XING Company Profiles – 5 Handy Optimization Tips

About a week ago we launched some new Company Profile features. So far more than 90,000 users – ranging from freelancers to SMEs to large concerns such as Siemens and Daimler –have already claimed their XING Company Profile. While talking to customers to find out their needs we noticed that there’s often a simple solution to their questions and requests, so we decided to write a summary with main five tips.

Tip 1: Search engine optimization
Make sure your profile can be found by search engines as you may well be reaching the right people on XING, but when it comes to range the more the better. So if your Company Profile can’t be found by searching on Google, Bing or Yahoo, you’re completely invisible beyond the realms of XING. We recommend you change this in your settings by going to your Company Profile, then clicking on “Company Profile settings” on the right-hand side and ticking the box next to “This Company Profile is visible to search engines and non-XING members.”

Tip 2: Post regular updates
Try to post an update every 2 weeks at the least. It doesn’t drain too many resources and, by doing so, it helps to raise your profile among your followers so they don’t forget about you. Besides, there’s bound to be something worth writing about at your company, be it new vacancies, products, marketing campaigns, etc. Just ask around and see if any of your colleagues have got something for you to post. And don’t forget that you’re by no means alone when it comes to managing your Company Profile as businesses with a STANDARD or PLUS profile can appoint up to 5 or 10 editors respectively, meaning that your profile can be filled with content from various departments.

Tip 3: Employees as ambassadors for the company
Company employees are generally interested in what’s going on within the business and are often prepared to act as ambassadors, so just ask them to recommend your Company Profile. That way, all of your employees’ contacts will see the recommendation which in turn helps to spread the word. By the way – company employees don’t have to go to the trouble of following their company updates as staff with a XING profile are automatically added as followers. Anyone who’s not interested in receiving company updates can of course choose to unfollow them at any time.

Tip 4: Include other social networks
Look for a quick and easy way to increase your range? No problem! Rather than just posting your updates on XING with a notification on your followers’ homepage, you can also automatically post them on Twitter and Facebook as well. When posting an update, there are two checkboxes below the input field which you can tick to post the update on Facebook, Twitter or both. The first time you do this you’ll need to authorize your Facebook and Twitter accounts, but after that it’s just a case of ticking or unticking the box you want.

Tip 5: Use keywords
Companies with a STANDARD or PLUS profile can add up to 5 or 10 keywords respectively to make it easier for people to find them when performing a search. Let’s say you’re a software company and want to be found by business customers. Rather than just enter the word ‘software’, you can be more specific and add things like ‘enterprise solutions’, ‘CRM’ or ‘open source’ as potential customers are likely to look for the specific service they need. We recommend you take a bit of time and put yourself in your customers’ shoes – what are they likely to enter when looking for services you offer?
If you have any questions about XING Company Profiles, just get in touch with our Customer Relations team by sending an email to companyprofiles@xing.com. Happy networking!