Creating a Following of relevant LinkedIn Members for your LinkedIn Page (sometimes called Company Page) is an important step. Having followers increases the opportunity your page content will be viewed, consumed, and even appreciated by the right people on LinkedIn.
The best makeup of Followers should include:
- Your target audience – the people in the roles of companies who could use your product or service.
- Influencers – the people who know your target audience and may introduce them to you.
- Consumers – the people who can benefit from your product and service and could become Influencers or your Target Audience.
- Business Partners – people who provide similar products and services and who could become Influencers.
- Employees – the employees of your company who rally behind your products and services.
- Your Tribe – business/personal friends who care for you and your business. You never know who they may know.
Creating a LinkedIn Page and building a strategy & execution plan to provide great content for your followers is only part of the process.
You will need to create campaigns to continually grow your followers.
Here are a few ideas you could use to grow your LinkedIn Page Followers:
#1 – As with any other social media presence, a consistent process of providing content your target audience and their influencers find useful is the best way to create followers. I call this “Feeding your LinkedIn Page”. You have to feed it consistently in order for it to thrive.
#2 – Share your LinkedIn Page content across multiple online sites, where your target audience may show up. LinkedIn Page content is fully public and can be shared and viewed by people who are not currently logged into LinkedIn. However, they can not engage on the content unless they are logged into LinkedIn.
Note – you can only share LinkedIn Page content as a LinkedIn Member. You can not do this step as the Admin (via the admin page)
Routinely pick one of your LinkedIn Page posts that got a good level of engagement. Share it on your Facebook Business Page, on Twitter, in your latest company ’newsletter’, on Quora, on your blog, in a comment to a relevant social post, etc. Invite your employees and/or Tribe to do so, where relevant and appropriate.
Anyone who sees a LinkedIn Page post, who is not yet a follower of your page, will see the +Follow Icon on the post. When you share the post, use an editorial statement that encourages the consumption of the content and potentially clicking the Follow button.
#3 – Invite your LinkedIn Network to be Page Followers.
As a Page Admin, you can invite targeted members of your LinkedIn Network to Follow your LinkedIn Page. You’ll find this option on the Admin toolbar under Admin Tools, or in the right side column labeled “Invite Connections to Follow” Currently (09/03/20), you can send 100 invites per LinkedIn Page (across all Page admins).
Be very purposeful to invite the best LinkedIn Connections relevant to your page. If you have fresh content on your page when you send these invites out you’re more likely to get your invites accepted.
#4 – Give business development employees Admin rights so they can use the Page Follower Invite feature. It’s not unusual that the LinkedIn Page Admin does not have a LinkedIn Network filled with the business’s target audience.
An idea I have been exploring is to make your key business development employees Admins of the Page in order for them to invite their LinkedIn Network to be page followers.
This will take some planning to execute effectively.
Here is a task list to consider for this process:
- Schedule a day that works for the business developer to do this work.
- Have them build a list of up to 100 LinkedIn Connections they would like to invite.
- Invite the business developer to be a Page Admin from the Admin Tools option of your LinkedIn Page.
- Provide a quick training session showing the business developer how to use the feature.
- Give them time to execute this process for up to 100 invitations.
- Once they are done, remove them as a Page Admin.
- They will be able to see who they invited who has not accepted from their Sent Invites page
- Ask them to Withdraw any unaccepted invites 1 month later. (This will allow for another employee to invite them later)
- In the next month (when available invites go back to 100), repeat this step for the next business developer.
#5 – Introduce the value of your LinkedIn Page through other business communications.
Sharing the URL to your business page, as well as telling stories about how your use your LinkedIn Page to help your target audience, with an invite to follow the page is another useful tactic to create Page Followers.
You could share this in your newsletter, in blog posts, and even in routine messaging to your tribe, clients, prospects, and even employees. Be creative in this tactic.
#6 – Share your LinkedIn Page thru Blog Post commenting. As you find content relevant to your business you could comment on the article and use the LinkedIn Page URL as the Web Page entry for the comment. This can help to get others to find your LinkedIn Page as well as aid in the SEO ranking of your LinkedIn Page.
#7 – Create a private POD of LinkedIn Members who care for and/or are interested in your company products/services. This could be as small as 5-10 clients, prospects, peers, business partners, employees, and friends. As you share content on your company page invite this group (via email or messaging) to review and engage on the content with their perspectives or ideas. Encourage them to engage on each other’s comments on the post as well. Ask them not to always use the Like or Share option. A Comment or comment reply is more impactful for content reach. Ask them not to comment with simple statements like “Thanks” or “Good point”, etc. Engagement should be meaningful. Be appreciative of your PODs involvement, maybe even to the level of sending them SWAG (trinkets) to thank them for helping to drive more views of the content.
#8 – Ask your POD, and others to share your LinkedIn Page Posts and to @mention target audience, peers, and even target companies to pull them into the conversation. Encourage them to pay attention to any and all engagement they solicit in their posts.
#9 – Simply mention your LinkedIn Page to people in conversation. Add the URL to your email signature, on your website, in all of your marketing content, etc.
Growing a relevant Following to your LinkedIn Page is just one step towards getting value from using LinkedIn as a business tool.
Do the work, reap the rewards.
/Teddy
