LinkedIn Company Pages

LinkedIn Company Status Updates - The Anti-Social MediaLinkedIn finally gave companies the ability to post status updates to their LinkedIn pages.

Why this feature took over a year to implement, I don’t know. It’s not like they were building an entirely new functionality that will revolutionize the way we interact with brands on a one-on-one, public basis. What year do they think this is? 2007?

What I know is that I really don’t give a crap about companies having another mouthpiece to put more crap in front of me.

What are brands doing for me on Facebook? On Twitter? Nothing. Attempting to get me to buy stuff. Attempting to fix the relationships they ruined with crappy products and services. Now LinkedIn wants to try and fix their crappy hiring process by having job seekers complain on their LinkedIn page?

Please, Betty in HR has better things to do, like make sure you get your meager benefits.

On LinkedIn, all I care about with a company is seeing if I know anyone who works there, seeing if someone in my network knows someone there, or if they have job openings.  I don’t need a company’s latest press release, and I certainly don’t want to start a dialogue using my professional network and profile.

LinkedIn I know you want to be cool like Facebook and Twitter and give businesses a voice. As a publicly-traded social network, you are also trying to answer to shareholders and the businesses that make up your revenue source. But let’s face the facts.

You’re a social network of utility, LinkedIn. People use you because they want their professional life in one place. Focus on giving users the network and tools to succeed in their careers by connecting them with people and companies in real and valuable ways.

What do you think of LinkedIn’s latest feature? Useful? Useless? Let me know what you think. I’ve got to put my latest press release in front of another network.

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12 Responses to “LinkedIn Company Pages”

  1. Gini Dietrich October 10, 2011 at 8:03 am #

    I don’t know yet. We just started using it for the business last week. But my lens on LinkedIn has always been off. First I didn’t understand why I needed it. I do, after all, have a job and, even if the business weren’t successful, I’d be unemployable. And then I discovered the ability to find out professional information about people before meeting with them.

    So…the jury is still out for me.

    • Jay October 10, 2011 at 9:32 am #

      Yeah, the jury is out for me too. From a marketing and PR standpoint, I see a lot of potential, especially in terms of recruiting and for B2B businesses.

      But as an average person whose life is already filled with way too many updates, I look at this and just think, “Really? Another marketing channel?”

  2. Morgan October 10, 2011 at 3:40 pm #

    Yeah I really don’t know how useful this will be…I’m with Gini in the sense that my radar towards LinkedIn is sort of turned off. I use it every now and then and I do connect with business professionals, but beyond that, I don’t even update my personal status, let alone a business status.

    • Jay October 10, 2011 at 4:39 pm #

      I only update my personal status as a way to promote this blog. I have no idea if anyone ever clicks the links though.

    • Claire Wagner October 10, 2011 at 5:09 pm #

      I’ve been wondering if something is wrong with me, but I see I’m in good company as my radar is also off when it comes to LinkedIn. I think it is an important place to park my resume and to check people out, but Twitter is where I’ve found the best links and info in my subject areas. I do occasionally update my status - usually sharing Gini’s posts just because she has that button sitting there.

      • Jay October 10, 2011 at 7:12 pm #

        Yeah, LinkedIn just doesn’t seem like an information hub unless you’re stalking professionals.

  3. Camilo Olea October 10, 2011 at 3:42 pm #

    I agree with both Gini and Jay. I believe each network should accept how its community uses it, and focus on providing a great experience on that.

    LinkedIn will never be Twitter or any other network. Instead of copying other networks features, it should focus on making the best experience available for business networking, for example.

    • Jay October 10, 2011 at 4:39 pm #

      LinkedIn doing things for business? That’s too logical.

  4. Dania Souid October 10, 2011 at 6:05 pm #

    To be honest I’m not a fan of the so-called improvement to Linked-in. After all, its main purpose isn’t for social interaction, or at least it shouldn’t be. It should be one of the few places online a person can actually be professional. Adding business updates is distracting and it seems like business are desperate to show you all the ‘new things’ they are doing. Of course that doesn’t include actually hiring you.

    • Jay October 10, 2011 at 7:12 pm #

      Businesses hire people? I thought that this was the recession and we were all jobless.

  5. Stephanie October 10, 2011 at 8:08 pm #

    LinkedIn is just trying to be a little more hip and cool because quite frankly it is really boring as a “social avenue”. So I think there could be instances where this could be handy in identifying a brand personality for a business trying to hire people.

    I know a question people ALWAYS ask is what is it like to work here? A little personality in the business profile might be nice rather than the “WE ARE A COOPERATION AND WE ARE AWESOME” robot voice you see when going to profiles currently.

    I don’t really care if people/businesses are busy selling me stuff. I ignore it unless I care or it pertains to me. So go right ahead and try to serve me up your coupons, offers, pig-in-a-blanket or video I don’t care about….

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