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LinkedIn Product and Services Pages Discontinued

by Jennifer Beever

Photo from Flickr by Simon Yeo, Some Rights Reserved
Photo by Simon Yeo, Some Rights Reserved

 

Today LinkedIn Products and Services pages will be discontinued. Here’s what you need to know about the change.

LinkedIn has been sending emails and posting alerts about discontinuing its Products & Services tab under Company Pages. Products & Services tab is just what it sounds like – a place to describe in detail what a company offers. The pages allowed companies to display graphic images and provide links to videos about products and services. They also allowed visitors to the page to “Recommend” a product or service.

Now, LinkedIn is offering Showcase pages instead. Showcase pages allow a LinkedIn member to follow something a company is showcasing. For example, I may want to follow one product or service that IBM showcases, rather than follow IBM the company on LinkedIn. Showcase pages could be used to provide updates on a company division, a product or service, an event, or a publication such as a blog or newsletter.

Showcase pages increase advertising opportunities for companies on LinkedIn (imagine that). Companies can run ads to increase followers for a Showcase page and can also sponsor updates on the Showcase page, the same way they can sponsor Company page updates.

Some people (especially those who made a concerted effort to get product and services recommendations) are upset about the end of Products & Services. They don’t like the fact that their recommendations will no longer display. Others are bemoaning the fact that Showcase pages benefit large companies or organizations with multiple divisions and product lines. They say that small businesses won’t be able to use the Showcase pages.

I’m in favor of dropping Products & Services tab on LinkedIn Company Pages. I feel that Products & Services was just a duplication of what is already on most websites. I suspect that most companies never built Products & Services pages. I also suspect that if a company had the pages, LinkedIn users rarely drilled down to view products and services, so the feature wasn’t used much.

What can a company do to save their Products & Services pages recommendations? In a recent Twitterchat (#B2Bchat) I saw a great suggestion for handling this. LinkedIn expert Viveka von Rosen tweeted that companies can save their recommendations into a slide deck and share it on SlideShare.

Tweet on LinkedIn Recommendations Viveka von RosenSet up Showcase pages for your most popular brands, products, services, events and more. You can display related LinkedIn groups on Showcase pages and assign any of your 1st degree contacts as an Admin of the page. Showcase pages include an image, with the minimum size 974 x 330 pixels. A sample page appears below.

Do you need help optimizing your LinkedIn presence? Do you want to learn how to get qualified leads and sales inquiries from LinkedIn? Contact us today – we’ve worked with many clients to drive results from LinkedIn and other online marketing platforms.

LinkedIn Showcase page Microsoft

 

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