LinkedIn was started on May 5th 2003 and transformed the way business professionals connect worldwide.

With 500+ million users and growing, and the search intent for the keyword “LinkedIn” that has more than doubled in the last 10 years, this professional social media networking site is now one of the most influential platforms over the internet. As the platform has grown, it evolved to include key features for marketing and talent solutions.

Moreover, through the adoption of content sharing, groups, paid advertisements and other features, LinkedIn has become a powerful platform to manage your brand, grow a business and generate leads. In fact, 80% of B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn.

In order to effectively leverage LinkedIn’s reach for your business’ objectives, there are a number of strategies you need to use. We’ve put together 10 tactics that you can implement as a B2B marketer to boost your company’s followers on LinkedIn.

1. Include a link to your LinkedIn profile in your email signature

Successful marketers recognize the importance of linking email marketing with social media. If you handle them separately, you will lose the opportunity to gain followers from your email campaigns. If your contacts find your emails valuable, they are likely to click on the LinkedIn social icon at the footer of your email which results in driving more traffic to the channel.

2. Place a LinkedIn follow/share button on your website or your blog

One of the simplest tactics to drive traffic to your LinkedIn company page is featuring your LinkedIn social channel icon (both follow and share button) on all your website pages and blog. That way, visitors who are interested in your brand are likely to visit your LinkedIn business page to follow you or share any of your pages if they find them interesting.

3. Use hashtags to build awareness and reach new conversations

When you use relevant hashtags to your posts, you expand awareness around your company and better engage with prospects who may be interested in your brand.

However, you need to be careful not to use hashtags excessively as your post might be marked as spam by LinkedIn’s algorithm.

Another way hashtags may help your company is access specific feeds around them and discover posts and questions. For example, if you need to publish posts and answer questions related to marketing automation to boost traffic to your website or specific blog pages that talk about such a topic, you can search for #marketingautomation, click to access the feed, follow it, post these blogs there, and engage with conversations around it.

You can also find the hashtags that you’ve previously followed on the left side as shown in the screenshot below:

4. Post a variety of content formats

It’s recommended to publish different types of content to better entice your audience to engage with you. You can upload images and videos, write an article or attach any file so your followers can download your document in a PDF format. You also have the option to create a poll to drive your audience to answer your question and select an option.

The more you diversify your posts types the better the chance to get more engagement. When people share your posts, they will appear in front of their friends which increase the likelihood to gain new followers.

5. Join relevant groups and engage in discussions

Search for groups that are relevant to your business and distribute your content there to get more people to follow your page and drive more traffic to your website.

Make sure you publish content that intrigue interest and find out the best ways to effectively engage with other posts by submitting valuable comments. You can also include links back to your content pages if they complement the replies that you leave and add more value to the group members.

6. Run a simple PPC campaign

Most often, the major purpose of ‘pay per click’ is to promote your website on a social channel, or to collect emails from users. This leads them to a landing page after they click on your ad. Positioning an attractive ad which contains catchy headlines with insightful content and compelling imagery can “drag” LinkedIn users to your ad. As a result, they click on your ad, visit your website and follow you on your business page, further boosting followers as well. The higher the bid you wish to pay, the greater the chance that your ad is going to be more attractive and garner more users
Similarly, you can launch a Follow Ad campaign that is also featured on LinkedIn and target your Ad to specific companies. When users click on that button to follow you, the activity is spread into their network which encourages others to follow you.

7. Take advantage of LinkedIn native video

As videos are 5 times more likely to get engagement than other content formats, posting direct videos to your LinkedIn’s company profile instead of linking them to YouTube or Vimeo boosts the likelihood to get more views and receive comments on the spot.

The good thing about LinkedIn is that you’re allowed to post videos up to 10 minutes with a file size up to 5GB.

In addition, the channel enables you to add a caption or thumbnail along with your video. The purpose of adding a caption is to add more value to the video and increase accessibility particularly for those who work in shared spaces and don’t have the option to switch the sound on.

Interestingly, boosting your company’s LinkedIn page engagement is considered a good sign for SEO which leads to improving your channel’s page ranking in search engine results pages (SERP).

8. Consider influencer marketing

Building a relationship with marketing influencers is a great way to gain more followers on LinkedIn especially expert marketers who have an audience that may be interested in your brand.

One of the practices that you can implement is asking to do a video cast with that influencer or write a case study about his business and tag him when you publish that post on your LinkedIn page. Other simpler ways you can do is constantly engaging with their posts and resharing them by mentioning their names. Start asking them to leave their feedback about a post you’ve shared in order to improve your relationship with each other and remember who you are.

When their followers see them mentioned in your posts, they may get curious discovering more about your brand and follow you.

9. Increase your followers from your employees

As your employees are your major followers, encourage them to share your post updates because their following will see your activities too. This way, you boost your posts visibility which leads to gaining more followers.

10. Monitor engagement

It’s critical that you regularly keep an eye on your metrics to find out what posts are driving engagement in order to put your emphasis on using them even more in the future and tweak your messages. Examples of these metrics are clicks, impressions, video views, post shares, reactions and comments.

You can check all visitors and followers and filter their demographics by location, job function, seniority, industry or company size. This helps you determine how to better align your posts with your target audience preferences.

LinkedIn is a very popular social channel for business professionals worldwide. B2B marketers can use LinkedIn to increase their brand visibility, nurture relationships and generate more leads. If you’ve not been using it yet, think twice.

Never miss the key takeaways below:

  • Use social media links in your email signature to get more followers.
  • Use the LinkedIn follow/share button on your website and blog.
  • Use hashtags to expand your brand awareness and reach new conversations.
  • Publish a variety of content types regularly to increase the likelihood of your audience to better engage with your posts and recommend your page to others.
  • Follow and engage with groups relevant to your business to gain more followers to your page and drive website traffic.
  • Use LinkedIn native video to convey your message easier and encourage your audience to engage with your videos directly from the platform instead of linking to another page or video channel.
  • Run PPC campaigns to increase your web visitors and drive more followers to your LinkedIn page.
  • Build a good relationship with marketing influencers to boost your brand exposure and drive a significant amount of followers.
  • Encourage your employees to share your updates so their networks will notice you and follow your page as well.
  • Monitor your performance metrics to find out what’s working and how you can create future posts that better align with your audience needs.