In a crowded field of LinkedIn “experts” eager to sell you their coaching programs with promises of delivering a flood of qualified leads, Adam Houlahan, Founder and CEO of Prominence Global, distinguishes himself as one of the select few with the credentials to back up such claims. Not least, he was included in the elite LinkedIn Top Voice program in 2024.
With thousands of direct connections and an even larger following that has been absorbing and applying his LinkedIn strategies for over a decade, Houlahan’s expertise is well-established.
We sat down with him to get the inside scoop on leveraging the recent changes to LinkedIn company pages. Here’s the transcript of our conversation…
Joshua Finley:
“Great to talk with you today, Adam. Let’s get straight to it. LinkedIn company pages have been around for ages so what’s the big deal? Why do business leaders need to focus on this right now?”
Adam Houlahan:
“That’s true. Company pages have been available on LinkedIn for over a decade, but until now they’ve been pretty bland and generally haven’t got as much audience traction as personal profiles. However, nothing stands still and that’s certainly true of LinkedIn.They often change or add features and functionality that most members ignore or don’t know how to use. Recent changes to company pages have suddenly upped the ante.”
Joshua Finley:
“Sounds interesting. What’s changed and what do business leaders need to do about it?”
Adam Houlahan:
“Here’s the thing. LinkedIn is steadily widening the gap between free accounts and premium accounts, in terms of features and functionality. They’ve done that with many other aspects of the platform and now it applies to company pages as well. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.
The latest big change is that they’ve launched Premium Company pages with a suite of enhanced features that aren’t available on the standard company pages, even if the page admin has a premium personal account.
Joshua Finley:
“OK so give us a run-down of those enhanced features.”
Adam Houlahan:
“There are several. There are some that I think will be well worth implementing. Others I’m not so sure will be useful so I’ll be watching to see what happens with them.”
Joshua Finley:
“That makes sense. So which are the main features business leaders should pay attention to and consider implementing right now.”
Adam Houlahan:
“I think one of the most important new features is the Custom CTA – call to action – button. It appears right near the top of the page, highlighted in blue so it’s easy to see. And unlike posting external links in your content, which tends to get suppressed, you can use that button to point to any resource you like.
On our Prominence Global Premium Company Page, there’s a link to register for one of our forthcoming webinars.”
Joshua Finley:
“OK, that sounds like a pretty good feature for businesses to use. What else?”
Adam Houlahan:
“There’s more than we have time to cover today so I’ll just mention a few of the most important elements that I think make sense for businesses to look at.
You can showcase a customer testimonial right at the top of your page, displayed with light-colored shading different from the standard LinkedIn blue so it really stands out.
Then, just below your company overview – the About section – you can feature several highlights to promote aspects of your business. Like the custom Call To Action button, you can link to just about anything, both on and off the platform. Our Prominence Global page highlights testimonials and reviews, as well as our programs and some other publications.”
And last but by no means least there’s the auto-invite feature.”
Joshua Finley:
“I think I can guess what that might be, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions. What’s that and how does it work?”
Adam Houlahan:
“It’s specifically geared to enhance engagement with people who visit your company page. You get a limited number of invites, currently around 250, and they reset each month. Maybe it’s best if I just quote the way the people at LinkedIn themselves explain it:
‘You can grow your followers by automatically inviting members who engage with your content to follow your Page. After you enable auto-invites, members who publicly reacted, commented on, or shared your Page’s posts in the past 30 days will be invited to follow your Page. Auto-invites are also sent to members who engage with posts from admins of your Page, specifically when your Page is mentioned in the post. Invites will continue to be sent as members engage with your Page’s posts. You can see how many new followers came from auto-invites in your follower analytics.’
If you use this well it should go a long way to improving audience engagement, but it also raises a key issue for company page admins. You get out what you put in, so there has to be high-value content on your company page to generate audience engagement in the first place.”
Joshua Finley:
“That certainly makes sense and this sounds like a feature that will save business leaders and company page admins a lot of time. So, how do you get access to a LinkedIn Premium Company Page and what does it cost?”
Adam Houlahan:
“First I should mention that LinkedIn never rolls out a new feature to all members at the same time, so you may not have access to it yet, but it won’t be long. You can easily check – just go to your existing company page and look towards the bottom left-hand side of your screen. You should see a button that says ‘Try Premium Page’.
When you click that you’ll land on a sign-in page with a description of the main features, a link to the usual free trial period and the subscription cost. For Australia, it’s $109.99/month billed annually, so just check what currency it’s quoted in for your region.”
Joshua Finley:
“We’re just about out of time, so Adam, once again, thanks for sharing your insights with us today. One final question – if our readers want to find out more about your LinkedIn services for businesses what should they do?”
Adam Houlahan:
“Thanks, Joshua. My pleasure. At Prominence Global we run a range of different programs and we also publish a lot of free content on how to leverage LinkedIn. If your readers want to find out more they can reach out to me on LinkedIn or – dare I say it – visit our premium company page.”
Joshua Finley:
“Well, there you have it. All the inside running on LinkedIn’s new premium company pages from Adam Houlahan, one of the world’s leading LinkedIn experts.”
Published by: Khy Talara
