LinkedIn is announcing a new feature called a Showcase Page that will allow businesses on the professional networking site to target the fans of a specific product or brand.
David Thacker, the company’s vice president of marketing solutions products, said that when companies with a number of different products are trying to discuss all of them from a single page, it can become “a little bit overwhelming” for followers who aren’t necessarily interested in all of that content.
With Showcase Pages, on the other hand, Microsoft has been able to build a page focused on Office and another on Dynamics. Adobe, meanwhile, has created a page for its Creative Cloud suite of products and for its Marketing Cloud.
Aside from being more focused, Thacker said Showcase Pages are mostly “intended to work the same way” as Company Pages. Each company can create up to 10 Showcase Pages, and those pages are free, though naturally LinkedIn is hoping businesses will also pay to promote those pages with Follower Ads and Sponsored Updates.
And while the initial users are big tech companies, Thacker argued, “There’s no reason small businesses couldn’t use this to highlight different aspects of their business” too.
He also suggested that the Showcase Pages are another sign that LinkedIn isn’t just about finding jobs and recruiting anymore, and has become “a professional publishing platform” for a range of content. Indeed, Showcase Pages don’t include job listings at all — if you want to find those, you’ll have to go to the main Company Page.
Not that LinkedIn is ignoring those recruiters. It’s also announcing a new feature called Talent Updates, which allows recruiters to post status updates (“everything from recruiting events to company blog posts to employee videos”) directly to company followers.
