We are all familiar with LinkedIn, the popular business-focused social network that none of us know what to do with. Most of us may have professional profiles for ourselves, but few of us have starting using the network for our businesses.

LinkedIn does allow you to create a profile for your company that other users can follow, and can be linked to in the personal profiles of all your employees. This can be a handy little way to create connections and gain exposure for your brand.

The great news is that it only takes a few minutes.

Create Your Company

To start, click the ‘Companies’ tab at the top of the LinkedIn menu bar. Once you are there, click the ‘Add a Company’ link on the right side of the page.

Here, you will need to enter your company name and a valid email address. You will also have to verify that you are an official representative of the company. The good news is that anyone in your company can setup the profile, as long as they have a valid email address.

Fill In The Blanks

Once you have created and verified your employment with your company, you will be able fill our the profile information. I recommend filling in as much of the profile as possible.

A few of the things that you will be able to add to your profile:

• Your company logo
• Company description (minimum of 250 characters)
• Company Specialties
• Twitter ID
• Your companies blog RSS feed
• Recent news module (displays recent news about your company)
• Your address, locations, and phone number
• Basic statistics like your industry and number of employees
• A link to your companies website

Once you have all of the fields populated, click publish, and keep your new company profile up to date!

Promote Your Profile

Once you finish your company profile, you will want to make sure that all of your employees or coworkers link to the profile from their personal LinkedIn page.

Now, when they add a position to their profile, typing in your company name will automatically find and link your company profile to their page.

This will be one of the primary ways people get to your page, so it is very important.

The Benefits of a LinkedIn Profile for your Company

With all this trouble, you may be wonder what some of the benefits of are.

Gain Followers
LinkedIn does allow users of the network to follow you and receive updates from your company, much like they would with Facebook or Twitter. Many LinkedIn users use the services in this way. So, it can be a very viable feature for a company looking to gain some regular exposure.

Create Exposure
Once you have your profile setup, and your employees have linked to it, your new profile will get a fair amount of click-through traffic. Basically, as people in the network explore your employees, they will eventually explore your company. Having a complete profile will help ensure that you can define the experience and tell your own story.

Stay Current
Once you have a profile, you can set it up so that anyone in your company (with a company email address) can make updates to the page. This setting is helpful because it ensures that your profile is always up to date.

Content Connections
Two of the most prominent things on your profile will be your recent tweets and links to your blog from you RSS feed. Your LinkedIn profile can be a great way to gain Twitter followers and traffic back to your company website.

More SEO Juice
Now, I wouldn’t consider LinkedIn profiles a major player in Google search, but it can play a role. The more information that you have on your page, the more likely someone will find it using Google or LinkedIn search. Search listing and link-back traffic to you website can only stand to improve your Google PageRank.

Go Profile

A LinkedIn profile is just another small way that you can improve your company presence online and with social media. It literally only takes a few minutes to setup, and is certainly worth your time and effort.