Every business needs a LinkedIn page, but you can’t just paste your website’s About page into the profile. Between character limits and the unique function of a LinkedIn profile, a business’s page requires a bit more attention and care.
But that doesn’t mean writing a company’s LinkedIn profile is complicated.
If anything, the secret to an effective profile is simplicity. Pay attention to the details, but don’t get lost in them. Keep your focus on the big picture: what your company does.
In this blog, we walk through the basics of a LinkedIn company page, covering:
- Why your business needs a LinkedIn page in the first place
- How to write an overview (and tagline) for your company’s profile
- What other organizations do right (and wrong) on their LinkedIn profiles
Let’s get started!
Why LinkedIn Is Useful for Businesses of All Sizes
At this point of digital history, most businesses have a love-hate relationship with social media. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc. — they’re necessary evils we engage with to get on the radar (or feeds) of potential customers.
LinkedIn is a bit different. While businesses can use it to market to prospects, LinkedIn is primarily a business networking platform. It’s a place where professionals talk shop about their industries, businesses share exciting updates, and employers connect with potential employees.
Given LinkedIn’s unique position as a virtual watercooler for professionals across industries, worldwide, it offers a few specific benefits to businesses that aren’t always achievable on other platforms. These benefits?
- Spread the word about your business and what it’s up to — in an industry-specific way. Your other social platforms may cater more to an audience with just one foot inside your industry. On LinkedIn, you can foster a following made up of insiders, and then speak directly to them about the work your business is doing and how it’s unique from the rest of your industry.
- Get discovered by potential customers and business partners. Being present on LinkedIn makes it easier for other businesses in your industry to find you, thanks to the “Industry” and “Specialties” sections of the company profile. This discoverability can open doors to partnerships with like-minded businesses that offer services complementary to yours, but wouldn’t have known about you if it wasn’t for your LinkedIn profile. Such partnerships — or simply being active on the platform — could also lead to relationships with customers who would never have searched for you online.
- Attract talent who connect to your mission. LinkedIn is one of the leading job sites on the internet — and because your job postings link directly to your company page, candidates can easily learn more about your company and if it’s a place they’d like to work.
The best — and, indeed, only — way to enjoy all of these benefits is to set up a company profile on LinkedIn. And according to LinkedIn, companies with complete information on their page get 30% more weekly views than those with incomplete information, so be sure to do more than add your logo and website.
Here’s what you need to be ready to add once you set up that page:
Elements of a Company Profile on LinkedIn
A company profile on LinkedIn involves a number of elements, though everything isn’t required. We’re not going to list everything here, but here are the basics you’ll want to include on yours:
- Logo and header image: Use the same logo you use everywhere else, and design a header image that’s consistent with your brand.
- Tagline: This can be the same tagline you use elsewhere, or one specifically crafted for LinkedIn. More on this later.
- Overview: This serves as a quick introduction to your company. We go deep into what your overview should cover in the next section.
- Website: Probably the most important element on this page, because even if nothing else is filled out, visitors can learn more about your company here.
- Industry: Start typing in your industry and then select from LinkedIn’s list.
- Specialty: You can list multiple.
- Location: Where in the world is your business located?
As you can see, most of these are pretty simple to address. What requires the most energy and attention are your tagline and overview.
How to Craft the Right Tagline and Overview for Your Company’s LinkedIn Profile
When someone lands on your company’s profile, they probably have one question in mind: What does this company do? Your profile must answer this question.
The two elements that are most helpful for answering this question are the tagline and overview.
- The tagline is visible under your company name and should briefly express what your company is about.
- The overview is basically your company’s bio. Depending on the length, a shortened version will appear on the “Home” page of your company profile, with the full version available under “About”.
Here are our tips for making sure your LinkedIn tagline and overview do their job:
1. Start with what you already have.
Your company’s existing tagline and website About page can serve as the starting point for your LinkedIn profile.
If your company is already fairly visible and well-known, you might use the same tagline you use elsewhere. If you’re using LinkedIn to gain visibility, you might want to opt for a longer, more descriptive tagline that you only use on the platform.
The idea here is to give visitors a super quick and snappy description of your company. The tagline won’t answer all of their questions, but it should at least give them an impression of your company’s purpose — whether the specific work your company does or its guiding mission.
For the overview, I recommend cribbing from your website’s Home and About page. You could even drop that content into Wordtune Read to see how the tool summarizes the content. Then, use that to craft a clear, concise description of your company.
2. Write to the person who’s never heard of you before.
If someone is visiting your LinkedIn page and actually reading your overview (not just clicking to your job listings), they don’t know what your company is yet. Your overview should tell them.
Your overview is the nutshell version of your website’s About page, written for someone who hasn’t yet been to your website’s “Home” page. What do they need to know in order to understand your company? Write with that in mind.
3. Don’t copy the Amazons and Googles of the world.
The bigger the company, the worse the LinkedIn overview — or at least, that’s how it seemed when I researched this article.
Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft spend the bulk of their overviews speaking abstractly about their proclaimed missions. They take forever to describe what they actually do.Don’t follow their example.
Massive companies can get away with abstract LinkedIn overviews because most people already know what they do. They know they can buy anything from A to Z on Amazon.com, find the answers to just about every question via Google, and buy a computer, tablet, phone that runs on Microsoft.
If you’re reading this article, my guess is, you’re trying to figure out how to write a profile for a business with a little less reach. You can’t waste the prime real estate of the overview section waxing eloquently about the deeper purpose of your organization. You need to use that space efficiently and effectively — to give your audience a quick understanding of exactly what you do.
So here’s your permission slip to ignore the big shots and focus on your audience.
4. Answer this question as simply as possible.
What does your company do?
Answer that question in a single sentence with absolutely zero jargon.
Aim for clarity. Someone who’s completely unfamiliar with your industry should read the sentence and immediately know what it means.
Use this as the first sentence of your overview. Then write the rest of the overview to flesh out that sentence and/or provide additional information about your business that supports your brand identity or shares some of the business’s legacy.
5. Use the space wisely.
You get 2,000 characters to describe your company in the overview, and way less for your tagline. If your LinkedIn page does well in a Google search, the first ~150 characters may be displayed on the Google results page. So: get to the point right away.
- Use the “inverted pyramid” construction favored by breaking news journalists, and write the most important information first.
- Integrate keywords from your SEO research to help you reach the right audience.
- Paste what you’ve written into Wordtune Editor and use the “tighten” feature to cut out unnecessary words.
Lessons from 6 Real Company/Organization LinkedIn Profiles
Some bigger companies do LinkedIn profiles (and overviews) right. Here are a few you can look to for inspiration on how to approach your own.
1. Greenhouse Software
Greenhouse is the hiring operating system for people-first companies that enable fair and equitable hiring.
That’s probably the most descriptive and complete tagline I’ve seen on a LinkedIn profile. In fact, it makes the first couple sentences of the overview redundant — they just say the same thing in a more wordy way.
Because the tagline is so good, the overview here basically just adds credibility by providing numbers, naming companies (like HubSpot and Buzzfeed) that Greenhouse supports, and listing awards the business has received. If your company has worked with big-name clients or received significant awards, you could also include those in your overview.
Try it: As you write your tagline or the first sentence of your overview, try doing what Greenhouse did and craft a simple one-sentence explanation of what your company does. The formula could look something like this:
[COMPANY NAME] is [what?] for [who you serve].
2. TED Conferences
TED’s LinkedIn profile is a masterclass in brand consistency — which speaks to how cohesive the TED brand is as a whole. The tagline here (Ideas worth spreading) is the same tagline found on TED.com and in every TED Talk video.
The overview does a great job of answering the basic question, What is TED?, right away, while also sharing a bit of TED’s history and highlighting how it’s gone global via the internet and local TEDx events. Because it’s written in an efficient way, the overview has room to talk about the company’s driving goal: “How can we best spread great ideas?”
Try it: Write your overview with the past, present, and future of your company in mind. Start by describing your company as it is right now. Then, briefly describe its origins and how it’s grown over the years by sticking to its mission. What future is it pressing toward?
3. Harvard Business Review
I’m not a huge fan of HBR’s tagline or the first sentence of its overview, but some organizations are hard to sum up in a single sentence. What HBR does well is it uses the rest of the overview space to flesh out those initial pieces of content.
“Harvard Business Review is the leading destination for smart management thinking.”
Huh? What does that mean?
Next sentence: “Through its flagship magazine, international licensed editions, books from Harvard Business Review Press, and digital content and tools published on HBR.org, Harvard Business Reviews provides professionals around the world with rigorous insights and best practices…”
That second sentence is long, but it makes the first one a lot more clear.
The other thing HBR does well here is it uses its overview to set expectations and standards of engagement for its audience. As a publication that writes about ideas, HBR is likely to post content that people don’t always agree with. Here, it communicates what type of interaction is welcome. This isn’t something every organization needs to do, but if your company’s work is at all controversial and you deal with a lot of internet trolls, something like this might be worth including on your profile.
Try it: If you’re struggling to sum up your company in a short sentence, change gears and write a short sentence that sort of explains what your company is. Then write a longer sentence that goes into more detail.
4. Cvent
Cvent’s tagline here is worth checking out, but I’d like to call attention to their use of sections in the overview.
Rather than just writing a narrative bio with a bunch of paragraphs, Cvent organizes its overview into four sections:
- What We Do
- Our Mission
- Why Meetings & Events
- Who We Are
This makes it easy for a visitor to find the information they’re looking for — and to see at a glance what’s important to the company. (This may have also made it easier to write the overview.)
Try it: Choose a few section headings and write a sentence or paragraph for each, concisely describing your company, what it does, and how it fits in its industry.
5. Nike
Nike is an example of a company with an incredibly strong brand identity that wouldn’t need to explain itself on LinkedIn, but still does so — and incredibly well. The overview clearly describes what Nike is and what it sells. And it accomplishes this in a single sentence.
NIKE, Inc., named for the Greek goddess of victory, is the world’s leading designer, marketer, and distributor of authentic athletic footwear, apparel, equipment, and accessories for a wide variety of sports and fitness activities.
Notice the use of a long sentence with a written list and general labels. No mention of running, soccer, football, or other particular sports — because that isn’t needed. The aim here is to clearly communicate that Nike makes athletic gear. Mission accomplished.
Try it: Instead of stuffing a description of your company into 10 words or less, write a long sentence that explains your company and lists its general services or products.
6. NASA
NASA’s overview looks like it was legitimately fun to write (or maybe that’s just my childlike space obsession talking). Not many organizations can lean into words like “universe” and a legacy that includes landing on the moon. This overview is an example of using the specifics of an organization’s work to give a well-rounded, concrete view of what the organization is all about.
Try it: Make a list of your company’s major accomplishments. Now, write a description that integrates those accomplishments in a way that shows them in line with your overall company purpose or mission.
Your company’s LinkedIn profile doesn’t need to be a stuffy, boring place.
A well-written overview can bring your company’s work to life and stir up excitement in colleagues across your industry — helping you forge new connections that will support the growth and success of your business. It just takes a bit of thought and work to clear away unnecessary content and hone in on the best way to answer that simple question: What exactly does this company do?
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