By now you should have read that to get found on LinkedIn, you have to have a well optimized personal LinkedIn Profile. This will, of course, also get you found on Google as well as LinkedIn. If not, check out this article as well as other blog articles I have written.
But what about your company? Many business owners don’t even have a Company profile on LinkedIn. And even if they do, their Company is not being found by their potential and present clients.
Why? For the simple reason that their Company is not correctly named, nor is the description content optimized properly.
This is 
not your fault. When first setting up a Personal profile on LinkedIn, and adding a company name to the Experience section, LinkedIn prompts one to “create” a company profile. All that is needed is a Company name and an email address at that Company. You do not have to be the CEO or Founder or President to create your Company profile. Any employee with an email address at your Company can set up your Company’s profile on LinkedIn.
I doubt many employees do this maliciously, but as an executive / owner of your own business, it might behoove you to see if you have a Company profile on LinkedIn that you didn’t even know about! To do this, simply go to the Company Search Box and type in your company name:
You will also want to keep tabs on your Company because right now ANY person who currently works at your Company can edit the Company profile. Scary, right? Even scarier is the fact that no one seems to know this, and LinkedIn does little to control unsanctioned creation or editing of a Company profile! What you can see is the last person who edited the Company Profile – so you can either thank them, chastise them, or fire them!
What else can you do?
Do Your Have a Company Profile?
- Make sure that as the Company Owner or Executive you have a personal profile on LinkedIn
- Make sure that that your Company Name in your Experience section matches the name of the Company in the Company Profile.
- Once you have access and can edit your Company Profile, rename the Company name to what it should be (In case there are spelling errors or other naming issues – Inc. instead of Corp., etc) You will have to ask LinkedIn to do this for you at customer_service@LinkedIn.com
- Make sure that you have all your keywords in your Company Description – you have 2000 characters to describe your Company’s Product or Service, the benefits to your clients, some features you offer.
- Do an audit of your company! LinkedIn automatically lists the employees of your company when they put your company name into their personal profiles.
So make sure that everyone you think should be in your company is there, and no one is there who shouldn’t be! If someone claims to be an employee of your company, you can report them at: abuse@LinkedIn.com
Who here doesn't belong?
If there is someone listed as current employee who is, in fact, a past employee, simply ask them to change the “current” setting in their experience section to “past” by unclicking the “current” tab.
So now you should be current, clean and clear! We often forget about Company Profiles on LinkedIn. But they can be a powerful channel for client engagement. So make sure your company is correctly titled, optimized, and reflective of your brand!
If you have any more suggestions, questions or comments, please let me know!
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I just set this up for one of my clients – and even though I have a company email address – I logged out of my account – logged in with hers – and then set up the company profile. I have some questions about the function of this system though.
1. The people who can be connected to this company are not “employees” -they are people who have been certified to use the company name, so if they put in their work history this company name – it’s not as though they are working for this company. Sorry – that’s prob confusing!
2. I can’t figure out how to input for “new hires” etc…
In other words – errrrrr – not very fun.
On another note – not happy that Private Group discussions are not private unless you modify your settings for ALL Group discussions – wish I could set those one by one.
Happy LinkedIn customer – sortof -
You are not alone in your frustrations!
It’s a real problem!
First of all – ANYONE – can say they are working at your company simply by putting the company name in the “Experience” field. You can report them at abuse@Linkedin.com But quite frankly, I have had those same three showing up as employees of mine for over a year – I have reported it many times, and LinkedIn has done nothing about it
Unfortunately there is no way of inputting “New Hires” other than to ask them to create a LinkedIn profile (or creating one for them)
LinkedIn auto-populates this field with the members as they fill in the “Company name” field in their experience section (as above) Sigh
TOTALLY agree with you on the Private Group setting.
Its a great tool. It’s free (well, LinkedIn has a free account) but I would do things differently. Unfortunately, they never ask
Linked In has a number of privacy issues that I think we can all relate too. These are issues that will no doubt come to a head in the future if nothing is done to change the ease in which people can access you company.
I agree whole-heartedly. Its kind of scary, isn’t it?
Even scarier is that some people point to their “position” at your company to validate their knowledge and expertise. Argh!
I actually had someone contact me once for a reference on one of these fake employees of mine!
Thank you Jason! You are the best!
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