Sometimes social media platforms can make you look silly...

    

  

Recently we presented to a client about making the most of LinkedIn's functionality and the various features they should be using on the platform. This week some of that information is completely redundant; LinkedIn is making a change to the company pages having announced the Products and Services tab is to disappear on the 14th April. 

So there we were demonstrating the fatBuzz LinkedIn Products and Services tab with a complete list of services, healthy impressions and some good recommendations only to discover it is being dropped later this month. Read more from LinkedIn here...

The problem with social media marketing is knowing where to concentrate your efforts and we've long said the hub of your social media marketing activity should be on a platform that you own and control. There are many tools and platforms out there that will help extend the reach of your message but you should take whatever steps you can to 'future proof' your investment by syndicating content to them rather than creating the content on them.

The changes to LinkedIn means we will lose the recommendations we have on the Products and Services tabs; LinkedIn say we can recover them by copying them to our own document before the 14th April - not really a great result!  

The advice from LinkedIn is to use Showcase Pages in future. Showcase pages are intended to extend your presence on LinkedIn by featuring specific aspects of your business, they are intended for long-term engagement rather than to promote short-term events or campaigns. Read more about LinkedIn Showcase Pages here... 

To promote short-term campaigns you should use Company Updates. You can post and share items like company news, promotions, relevant industry articles, SlideShare presentations, and Vimeo and YouTube videos. Read more about Company Updates here...

The topic of the April New Media Breakfasts is "Choosing the right tools" where we will be looking at how to decide which tools are best suited to your goals; as part of this we will be looking at what you can do to limit the impact of sudden changes to social media platforms and the functionality they offer. You can find out more about the New Media Breakfast presentations here...

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