If you don't already have a LinkedIn company page, you should absolutely set one up right now. It'll make your personal profile look so much more professional, and will also give your brand a nice SEO boost. Plus, once you've got followers you'll have a targeted audience to stay top of mind with.
It'll take about 2 minutes to set up, see:)
Ok, now that you've got your LinkedIn company page, you'll need some followers. This article outlines the most effective methods for attracting people to your company page.
And just in case you weren't convinced as to why it's worth bothering, consider:
- Your company page follower count is public. The more popular you look, the more popular you'll be.
- Your followers are more likely to see the content you publish. The more you're seen, the more you'll sell.
Before we get to the most effective ways of building your following on LinkedIn – having built audiences of thousands for our businesses and for our clients – let's look at a couple of hygiene factors your need to sort out first:
- Optimise your profile. This means making sure all your contact details are up to date, you've got a compelling tagline, a meaningful About section and a good looking banner image.
- Regularly publish content. This is about giving your prospective followers a 'WIIFM'. No one wants to follow a dormant company page that offers no value.
- Make sure your team have listed your company as their workplace. This'll allow anyone who checks out your company page to easily find out more about the team that will be serving them.
- Engage with other people's content. You've probably heard this a million times before, but it's called social media for a reason – interact, contribute, support and generally show up and have a good time:)
Like most things on social media, the principles are dead simple and quite intuitive, but they do require consistency, a whole heap of grunt work and a bit of creativity – we can help, otherwise you may be able to delegate these tasks to someone in your team. If you do, make sure you clearly define what needs to be done, how often, and for how long. Otherwise, you may find your people getting lost down the rabbit hole.
Invite your connections to follow your page
- Go to your company page admin screen
- Select 'Invite connections' from right hand side (see below)
- Invite all non-competitive connections to follow your page
LinkedIn will either give you 100 or 250 credits each month. On the 1st of each month these credits reset, so you'll get a fresh 100 or 250 invitations to send out. Don't be shy hitting 'invite' as the credits don't roll over into the next month, so once they're gone, they're gone!
If you find that people aren't accepting the invite to follow your company page then consider whether you're inviting the right people.
We find that for a lot of brokers, advisers and accountants, their personal networks are heavily saturated with industry associates. These aren't the people you need to have following your company page. Instead, focus on referral partners, existing clients and ideal future clients.
Add a link to your company page to your email signature
This one's pretty self explanatory. Just underneath the usual social profile icons on your email signature, you can add a text link that says 'Follow us on LinkedIn'. This method doesn't have the highest strike rate, but you may attract some of your loyal clients to your company page.
Send any questions about the ins and outs of building an audience for your LinkedIn company page to hello[at]socialbroker.com.au
