Mario Sundar's Speakeasy

Now, many of you reading this are probably aware of LinkedIn’s recent launch of Company Pages – any company or small business’ own space on LinkedIn. An Adage article by Irina Slutsky that came out earlier today talks of the growth and experience of some companies within Company Pages.

As I’d mentioned earlier, I work with many of my social media counterparts at sharing best practices on LinkedIn and I was thrilled that we could get both Kodak (Thomas Hoehn) and Samsung (Esteban Contreras) to launch their brands’ Company Pages on launch date. Brian Nizinsky from Kodak briefly describes his Company Pages experience in the above-mentioned article:

Another feature recently launched is “Company Pages,” extremely similar to Facebook Pages. Companies have jumped on the feature like a starving hyena on the fresh carcass of an elephant. Just in one week, more than 40,000 companies signed up, since now marketers can use the page to promote new products and …yes, engage with their customers. Kodak said the feature is relatively new for it, but hopes to expand on its capabilities. “We have been able to add more information about us and our products/services,” said Brian Nizinsky, online marketing manager at Kodak. “This gives our audience more ways to interact with us and that should only increase as the LinkedIn user base starts using those features more.”

I’ve also had a couple of great conversations with Brian in the past (unrelated to the above article) on LinkedIn Groups and how it could be the starting point of your B2B marketing strategy, and was glad he shared some of his insights into LinkedIn groups here as he has with me:

LinkedIn groups have often been downplayed as LinkedIn’s less-successful features, bringing in low traffic. But Kodak had a different take. “We have found that LinkedIn Groups have been a great way to both start and participate in online discussions that are happening only on LinkedIn,” Mr. Nizinsky said. “We know that the people on LinkedIn use it for business networking and career enhancement so they tend to be more engaged with our content. We make sure we are members of the most active groups that are relevant to our B2B audience — for example, the digital-printing group with over 11,000 members. Once we are part of these groups, we often share content and make sure to respond to any questions and comments that people post.”

I think we could all learn a thing or two from Kodak’s successful experimentation with LinkedIn Groups. I’d like to also provide you a few more insights on that topic. Stay tuned.

In the meanwhile, if you’ve a question on LinkedIn groups or LinkedIn Company Pages, leave a comment or @mariosundar me on Twitter. <<Disclosure: I’m LinkedIn’s Sr. Global Social Media Manager, since 2007>>

Filed under: Linkedin, LinkedIn Features, LinkedIn Company Pages