How to Set up a LinkedIn Company Page for Your Private Practice
While Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are all fantastic for marketing your practice, it’s important to not forget about LinkedIn. Once seen simply as a place for job searches and resume updates, in recent years LinkedIn has become one of the most effective tools for marketing your business online.
As a business-first social network, LinkedIn has many benefits that Facebook and Twitter do not. Because of this, it’s rated the top social network for lead-generation.
LinkedIn is particularly well suited for therapists’ social media marketing because its benefits are two-fold: you can network with potential clients AND network with possible referral sources.
How?
With the integration of a news feed on LinkedIn, it’s now quite common to see posts regarding work-related stress, career advice, work-life balance, and more. This presents a great opportunity for Mental Health Professionals as you can create content that caters to these topics and lets potential clients know you are there to help.
In addition to connecting with potential clients, there are also many opportunities to connect with other professionals in (or adjacent to) your field. Building business connections can open the door to new sources of client referrals you otherwise may not have had access to – for example, Medical Providers, Coaches, or other Therapists.
Convinced yet?
Great!
In this article, we’ll walk you through the 4 primary steps to set up your private practice’s LinkedIn page properly.
Then we’ll turn our focus to the 5th and final step – fine-tuning your LinkedIn page to really make sure your practice stands out from the rest.
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Step 1 – Create A LinkedIn Company Page Using Your Personal Account
Much like Facebook, LinkedIn also requires that you create and manage company pages through your personal LinkedIn account, so you’ll need to log into that account before we go any further.
Once you’re logged in, expand the ‘Work’ tab in your main menu and click on the final option to “Create a Company Page”.
Step 2 – Select Your Page Type
On the next page, you will be asked to choose between 4 different options.
The majority of private practices will fall under the category of “Small business” but select whichever option best applies to your business.
Step 3 – Basic Company Info
This page will ask for all the important information about your practice.
Page Identity
This is where you’ll indicate the name of your practice (which will automatically populate your LinkedIn URL) and your website’s URL.
Company Details
For the Industry field, we recommend using “Mental Health Care” but this is completely up to you.
You’ll need to tell LinkedIn how many employees are currently working for your practice and then select the Company type.
Here, the most common choices will be “Partnership” for group practices or “Sole proprietorship” for solo practices.
LinkedIn Profile Details
Finally, you will need to upload your logo and enter a tagline to briefly describe your practice and the services you provide.
The recommended size for your logo image is 300 pixels wide x 300 pixels tall.
In the tagline area, you will have limited characters (120 characters, including spaces and punctuation) to explain your practice and capture the attention of potential connections. So be creative and say a lot by saying a little!
Your tagline should also include the main keyword (or search phrase) you’ve optimized your practice’s website for.
Note: This tagline can always be changed at a later time.
Finally, check the box to verify that the information you’ve provided is correct, then click “Create page”.
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Step 4 – Detailed Company Info
Once you’ve filled in all the basic fields to create your business page, you’ll want to complete your page set up by adding a cover photo, location details and additional content.
Cover Photo
Just like other social media networks, your LinkedIn cover photo is the largest image on your company profile, and it appears across the top of your page.
It’s important that you choose an image that is visually dynamic. You want a cover photo that will capture your visitors’ attention and lure them in to take a closer look at the rest of your page.
The recommended size for this image is 1,128 pixels wide x 191 pixels tall.
Description & Specialties
Unlike your tagline, the description is your chance to give visitors a more comprehensive overview of your company and the services you provide. This will be displayed near the bottom of your company page, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take time to write a great description for your practice.
If someone makes the effort to scroll down and find your description, they’ve already demonstrated that they’re interested in your practice. Don’t disappoint them by not providing the information they’re looking for.
Furthermore, be sure to use your website’s most important keywords in this description, so people can find your LinkedIn company page through relevant online searches.
To add this info, simply click the “Add description” button from the ‘Build Your Page’ section at the top of your new company page:
Then, in the same popup window, you can also add up to 20 specialties (keywords) that are most relevant to your company and your services. This will also help with search engine optimization and online visibility of your company page.
Location
Also within the ‘Build Your Page’ section at the top of your new company page is a button to add your practice location:
How to Make Your LinkedIn Business Profile Awesome
Create LinkedIn Showcase Pages for Each of Your Specialty Services
In the same way you (hopefully) have individual specialty service pages on your private practice website, LinkedIn showcase pages are an extension of your LinkedIn company page and can be used to highlight individual services you provide.
They allow you to customize your messages for different segments of your audience. LinkedIn users can follow showcase pages for topics or products that they’re interested in. This means that the content they see in their news feeds will be more relevant to them, which is likely to result in higher engagement.
To create a Showcase Page, expand the Admin tools menu and select “Create Showcase Page” from the list of options:
Then, simply follow the prompts to create each Showcase Page the same way you did your main Company Page.
Use Featured Updates to Highlight Important Posts
Just as you can pin a tweet to the top of your Twitter profile, you can also set any post you publish on your LinkedIn Company page as ‘featured’, so it is highlighted at the top of your company’s home page.
Use this feature to promote an event, hype a sale, or draw attention to a specific promotion or piece of content – make it a featured post so more people see it.
To do this, click the 3 dots in the upper righthand corner of the post you want to pin and select “Pin to top.”
Market Yourself on LinkedIn by Posting Regularly
The best way to market your practice’s new business page is to create a regular posting schedule.
Posting regularly and predictably not only gets your name out there so your posts can start showing up in people’s LinkedIn searches, but it also helps to build your brand’s reputation and trustworthiness online.
Think of it this way: how much less would you trust a business whose LinkedIn company page has only ever posted a couple of times? On the flip side, how much more would you trust a business that has been regularly putting out relevant posts every week for the last 6 months?
Along with developing a dependable posting schedule, it’s also important to keep your posts thematically similar. You want to make sure you’re attracting your ideal clients by posting content that they will find interesting or helpful. If you’re posting content that’s all over the board, it will be much more difficult to build up a dedicated group of followers.
Little touches like these really help to pull your posting strategy together into something truly professional – and effective.
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