LinkedIn: How to Increase Followers

What Is LinkedIn Marketing?

LinkedIn marketing is the process of using LinkedIn to make connections, generate leads, improve brand awareness, foster business relationships and partnerships, share content, and drive traffic to your website. LinkedIn is an integral part of many successful marketing strategies today because of how effective it is in expanding professional networks.

When you use LinkedIn to market your business, you gain access to useful features related to analytics, connections, and brand-building, just to name a few. (Don’t worry, we’ll review all of these in-depth momentarily.)

Why is marketing on LinkedIn important?

When it comes to social media marketing, you may be tempted to put all your resources toward the big three: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Those are great platforms for reaching your target audience, but excluding LinkedIn is doing your business a huge disservice. As the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn generates leads 227% more effectively than Facebook and Twitter, so it’s an essential platform for your business when it comes to marketing.

LinkedIn Marketing Best Practices

1. Use hashtags

Hashtags are often used to add emphasis to your LinkedIn post, but they actually serve a purpose that can change your marketing strategy for the better. These simple phrases preceded by a hashtag symbol are goldmines for tapping into new audiences, industries, and niches. But using too many, or worse — the wrong ones, can hinder your reach.

That means you’ll want to strike a balance between relevant and popular hashtags by doing hashtag research on LinkedIn. Use the search bar to query a broad hashtag first. For example, if you work in growth marketing, start by searching #growthmarketing to see how many people are following the hashtag, and how often it is being used.

2. Know when to use a LinkedIn Profile vs. a LinkedIn Page.

LinkedIn Pages are able to be followed without sending a connection and waiting for approval. That means when a LinkedIn user shares your Page with their connections, those individuals will be able to follow your page and see your business’ content right away which has the potential for high engagement. LinkedIn Pages and LinkedIn Profiles serve different purposes in LinkedIn marketing. Pages are public and used primarily by businesses. Profiles are private and used by individuals. Each of them works with the LinkedIn algorithm, but you’ll have different tools that you can leverage to grow your audience.

3. Create posts of varying lengths.

Quick, bold posts pack a punch on LinkedIn. Long-form stories capture the readers’ attention and lead to a longer dwell time on the app. Both of these types of posts should have a place in your LinkedIn content plan.

4. Share external articles on the platform.

Unlike other platforms such as Instagram, LinkedIn’s algorithm supports external links to blogs and websites. So long as the content you post has value and is relevant to your audience, you’ll find success posting other people’s content on the platform.

5. Keep your publishing schedule consistent.

Whether you publish every day, every other day, or even once a week, your network will come to expect your content regularly which builds trust. Choose a schedule that makes sense for your business and stick to it for a month. See what days and times are yielding the best engagement and make those part of your publishing schedule.

How to Use LinkedIn

• Customize your public Profile URL.

You can do this by clicking View Profile and then clicking Edit Public Profile and URL. Here you can change your URL to anything you’d like — such as your first and last name or business name — assuming it hasn’t already been taken by another LinkedIn user.

• Add a LinkedIn background photo to your Profile.

LinkedIn recommends a background photo size of 1584 x 396 pixels, and it must be a JPG, PNG, or GIF file under 8MB.

• Add, remove, and rearrange sections of your Profile.

You can edit and reorder sections of your LinkedIn Profile to highlight specific pieces of information in any way you see fit. When you’re in edit mode, simply hover your mouse over the double-sided arrow in each section. 

• Optimize your LinkedIn Profile for the search engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t limited to blogging — you can also optimize your Profile to get discovered by people searching LinkedIn for key terms you want to be found for. You can add these keywords to various sections of your Profile, such as your headline, your summary, or your work experience.

• Add a ProFinder Badge to your Profile.

You might consider adding a ProFinder Badge, which is used to identify freelancers within LinkedIn’s ProFinder. This service matches contractors with project managers who are seeking help. Freelancers can display a ProFinder badge on their Profiles to show prospective clients their skills, expertise, and recommendations.

• Take advantage of the blog and website links on your LinkedIn Profile.

You can add portfolio links and social networks to your LinkedIn page. Links to your content and business information can also be added to your Profile to increase clicks. This feature allows you to draw greater attention to specific areas of your page to drive traffic elsewhere.

• Check your Network Updates (or share your own).

Found on your LinkedIn homepage, Network Updates are essentially LinkedIn’s version of the Facebook News Feed. Check this feed periodically for a quick snapshot of what your connections, customers, competitors, and others are up to and sharing. You can also share updates of your own, such as details about your products or services and noteworthy content your business has created and published.

• Be identifiable.

Your LinkedIn connections should recognize your Profile the moment they look at it. A great way to make your Profile easily identifiable is by ensuring your Profile’s name, headline, and other simple identifiers are easy to see.

• Check out who’s viewed your LinkedIn Profile.

Learn a little about your audience members, potential leads, and customers who are viewing your Profile and marketing content that you’re sharing on LinkedIn.

• Design all aspects of your LinkedIn page.

The design of LinkedIn pages has changed a lot over the years. Make sure yours is set up correctly and optimized for the latest layout, featuring a compelling and high-quality banner image.

Understanding the LinkedIn Algorithm to get a high Organic Reach

After you thought of what content you would like to share, what story you would like to tell, and created engaging branded content, it’s time to post in a way that will maximize your chances of getting a high organic reach. Understanding LinkedIn’s algorithm is very important.

Basics LinkedIn Algorithm:

Share content that people would like to engage with and help LinkedIn to reach their goal of becoming a Content Powerhouse.

A couple of key points to their algorithm:

• Receiving thoughtful comments should be your main goal if you want to increase your organic reach. LinkedIn loves comments the most because these will add even more value to a content piece and helps LinkedIn to become a Content Powerhouse. That is why you often see people asking questions and saying ‘link in comments’ (more on that on point 3).
• The second best way to increase your organic reach is by receiving likes and shares.
• LinkedIn wants to become a Content Powerhouse. This means they would like to keep people engaging and contribute more content on LinkedIn. Content that does not include links to get people off the platform, tends to perform better.
• Interactive posts perform best. So text with images, carousels, etc. Not link posts 😉
• Receiving engagement in the first hour is key for how LinkedIn will score your content. More on LinkedIn’s filter and scoring mechanism below. Be sure to post content when your followers are most active. You can easily see in your data in which country your followers live. Make sure to tailor your posting time to them ;).

Finding and using the right hashtags on LinkedIn

Organic reach on LinkedIn is really great. Using the right hashtags helps you to get in front of the right audience. LinkedIn posts with 0 hashtags, will mainly be seen by your followers and connections of people that interact with that post. LinkedIn posts with the right hashtags will be seen by people who are not following you yet and you’re not connected with. LinkedIn is even encouraging you to use hashtags. They want to catch up on being a content platform like Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook. Work with LinkedIn and you will get rewarded.

How to Increase Your LinkedIn Followers

1. Run a LinkedIn Giveaway Contest

One of the most effective ways to increase your connections on LinkedIn is to run a giveaway contest. Giveaways are a popular way to generate excitement online.

People love having the chance to win a prize, and with effective giveaway promotion tactics, you can make your giveaway go viral online.

With a viral giveaway contest on LinkedIn, you can:

• Increase your LinkedIn followers
• Promote your LinkedIn company page
• Drive traffic from LinkedIn to your website
• Promote products or services
• Increase engagement with your followers
• Grow your email list

And more.

The easiest way to run a LinkedIn giveaway is to host it on your business or personal website. That way, you can grow your LinkedIn followers AND send highly-targeted traffic to your website.

2. Ask Your Employees/friends to Follow Your Page

Another easy way to grow your LinkedIn followers is to get your team members involved. Ask employees and colleagues to follow you on LinkedIn and spread the word with their connections. This is an essential step for new LinkedIn pages, as it helps you grow your page quickly. When team members and colleagues tag your page in updates and share the benefits of following you, it adds up to a much-needed boost.

3.Add a LinkedIn Follow Button to Your Website

4.Make it Easy to Share Your Content on LinkedIn

After you add a follow button to LinkedIn from your website, it’s also a good idea to add social media sharing buttons.

5.Use Website Popups to Promote Your LinkedIn Profile

Another way to boost the visibility of your LinkedIn profile is to add popups to your website. They’re a great way to capture people’s attention and come in many different styles. 

6.Link to Your Profile from Your Email Signature

Don’t forget about your email account when promoting your LinkedIn page. With nearly 105 billion emails sent each day, it’s an easy way to reach your target audience.

7.Tag Other Users in Your LinkedIn Updates

You might not associate LinkedIn with influencers, but there are plenty in the B2B marketing world active on LinkedIn. If there are people in your industry you admire that don’t compete with your brand, mention them in your updates.

8.Encourage Other Users to Mention Your Page

Besides tagging relevant people in your LinkedIn posts, you can also ask other people to tag you in their updates. Think about important figures in your industry and ask them to talk about your brand and link to your page.

9. Join Relevant LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups are an excellent way to join engaged conversations between like-minded people. Since groups include people interested in niche topics, you can join these discussions and share your brand’s expertise.

By contributing to groups as an expert on relevant topics, it can raise brand awareness and position you as an authority.

10.Promote Your Page on Other Social Media Platforms

Don’t forget that there’s a variety of other social media platforms online, with audiences that might be interested in what you do. Look at where your target audience hangs out and share your LinkedIn page on those platforms to reach them.

11.Run a LinkedIn Follower Ad Campaign

Our final tip to increase your LinkedIn followers is to run a LinkedIn ad campaign. With LinkedIn ads, you have more control over the type of audience you target and can personalize your ads to your ideal users.

Grow Your Followers

Since you have already established your profile, it’s now time to grow your followers. Learn these simple guidelines to expand your business and community on LinkedIn. You can start by inviting your followers to follow and share your page. How? Follow these easy steps:

1. Sign in to your LinkedIn account
2. Go to your Company Page
3. Click on “Admin Tools”
4. Select “Invite Connections”
5. Choose connections you want to invite to follow your company page

Engage Your Team Members

Your employees are powerful partners to grow your following. Tag them in your posts and encourage them to promote your content to their network too. In this way, your story can reach more people in the community. Inspire your colleagues to share your interests and the benefits of following you or your page. LinkedIn groups are helpful too in promoting your content – encourage the team to participate and build awareness to different groups about your brand.

Create An Advertising Campaign

Running a paid advertising campaign is an advanced approach that you can use to increase your followers. You can start by creating your first ad campaign to learn the basics and once you have succeeded, you can now create and run dynamic ad campaigns.

Get support from leaders and executives

Executives and well-known leaders in line with your business are great influencers and have a broad professional network. You may ask support from these people to @mention your LinkedIn page in order to entice followers and create traffic. I know, it’s a bold move, but it’s worth a try.

Also, watch their content conversations and interact with those who comment. After a few interactions, send a connection request. When they connect back, that will also count as a follower. 

Get support from members/connections

Now that you have members on your LinkedIn page encourage them to participate actively in your posts. Get them to react or comment on your content. This way, your content will have a chance to be exposed to a broader audience and can create a positive ripple effect. Always remember to be active as well by commenting back and making sure that your comments are substantial and worth reading to make them viral.

Keep an eye on your competitors

Another way of improving your page and strategy is by looking at the page of your competitors. It is important to conduct a competitive analysis to identify and come up with content that resonates or content your competitors cannot give.

Get help from influencers

Influencers are your friends in digital marketing. You can benefit from them by their promotions and advertisements of your products or services. They have lots of followers who pay attention to their posts and views, so collaborate with them. In return, they will also benefit by getting recognition which is very important in social media.

Post job offers on your page

This is a smart idea that many misses! Many people in LinkedIn are not just companies or businessmen but are individuals looking for great job opportunities. By posting job offers, you entice these individuals to go to your page and check out what’s in there for them. It is essential to make your page look good all the time by creating a welcoming space for every interested audience.

Tips to Crafting the Perfect LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

1. Define Your LinkedIn Marketing Goals

Marketing on LinkedIn is no different from any other social marketing. You need to begin each campaign by defining and setting your goals. You need to ask yourself why, precisely, are you undertaking this LinkedIn marketing campaign? What are you hoping to achieve from it?You want your goals to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. In  particular, you need to ensure that you can use some suitable metrics to measure the success of your campaign.

Some common goals (expressed generally here, not fully SMART) include:

• Increasing your brand awareness (probably best measured using data on your LinkedIn Page analytics)
• Building leads (LinkedIn is after all the network where you are most likely to find potential business decision makers/customers)
• Engaging with your target audience (again you will find data on this in your LinkedIn Page analytics and less tangibly in your participation in LinkedIn Groups)
• Selling your product (perhaps less common on LinkedIn, but still possible indirectly)

2. Know Your Target Audience

If your potential customers do spend time on LinkedIn, you will want to go into further detail describing their demographics. You need to know the essential characteristics of the people likely to buy your product, ahead of  the company for whom they work. You might sell B2B products, but it isn’t a business that makes up its mind whether to purchase your product – it will be some specific manager within each company. So, it is worthwhile asking yourself, which manager would make the decision, or even who is likely within a business to give recommendations on purchasing.

3. Perfect Your Company Page

An attractive, informative company page is essential for any business on LinkedIn. It will be one of the most likely places for your target audience to visit on LinkedIn. You should imagine it as being a virtual store, whether you sell items or just use LinkedIn to build brand recognition.

4. Promote Your Company Page

You should take the opportunity of promoting your page whenever you get the opportunity. This can be as simple as a linked LinkedIn logo on your webpage and other social accounts, encouraging people to follow you on LinkedIn. The more visible your LinkedIn page, the more successful you are likely to be on the platform.

5. Create and Share Useful Engaging Content

It is important to remember that LinkedIn is a more “grown-up” and serious social network than many of the others; it is probably not the ideal place to share your cat memes. However, it is a perfect site to create and share blog posts that will interest your target market. LinkedIn is particularly suited to Thought Leadership type articles, allowing you to demonstrate your expertise in your niche.

6. Use Images and Other Media in Your Content

While the text is the meet of your shared post, you should use visual media to embellish it. In most cases, it will be the image or videos that attract someone’s attention and bring them in to read your article. If they like your overall post, they will hopefully follow your page.

7. Be Active in LinkedIn Groups

You could even opt to create and moderate a group where you target your preferred audience. You will, of course, must spend time to keep the conversation going and make it worthwhile for people to participate.

8. Include LinkedIn Ads in Your Campaign

The ads you can buy include:

• Sponsored content – here, you pay to amplify the content you share. This means that your posts reach a much larger audience than you could achieve organically
• Text ads – PPC ads that appear on various LinkedIn pages, for example, the LinkedIn home page, profile pages, search results pages, and Group pages.
• Sponsored InMail – these allow you to send personalized messages to LinkedIn members – like email marketing but done within LinkedIn

9. Study Your LinkedIn Analytics

In many cases, you will find the relevant data in LinkedIn Analytics for your company page. This will give you invaluable progress about the visitors to your page and how they have engaged with your content.

How to Master LinkedIn Content Marketing

• Engage with your audience.

It’s easy to create a post and then move on to the next project, but using LinkedIn for marketing shouldn’t be a one-way street. If you’re fortunate to have users commenting on your post, interact with them. Respond to questions and comments, ask for feedback, or ask questions that spark discussion.

• Be genuine, not salesy.

Yes, social media marketing is about promotion, but you can promote yourself and brand without taking a hard sell angle. Producing good content with an authentic voice will perform better than a hollow sales pitch. People are smart, and can spot dishonesty quicker than you may think.

• Use hashtags.

Just like other social media sites, LinkedIn hashtags are used to categorize content. You can use them to help you reach your target audience and those with shared interests. Hashtags are also a great way to reach those outside of your network who may be interested in your content based on the hashtags you use. Two to three relevant tags should do the job.

• Be consistent.

A successful LinkedIn campaign requires consistency. This may be hard at first, but it’s important to develop a regular cadence for publishing. This builds trust with your audience and will help establish yourself as an expert in your field.

• Be exclusive.

It can be tempting to publish the same content across multiple platforms, but that would be a mistake. Provide your LinkedIn audience with exclusive content that they can’t find elsewhere. It’s not uncommon to have the same followers on several platforms, so you don’t want to bombard them with duplicate content.

• Observe and adjust.

Don’t get discouraged if your posts don’t initially get the level of response you hoped for. Make adjustments and continue to improve with each new post you share.

Tips for Sharing Updates on LinkedIn

To do	To avoid
Share links to interesting articles, websites or videos. Use words that grab the readers and encourage them to click the link.	Talking about what you had for breakfast (or your cat). LinkedIn is a professional network. Before you post, make sure that what you’re sharing is relevant to your audience and provides value.
Attach a document to your status update. Your audience might appreciate receiving checklists, white papers, or case studies. Job seekers, this is a great place for your resume.	Being a spammer. To avoid coming off as spammy, try to limit your updates to no more than a couple times per day.
Mention a person or situation that might be helpful to some of your connections. The “@” before an individual or company name allows the reader to click through to that person’s LinkedIn profile or company page.	Talking about sensitive topics. I am too embarrassed to even think about, let alone share, some of the items I see posted as status updates. If your mother wouldn’t want you talking about it, don’t include it in your status.
Talk about an event you are attending or have attended. This might encourage involvement and/or questions about what you learned there.	Continually pitching products and services. This takes people back to the days of big newspaper ads and screaming radio messages. This is not the purpose of social media, especially LinkedIn.
	Don’t bother posting when no one’s looking. Try to align your posting schedule with the business hours in which people in your industry operate. Of course, this varies if you have a global audience.

Key Benefits of Publishing Long-Form Posts

• Targeted audience: Considering a majority of your connections are like-minded professionals, it’s easy to select topics that will resonate. This type of shared interest provides an opportunity to create a two-way dialogue where everyone is sharing their expertise and strengthening their relationships.
• More exposure: Every post you write and publish prompts a notification for your connections. This is a great way for you to showcase your thought leadership on your chosen topic and add value to those within your network.
• Increased following: If your connections enjoy your content enough to like it or share it, that can open doors to a whole new audience. And if your connection’s network sees your posts and finds value, there’s a chance they will follow you to keep up with your contributions.

Steps for Publishing on LinkedIn

• Define your purpose: What is your outcome in publishing content on LinkedIn? Who is the main target market you’re writing the content for? What are the main challenges they face within their role or industry?
• Brainstorm topics: Once you have a clear understanding of why you’re writing the content (and who you’re writing it for), try to come up with a handful of working titles based on your audience’s challenges.
• Narrow your focus: Once you’ve created a backlog of ideas, it’s time to hone in on one. Select the one that you think is most relevant to your audience and get writing. If you need guidance, refer to this resource from LinkedIn for tips on how to write effective long-form content.
• Select an image: Pick out a compelling cover image to accompany your post. (If you’re stumped for an image, check out these free stock photos sites.)

How to Execute a LinkedIn Content Marketing Strategy

Step 1: Plan Your Content in Advance

In order to achieve optimal results, you need to plan the content you are going to share. Here are some tips for how to plan more effectively:

• Start by taking some time to find articles you want to share, status updates you want to post, or infographics that are relevant to your industry.
• Organize the content on a calendar and decide when you want to share them. (Click here to access HubSpot’s free social media content calendar template.)
• Leverage software — like HubSpot’s Social Publishing App — to schedule your content in advance.
• When you have a plan, you not only save time, but you are able to focus your energy on finding the right content for your audience.

Step 2: Determine Your Frequency Strategy

When sharing content, the goal is to identify a frequency that allows you to stay top-of-mind without overwhelming your audience. To help you achieve this balance, here are the publishing guidelines to follow:

• Status Updates: 2-3 times a day.
• Long Form Publishing: 1-2 times a week.
• Keep in mind that every industry is different. While this works for me, you may need to modify this schedule as you see fit.

Step 3: Utilize Content Creation Templates

Your content needs to have a purpose and an outline. Are you writing a blog post, or a case study? Will you be promoting content on LinkedIn, or publishing it there?

Step 4: Follow Up With Generated Activity

If your content marketing efforts are working, you’re going to notice a spike in your activity. This could be anything from increased views, connection requests, or even direct messages from viewers. With that said, now is the time to strike up a conversation. If people are viewing your LinkedIn profile or requesting to connect, consider striking up a dialogue with them. By uncovering what interested them about your profile, you can then begin to uncover potential opportunities for collaboration.

Ways to Grow Your LinkedIn Advertising Strategy

1. Why Use LinkedIn for Advertising?

LinkedIn is about business, so it’s great for B2B products and services aimed at the professional crowd. If your goal is to increase your visibility in your industry and deliver focused advertisements, this paid channel will be huge for you. After debuting the Pulse and Influencer efforts, the platform has also evolved into a content site, playing host to a professional-grade news feed.

Here’s a few questions to keep in mind when starting a LinkedIn ad campaign:

• What is/are the job title(s) for my target audience?
• Where does my target audience work?
• What unique skills/interests does my target audience have?
• What role does my target audience hold in their company?

2. How to Target Effectively with LinkedIn Advertising

Targeting options for this platform are similar to Facebook and Twitter, but LinkedIn moves beyond the basics and up to the next level. Company size, title, education, industry, and geographic targeting is available. You might also eliminate specific groups, companies, skills or fields of study from your ad sweep. Say you’re targeting marketers, but don’t want the competition to see your ads – simply omit their name. Maybe you’re growing your mailing list but don’t want a certain set of people to click a free download you’re offering in your ad (because it’s too simple or over their heads). No problem – just eliminate certains skills or positions from the targeting.

3. Audience Expansion

There’s an option for what LinkedIn calls Audience Expansion. “Enabling this feature can increase your campaign’s reach by also including members similar to the target audience you’ve selected.”  Unchecking this box will keep your search as targeted as possible. You might like this option for increasing brand awareness, but this can be costly. The pay per click and pay per impression payment model LinkedIn uses could be prohibitive if you’re using the platform to target specific user ranges. We’ll dip into the costs and ROI of LinkedIn advertising in a moment.

4. Anatomy of a LinkedIn Ad

Linkedin allows you to create multiple ad variations. Two types of ads are available on LinkedIn: sponsored ads and text ads. Since your audience isn’t actively looking for you, both ad types are more push than pull. This means that you’ll want to really make ads stand out and capture member’s attention.

Both include:

• Headline (Short, punchy copy for headlines is always crucial. Using the title of audience members can also be effective. The headline limit is 25 characters).
• Ad copy (With a separate landing page established for each ad campaign, you’ll be able to measure results directly from different ad copy. Copy is limited to 75 characters, or two lines).
• Destination URL (This can be a LinkedIn page or an external URL. Ideally, an external landing page may be tailored to the LinkedIn members you’re targeting).
• Thumbnail photo (Pictures of people are ideal, because people like to see people. According to the LinkedIn optimization team, photos of women drive the best click through rates. Simple photos will always be best. Using your brand logo is only recommended if you’re focusing on building brand awareness).

5. Who will see my LinkedIn Text Ads?

These ads will be visible to anyone surfing LinkedIn and the LinkedIn Audience Network partner sites. These partner sites are mostly high-end media sites, some of them are part of the Collective Media ad network and the Doubleclick exchange. Such partners include:

• The New York Times
• Business Week
• CNBC

6. The Cost of LinkedIn Advertising

There are two options for setting up ads: cost per click (CPC) and pay per impression (PPM) for every 1,000 views. LinkedIn will keep the ad up until they hit the money mark, so micro-targeting campaigns are great with sponsored content. Highly targeted ads for smaller audiences (with highly targeted landing pages) will return a much higher ROI. Switching up the ads at least once a month can help with impressions and improve CTR. New ads always get more attention and experimenting with different headlines and copy can make all the difference in terms of CTR.

7. Click-Through Rates for LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn cites a good click through rate for sponsored ads at 0.025% – but a great photo and copy can definitely boost that up. Aiming for a CTR of .08% to .10% will leave you in good shape. But .30% is absolutely possible. Ads that achieve more engagement will be shown more continuously than those receiving little or none. This is how LinkedIn determines if a particular ad is resonating with the audience. A typical text-ad CTR hovers around 0.005% – 0.020%. That said, this can vary greatly given your targeting, copy, and offer.

8. Lead Capture with LinkedIn

Two options are available here: a landing page or LinkedIn “Lead Collection.”

After someone requests to contact you about an ad, you receive an email. This is convenient for the user because their browsing goes uninterrupted. It’s great for you because you can immediately send a follow-up email.