LinkedIn Retiring Products and Services from Company Pages: Now What?

In case you haven’t heard the latest news, the LinkedIn Products and Services tabs on company pages will be removed on April 14^th. And this change is causing confusion for companies. What should your company do? What is the alternative?

LinkedIn is an important social media tool for companies. But with the Products & Services tab going away, many companies are confused on how they will showcase their capabilities.

Why is LinkedIn removing the Products & Services tab?

We believe LinkedIn made this decision based on two recent changes to LinkedIn. First, LinkedIn acquired Pulse, a popular, go-to news source for web and mobile, in 2013. Pulse had a loyal following and was an everyday destination for readers. LinkedIn acquired Pulse in order to move toward being a go-to source for news and content. Pulse’s content would allow LinkedIn users to “choose” the content they want to browse in their feed.

Second, LinkedIn recently released their addition of Showcase Pages for company pages. This was another strategic move by LinkedIn to encourage companies to share their content. It provides an opportunity for companies to target specific audiences or industries and share relevant content. However, in order to “encourage” companies to create Showcase Pages, LinkedIn needed to remove the Products & Services tab.

The two alternatives

Once the Products & Services tab goes away on April 14^th, companies will have two options to promote their products and services: Company Updates or Showcase Pages.

1. Company Updates

The easiest transition for companies will be to share content on their current company page to promote their products or services. If your company has a blog, then Company Updates is a great place to share that content. Updates appear in your followers’ feeds on every device and can easily be shared—helping your content spread further and building your company as a thought leader.

2. Showcase Pages

If you’re willing to invest a little more time into your company’s LinkedIn presence, then Showcase Pages are a great way to target particular audiences or highlight specific products or services. Showcase Pages are a great way to raise awareness about your brand’s expertise or capabilities and drive quality leads—since each Showcase Page has its own set of followers.

However, we only recommend going this route though if your company is creating content specific to those Showcase Pages that you would create. Otherwise, your Showcase Pages will have no content relevant to its audience and the page will be ultimately useless as no one will be following it.

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Whichever route your company chooses to take once the Products and Services tab disappears, both options require companies to post content. If your company doesn’t current produce a lot of content, here are 8 ideas to jumpstart your content creation.

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