Your brand extensions deserve the spotlight, too!
If you’re launching a new product, department, initiative or special division, you’re going to need showcase pages to get you traction on LinkedIn.
Everyone from Microsoft to local brands are using them.
Today, I’ll show how you can leverage LinkedIn showcase pages to maximize your exposure, build connections, and supercharge your growth.
What are LinkedIn Showcase Pages?
LinkedIn Showcase pages are an extension of your brand.
Think of your company page as the home of your brand or business.
And, each of the LinkedIn showcase pages are the “kids” of the company page.
They allow you to create different “sub-pages” that highlight the new products or things that you’ve got going and get people to notice them.
We like them because they keep your marketing organized.
Instead of trying to launch different products on just one company page, you get the opportunity to have different pages set up for them. Each page can have its own branding, engagement, followers, and theme.
Another great reason to set them up is that they come with their own Analytics and posting features which really helps if you’re trying to track the different channels of your traffic.
Finally, they also help if you want to build a sub-community out of your current one.
Creating a Showcase Page
On your LinkedIn feed, you want to navigate to the upper-right-hand side of the window and click on the “Work” icon.
After that click on “Create a Company Page” and a new page will come up.
Select “Showcase page” from the four options available.
This will now take you to Showcase page creation section where you can edit and tweak your profile.
First of all, you need to associate your showcase page with your company page on LinkedIn. You can find that in the “Associated company page” field.
(Make sure you’re the admin of the company page before moving forward or else you won’t be able to create a showcase page.)
After that fill out the name of your showcase page followed by the custom LinkedIn URL that you want to use.
Here’s how you should be creating custom LinkedIn URLs
Adding a website is optional, but we highly advise you to add a URL here. It doesn’t matter if it’s a page within your own website.
You can then select which industry the extension belongs to.
If you look to the right, you’ll notice that you can preview what your company “header” area will look like.
As you scroll down there will be an option for you to add your logo and tagline.
Make sure you use the correct sizing for your showcase logo, 300 x 300 pixels is recommended, and include some white space to highlight it.
For taglines, make sure you follow our LinkedIn headline guide so you can write a convincing one.
And, presto, you now have a LinkedIn showcase page!
Optimizing LinkedIn Showcase Pages
Now that you’re done creating your LinkedIn showcase page, it’s time to optimize it and bring in traffic.
Cover Image
First of all, let’s talk about your cover image.
Your cover image follows the same rules like the one in your own profile, it needs to be a lead magnet.
This is one of the biggest pieces of visual real estate on your showcase page, and it’s advisable that you put in a number of elements to make sure that it stands out.
You can add photos of your product or service, add in branding elements, put in a CTA or some copy, add extra photos and graphics, and include your social media handle.
A lot of brands will also use this space to advertise their latest promos or recent news about them.
About Summary
Keep this area short and concise.
People are more interested in the “how’s” and “why’s”, rather than the “what’s”.
This is a great area to add some storytelling elements that help provide visitors with an experience of what your brand extension does.
If you’re tempted to add in all the details of what you do, make sure that you use bullet points so that the information is arranged neatly.
You can add your contact information at the beginning so that there’s no way that they can miss out on contacting you.
Use LinkedIn SEO
Your showcase page has to be search-friendly.
Make sure you know what keywords you want to target and add them naturally.
I would highly suggest using a keyword in your showcase page tagline, then using secondary and LSI keywords in your about summary.
What matters is that you use them and they’re not obvious.
You want your content to sound as natural as possible, when people start noticing keywords, content starts to become off.
Check out our guide for more LinkedIn SEO tips.
Leverage Content
One of the biggest reasons why showcase pages are recommended is because you can streamline branding for that extension of the main brand.
This helps a lot with content.
Here’s what.
You can pretty much come up with a new brand of content that has a specific voice for that particular showcase page.
Now content is an important tool in LinkedIn.
It can be used as a lead magnet, and as a way to nurture leads through the sales pipeline.
What Types of Content Can I Release?
Showcase pages are like company pages, so you can release any type of content that helps bring in leads.
You can do:
- Links
- Case studies
- Graphics
- Videos
- Lead magnets
- Photos
- And, even plain text founder stories
What’s important is that they either promote the brand or add value to your prospects.
Can I Refurbish Content?
Of course, you can!
However, make sure that you’re not releasing the same thing across your page, your company, and the showcase pages. Content still needs to seem original.
If you have a piece of content that did well on Facebook or LinkedIn a few months back, you can always rework that piece of content onto your showcase page.
Coming up with original content – especially if you manage multiple web and social properties – can get difficult, so it’s critical that you’re efficient with what you do.
Promoting Content
Here’s the problem with both showcase pages and company pages.
They both don’t get as much traction with content as you would get from personal pages.
This is why it’s critical that content from your showcase pages has to be promoted or shared on your own profile, or the profiles of team members.
By doing this you don’t only highlight that piece of content, but the showcase page as well.
Examples of LinkedIn Showcase Pages
Microsoft is a tech giant and naturally, since they cover a lot of industries, they have a lot of spinoffs. This is why they have a bunch of showcase pages for their smaller ventures like Microsft for Healthcare and Microsoft Security.
By doing this they’re able to feed traffic directly to their main brand while keeping content and branding distinctively tailored to their smaller projects.
Amazon also uses showcase pages.
Salesforce has a lot of little divisions that it also attributes smaller showcase pages to.
Notes on LinkedIn Showcase Pages
- You can’t link a showcase page to more than one parent page. Once you create an extension of your brand through a showcase page, you can’t add that showcase page somewhere else.
- LinkedIn showcase pages allow you to assign admin access so you can choose who gets access to what. This is useful if you have a social media manager or a growth hacker who needs quick access.
- Don’t use showcase pages if you have a venture that looks like it’s going to scale. Create a new company page for that. Showcase pages are best limited to smaller projects.
Takeaways
LinkedIn showcase pages are a great way to promote a new brand that you have under your management.
They allow you to organize your messaging and create communities that support your initiatives.
But, here’s what.
It allows you to spread your reach.
By spreading your reach and customizing your messaging you can create content that resonates well with your prospects.
This in turn brings in new connections and that brings growth.
So, think about it.
Are you grouping all your brands into one company page?
Maybe it’s time that they have pages of their own.
