LinkedIn is proud to play a part in connecting people with each other, with brands and with businesses. With more than 1 billion million members across 200+ countries, we’ve become the world’s largest professional network and an excellent destination for B2B marketing.
It’s no surprise that 96% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content, and that 80% put paid budget behind promoting that content.
Marketing on LinkedIn starts with your brand’s LinkedIn Page. That’s your hub within this global community: a place to share, connect and grow. It’s an instrumental tool for building awareness, authority and trust.
Best of all, the potential reach and impact of your LinkedIn Page increases along with its number of followers. Here are five of the most effective techniques to organically attract more folks to your LinkedIn Page.
For even more tips, visit the LinkedIn Pages Best Practices hub.
5 Tips for Increasing Your LinkedIn Page Followers
1. Get the basics right
Before you invite guests over, make sure your house is ready to receive company. The content on your Page should clearly and quickly convey what your business does and who you can help. Complete your Page by filling out the overview, logo, organization info and call-to-action button. Be sure to include pertinent keywords in your business description, as LinkedIn Pages are crawled by search engines and can often rank highly.
Next, add a “Follow” button on your blog, website and newsletters to make it easy for visitors to join in. Encourage first-degree connections to jump onboard with the “Invite to Follow” function. Consider linking to your organization’s LinkedIn Page in your email signature, or on other social media profiles.
2. Publish thought leadership content
LinkedIn isn’t like other social networks. People don’t come here to kill time or pass time. They come to invest time in learning. These executives, managers, decision makers and other stakeholders are on the lookout for original, insightful and valuable content to expand their knowledge and help them achieve their professional goals.
The best way to capture the attention of such an audience is to publish compelling content about industry news, trends, and other relevant topics. In fact, 61% of business decision-makers agree that thought leadership content is more effective at demonstrating a company’s potential value than traditional, product-oriented marketing.
Unfortunately, only 33% of thought leadership producers rate the overall quality of their content as “very good” or “excellent.” You can capitalize on this gap by publishing well-researched, useful, and relevant content for the audience you wish to attract.
Organizations can share content through their LinkedIn Page in a variety of ways, from writing short and long-form posts to curating third-party articles, showcasing employee voices and more.
3. Join conversations that matter to your brand
Strong communities aren’t built through one-sided monologues. To make your LinkedIn Page appear lively, interactive and approachable, you’ll want to engage with others and help shape existing conversations on the platform.
To help promote relevant conversation on your Page, you can choose up to three specific hashtags to associate with your brand. This makes the Page more discoverable for members interested in the topics your brand wants to discuss. You’ll also be able to react to and comment on conversations taking place on the hashtag feeds from the perspective of your brand, carving out a distinct point of view.
Another smart tactic, especially as your following grows more robust, is to find and host popular events related to your industry through LinkedIn Events. This creates opportunities for real-time interaction and engagement.
4. Know and grow your audience
Through Page analytics, you can access detailed, aggregated data about the demographics and traits of your followers and visitors from either desktop or mobile app. You’ll also be able to identify which of your posts and updates are driving the highest engagement. With these insights in hand, you can continually optimize for better audience alignment, providing the type of content they find most valuable.
5. Activate your people
When it comes to growing your brand on LinkedIn, your employees are a major potential contributor. To begin with, encourage all employees to keep their own profiles up-to-date, with your organization included in their work experience (it will automatically link to your LinkedIn Page).
There is a four-pronged blueprint we recommend for activating and elevating your employees on LinkedIn:
- Re-share your employees' best @mentions and LinkedIn content.
- Notify employees of your most important Page posts to boost organic reach (up to 1x/day).
- Personalize by recognizing team moments or employees with a shout-out from your Page.
- Engage by fostering internal engagement through a trusted, employee-only community on LinkedIn via the My Company tab.
Grow Your Brand’s Impact and Influence on LinkedIn
The LinkedIn Page is your brand’s social homepage in the world’s online business community. Investing a bit of time and energy into making it the best it can be will go a long way. We find that once Pages gain 150 followers, their opportunity for growth becomes exponential. There’s no better time than today to start building momentum.
Learn more about LinkedIn Pages and explore the free course Using LinkedIn for Brand Awareness, to learn more about building and growing your brand on the platform.