LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful tool for individuals and companies alike. It’s no longer a platform made just for individuals who are seeking employment. LinkedIn has eclipsed the role of employee and employer matchmaker to become one of the most engaging social media platforms available. This article will give you 10 valuable tips to grow your LinkedIn company page.
Don’t expect to consume the same type of content on LinkedIn as you do on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok. LinkedIn feeds aren’t typically filled with family photos, dog videos or TikTok dances; instead, they are filled with more professional-oriented content. LinkedIn allows its users to publish photos, videos, and articles about what’s important to them from a professional standpoint. Day to day, you might find posts on company culture, leadership, equality and inspiration.
"Show me another platform that wants to see people succeed as much as LinkedIn. LinkedIn sets people up to network, to learn new industries, to hold social events, to learn new skills, etc. LinkedIn is setup for continuous self-improvement, whereas other social platforms are set up for continuous entertainment." - Spencer Cook CMO Somnu Medias
Companies that use LinkedIn to communicate and engage with employees, vendors and customers see a 20%-40% increase in customer spending. We've put together 10 tips for you to implement into LinkedIn for your business. Stick with these and we guarantee you'll start to see results!
1. Make use of company page invites.
This is your first step to having success on LinkedIn. We recommend making each member of your C Suite an admin on your company page. If you don’t know how to do that, you can refer to this article.
Once you have admins on the account, each person will have the ability to invite their own connections to follow your company page. It’s important to note here that LinkedIn only allows you to invite a set number of people each month. Here at Somnu we call these "invite credits". The good news is that LinkedIn just recently upped their set number of monthly invitation credits from 100 to 250. Additionally, when an invite you sent gets accepted, you get that invite credit back! We can’t emphasize the importance of inviting your connections to follow your page. Invite all of them! Friends, family, ex-bosses, frenemies, and all other individuals in your network. The more individuals who follow your company page on LinkedIn allows for more people to see and engage with your content!
2. Connect with more people on LinkedIn.
Having a large network on LinkedIn is crucial to growing your company page. The reason for this is, as a company page admin you can only invite people to follow your page that are already connected with your personal account. So be sure to find people in your rolodex and connect with them on LinkedIn. You can also find businesses that your company works with and connect with the employees they have listed on their LinkedIn company page. Many people are trying to grow their networks on LinkedIn for the same reason as you are so no need to overthink a request to connect.
3. Publish engaging content (and do it consistently).
We would argue that this is the most important step in growing your LinkedIn company page. As you start to invite acquaintances to follow your page, make sure you have something to show them! Catch their eye beyond the invite in their inbox and you're guaranteed to get a follow - hook, line and sinker.
Engaging content most often emerges in 3 forms: videos, human content (including people who work at your company) and posts that give value rather than ask someone to buy something. We've noticed video has become the easiest and also most engaging type of content to incorporate into LinkedIn (and the rest of your socials). Almost everyone in the USA owns a smartphone with a camera on it. If you want your company page to grow then it’s time to put that camera to work!
4. Collaborate with others (individuals or companies).
You may be asking yourself, “I’m no social media guru… what does a collaboration even entail?” Fret not, we have you covered! A collaboration can be as simple as creating photo or video content with other individuals or companies. These individuals may be within your company or they may be with a different company.
Purposefully creating content with other people allows you to tag them and their company in the post. Which, in turn, increases the likelihood of those individuals/companies sharing your post (which equals more eyes on your content). Currently LinkedIn’s algorithm pushes collaborations to the top of people’s feeds and thus gives that post a better chance of getting engaged with.
One example of a collaboration would be taking a photo with a loyal customer. When you post that photo to your company’s LinkedIn, tag your personal account, the customer and the company the customer works for. Now that piece of content has the chance of being shared by you, the customer and the customer’s company. Thus, your content will now be viewed by exponentially more people than it normally would! Collaborations have always been an integral part of every business, LinkedIn now acts as a platform to showcase these collaborations.
5. Share content to industry specific groups.
Are you in any industry-relevant groups on LinkedIn? If not, we highly encourage you to find and join some. Be sure to vet the groups for scammy-feeling posts and join the groups that are posting valuable, industry-specific content. Once you have joined a few groups you can start sharing your company’s posts to those groups. Remember to keep your posts engaging so the people in these groups are encouraged to like or comment on the post. If you can get groups to engage with your content then your content exposure will can only grow.
One thing to also mention about groups on LinkedIn; the content you share to groups will have a higher chance of being engaged with if you yourself are engaging with other posts in that group. With LinkedIn groups the more you give the more you get. So don’t be shy! Comment on other people’s posts in the groups that you join.
6. Tag your company page in your personal posts.
As you start to feel more comfortable posting on your company's LinkedIn page, you can start to expand to posting more on your personal page. LinkedIn is an incredible social media platform because it allows individuals to express their professional beliefs. Here at Somnu, we recommend that you stick to the 80/20 rule when it comes to posting to your personal account. 80% of the time you want to post content that is valuable to your followers. Give advice, or share an inspirational article you just read. Then 20% of the time you can actually ask your followers to engage with your company page or to visit your company’s website.
So you now may be wondering, which posts do I tag my company page in? Ask posts or give posts? The answer is it depends… We recommend tagging your company page if your post’s content is related to your company; but, if your post’s content has nothing to do with your company then we don’t recommend tagging your company. In our opinion and experience, it looks more professional to tag your company in posts that are actually related to your company.
7. Put your LinkedIn url on your website.
This is an easy and free way to get more LinkedIn followers and to own more online real estate. Put your LinkedIn URL as a hyperlink in your company’s website footer. How does that increase followership and grow your online real estate? Let us explain… When you backlink from your website to your social accounts, it communicates to Google and other search engines that those two sites are connected. Thus, when someone searches for your business, it's more likely that your website and links to your social pages will show up before competitor websites. Backlink all of your socials and the search results would then show your company’s Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, or any other sites you've backlinked.
If any of this seems confusing or you find yourself needing some help, then please feel free to contact us. Once you have made these changes, we guarantee that your LinkedIn will start to appear in the first page of Google when you search your company name (it may take a few weeks). Now when people search your company they will see that you also have a LinkedIn page. They may click on your LinkedIn page in the Google search result and ultimately follow your company’s LinkedIn page!
8. Add your LinkedIn url to your email signature.
Now every single email you send will have easy access to your company's LinkedIn page. Depending on how many emails you send monthly, weekly or even daily, this is tons of potential exposure! This will also showcase to all of your email recipients that your company is active on LinkedIn. Many prospective customers and vendors will have access to your hyperlink and have the opportunity to click on it to view what your company is posting on LinkedIn. Who knows, maybe they’ll even decide to hit that "follow" button! Adding your URL to you email signature also plays a minor role in boosting your SEO, which is never a bad thing.
9. Put your LinkedIn url on your YouTube.
YouTube allows you to add a handful of links on your channel. We recommend adding your website as the first link. LinkedIn can be your second! If your company is drawing viewers to your channel then they will likely click around and see what else you may be posting online. The links on your YouTube channel are easily visible and many subscribers may click on your LinkedIn link and ultimately follow your page. Again, this tactic is easy to implement and will also boost your SEO.
10. Take advantage of in-person events (and QR codes).
Last but not least, if your business is regularly exhibiting at conferences or attending in-person events then it's an absolute must to print out a QR code that links to your website & social accounts. One positive thing from COVID was that most of the population learned how to use a QR code for contactless ordering of food at restaurants. These QR codes are now addicting! They act as magnets to get people to come to your conference booth and give them a scan. There are many free QR code generators out there that allow you to add a handful of links. We recommend creating your code, adding your links and printing out a handful of them. If you’re fancy and earth conscience, you can even create a very professional trifold to reuse at all of your conferences!
And that’s it! Those are our 10 tips to get more followers on your company’s LinkedIn page. There is a ton of value in having a large following on any social media platform, but for many businesses LinkedIn is the most important. You can attract talent with your company LinkedIn page while keeping your customers, vendors and even competitors up to date on what your company is doing. We can’t recommend it enough to get on LinkedIn and follow these 10 tips. If your company doesn't have the bandwidth to execute these 10 things, then our team of experienced social media managers would be happy to setup a call to chat about your company’s wants, needs and goals on social media marketing! Please feel free to reach out!