In an effort to improve the overall user experience and tailor news feed content to the right audiences, LinkedIn has announced the launching of Showcase Pages, a way for brands to create sub-company pages for specific products and services.

Showcase Pages allow companies to push their products and services to the forefront, going beyond the inner pages made available for that type of company information. This can prove to be useful for companies that have multiple brands or products, and serve different types of audiences across verticals. For example, Microsoft has setup dedicated pages for Office and Microsoft Dynamics, tailoring status updates based on the audience.

These streamlined pages also give a glimpse of what company pages should look like: dynamic cover photos, two-column news feeds, and a simplified interface. Avid social media users will notice that it’s nearly identical to Google+ and Facebook pages, and that’s no mistake: the trend of simplicity within the social media environment is putting a bigger focus on photos and easy-to-read news streams.

For existing LinkedIn company page owners, setting up a Showcase Page is rather easy and can be accomplished by following these simple steps:

• On the Company Page for which you want to create a Showcase Page, go to the “Edit” dropdown menu and select “Create a Showcase Page”.
• Start customizing your new page by adding a short description, website URL, cover photo, and profile photo for network updates.
• Start publishing content and take advantage of LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates advertising feature to gain more followers and increase engagement rates.

LinkedIn has been on a roll lately: last week, the social media site unveiled Pulse integration, replacing the traditional LinkedIn Today news aggregator with it’s prized mobile app acquisition from April. The mobile application also received a major update, allowing users to login via their LinkedIn account, which in turns provides more relevant content based on a user’s interests.

Introducing a new social media element, Pulse now allows users to like article and provide their own insights and comments. By improving the personalized content features available within LinkedIn, the social network hopes to attract more users and increase community engagement.