• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, November 19, 2013

Building on its company pages launched three years ago, LinkedIn on Tuesday introduced “showcase pages” that allow companies to highlight specific brands or products by creating dedicated sites for them on the professional network.
 
As with company pages, users will be able to follow showcase pages for brands, products, business units or corporate initiatives to get relevant updates in their feeds. Initial examples include pages for Microsoft Office, Adobe Marketing Cloud, HP Converged Infrastructure and Cisco Security.
 
“Through Showcase Pages, companies can segment content to distinct audiences who are interested in different aspects of their business. It’s a new way to directly engage the right people in the right context,” stated LinkedIn in announcing the extension to company pages.
 
The move marks an expansion of LinkedIn’s broader goal of serving as a content marketing hub for large companies, which can now promote their showcase page posts directly through Sponsored Updates that appear in users’ news feeds. For LinkedIn, more content created by businesses means more potential advertising as well.
 
LinkedIn indicated that showcase pages can be set up easily by company page administrators by going to the “Edit” dropdown menu on their dashboards and selecting “Create a Showcase Page.” Businesses, which can operate up to 10 showcase pages, will be able to track page performance through existing analytics tools.
 
In June, the company announced surpassing 3 million company pages, so millions more showcase pages could flow from that base, depending on the demand. Company pages already include a “products and services” tab, so some may not go beyond that or other content posted on their main page. But LinkedIn is aware that global brands have created multiple pages on Facebook, so it is competing in the space.