LinkedIn new ‘Follow Company’ feature

Following on from my previous post about LinkedIn and their focus on recruitment, they have just launched a new feature on the site allowing you to follow companies and if you are a company profile owner to ‘be followed’.

No doubt you are familiar with the fact that every company on LinkedIn can have its own profile page which can be found through current and previous employees profile pages or through the company search field.

Firstly, by hovering over the company name on an individual’s profile, it brings up a snapshot profile of the company as below. You see a brief company intro, logo, size, web address, location and industry.

By clicking on the company name you are taken through to a more detailed page giving you further information about the company such as current, past and new employees, an overview of the company demographic and, if they have set one up, a feed from the company blog or other news source. On this page to the top right you can click on ‘Follow Company’ and then choose what aspects of that companies activity you want to be kept informed of through the notifications tab.

 

The options include staff changes, job opportunities (fits in with LinkedIn business plan…) and any changes to the company profile. You can even choose to receive these by email. There is a benefit here of having a premium account which will mean you can get updates to changes of employees outside of your network too and I see that’s a wise move by LinkedIn because they need to add value to the premium package.

On face value this is moving down similar lines to having a ‘Fan’ or should I now say a ‘Like’ page on Facebook where people can request to see updates relating to your business in their stream. It certainly adds value to the company profile and so I suggest if you don’t already have one or you do but it is poorly maintained, now is the time to get this aspect of your social media activity up to scratch.