Recently I did a webcast recording for an awesome marketing company talking about LinkedIn Company Profiles.

The presentation was on how a company can/should market on LinkedIn, and many people gravitate towards what they think the most important thing is: setting up a “Company Profile.”

Right after I did the recording I found this post, The LinkedIn Company Profile: Is your company properly represented on LinkedIn? It is written by Viveka Von Rosen, who is a nice person, and does a lot of LinkedIn training.

She breaks down the Company Profile on LinkedIn, and presents some cons.  It’s an interesting read.

My position, though, is that most companies shouldn’t post their Company Profile on LinkedIn.

Before I go on, I need to reiterate that Company Profiles is a goldmine of information… but it’s more valuable to the person looking at the company than the company itself.

If a company wants to market on LinkedIn I WOULD NOT recommend they do it with a Company Profile. There are plenty of things a company could/should do on LinkedIn, but opening up an employee directory is, I think, not a good tactic.

The goldmine is for salespeople who want to sell in, vendors, competitors, recruiters, job seekers, etc.  It’s a great place to get awesome information to get into the company, not necessarily brand the company, sell more stuff, etc. Here are some snippets from her post, with my comments:

>> “…it might behoove you to see if you have a Company profile on LinkedIn that you didn’t even know about!” [YES, I totally agree... go see if your company has a Company Profile.]

>> “…LinkedIn does little to control unsanctioned creation or editing of a Company profile!” This is a major security and branding issue that needs to be fixed… for now, it’s a loophole.

>> “Do an audit of your company!  LinkedIn automatically lists the employees of your company when they put your company name into their personal profiles.” [how bad is this problem?  LinkedIn, the company, can't even control it - many people say they work at LinkedIn and show up with LI as their employer... oops!]

>> “[Company Profiles]…can be a powerful channel for client engagement.” [I don't see how this can be... a powerful channel for client engagement?  If there is any engagement it is likely with the wrong people.... of course prospects can find the right person, and maybe it happens, but I'd weigh that against others who you don't want networking into your company... :s]

My recommendation for companies to market on LinkedIn?  More on that later

I have been at a conference most of the week and am sitting in the New Orleans airport (it’s Saturday morning)…. I heard about the new “follow company” feature on LinkedIn… you can read more details about it on this TechCrunch post.

I haven’t poked around but on the surface this seems like a great idea that makes a lot of sense.

A major issue, which you’ll see on the first comment of the TechCrunch post, as well as many comments from post titled Why is there an impostor in my company in LinkedIn? (like this comment from Susan Baird), is that Companies is still somewhat messed up since it is difficult to verify the truthfulness of data shown on a company page… read all the comments on that post to get an idea of the problem.

I got an email from a friend in Washington state asking why there is someone in her LinkedIn Company page that she doesn’t know.  This is a very small company, she is an owner, and she would clearly know who she has hired and/or paid.

The way you end up in a Company in LinkedIn is simply to add the company to your current (or past) employers.  In your Profile just say whether you do or did work there.

It’s that simple.

Here’s the company page for Oneicity, the company in question:

When I click on the “marketing engineer’s” profile, I see this:

I have no idea why that person put that company in their profile, but just by doing it they show up on the company profile page.

I think LinkedIn needs to put some kind of QA in place so the Company admin can approve people, and/or take people out…  on the other hand, a company might keep it too scrubbed (which won’t be good, and will ultimately negate the integrity of the information showing).

The challenge is not trivial… what would you suggest LinkedIn incorporates?

In the last post I talked about how to cheat the system by joining Groups (in regards to contacting people you find on LinkedIn).

Here’s another tactic, though, which I’ve used.  When I find a target contact I will use the internal messaging if I have to.  I like LinkedIn Introductions, to a point… but what might be better is just a plain old email to the target contact.

However, if you are not a first degree contact it might be really hard to find an email for the person.

Now it’s time to start thinking like a recruiter.  If a recruiter found the perfect candidate, and the email wasn’t there, that would not stop them from moving forward.

A recruiter would look for another way to contact the person – phone (whitepages.com) or email or something else.

Recently I found someone who I wanted to contact.  It was the CEO of a company.  In doing some company research (first on LinkedIn, to find other employees there, then on their blog) I found the naming convention of their corporate email addresses.

How?  I found two employees who had their email addresses posted online (0utside of LinkedIn).  Both of their email addresses had the same naming convention… so I GUESSED on the CEO’s email.

It worked – within 24 hours I had a reply to my email, from the CEO.

Just because you can’t message someone through LinkedIn’s mechanisms, don’t stop!  Find other ways to get in front of that person – when I’m stuck I think “what would a recruiter do?”  Tacky, I know, but they do this stuff all day long.

This last week I’ve been working on “business development,” or looking for key contacts in industries and companies that I want to communicate with.

Specifically, I’m looking for channel partners to help me move forward with my outplacement offering.  I should say, it’s more of an alternative, or even a supplement, to outplacement – by no means do I think I’m going to compete head-to-head with traditional outplacement.

I find myself doing more and more searches in the LinkedIn Companies search than anywhere else.

The old Jason would have done a regular, simple search in the regular search box, which by default searches on “people.”

The new Jason clicks on Companies (at the top) or changes the default search from “Search People” to “Search Companies.” I’m thrilled, elated and impressed with what I’m finding.

I find all relevant people in a target company.  The most relevant, for me, have become those who are currently at the company (the first grouping of people).  I look at the contacts based on (a) their job function/title, and (b) their connection to me.  I find the people I want to contact and then reach out to them.

Some people get an inmail or message, although I have to be careful with those because I only have so many.  Others will get a direct email.

I’ll blog more about some of the aspects in this post next week, but I have to say, I’m IMPRESSED with the LinkedIn Companies functionality – I have been saying it’s the second best thing about LinkedIn, and I’ve come to fall in love with it.

Are you using Companies yet? If not, I bet you could magnify the value you are getting out of LinkedIn by creating a Companies strategy.  (I touch on this in my LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD)

I have heard for a few months that you can add your own company to LinkedIn’s Company section, which is an amazing (relatively) new addition.  I could never find the link to add a company, though… until recently.

I’m pretty sure I found the link to add a new company in the Network Updates section (on the home page), after one of my contacts had add his company.  I immediately checked the link to add a company and am pretty sure this will work for you – not sure where they are going to put the “add a company” link next, but this page might always work: Add a company on LinkedIn.

Here’s what you see:

I highlighted the part about “current employees…” they way they check that, I’m pretty sure, is by sending an email verification to your company email (not gmail, yahoo, etc.).

I am not going to do this because I have a very small company and don’t want anyone to find out who my incredible employees are (and take them away from me :p).  If you aren’t worried about that, then go add yoru company on LinkedIn