Amidst the noise of Facebook reels, Instagram highlights, and status updates through X and Threads, is a social platform that serves as a cornerstone for businesses and entrepreneurs alike; LinkedIn. Unlike the more popular social media platforms, employers and networking enthusiasts struggle the most to grow their LinkedIn following. It’s not rocket science, but growing your LinkedIn followers requires creative strategies that involve patience, practice, and collaboration from your business teams.
If you’re running a business page through LinkedIn, you know how vital it is to attract followers and keep them around for the long term. Your LinkedIn followers enable you to:
- Share thought leadership with valuable audiences
- Promote your brand’s initiatives
- Build meaningful connections that support your business growth
In short; the bigger the following, the better. Follow along as we walk through all the strategies you can start using to grow your LinkedIn followers and make connections that last.
The First Steps to Grow Your LinkedIn Follower List
Thinking about growing your LinkedIn followers and actually reaching those valuable audiences can be a long, draining process. If you don’t know where to start, then your first step is to go back to the basics. Here we introduce five straightforward strategies you can implement to attract new followers.
Strategy #1: Be Search Friendly
Optimize, optimize, optimize! This term is most important for any business that desires high search rankings and increased visibility. Optimizing your LinkedIn business page enables you to rank in search results, reeling in traffic from outside the LinkedIn platform. Here are a few ways you can optimize your LinkedIn page to start winning in search:
- Upload a branded logo and banner
- Write a brief and informative ‘About’ description
- Include relevant keywords within your company description that you want to rank for in the search
Strategy #2: Perfect Your Brand
Most social media users are drawn to business pages that reflect a consistent and compelling brand image. Features such as brand colors, a creative logo, and tone of voice enable users to recognize your brand each time you post or interact with other pages. When you establish a unique identity and consistency in your brand, you’ll start to see your LinkedIn followers increase. Below are a few examples from HubSpot that help them improve engagement, but also target their preferred audience. After all, we all know that Cancers are known for being an emotional sign. 😉
Strategy #3: Initiate Networking
Let prospective LinkedIn followers know that your business actively engages with the LinkedIn community. Responding to relevant posts on your page, comments, and reviews prompts interaction with members and encourages further interactions. Not only will this strategy build relationships, but your post engagement will increase its feed visibility and promote your brand.
Strategy #4: Stay Up-to-Date With Content Trends
It’s difficult to grow your LinkedIn followers if your content is stuck in the past. Staying on top of current content trends, such as using AI for personalized content or creating attention-grabbing short-form videos, establishes brand relevance and increases engagement among your target audience. The key is to build posts unique to your brand and share them consistently, so your current followers and page visitors see fresh, relevant content every time.
Strategy #5: Post, Analyze, Refine, Repeat
Get inside the heads of your LinkedIn followers and page visitors using LinkedIn’s analytic software. In any marketing initiative, analyzing your data is a crucial step and offers valuable benefits such as:
- Understanding your LinkedIn follower and visitor demographics
- Refining your content strategy
- Aligning your brand with the right audience
- Scoring new followers and relationship-nurturing opportunities
In short, if you want to know whether your business is on the path to growing your LinkedIn following, analyze the data, refine your strategy, rinse and repeat.
Tips to Keep Your LinkedIn Followers Flowing
Now that your business is on its way to becoming well-established on LinkedIn, you can introduce these advanced strategies to continue growing your LinkedIn followers.
Strategy #6: Use Your Village
A great way to ensure your brand stands out among competitors is by encouraging your employees to interact with your LinkedIn page and posts. This tactic not only shows credibility to your brand, it also expands your content reach to networks that might not otherwise engage with the company. Secondly, when employees actively engage with your brand, it signals to potential followers that your business fosters a supportive work culture. In turn, like-minded members will be compelled to join your LinkedIn community. Here are a few key strategies you can use to encourage employee engagement and accelerate your LinkedIn following:
- Ensure your employee LinkedIn pages are mapped to your business (i.e., employment history, profile header, ‘About’ description)
- Encourage employees to like, share, or comment on your content
- Recognize and celebrate your employee contributions on LinkedIn, and encourage your team to share those milestones
- Set up employee notifications on your LinkedIn page to let your team know when you’ve posted
Strategy #7: @ThoughtLeaders
If you want to attract valuable LinkedIn followers, you should be networking with professionals and thought leaders whose values and expertise align with your business. To do this, @mention thought leaders in your posts to grab their attention and potentially encourage them to engage with your content. However, to find success in this strategy, it is crucial to spend some time researching the best thought leaders or brands that reflect your target audience.
Strategy #8: Benchmark the Competition
The last and most important strategy to attract more LinkedIn followers is to understand your position against industry competitors. Take time to review your competitor’s LinkedIn pages and take note of the types of content they post and share, their target audience and employee engagement, and other strategies such as how often they @mention thought leaders. When you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competition, you can build off those pain points to create a stronger LinkedIn brand and attract followers to your page.
Final Thoughts
After laying the groundwork to expand your LinkedIn follower list, hopefully, the task does not seem so daunting after all. When you take the time to review your current LinkedIn brand and implement these beginner or advanced strategies, you’ll come out the other side with stronger content ideas, networking opportunities, and a competitive following. Remember that building your LinkedIn community takes patience and collaboration from your business teams, your current LinkedIn followers, and networking spectators. Take advantage of these resources and the strategies at your disposal, and you’ll be a LinkedIn superstar in no time. If you’re looking to improve your LinkedIn positioning, take a look at Sell to Win’s LinkedIn Bootcamp.
About IN2communications
IN2communications is an award-winning digital marketing and web design agency helping hundreds of B2B organizations create awareness, boost consideration rates and generate sales leads.
Our awesome team provides experienced expertise in the following areas: Creative Strategy, B2B Campaigns, Web Development, Video Production, Social Media, Paid Advertising, SEO, Email Campaigns, Blogging, Presentations, Webinars and remarkable Content Creation.
