Wanting to do more content marketing on LinkedIn? Now you can as the site is opening up to more granular updates on company pages.

LinkedIn has more than 3 million company pages at the moment, but experimented in a pilot program with showcase pages for Adobe, Cisco, HP and Microsoft. Instead of just offering information about the company and job posting, these companies were able to post more updates about their various products.

Perhaps you’ve seen Microsoft’s company page for its Office product? The page offers a product overview with descriptions of five aspects of what the software will do as well as an informational video. Cisco Security also has a page in the pilot program for its TRAC Fahrenheit product. The page included pictures and links to further information about the product.

The changes made by LinkedIn will allow marketers to use the content as
sponsored updates that will appear between the updates from users’ contacts and posts by people/businesses they follow. Some industry experts believe this
could be LinkedIn’s attempt to boost its advertising revenue, which was $74.9 million in the second quarter of 2013. Sponsored updates are LinkedIn’s rendition of native ads, which appear in users’ news feeds.

Marketers could be enticed to try out paid promotion if they’re already
accustomed to creating more content and attracting more followers. LinkedIn
wants to grow its ad business by having brands promote their white papers and
links to the content that LinkedIn is already publishing on their company pages. Sponsored updates have been available since July.

This represents quite a shift for LinkedIn, which has led the company’s CEO to
contend that they’re in a transition period currently. It’s no longer a site for simple business networking and dropping resumes – it’s becoming a more
powerful tool for marketers. If you are looking to boost your content marketing
on LinkedIn contact Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions, we can help you do just that.