Here is the article I published on LinkedIn following the announcement of LinkedIn removing the Products & Services facility from your company page. Plus why I think this is a positive and not negative move forward for you and your company. Here is the link for the interactive article - http://ow.ly/uWaNI

1. RIP - Products and Services
Or is it?
It was quietly released at the beginning of this month to say that LinkedIn were closing
down but was this information page displayed in advance of what was happening and as
a pre-emptive strike????
(Note the date - 14th of March 2014)
Maybe be this was good marketing or making sure their customer service was ready in
advance for questions that may arise?

2. If you visited your Company Page yesterday (Monday 25th of March 2014), you would
have seen this notice had appeared:-
And then over night, an email arrived to say:-
and giving you this notice to say that as from 14th of April 2014, on your Company Page,
that the 'Products and Services' tab were to be removed and what would happen.
( The "Learn more about your options >>" link covers the items I am writing about below
and I have added some more comments to help you too)

3. Whilst many companies and marketeers may say that this is a really bad move and such
a loss of interacting with your audience, in my opinion, the answer is they are wrong!
What LinkedIn have done, is something so very clever that not many people have picked
up on (including so-called Social Media experts and Media/Marketing companies) and is
so much to your advantage not just locally but worldwide. With the advancement of
SoMeLo and Location Marketing starting to evolve more and more from Content
Marketing, LinkedIn are opening your company up to the whole world....
Last year - (and for those of you connected with myself will I have being shouting and
raving about this facility since they were launched) - LinkedIn launched Showcase
Pages and many people publicly and privately told me that I was both misguided and
misleading people by stating and promoting that companies should get on board with
these pages very quickly! I wonder what those people are thinking now?
Well, moving on.....it is time for you to really embrace Showcase and the ability of having
up to ten Showcase Pages that you can put on display to your audience. So, let's break
this down for you....
Your company page:-
Your need to re-visit and re-edit your Company Page to make sure you are providing the
information about your Company and have the correct links in place to your website, so
when people visit your Company Page, they can find out all about who you are, what
you do and your contact information.
The next part is your "Information Stream" that is going to be a real play maker for you.
This stream (or all your status updates), is where you can post and share:-
• all your latest information about what you are up to
• news items relevant to your company or your products and services
• (by promoting news items, don't think of it as promoting your promoting your competitors
but about promoting the product or service)
• news releases relating to your Showcase Page(s) including links to them
When you post anything on your Company Page, this will show up on the news feeds of
the people that are following your company, and thus allowing them to read and
comment on too as well as share it to their audience.

4. Your Showcase Page:-
LinkedIn are giving you the opportunity to have up to ten Showcase Pages for
your company to promote itself, so make sure you decide and plan these out first....
Why do I say this, because this is something once done, you have made a step forward
from which there is no way back as your page title is fixed....
(Also, there is an even bigger opportunity for you here - that you can be your
own Facebook, Google or Twitter! Sorry, but I am keeping this little gem back for
my clients as you can appreciate, I can't give all my secrets away for nothing).
By creating this Showcase Page for your company, you are creating a fully interactive
page all about that one product (or product range) or service that your company offers.
Furthermore, it not all You, You and You! As I mentioned above, this gives you the
opportunity to promote how this product or service is being used world wide, even if it is
by a competitor - this knowledge sharing....
Thus, the Showcase is completely dedicated to either that product, product range or a
service your company offer's. It could or maybe be divisions of your company and you
want to promote those.....
Here you can post new releases to the product and it's range (or services) news updates
on this and this is the real winner for me I believe, is the ability of discussing and
promoting that product or service and interacting with your audience. The interaction and
discussions gives you the chance to entice a wider audience to understand more about
your Company and in turn becoming a prospect and hopefully a client too....
This can - if used correctly - be a good competition section for your audience as well!
The opportunities are endless.....
So, I hope this has give you food for thought and may help you to understand why
Products and Services hasn't died or damaged your Company Page BUT opened
your Company up to a whole new world and one that will be very exciting....
You can learn more about Ian Calvert and how he can help you further, by visiting
his website here
Note - images used here were taken from searching on specific words or phrases
via www.google.com and their images section.