A while back, we published a blog about how executives can help grow the number of followers for a company LinkedIn page. Those tips remain important, but LinkedIn also provides a powerful tool for companies to invite followers. Company page admins – which can be a company executive or an employee – can actively invite personal LinkedIn connections to follow the page. As noted in the previous blog, executives’ networks are naturally full of the “right” people to follow a new or emerging company’s page. Any executive or employee with industry connections can dramatically increase the number of followers in 10 minutes or less per month.
Below is an example of Rainier Communications’ LinkedIn page: beginning December 2019, soon after this new feature rolled out, our team began inviting contacts to follow the Rainier page. In one year, we’ve gone from 285 followers to over 800 followers, about 185% growth. And we are a small team, so imagine if you had a larger company and a dozen or more team members participated!
It’s a simple process: first, a current page admin adds the person who will invite connections as an additional admin (via “Manage Admins” in the pulldown menu shown). Next, the new admin can begin inviting connections by clicking on the “Invite Connections” button in the pulldown. It’s easy to pick and choose those to invite since certainly not every connection is appropriate. LinkedIn gives company pages 100 credits each calendar month for invitations. As people accept an invitation, a credit is returned. So if you invite 100 people and 50 follow your page, you’re given another 50 to invite during that month. In the example shown, our CEO, Steve Schuster, invited 100 people to follow our page around December 1st. Twenty-four people have followed our page and now we have those additional credits during this calendar month.
To those who work in PR and marketing, it may seem obvious that people interested in a company or product should follow the LinkedIn page, but it’s not! We find that people just need to be asked. Rainier suggests that companies have executives rotate the process of inviting connections to broaden the potential pool of followers.
It follows that sharing well-written, relevant content on a LinkedIn company page is very important. Those new followers will want to hear about your news, opinions, wins, events and more to remain engaged. Videos also receive a high level of engagement on LinkedIn and can be shared via a link to YouTube (example in the link is to a video Rainier produced for client OnwardMobility) or uploaded directly to a LinkedIn update – both methods are effective and drive engagement.
Have questions about how to use LinkedIn to grow awareness of your company? Need a full PR program? Send the Rainier team a request to meet: https://www.rainierco.com/contact-rainier-communications.
P.S. Don’t forget to follow Rainier on LinkedIn!
