Hi there!
Small companies and start-ups often don’t have a lot of money to invest in marketing. Using social media, such as LinkedIn can then be a good way to reach your target audience and engage with them without any cost. Even though you can create ads on them, which of course will cost you money, you can still gain visibility without using them. And don’t forget, it’s not always the quantity of your followers that will make you succeed, but more the quality of them.
Here are ten ways that are completely free to gain visibility and followers on LinkedIn:
1) Promote your LinkedIn page on other channels to gain more visibility: it can be on other social media, your brochures and other marketing communications, your email signature, your blog, your website and so on. Whenever possible add direct links to your LinkedIn company page.
2) Post when most people are on LinkedIn: this way you’ll increase the chance that your followers see your posts and react to them. Whenever they react to one, their own connections will be able to see your post on their feed which at the end will lead to more people seeing it than the number of connections you have. Indeed, talking about my personal experience, the other day I posted something on the networking platform and could see that almost 4x more people saw my post than the number of connections I actually have. The fact that some people liked it helped a lot as their own connections might have seen the post as well in their feed afterwards. To find out when is the best time to post, check my previous blog post here.
3) Add hashtags related to what you post: each time LinkedIn users will write down words that you “hashtaged” in the search function of LinkedIn, a feed will appear with all the posts that used this same hashtag. This will allow your post to be seen by more people. But be careful, don’t put too many hashtags. You don’t want people to think you’re in desperate need to gain visibility. Two to three hashtags are probably a good number.
4) In your posts, tag other people or companies that are on LinkedIn whenever relevant: To tag them, write “@” followed by their name (as they wrote it on their account).
5) Join LinkedIn groups: by becoming a member of different LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your industry and by being active on them, you’ll be able to create new contacts.
6) Ask your colleagues/employees to follow and interact on the company page: if they like, comment and share your content, their own connections (for which a lot are people of your industry that you might not be connected with yet) might see this content as well.
7) Post regularly: according to Buffer, companies that post regularly gain followers faster than businesses that don’t. If people see that you are active on LinkedIn, they might see an interest in following you to get regular updates and information that can be helpful for them. It’s therefore also very important to add value to your posts by creating original content that people would hardly find on other LinkedIn pages.
8) Complete your LinkedIn company profile entirely: according to Buffer, these pages when fully completed can receive 2x more visitors than the ones with uncomplete profiles. Check the website of Buffer here to get more information on how to complete it.
9) In your post, try to engage with your audience by asking them questions: this will help to start a conversation. And don’t forget to always answer people that wrote a comment, even if it’s just to say “thank you for your message”. Otherwise, they may not comment your posts anymore, thinking you don’t really care about those.
10) Analyze your LinkedIn statistics: that will help to figure out which posts worked and which didn’t. That way, you can continuously improve your content. A useful and easy way to keep track of your statistics over time is to use an Excel file. On it, you can write down your stats for each month, such as the number of likes, shares and comments your posts received, but also the themes of your posts so that you know which were the most popular ones.
Did you already use these strategies to grow your audience? Did they work? Or do you see other ways to gain followers and visibility? If yes, I’m very curious to know about them in the comments below! Also, let me know if there is a specific subject you would like me to cover.
Very soon, I’ll post about best practices for LinkedIn pages of small businesses and start-ups so that you get inspired for your own one.
Take care and enjoy your weekend!
