Marketing on LinkedIn with Company Follows?

Or, so they suggested today. LinkedIn announced that they are going to announce how they plan to beef up the Company Follow concept on their site. Those of you who are unaware of Company Follows, it's like a Facebook Page for your company on LinkedIn without any of the cool marcom tools. To date, it's been rather anemic in it's business_networking_linkedin-resized marketing use. Most people just follow the company they work for, if at all. Gaining followers has never been important...until today, supposedly. The vague report didn't reveal much of anything, but served it's intended purpose - getting speculators talking on CNBC, online and potentially helping their stock price jump back above their over-priced IPO. For us mere mortals, this is what speculators and cheerleaders suggest we need to do immediately:

Get Followed - LinkedIn surmises that there are only so many brands one can actively pay attention to. This applies to LinkedIn as they obviously haven't paid much attention to Facebook Page Like numbers. Would LinkedIn have a limit on the number of companies you can follow - like the number of groups you can join? If so, companies will need to steal you away from another. This means companies need to be focused on getting followers early, which they suggested. What leverage that will provide remains to be seen. If I'm a company, I'd rather pay for highly qualified followers versus everyone on the platform.

Watch for Their Announcement - I guess being in the Bay Area there seems to be a "major announcement" every two days. Maybe it's me, but I'm really tired of the publicly traded ploy of press conferences announcing the announcement of something big. Until there is something other than speculation I have shows to watch on my DVR from last week.

Majority of Users Are On, Then Off - They can't sell ad space if they can't show time-on-site or retention. There are only a few of us that spend time actually on LinkedIn building relationships in areas like Groups, Answers and using the paid In-Mail services to network and hunt for leads. The rest have a profile and just leave it up. The next time they change jobs they come back and update their profile. With today's "announcement of the announcement" they are carving out a strategy to lure all those others away from their Facebook profile and over to LinkedIn. In a down economy with many people looking for jobs, using companies to build loyalty to your platform seems like a smart plan - given the announcement really has teeth.

From my perspective, marketing on LinkedIn is all about participation. Medium to large companies will embrace whatever LinkedIn announces next week so they aren't left out. They have the resources to support this and every other BSMO (bright shiny marketing object) where the rest of the businesses need to spend their resources wisely. Don't get spun out over every new announcement unless it will directly add to or deplete from your revenue stream. More next week with the actual announcement.

What could LinkedIn do for your business to become the most valuable online platform you use?