LinkedIn gives businesses more ways to publish content with 'showcase' pages

LinkedIn users will soon have access to a wider range of professionally curated content on the site through a new publishing tool available to businesses.

On Tuesday the social network announced the launch of "showcase" pages -- a place on the site where companies can publish information related to a specific area of their business. The new pages are designed to serve end users, by letting them receive more focused company updates in their feed, and businesses, by giving them a dedicated page to highlight certain segments of their companies.

Businesses will be able to monitor the performance of their showcase page through LinkedIn's analytic tools, the company said.

Cisco, for example, has showcase pages for enterprise networks, security products and the Internet of things.

Companies will not be charged for creating showcase pages, and can create up to 10 of them on their own. End users can follow a showcase page without having to follow the larger company. The new pages will be rolling out globally over the next few days, said Aviad Pinkovezky, LinkedIn's monetization product manager. The pages, he said, will give businesses on LinkedIn a way to connect with the right people.

But it could also yield some additional advertising revenue for the site. Although LinkedIn will not charge for showcase pages, companies can still elect to promote them on the site through the company's sponsored updates or follower advertising products.

The showcase pages also could help LinkedIn better engage its users and keep them on the site longer. LinkedIn is known as a site for posting resumes and connecting with business colleagues. But by offering more publishing tools, the site could be seeking to boost its cachet by providing a wider stream of content and information -- albeit of professional variety -- like Facebook or Twitter.

As part of this goal, earlier this year LinkedIn announced its acquisition of the news reader app Pulse, to build out its publishing platform.

Other showcase pages on LinkedIn include Microsoft Office, Adobe Marketing Cloud and HP Converged Infrastructure.

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com