What You Can Do About LinkedIn's Decision To Sunset Products & Services Pages

I was doing some research on LinkedIn for a client over the weekend and learned of the upcoming major change to the Company Pages feature. As of April 14, 2014, the Products & Services Page/Tab (with all those recommendations you collected) will no longer be supported. Until then, you can edit existing products and services, but the ability to add new products and services will no longer be supported.

Wait. What?? Yes, it's true. Like many companies, LinkedIn sunsets (or retires) features, products and/or services based on usage (or lack thereof) or a variety of other reasons. Like it or not, when you're using a freemium service, you can expect this to happen rather often, and it also happens even when you're paying.

A letter went out to Company Page administrators today explaining the upcoming change, and then here's what I found in their Help Center:

At LinkedIn, we aim to provide a simple and efficient experience for our members. To do this, 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. So on April 14th, the Products & Services tab will be removed from all LinkedIn Company Pages. What does this mean for your page?

Your Products & Services tab will be removed on April 14, 2014. Until then, you can edit existing products and services, but the ability to add new products and services will no longer be supported.

Company Page Administrators can recover Products & Services Recommendations directly from the tab by copying the information into your own document. You should have also received an email regarding this change and can download a copy by clicking a link from within that message.

Where on my Company Page should I put this information now?

While Products & Services is going away, companies can get more visibility for their products and services by using 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).

Use caution going forward

Because of LinkedIn's history of unexpected changes like this one, I always caution my clients against investing too much time on LinkedIn features that they can't back-up or are mission critical to their corporate identities/brand. For example, two of my tips:

  1. Output your Connections list at least once a month and save the files on your hard drive or in Google Docs.
  2. Copy and paste the recommendations you've received for your products or services (from your Company Page) to your web site or into a blog post.

Here's my current Products & Services page for Bella Domain Media just so you have a visual:

What will you do to salvage some of the work you've put into building your Products & Services page? If you have you used the P&S page to develop "social proof" for your business or your brands, what other LinkedIn feature will you likely focus on instead?

(Like this post? Please FOLLOW me here! Need help navigating this change or developing Showcase Pages for your business? You can check out my Work With Me page or contact me and let's talk!)

Logan Nathan

Founder and CEO at i4T Global | Digital Transformation Influencer | Serial Start-up Entrepreneur | Board Director/Advisor | Angel Investor

10y

Agree Sandy. I am with you on the 2 tips. I certainly hope that LinkedIn is learning from the user feedback and think about the easy migration path to any new changes! All of us welcome these new changes heading in the right direction like you have pointed out but the issue here is LinkedIn will have to work lot harder to retain user's TRUST level if they want to keep moving and take this wonderful platform they have created with their loyal support base intact and rapidly growing in the future!

Adrienne Tange

Instructional Design Consultant

10y

Great post and very timely. And why did they choose April 14? People are already under pressure to make the April 15th tax date.

Linda Ruth

Audience Development and Digital Marketing Strategies for Publishers

10y

Thanks Sandy. Great heads up, great tips!

Deborah Collins Babb, Psy.D.

Educational Psychologist, CEO, EdPsych East Bay

10y

Sandy Jones-Kaminski, what is the impact going to be for small business owners/ service providers such as myself? And what advice do you give on things to do before this effect goes into effect, aside from copying recommendations?

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