Try these tips to attract potential customers to follow your business on LinkedIn.

This is part three of a three-part series on LinkedIn for B2B businesses. Check out part one, LinkedIn for B2B: Getting Started, and part two, How to Hire Talent through LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a goldmine for organizations looking to build professional relationships and generate more quality leads. The 433+ million member base presents an enormous opportunity for your company to earn new business. But once you set up your company page, how can you start attracting those members to follow you? We’ve got 10 steps to get you started.

Keep in mind: Attracting followers can work like a domino effect — if you find the right people, that is. When you form an authentic LinkedIn relationship with someone, someone who is genuinely interested in your business and the content you distribute, that person is more likely to like, comment on, or share your updates. Then that person’s network will see that s/he engaged with your business. Not only does this provide exposure for your company, but also offers an endorsement of sorts. It encourages other people in your followers’ networks to follow you as well.

10 steps to attract LinkedIn followers

1) Entrust your colleagues.

Send around a company-wide email encouraging your employees to add your company to their LinkedIn profiles. When they do, your company name and logo show up on their profiles. Additionally, they automatically become followers of your company page and will receive your updates. If you can encourage them to like, share, and comment on your content, even better.

2) Tell your customers and partners.

Follow your customers and business partners on LinkedIn to prompt them to do the same for you. You can also let them know that you have a company page by including it in customer newsletters, your email signature, or other regular communications with them. Engage with their content on LinkedIn to stay top of mind and to get your business’ name in front of their followers as well.

3) Follow your competitors.

Get insight into what the competition is up to and how they are interacting with their followers. Make sure to like and comment on their content since their networks will see this activity (and, thus, your business’ name). You may even go further by following some of their customers and partners — you never know where a new business relationship might start!

4) Add a follow button to your website, social accounts, and content.

Don’t forget to add LinkedIn to your follow buttons on your website, blog, and other social media profiles. You can also add it to the share widgets on your content assets, like blog posts, emails, and landing pages. Doing so provides potential followers with an easy way to locate your company page or to share your content with their networks.

5) Write a blog post about it.

Announce the launch of your company page with a celebratory blog post. Enrich your post with keywords that resonate with your target audience, so potential customers searching the Internet might come across it and want to connect with you. Make sure to share the post through your other social media channels to encourage your followers there to find you on LinkedIn as well.

6) Join group discussions.

LinkedIn groups facilitate conversations about popular issues and hot topics in your industry. Though company pages cannot participate, individual employees partaking in the discussion represent their companies. (In fact, your company name is displayed under the employee’s name when they start a discussion.) Encourage your executives and other company leaders to find and join groups that relate to your business and to actively participate in dialogue. They can also share company updates or blog posts in these forums. Other group members will recognize their expertise and form a favorable opinion of the company — perhaps favorable enough to follow it.

7) Post regular content.

Keep yourself in your followers’ eyes by posting content at least several times a week. Keep in mind it doesn’t have to be all original content. In fact, it’s a smart idea to mix it up and share articles and posts by others that you find interesting. Users who come across your company page will recognize you as a source for frequent, relevant information, and will want to follow you to stay in the know.

8) Like, share, and comment on others’ content.

The more you interact with different members’ content, the more brand exposure you’ll get. Remember, the connections in members’ networks see details of your interaction in their newsfeeds. The more you interact with different people, the larger your reach.

9) Follow industry news and post on LinkedIn Pulse.

Keep up to date with the latest happenings and topics of conversation in your industry on LinkedIn Pulse. It’s a great way to gain inspiration for content. And posting to Pulse is an excellent way to attract followers. Millions of people browse and engage with Pulse conversations every day, so publishing can offer great exposure for your business.

10) Strategically utilize sponsored updates.

Your content can reach users outside of your company page’s followers and visitors through sponsored updates. The Campaign Manager tool will insert particular posts into a targeted audience’s LinkedIn newsfeeds. You just set your budget and choose cost-per-click or cost-per-1,000 impressions, and voilà! While few companies have the budgets for daily sponsored updates, these campaigns can be really effective at attracting followers when you have particularly compelling content to share.

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10 Ways to Gain LinkedIn Followers