LinkedIn to Sunset Products & Services Tab on Company Pages

I was doing some research on LinkedIn for a client over the weekend and learned of an 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: