Social media has been the most democratic and extensively growing platform over internet, with 1.4 billion users. LinkedIn with 187 million users, the world’s largest professional network. However, Facebook has over 1 billion users and clearly dominates this platform. Both, Facebook and LinkedIn – the two biggest online networking websites are competing neck to neck to achieve a standardized place in the industry. LinkedIn is more popular among the professionals and intellectuals where, Facebook is more popular among the fun lovers.
LinkedIn is a platform which connects customers, prospects and industry experts. With 2.6 million companies on LinkedIn, it has become an essential social network for corporates, especially those in B2B, to leverage in their communication plans. Earlier this year, in order to make itself more engaging LinkedIn launched its enhanced “Company Page”. Company page is a centralized location where a user can look for company updates, products launched or information over existing ones, services, business opportunities and look out for job openings with in the LinkedIn arena. Similarly companies can go and highlight their products, services, engage with target audience, share job opportunities and convey their messages. The analytics tab is only visible to administrator, which gives–momentous information–who all are following, what is appealing to them, who all are viewing your page etc. However one needs to have a paid account to avail some of these facilities.
To enhance its initiative of Company Page, LinkedIn conducted a survey and came up with the best company pages of 2012. It clearly shows how companies are showcasing their brands and targeting audience. Apart from the companies listed below-Aurecon, CNBC, INSEAD, IT Media Group, Magna Powertrain, Pacific Dental Services, Walt Disney and Xactly corporation are also featured in the list.
With a compelling tagline on the homepage -“show customers a relevant experience and they’ll show you their loyalty”- with 107,184 followers Adobe tops the list. The company page features – intro video, recent blog post and tweets. Most importantly, 52 products with dozens of recommendations and different cover picture for each page made it look interesting .
HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company, with 20,887 followers also features on the list. Also, the company Page offers demo of their products. with such a presence, customers are forced to use your products at least once. Along with 10 products and 72 recommendations, it also has very interactive posts and tweets.
Indeed, 75% of fortune 500 companies use LinkedIn to hire employees. HireVue on demand video interviewing service is also showcased in the top-12 list. HireVue might only have 636 followers but with enchanting description, frequent blog posts and a nice product rightly brings them on the list.
TATA consultancy services the only Indian company to feature on this list. With over 295,492 followers, very impressive intro-video and over hundred recommendations justifies its position.The Indian IT giant has 164, 812 connected employes, 64 job offers, highly interactive posts clearly suggests-You don’t have to sell-just become-go to expert, and your customers will come to you.
Company page rankings clearly suggest that companies just have to be interactive, engaging and innovative about their pages; they need not be a IT giant or a billion dollar enterprise.
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