Wendy Schollum: New opportunities on website

While Facebook and Twitter give businesses direct and easy access to consumers, LinkedIn.com has long been recognised as the social network site of choice for B2B's (businesses that sell products and services to other businesses). And, with the launch of LinkedIn's new company profile tools, businesses can finally go beyond mere promotion of their executives and key personnel and start promoting their company using this unique social network.
The motivation to invest time in profiling a business on a social networking site is directly linked to their ability to facilitate the viral spread of information within trust groups of online friends - a much cheaper and more powerful form of marketing than traditional advertising provides. And, while LinkedIn has always provided individuals with the ability to promote themselves within the social network, it has (up until now) provided only limited tools with which to promote businesses.
The ability to set up LinkedIn "company profile" pages was largely limited to an introduction about the business, contact details and a list of previous and current employees. However, it seems that LinkedIn has finally realised that companies are growing wary of their site, seeing it as more value to individuals (particularly those looking for new jobs or one-to-one sales leads) than businesses, and have expanded the tools available to businesses, in response. The LinkedIn companies profile pages now include three tabs. The new "products and services" tab is where businesses will finally find the tools they need to reap a return from their time investment into LinkedIn.
Companies can now set up a list of their key products and services on their LinkedIn company profile page (including links to multimedia collateral, such as videos, presentations, etc) and invite existing clients to recommend these products/services. Existing clients can then choose to post a generic "I recommend this product" comment, or compose something a little more in-depth, relating to their personal experience with the company. "Company pages now allow you to showcase recommendations from your customers, and help build your brand virally and credibly on LinkedIn," wrote director of product management Ryan Roslansky, on the company's blog. "Each time a LinkedIn member endorses your products or services, their recommendation becomes visible to all of their connections and could spread virally."
Also, as part of the LinkedIn upgrades, users can now "share" information about products/businesses with their contacts (and even automatically post a link on Twitter), all by simply clicking the "share" button now on all company product pages.
These latest changes are a savvy move by LinkedIn to add further value to businesses which participate in their social network, and encourage their staff to do so. So, if you're a B2B and not yet using LinkedIn, now's the time to secure your place in cyberspace, and start tapping into its marketing potential.
Wendy Schollum is a web strategist and managing director of Xplore.net Solutions Ltd (www.xplore.net).

If you would like more information on using social media to promote your business, join Wendy on Facebook (www.facebook.com/xploreNET), connect with Wendy on LinkedIn (http://nz.linkedin.com/in/xplore), follow the Xplore.net team on Twitter (www.twitter.com/xploreNET) or phone 0800 100 900.