LinkedIn.com has introduced a special type of Company page they are calling Showcase pages, where organizations with multiple services, products and brands can concentrate on a single product line and aggregate its own community of interest.
For law firms, here is a digital property where you can amplify your niche expertise while maintaining the broad firm-wide focus of your LinkedIn company page. You can build a robust niche presence, with the ability to post updates, content and gather a following without drawing attention away from the overall firm.
LinkedIn has more on its blog . Company page managers can use the Edit menu to create Showcase pages for practices or firm specialties. The first step is to determine which of the firm’s unique or stronger practices merit this special attention and can carry on a conversation with LinkedIn members. For instance, a Showcase page would be a perfect place to promote a particularly strong industry practice to capitalize on the broad business base of LinkedIn users who would be attracted to the depth and range of your firm’s team.
If your firm has a blog currently, this focused content would be a natural source of status and other updates for a Showcase page. It might be a place where you encourage your blog readers and authors to go for conversations and sharing that are more discrete than the public content in a blog’s comments section. If you are one of the law firms that suppress comments, you can be sure that LinkedIn will offer a better and more protected professional space for online conversations, since each commenter will self-identify with their LinkedIn account.
Other sources of Showcase pages would be expertise that the firm can hold out as a client benefit, whether that is in complex litigation, technology processes or intellectual property, for example. With any Company page, Showcase pages will need good stewardship to garner the right kind of marketing return on investment.
Some examples of Showcase pages on Linkedin are: Microsoft Office and HP Converged Infrastructure.
It stands to reason that a good and effective Showcase page would support and expand the reach of a good and effective Company page through additional audience development and focused content distribution. Law firms can benefit from this extended reach if they have a strong and clear LinkedIn presence currently. How that can be developed is the subject of our next post.