LinkedIn introduces Showcase Pages

LinkedIn introduces Showcase Pages

Today, LinkedIn introduces a new feature for content marketers, Showcase pages.

Showcase Pages are dedicated content hubs enabling businesses to extend their Company Page presence, effectively segmenting audiences and enabling businesses to deliver the best message to the right audiences. 

Somewhat similar to LinkedIn’s existing company pages, Showcase Pages are designed to give individual brands and business units within corporations the ability to create their own segmented marketing channels on LinkedIn.

These pages are discoverable through search and allow users to attract a unique set of followers to push provide sponsored status updates, videos, blogs, Slideshares, and other content to targeted groups of users.

The example featuring Microsoft below shows how they’re using the Showcase Page to feature specific Microsoft Office content, while remaining connected to the corporate Microsoft account.

Unlike on Facebook where you have to create a regional page, app or standalone page for brand, these Showcase Pages stay within a company’s network. There’s a place to highlight that page’s affiliation with other business units, allowing their Company Pages to grow and develop within this unique LinkedIn network. 

Facebook’s Parent-child pages had a similar relationship, though with these you couldn’t really separate out for business units or bring campaign Facebook pages under brand ones.

How do you create a LinkedIn Showcase Page?
It seems fairly simple for existing Company Page admins.

Any Company Page admin can go to the drop down menu next to the edit button on their Company Page and select ‘create a Showcase Page.’

Company Pages and Showcase Pages are similar in functionality, with the main difference coming in the audience.

Users follow Showcase pages just as they follow Company Pages but Showcase pages don’t have a careers or products/services page, and employees can’t associate themselves with a particular Showcase Page.

Updates on both Showcase and Company Pages have the ability to be sponsored in LinkedIn home feeds.

What’s in it for businesses?
With more than 259 Million users, LinkedIn is the gold standard when it comes to growing and nurturing a network of professional relationships.

While most people only think about it as a tool for career development, since the introduction of Company Pages in 2010 LinkedIn has been strengthening their position as the leading platform for publishing quality content.

As these corporations expand content marketing efforts to different business units, LinkedIn needed a better way to allow interested users follow these different topics without diluting recruiting or career development efforts of the corporate pages.

Companies like Adobe, Microsoft, and Cisco are already starting to take advantage of Showcase Pages, and I imagine it won’t be long before more businesses start to take advantage of these pages. Now, more than ever, marketers are now setting aside larger budgets and more time to experiment and execute content marketing strategies.

The ability to use segment audiences and use sponsored updates to amplify valuable content efforts combined with LinkedIn’s uniquely focused audience of content consumers will make Showcase Pages an asset to all companies, especially brands.