LinkedIn to Discontinue Products & Services for Company Pages

According to an official LinkedIn post, you will no longer be able to showcase your products and services in your company page.

So on April 14th, the Products & Services tab will be removed from all LinkedIn Company Pages.

The ability to add any new products and services has already been removed, although company page administrators can edit existing products and services until April 14.

Why?

The move seems to be an attempt to encourage more updates from companies, and more interaction between companies and customers.

All social and professional networks rely on fresh contact and interaction between members. The "old" products and services tab allowed companies to create static pages describing their offerings. Few companies took full advantage of this capability by adding their full catalog to the tab. Fewer companies still updated these pages on a regular basis.

By forcing corporate users to migrate to showcase pages, LinkedIn is sending a clear message that, if you want to stay in front of and relevant to your customers, you need to up your game and be committed to maintaining a showcase page. From LinkedIn's own recommendation (emphasis mine):

Showcase Pages are designed for building long-term relationships with members who want to follow specific aspects of your business, and not for short-term marketing campaigns. It makes sense to create a Showcase Page when you want to establish a dedicated page to represent a brand, business unit, or company initiative. Before creating a Showcase Page, ensure that you have a plan for maintaining an active presence.

In addition to showcase pages, corporate users can also use company updates to reach your customers:

Company Updates are key to building relationships with your page followers. When your followers engage with your updates, it spreads your message to their networks and provides you even greater reach.

What's the Big Deal?

LinkedIn products and services pages were an easy way to get your wares in front of potential clients, but they did not foster the networking and interaction that LinkedIn has always needed in order to thrive.

It is clear that LinkedIn favors those users who engage more and with more activity.

I have mixed feelings about this. The old products and services feature allowed companies to build up their brand on LinkedIn, much like their website does. This allowed potential customers already on LinkedIn to better search for and understand companies they might wish to do business with. That seems like a good thing for companies and clients, but perhaps not for LinkedIn.

What are Showcase Pages?

Think of a LinkedIn showcase page as a dynamic web page. It's like web 2.0 for LinkedIn companies. Insteead of the limited features found in products and services pages, showcase pages allow you to have a large, high resolution image at the top of the page. It's a very graphic interface:

• Hero Image: Minimum 974 x 330 pixels. PNG, JPEG, or GIF. Maximum file size 2 MB. You can crop your image once it's uploaded.
• Logo: 100 x 60 pixels. Image will be resized to fit.
• Square logo: 50 x 50 pixels. Image will be resized to fit.

Fresh and Hot (off the press)

LinkedIn, as do other networks like Google + and Facebook, rely on user-generated content. They like fresh content and they like a lot of it. But, almost as long as there have been social networks, there has been a shortage of fresh, high-quality content. This was noted by Tech News Daily 4 years ago.

This is important for all companies, but small to medium organizations need to pay special attention. Such companies are often stretched thin when it comes to marketing, especially online marketing, and might not be able to keep up with these new demands LinkedIn is putting on them for fresh content.

At MonMan, we are highly experienced in working with underrepresented companies. Those small fish with big ideas. If that's you, pay attention, and make sure you engage your customers!

What Should You Do?

• Make sure you copy any and all content (including photos) you currently have on your LinkedIn product and services pages.
• Be sure to keep and recommendations your company pages have received:

Company Page Administrators can recover Products & Services Recommendations directly from the tab by copying the information into your own document.

• Learn about showcase pages as well as company updates
• Plan to spend more time updating and engaging your customers

You shouldn't freak out about this. The big picture seems to indicate this isn't a huge deal, just a small change in how you engage your customers on LinkedIn. The more passionate you have been about reaching out to your customers, the easier this transition will be for you. If you haven't updated your company pages in a while, you may find it challenging to work this into your schedule.