As with any social media account, on LinkedIn, you need a killer profile so that your company stands out. Today, I will share some best practices to grow your LinkedIn following base and to expand your network.
Step 1 – Work on the design of your profile
My first piece of advice is to work on the design of your page. Make sure you update your company’s description and be as precise as possible in sharing your vision: add your specialities, your website so visitors have direct access to your site, and your industry. With LinkedIn, you can also showcase your product and services. One best practice suggested by LinkedIn is to optimize your content for search. « Company Pages are very SEO-friendly » says the site, and Google displays the first 156 characters of your page. Use keywords wisely, and describe your company as richly as possible to help users find you on search engines.
Step 2 – Develop your community
There are two ways to develop a community and to expand your network on LinkedIn: first, attract followers, and then engage with them to create value.
As a company, you should start by getting your first followers through your network connections: colleagues and partners. Did you know employees are 70% more likely to engage with your company updates? Colleagues and employees should be encouraged to join the company page so they can keep up to date with the company news and help you to increase your reach.
You can also get new followers by adding a LinkedIn follow button on your site. The code is fairly easy to implement and different types of buttons are available to best fit your site’s design.
When you start growing your user base, do not forget the most important part: engagement. It is what makes people stay, what makes people come back to your page to check out news and what eventually makes people visit your site and convert to customers. According to LinkedIn, there are 4 components to an awesome update status that boosts engagement:
- Be helpful, not sales-y, people sense that and will be indifferent to those kinds of updates
- Think about timing. When do you think people are checking their LinkedIn feed? In the morning. This is why you have to post early!
- Post often – be consistent and find the posting schedule that fits your audience
- Focus on great content – this leads into the next point
Step 3 – Share quality content
More than tailoring your content to your audience, sharing quality links is crucial if you want the highest kind of engagement. When you share high quality content, you earn more credibility, your content is seen as helpful by users and shares become more frequent.
LinkedIn best practices for posting high quality content include:
- Posting videos, just like on Facebook, because they have a lot of impact
- Sharing best-of articles, they get almost 40% more amplification
To learn more, I invite you to consult our guide on how to enhance your personal social profile, using tools such as LinkedIn!
