LinkedIn’s plan to discontinue Product and Services pages on company pages, effective April 14, has raised the hackles of vocal group on the network’s help forum.
LinkedIn, which announced the change via email last month, suggests that companies focus their efforts on posting updates from their accounts, noting that such posts are more apt to reach followers feeds, or creating Showcase pages.
Showcase pages, LinkedIn says, are designed to highlight a particular brand or product. They give customers the ability to follow the Showcase page, and therefore receive updates about the focused product from the company.
But many LinkedIn page managers and consultants aren’t happy with the alternatives. They are upset that the Showcase pages only allow a 200-character description and, unlike the sunsetting Product and Service pages, that they don’t offer the ability for customers to leave recommendations. Many also believe that managing Product and Service pages are more manageable for small businesses, which typically don’t devote much time and resources to content creation.
And they are venting their anger on LinkedIn’s help forum.
“If they continue to remove it, it will be an enormous loss to small business owners across LinkedIn and will lower LinkedIn to Facebook level,” wrote one commenter. “It will be all about blasting your message out to people and that’s not what LinkedIn is really about. You need those recommendations and validation to build credibility for your company, your products and services. Would you remove Recommendations from the Profile? That’s essentially what you’re doing to the businesses.”
And another: “On April 14 all the hard work done by subscribers who created product and services pages will be sent to the trash bin by LinkedIn. I have a number of clients who paid to have their products and services pages created for them. LinkedIn has decided that their investment means nothing.”
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