Every social media platform is trying to squeeze out more cash from their users. For a long time the platforms made a killing on ads, forcing brands to pay up to get their content and ads in front of their user base. The new trend in town is subscriptions. Every channel is pumping out a subscription as means to augment their flatlining revenues from paid advertising.

LinkedIn has been on the bandwagon of subscriptions for a long time, but I'm not sure if you spotted this, but LinkedIn has quietly rolled out Premium Company Page. 

Over on the company page, they are rolling out Premium features for the company page. I'm not going to lie, they look pretty decent too. At the end of the article, I'll give you my opinion on who it is useful for and whether it's worth the money.

Premium Company Page Features

These new features are:

So let's look at the features in a little more detail.

When you sign up, you get six features. I'm guessing that more are on the way as the obvious gap tells me there is more in the works. 

I'm going to walk you through each feature and what it does, so you can make the decision as to whether it's relevant for you. Just a quick point, I'm an admin on a lot of pages and at the time of writing, about 50% of them didn't have this option, so I'm assuming it's being rolled out. Interestingly, it's available on pages which smaller followings, but not the ones with larger followings. I'm not sure at this point if this is a feature available to all pages. I've tried to get some info from LinkedIn, but it's pretty limited and sketchy as to how this will evolve (or even if it will stick around). LinkedIn have a habit of trying features and then culling them if people don't buy into them.

Anyway, here are the features.

Add a custom call to action

The custom call to action feature allows you to add a link not only to your page, but on every post that you put out. This will allow people who see your content to click a link and visit your landing page or website. At the moment you are limited to the following options:

• Visit website
• Contact us
• Learn more
• Sign up
• Register
• Visit portfolio
• Visit store

Whilst the choice of buttons is limited. The fact you can have a link on every post really does make up for the limitations.

Every post will now be a traffic driver.

Here's how it looks:

See who's visited your Page

This is a cool feature. When you have a paid plan, you'll be able to see who has visited your page. Similar to how it works on profiles, you can see who is looking and checking out your page. This gives lots of opportunities for prospecting and finding leads, as well as seeing which of your competitors are stalking you.

It's a simple feature, but could be powerful for timing your outreach and easy win conversations. The only frustration is, you can only see 7 people. This could be annoying if LinkedIn show you random people. I hope they have some cool algorithm behind this so the person you see is interesting or relevant.

Take a look:

Stand out with a custom testimonial

Again, another cool feature. Being able to share social proof straight on the page is another nudge to help people see why they should enquire, sign up or stick around. Social proof is critical to getting leads nowadays as there is so much BS. 

It's pretty simple, you can add copy and insert the picture of a person. It's a nice feature. I like it.

Here is how it looks:

Get help from AI to draft Page Content

This is similar to the AI drafter which has been live for a while on Premium Profiles. I'm not a fan of the AI drafter to be honest, but it's handy tool if you are struggling to write content. Essentially how it works is that you write something and LinkedIn spins it up into something more interesting. I've found it to be hit and miss, but I've been writing content for ages, so my gripes with it may just be because it can't replicate my style so easily.

It's a handy feature either way:

Grow your Page followers faster with auto-invites

Now this one feature is worth the £55.76 (billed annually) price tag. This is similar to how the LinkedIn newsletter works. It's a simple thing but could help Company Pages accelerate the follower growth. Every liker, commenter and sharer will automatically get an invite to follow the page. This is a massive incentive for pages to focus more on engagement (which for a long time has been tough) on pages.

Instead of running campaigns to grow followers, you can focus on attracting people with engaging content, then the Premium feature kicks in and asks them to follow. This is a play on the influencer strategy on profiles. It goes like this, post highly engaging content and then connect and nurture those who engage. The theory is that it becomes easier to get engagement because you are growing your profile with users with a propensity to like and comment. It works too. This kind of strategy on a company page could be pretty interesting.

Is it worth having a Premium Page Account?

The million dollar question (or £55.76 question). Is it worth it? I think it is, the main feature which would convince me to pay for it is the auto follower invite. If you are a solopreneur, it's probably not worth investing into, but if you're trying to build your business brand, it will help you grow your page faster. There is a but coming of course, you will need to really focus on growing page engagement, this means not posting external links and using your page as a place people will visit for useful and helpful information. In other words, your page cannot just churn out marketing propaganda.

I think for companies that want to build the business brand, it's a no brainer. It will be cheaper than ads and will encourage you to create content that keeps people hanging around your brand.

What do you think of the Premium Page Account?