Just over a month ago LinkedIn introduced its company follow button, a feature that makes engagement with customers, colleagues and potential future employees easier. While browsing a company’s LinkedIn profile, a user can now follow all of that brand’s updates and shared content simply by clicking the Follow button. Brands can even add the Follow button to their own company’s website by visiting LinkedIn’s Developers page.
Well, the fun doesn’t stop there. Earlier this week LinkedIn announced two new features for company pages: Targeted Updates and Follower Statistics.
Targeted Updates
Targeted Updates allow companies to send status updates to a specific segment of their follower list rather than the entire group.
Say lonelybrand publishes an article about social media and insurance. We want to share it with all interested parties, but chances are, our entire network isn’t necessarily interested in insurance-specific content. With the new targeting options, we can share strictly with followers who are members of then insurance industry.
Companies will have the option to send messages according to industry, seniority, job function, company size, non-company employees and geography.
Follower Statistics
LinkedIn provides a bit of under the hood support for Targeted Updates with Follower Statistics, a dashboard packed with analytics on exactly who is interacting with your content.
Targeted Updates and Follower Statistics are currently only available to early release partners AT&T, Dell, Samsung Mobile and Microsoft. The rest of us will see the update roll out over the next couple weeks.
In the mean time, we want to know how accurate LinkedIn’s statistics really are. The professional network claims that 70% of its over 150 million users already follow, or would follow, companies on the site. Do you follow companies on LinkedIn? Chime in on our Facebook poll.
