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A little foreplay is good.

But I’m not going to preach to you about how important it is to grow on LinkedIn… and blah blah blah.

Let’s get directly to the how part ๐Ÿ™‚

Read this guide as it covers in detail:

  • How to grow LinkedIn followers and be influential?
  • Free (organic) and paid (LinkedIn Ads) ways to gain Linkedin followers for your company page.
  • Implementation secrets to increase your LinkedIn followers fast.

Here’s a sneak peek into what we discuss:

  1. No shortcuts
  2. Relation building
  3. Engaging content
  4. Content is the kingmaker
  5. Engage
  6. Content creation

How to grow LinkedIn followers the right way?

How to grow linkedin followers

How to grow LinkedIn followers?

Tip-1: There is no universal rule to grow on LinkedIn.

Always remember, there is no universal rule to grow LinkedIn followers. There is no sure shot way.

But it helps to understand the following:

  • The game on LinkedIn is about what your audience likes AND what works for you.
  • What worked for you to increase your followers on another social platform, may or may not work on LinkedIn.
  • Similarly, what’s working out for someone else on LinkedIn may or may not work for you to grow your followers on LinkedIn.

So, keep experimenting. Continuously observe and optimize your LinkedIn strategy.

No shortcuts to increase your LinkedIn followers

LinkedIn Organic Reach

LinkedIn Organic Reach

The thing is, on LinkedIn, it is more about trial and error. It is less about a formula based success. But there are frameworks that can help you get early traction. These frameworks can help you gain momentum to increase LinkedIn followers.

Experiment & Observe

No shortcut to grow LinkedIn followe

No shortcut

I don’t have great following on LinkedIn …but I have decent traction on my posts, and a healthy sized network. In this insight, I’m not gonna parrot the formulas to grow LinkedIn followers, which a lot of self proclaimed LinkedIn growth experts evanglelize & bluff about. Instead, I would share a first-hand experience of how I have grown my following on LinkedIn, and how I have observed others grow followers on LinkedIn – the largest professional platform on the planet.

LinkedIn has good organic reach.

Reading this insight, you get to know what works and what not to grow your followers on LinkedIn.

The best thing is that LinkedIn has good organic reach, and you just need to ride the same to grow your LinkedIn network – your professional network.

Relation building works like a charm to grow LinkedIn following

LinkedIn is not a so sell network

LinkedIn is not a sosell network

Tip-2: Always remember, LinkedIn is not a sosell network.

Many people go all guns ablaze on LinkedIn and try to sell, sell, and sell …all the time.

Okay, I get where you’re coming from. In a world where they say “always be closing”, this is kind of acceptable behaviour.

But wait… You really want to be closing all the time?

Or you want to maximise your sales?

Well…

To maximise sales on LinkedIn, you need to build relations, and not scare people away with salesy pitches. You need to build authentic connections and grow your genuine LinkedIn follower base. Invest in meaningful bonds. Treat people as people, not numbers, not follower counts.

Prioritise genuine influence to sustainably grow your LinkedIn Followers

Build genuine LinkedIn Followers

Build genuine LinkedIn Followers

When you do it right, you automatically end up building genuine influence. Follower counts is just a matter of time then. I’ve seen people with 1.5 Millions followers struggle to add 500 people to their groups because their influence is zero.

No matter which stage of LinkedIn you are in, focus on building genuine influence. With influence, persistence, and honest efforts anyone can end up gaining good business from their follower base. You don’t necessarily have to be salesy all the time.

If you don’t already enjoy good influence on social i.e., if you do not already have any LinkedIn follower base. Then immediate actionable things which you can do to grow your followers on LinkedIn is to create professional content, and engage on the platform like a maniac.

Create engaging content to grow LinkedIn following

Create engaging content to grow your LinkedIn followers

Create engaging content

The core of LinkedIn growth is in creating engaging content.

Yes, becoming social media influencer is all about “influence”. But if you don’t already have influence, you can gain some by exhibiting your craft, your skills. And no matter, what your skill-set is, you always need good communication skills to get the exposure that you deserve.

And to maximise the exposure, you need support. Support of the algorithm, and support of people. Yes, I’m talking about playing with the algorithm and not against it, play for the people and not against them.

You get good engagement on social platforms when the social users become your cheerleaders, when algorithm likes what you do.

Sounds simple, but ain’t simple.

By the way, do you know swimming? Because now, we’re going to dive deeper into content creation & engagement for increasing LinkedIn followers ๐Ÿ˜‰

Engage with other's Create your own content to grow LinkedIn followers

Content – the kingmaker on LinkedIn

Take the leap to grow your LinkedIn followers

Take the leap

Did you observe? In the above LinkedIn post, I had attempted to create a specAd (fake ad, dummy ad) for Gold’s gym.

Now, I’m not saying this is great content, but yeah, I attempted my heart out in creating this short post for Gold’s gym (which is a fitness brand, of course). Umm.. I won’t label this as decent engagement, but yeah, I did get some traction. Right?

Now, the people who are supporting me here are lovely beings.

They support me no matter what I create.

No, no, no.. this is not loyalty.

To me, something else is at play.ย  Maybe.. love?

I do feel it is love. Love for content, and love for the creator.

Tip-3: Create content on LinkedIn for the RIGHT audience, be visible.

I have observed people on LinkedIn who pour their heart out to create content – which is not $#!T. Content that’s meaningful.

And what’s meaningful content?

Whatever your audience enjoys AND what adds value to their life i.e., something that takes them ahead in life, makes them better than who they already are.

People follow you, connect with you – when they do not want to miss your content, when your content makes them happy.

Opportunity follow visibility

Opportunity follow visibility

So, create content by investing your heart into it. Learn copywriting, learn storytelling, and learn the elements of effective communication to be good at content creation. Practice the hell out – what you learned, to be great at content creation. Great content is a prerequisite to great engagement.

Engagement – engage right to grow LinkedIn followers

No universal formula to grow on LinkedIn

No universal formula to grow on LinkedIn

Creating content is only 27% of the work that goes behind growing your LinkedIn followers & network. 73% is engaging on the platform.

Engagement encompasses networking. In a more detailed way, engagement includes:

  • engaging with other’s content in comments,
  • sharing posts,
  • recommending posts,
  • recommending opportunities,
  • striking conversations in direct inbox,
  • eMeeting,
  • meeting off the platform,
  • participating in audio events, and
  • leaving opinions on trending news on the platform.

In short, engagement is about creating organic and inorganic ripples. Be more of a human and less of a bot.

Engagement - the king

This post got decent engagement. Why? …maybe, because my connections and followers on LinkedIn felt connected with the creator i.e., me, and the content hit them in all the right ways.

Result?

LinkedIn pushes this content to the feed of people, who follow me and who engaged with my content. The post garners good visibility.

And opportunity follows visibility.

Content creation and engagement to help boost your Linkedin following

Engage to grow your linkedin followers

Engage

No doubt, engagement is the kingmaker.

But kingmaker needs support as well, that support comes-in from optimising your every single LinkedIn action. This is where you are playing with the algorithm and not against it to grow your LinkedIn followers.

Now, how do you optimise your linkedIn? How do you play with the algorithm?

Well, here’s the list:

  • Optimise your LinkedIn profile; write a stellar about section, a great tagline, and activate creator features if there is need. This is kind of LinkedIn SEO, akin to how you optimise websites for Google SEO. But this is comparatively pretty simple.
  • Use the right hashtags on your content so that it is visible to the right audience.
  • Engage on relevant hashtags.
  • Comment on the posts of popular creators in your niche.
  • Tag people in relevant posts, engage with organisation posts, and so on.
  • Collaborate with influencers in your niche.
  • Analyse your account stats, and optimise accordingly.

…the list will continue. Follow me on LinkedIn to not miss future additions because I’m very active there and engage with my network 1:1 most of the time. By the way, the content I share on LinkedIn is mostly about:

  • Content creation; creative writing; copywriting, content writing
  • Digital marketing; growth marketing
  • Freelancing
  • LinkedIn growth
  • Memes
  • Self improvement; personal development;
  • Personal finance & investment

Optimise …the end game to grow your followers on LinkedIn

To summarise how to grow LinkedIn followers:

Create. Engage. Optimise to grow LinkedIn

CEO

Create. Engage. Optimise.

Nishant Choudhary
  

Nishant is a marketing consultant for funded startups and helps them scale with content.

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