LinkedIn revealed two important updates last week which will considerably increase the possibilities of engagement with a company.

Company pages will now be able to publish status updates, which will be showcased on their profile but will also appear on the homepage newsfeed of their followers. The followers will have the possibility to Like, Comment or Share those updates, and their interaction will be seen by their network.
Company pages will now be more similar to Facebook fanpages, and will be more dynamic and engaging. This new possibility has a consequence for companies; their page will have to be managed and monitored to avoid having someone speaking in the name of your brand without authorisation. Company pages are automatically generated when LinkedIn users chose their employer. It is still the case, and as employees can make mistakes when choosing their employer (XXX, XXX EMEA, XXX ltd. etc), there is the possibility of having several Company pages speaking in the name of one company. With these new dynamic company pages, companies have to monitor their LinkedIn presence more than ever, encourage every employee to register on the right company page, and finally identify thought leaders authorised to speak in the name of the company.

For the moment, this feature is only available on beta test.
http://blog.linkedin.com/2011/10/06/company-status-updates/

This new feature comes with a better integration with Hootsuite: company pages will be manageable on a Hootsuite dashboard, which will allow community managers to run the LinkedIn company page in the same place as their Facebook fanpages or Twitter accounts.
Networking groups can also be monitored on Hootsuite now, with the usual possibilities of Hootsuite.

http://hootsuite.com/linkedin

Those two innovations will increase the possibilities of engagement on LinkedIn, both on a personal side (group monitoring) and institutional (company page monitoring) and presents a great opportunity to start conversations with the followers of a brand. Companies will have to consider it and take total control of their LinkedIn presence.

If you need any information regarding companies status updates or Hootsuite, feel free to contact Carve consulting at info@carveconsulting.com.