by 
By Julie Lyons
LinkedIn recently announced that it would be removing the Products & Services tab from all LinkedIn Company Pages effective April 14, 2014.
According to an announcement on LinkedIn “we’re continuously evaluating how our current products and features are used, and seeking new ways to focus our resources on building the best products. This sometimes results in the retirement of certain features.”
What does this mean for your page?
The most significant casualty of this change is the loss of user recommendations that were shown on the Products & Services tab. Previously, users could post a written recommendation of the product(s) found on a company page.
If you didn’t manually archive your recommendations before April 14th, you can submit a request to LinkedIn to have them sent to you. Administrators have until May 30th, 2014 to submit a request.
You can request a copy of the recommendations that were present as of March 4, 2014. The recommendations will be available through Customer Support until Friday, May 30, 2014.
Note: If you want to use the recommendations in promotional or marketing materials you’ll need to get permission from the individual who made the recommendation.
Since most attention will now be on your company homepage, now is the time to make sure that all profile fields are filled out completely. Add Company Specialties and list a few Featured Groups. You could also consider adding some of the copy from your former product page.
LinkedIn suggests using the Showcase Pages and Company Updates as an alternative for sharing content:
- Showcase Pages allow you to extend your Company Page presence by creating a dedicated page for prominent products and services. A Showcase Page should be used for building long-term relationships with members who want to follow specific aspects of your business, and not for short-term marketing campaigns.
- Company Updates are key to building relationships with your page followers. When your followers engage with your updates, it spreads your message to their networks and provides you even greater reach. Updates can be seen by your followers not just on your Company Page, but also on their newsfeed (across all devices including mobile).
For additional details, visit the LinkedIn help page.
