Cisco uses the hero image space on its Cisco Security Showcase Page to deliver a strong brand message.

Tip 5: Post page-specific content regularly

Just because Showcase Pages are an offshoot from your primary LinkedIn page doesn’t mean you don’t need a content strategy for them.

These pages are all about showcasing an aspect of your brand, so make sure to do just that. And be sure to post regularly.

LinkedIn finds that pages that post weekly have a 2x lift in engagement with content. Keep caption copy to 150 words or less.

It may be appropriate to occasionally share content from your main page, but only if it makes sense. Ideally, LinkedIn members are following all of your pages, so you don’t want to spam them with the same content twice.

You can use LinkedIn Analytics to get a sense of how much audience overlap you have.

Microsoft’s Showcase Page for Microsoft Office updates its feed roughly once a day.

Tip 6: Drive engagement with video

As with most other social media platforms, video wins on LinkedIn, too. Video is five times more likely to start a conversation than any other type of content on LinkedIn.

For an added advantage, try using LinkedIn native video. These videos are uploaded directly or created on the platform, as opposed to being shared via YouTube or Vimeo. They tend to perform significantly better than non-native video.

If video isn’t realistic for your brand’s social budget, LinkedIn advises companies to try to include an image with every post. Images receive an average of two times more comments than posts without them.

But try to avoid stock images, which abound on LinkedIn, and go with something original.

Tip 7: Build a community

The best LinkedIn Showcase pages are all about connecting like-minded people with each other. That can mean building a network for users of a specific product, or empowering members of a group, or reaching a group of people who speak the same language.

Foster conversation with posts that ask a question, provide tips, or simply deliver inspiring messages. Stay on top of your LinkedIn Analytics to see which posts perform best, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

LinkedIn Learning, appropriately, does a great job with this.

Source: Katie Sehl from Hootesuite