First things first
Before you start putting together a strategy to grow your followers, it’s vital to make sure that your LinkedIn Page is ready for them. Pages that have all sections completed get 30% more views – and they are far more likely to turn those views into followers. The more useful the content on your Page, the more likely people will be to want to stay in touch with your business. You can find more information on what to include in our LinkedIn Pages Best Practice Guide.
Laying the foundations
Once your Page is complete, you’re ready to start growing your number of followers. For starters, here are my favourite tips for building a follower-growing flywheel around your Page. Once in place, these ideas will keep giving with an impact that reinforces itself over time. They are great tactics for driving organic follower growth:
Tip 1: Optimise your Page for SEO
Make your Page discoverable through search engines like Google by incorporating relevant keywords into your Tagline and writing a structured About section that emphasises your mission and positioning concerning those same keywords. Refreshing your page by posting regular updates will help as well.
Tip 2: Engage your employees
Start by making sure that all of your employees are properly mapped to your Page (by citing it accurately in their Work Experience). That way, every new connection that your colleagues make will be prompted to follow your Page.
Encourage your employees to spread the word with friends and connections who have an interest in what you do. Asking them to tag your Page in relevant updates can provide a big boost.
Tip 3: Add a Follow button to your website
Cross-promoting your LinkedIn Page from your website encourages your visitors to become followers. A simple call to action that stresses the value of following you on LinkedIn will help: “If you enjoy our content here, you’ll love the stuff we share on LinkedIn.” Here’s the code that your developers will need to add a Follow button.
Tip 4: Add a Page link to your email signature
Edit your work email signature to include a link directing recipients to your Page, and a brief message encouraging them to follow your business on LinkedIn. If you’re corresponding with someone professionally, there’s a good chance your Page might interest them. This is a classic “set it and forget it” tactic that can draw in plenty of extra followers over time.
Tip 5: Add a Page link to your personal LinkedIn profile
Your personal LinkedIn profile is another opportunity to capture relevant members and direct them toward your company’s hub on the platform. First of all, make sure your profile is properly associated with your business’s Page (see Tip 2). Consider adding a short link to your LinkedIn Page in the Website URL field on your profile, or even in your Headline, as well. Invite other employees to do the same.
Tip 6: Post content to your Page regularly
Keeping a steady flow of fresh content on your Page will give it more visibility on member feeds (Pages that post at least weekly see a 2x lift in engagement, which leads to greater organic reach). It will also make it more appealing to potential followers. Tap into the Content Suggestions features if you’re short on ideas.
Tip 7: Join topical conversations with hashtags
Adding hashtags to your posts helps you to reach new, relevant communities with your content. Aim to use between three and five relevant hashtags in your posts. You can also associate your Page with relevant hashtags through your Communities Hashtags panel. This will alert you to the opportunity to join relevant conversations, further exposing your brand to new audiences.
Tip 8: Enlist help from customers and brand advocates
Do you have customers who are crazy about your brand? Or people in your circle who are driven to advocate for you? Let them know that increasing your LinkedIn following is a priority, and see if they might be willing to help out by posting about your organisation to their networks.
Tip 9: Adjust your content based on your Page analytics
Your Page administrator has access to demographic information about your followers and visitors, and engagement data for your updates, through Page Analytics. Use these insights to identify the types of content that resonate with your audience, and align your Page updates with what your visitors want.
Tip 10: Mention influencers and companies you admire in Page updates
Are there influential people in your industry, and non-competing companies, that you respect and wish to be associated with? By @mentioning them in your updates, you’ll have a better chance to get in front of their network, since they’ll be able to reshare your post to their followers. Just make sure not to overdo it, as this tactic can start to feel like spam if you use it too often.
Tip 11: Share plenty of videos and visual content
Make sure your content mix includes plenty of eye-catching visuals. Unique imagery, and especially videos, tend to stand out more in the feed, helping your brand (and Page) get noticed. Custom image collages are a tactic that LinkedIn has used to drive heightened levels of engagement. Don’t be afraid to upload a series of photos from your latest event.
Advanced follower-growing tips
Once you’ve established a core following on the platform, it’s time to grow that community. These advanced tips will help take your Page’s reach to the next level:
Tip 12: Encourage your experts to participate in LinkedIn Groups
Groups feature highly engaged conversations between people who are passionate about niche topics. When your company’s subject matter experts participate, it can help create awareness for your brand while also demonstrating its authority and credibility.
Tip 13: Launch a Follower Ad campaign
Follower Ads are a form of Dynamic Ad campaign that personalises messages and calls to action using your audience members’ name and profile picture. They stand out, help your audience visualise the value of connecting with your business, and drive strong response rates. By targeting them using LinkedIn profile data, you can quickly gain relevant followers.
Tip 14: Adopt an employee advocacy program
Build a formal structure around the employee engagement engine that you started to create in Tip 2. Employee advocacy tools like LinkedIn Elevate make it easy for your team members to share content and promote your Page authentically.
Tip 15: Encourage executives and prominent leaders to @mention your Page
The most prominent figures in your business serve as influential voices within your industry, and they often have large professional networks. When they frequently talk about and link to the company’s LinkedIn Page, it helps drive traffic and followers.
Tip 16: Encourage engagement for your posts
When members engage with your Page content by way of reactions or comments, it makes that content visible to their networks and helps expose it to a wider audience beyond the people already following you. Consider crafting the copy of your posts to encourage people to express a view – perhaps asking a question or encouraging others to share their experiences. Timely subjects are also likely to drive thoughtful and substantive comments. When people do engage in this way, remember to comment back with something equally valuable. The deeper the string of comments, the more viral benefits you gain.
Tip 17: Analyse your competitors’ Pages
Competitor analysis is important in all aspects of digital marketing, and the competitiveness of your Page is no different. Reviewing what others are doing helps you to identify white space and position your Page to provide something different to what else is out there.
Tip 18: Create and maintain Showcase Pages
A Showcase Page is an affiliated extension of your company’s LinkedIn Page that’s designed to highlight a specific sub-brand, business unit or initiative. A relevant Showcase Page provides audiences with an alternative point of entry to your business – and a new way of discovering your main Page. It’s worth showing restraint with Showcase Pages, though. It’s best to create them for distinct verticals and business lines with large potential audiences – and avoid diluting your LinkedIn presence by having them for every product or region.
Tip 19: Coordinate with influencers
Applying the principles of influencer marketing, and co-creating content with influencers for your sector is a tactic that delivers benefits all round. The influencer gains reach and recognition among your audience, and your brand and Page gain an introduction to their followers.
Tip 20: Respond to relevant comments on your posts
Not every comment merits a response, but you should aim to reply to every thoughtful question or contribution. This helps drive higher feed visibility for the posts, and members are more likely to follow a Page that actively engages its community.
Tip 21: Share job postings on your Page
LinkedIn is, of course, a very popular destination for job-hunting. Leveraging your Page for talent acquisition as well as marketing can open it up to new audiences.
Take the lead by growing your following
These 21 tips won’t just increase your follower count. They’ll plug your business and your brand into the competitive advantages that come from a great LinkedIn Page at the heart of an active and engaged community. You can look forward to amplified content, greater organic reach for your messaging, wider awareness as your brand makes it into more LinkedIn members’ feeds, and great insight into the priorities of your most important audiences. No matter where your Page currently stands, whether you’re starting from scratch with a handful of followers, or growing already and wanting to accelerate, there are always opportunities to build your following and the advantages it brings.
