Linkedin, The Professional Social Network
Linkedin was created in 2002 by Reid Hoffman, a philosophy graduate who dreamed of creating his own software company and advising others of the same type. Linkedin emerged as a social network focused on the world of work, starting with personal profiles, and soon after expanded to company profiles. In 2011 the company went public, increasing its profits and popularity, becoming the second most used social network in the United States, after Facebook, and reaching 130 million users worldwide that same year. The following year Linkedin began to buy smaller companies or those in decline, as a form of investment and also to include the services they brought to its portal. This is the clear example of what happened with Bright and Linda.com, the first developed an algorithm capable of connecting companies and users, while the second was an online portal that provided a variety of online courses, both acquisitions made it possible for LinkedIn to become what it is today.
How LinkedIn differs from other social networks
If YouTube is the social network par excellence for posting videos, and Instagram is the queen for posting photos, what sets LinkedIn apart from other social networks is its focus and main objective, which is to provide users with job offers. LinkedIn goes further and merges the functions of a job search portal and the actions of a social network to also offer networking tools in a light and innovative way. It achieves this through conversation groups and training courses, which it provides online through LinkedIn Learning. Other actions offered by LinkedIn, which in turn shares with social networks such as Instagram and Facebook, are the possibility of creating events, making stories, publishing posts; allowing users to interact with the content that interests them, give their opinion and express their reaction thanks to the wide variety of emotions provided in the posts (curious, happy, recommend …).
Linkedin continues to innovate and now combines the functions and objectives of a job search portal and the interactivity, variety and ease of social networks.
Do I have to have a company page or a personal company profile?
Knowing the variety of actions that we can carry out thanks to Linkedin, we must now think about what type of profile we should create. We can choose between creating a personal company profile or a company page. The personal company profile has the same functions and tools as a personal profile, but instead of being dedicated to show the profile of a person, academic achievements, former jobs, training, etc., it is used to show the profile of a company. On the other hand, we have the company page, it is a section totally dedicated to the company but it does not have as many tools and facilities as the personal profile dedicated to it. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages but if we want to get the maximum profitability from Linkedin the ideal is to have both options. Below we explain the benefits of both options separately.
The advantages of having a personal profile for my company
Having a personal profile for my company on Linkedin gives us presence on the platform and a good positioning, which is essential to reach a greater number of potential customers. In addition, the personal profile provides us with several tools that will help us to know our audience in greater depth, some of them are the analytics and LinkedIn Ads. The first one provides us with a large amount of data that will help us to segment our audience and have more information about them to communicate better with them, the second one helps us to reach new audiences more easily. Another existing utility in the personal profile is the possibility of sending messages to contacts or clients, to build professional relationships with other profiles, this tool does not exist in the company pages. Finally, communicating vacancies, new positions in our company, is much easier through a personal profile and also gives us access to LinkedIn Publisher, a tool created to publish long articles on the platform.
The advantages of having a company page
Having a company page on Linkedin has advantages and disadvantages, on the one hand the page is a more passive way to communicate with the public, since it does not allow us to send messages, it transmits, but at the same time we are perceived in a more professional way than in the personal company profiles. The page also allows us to update the status of the company, i.e. if we are looking for personnel, if there are vacancies for specific positions, etc. On the other hand, it gives us the possibility to connect with our employees, since it offers the option to connect our company with the employees that they have in Linkedin of the company where they work. Despite the differences there are also shared tools between the personal company profile and the company page such as the option to publish ads through LinkedIn Ads and the publication of posts or content.
As mentioned above, the best option to get the most out of LinkedIn is to create a personal company profile and a company page, in order to take advantage of all the tools provided by the website.
