It’s common knowledge at this point: promoting your business online is an effective way to increase brand visibility and generate leads.
Sharing thought leadership content; insightful commentary on news stories, industry issues, or current events; and, of course, the content your brand is creating all plays a big part in boosting awareness about your brand.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or are already well-established, the platform you need to zero in on to efficiently grow your company online is LinkedIn.
There’s a misconception that LinkedIn is primarily for job seekers—and it’s true that it’s a wonderful tool for talent acquisition and job applicants—but it’s also, in our opinion, the number one platform for business growth. Just as a job seeker can find a new career, you can find customers, employees, and partners on this professional social network. It’s the perfect place to build brand awareness and stronger relationships with consumers.
LinkedIn has always been a powerhouse in the B2B industry, even before the pandemic. With almost 800 million members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, LinkedIn’s unique advantage of organizing individuals by professional interests and backgrounds makes it an optimal marketing tool.
It’s time to grow your LinkedIn community, increase organic reach and gather robust audience insights for your brand—how?
Check out our six critical tips for growing your LinkedIn Community!
Six Marketing Tips to Grow Your LinkedIn Community
1. Invite your connections
Chances are, you have a lot of LinkedIn connections that work in your industry or have shared interests. Some of them probably work with or for you—and others may be clients or even competitors. Go through your connections list and invite them to follow your company’s page.
Every month, LinkedIn grants 100 credits to each personal account. You need one credit to send one invitation—so use them wisely! Target those individuals that may have a genuine interest in your brand.
For each invite that is accepted, LinkedIn will replace the credit. So targeting those who will accept the invite, you can gain more opportunities to send invites.
2. Notify employees
LinkedIn community growth is a process.
It starts with publishing great content, but that alone isn’t enough. Engagement from your followers will generate more stories that appear in the feeds of their first-degree LinkedIn connections. These stories will increase your impressions and eventually increase page followers over time as new audiences see your content.
So how do you drive engagement? Ask for help.
Solicit engagement on your company’s posts by asking your employees to like, comment, or share new posts. This marketing tactic will generate more stories in your employees’ network feeds and, by extension, more followers.
To automate your request to everyone at your company, click the ellipses at the top of your company’s post. This will open a drop-down menu. Click ‘notify employees’, and everyone in your company will get a new post notification. Admins can only send a company wide notification once every 24 hours—so think critically about your posting cadence and which posts your employees will be most excited to interact with.
3. Grow LinkedIn community with Ad campaigns
Page growth is a popular ad objective on LinkedIn, and their targeting capabilities are very dynamic. You can target by industry, job title, seniority, location, and more. LinkedIn digital campaigns get prime real estate on the site, running down the right-hand column just under the “LinkedIn News” feed. Well-crafted ads will generate leads, drive website traffic, and build brand awareness.
4. Analyze and optimize
We’re all about more, more, more—but that doesn’t mean spamming your followers.
More engagement means more stories generated in more feeds. And to get the engagement, you need to analyze the data. Use your page analytics tools to determine which content drives the highest engagement. Once you know what kind of content performs best, use the data to inform your B2B content marketing strategy.
Consider setting aside a small amount of your paid social media budget to boost successful posts to maximize your results, and drive even higher engagement.
Keep your finger on the pulse of that analytics. What works now may have dwindling results in a few months. Track the data and pivot your strategy accordingly. Think critically about posting cadence and content type—and don’t forget to do your competitor research.
You should review what your competitors and peers are doing on LinkedIn—not so you can replicate these practices—but for the opposite.
Identify the gaps and white space and provide something members won’t find anywhere else.
5. Check your LinkedIn Follow button placement
Where is your LinkedIn Follow button on your webpage?
We often tuck these opportunities to connect in a bottom corner or even in the footer. While you don’t want to take away from the focus of your website—your offerings—if you want to build connections, you need to make it easy to connect.
Consider moving your LinkedIn Follow button to the top of your homepage, or even give it its own hero slide. The text on or leading to your button should be simple and direct—follow classic CTA strategies and keep it simple.
Related read: How to Write CTAs That People Actually Click With Examples!
What do we recommend?
“Connect with us on LinkedIn.”
6. Attach your LinkedIn URL to your email signature
Another “set it and forget it” tip that can pay major dividends?
Put your signature to work. Edit your work email signature to include a link directing recipients toward your organization’s LinkedIn Page, and encourage them to give it a follow. If you’re corresponding with someone professionally, there’s a good chance your page will interest them, so it’s a win-win.
Whether you’re looking to share great content for your brand, find new employees, or reach a new audience, adding LinkedIn to your B2B marketing strategy is a no-brainer.
These six tips will help you increase followers, improve your brand authority, and grow your LinkedIn community.
Need help growing your LinkedIn community? That’s what we’re here for!
