A system for LinkedIn Company Page followers and leads
If your target market or ideal client includes white collar workers, CEOs, business owners, or those in HR, then you should probably be utilizing LinkedIn. There are a million resources out there for individuals to utilize LinkedIn, but it’s different when it comes to your LinkedIn Company Page.
Of course, if you’re already using a tool like Hootsuite, Buffer, or SocialPilot, you can easily publish updates to your LinkedIn Company Page. But how do you build up your audience on your page? And how can you use it to get leads?
Let’s take a look at one organization who used the system we developed—a system you can either use yourself or have us do for you.
Oh, and if you like numbers, this system converts at least 10% of your personal contacts into Company Page followers, and we’ve seen results as high as 33%.
Redbud Advisory Group
Last year Laura Gamble, one of our long-time clients who has become a friend to all of us, approached us and let us know she was starting a strategic consulting company. The company was Redbud Advisory Group.
This new venture of Laura’s excited us for three major reasons:
- It was a professional services business, which is one of the two major areas we serve.
- She was going to be serving nonprofits, which is the other major area we serve.
- It was Laura, whom we love.
So of course, we jumped in with both feet! A short time later, we launched her new website. Given what I knew about her organization, we then started talking about her LinkedIn Company Page.
Laura said, “I know that having a LinkedIn Company Page is a perfect fit for my new company, but what’s the point if I don’t have any followers?”
She was right!
Getting followers on LinkedIn
Here’s the system we used to quickly build up the followers on Laura’s LinkedIn Company Page. Best of all, she got multiple leads from this campaign as well!
High level, here were the steps:
- We created a Company Page on LinkedIn.
- We crafted a message to send to each of her personal connections inviting them to like the page.
- We exported her LinkedIn connections.
- We messaged all of her contacts asking them to like the page.
- She continues to message new contacts with a modified version of the original message.
First, we created her Company Page. Since she was just starting the company, we were starting from scratch! Fortunately, we’d developed a strong brand identity with a logo while making her website, so we were able to use that.
Next, we worked with Laura to craft a message we would send to her LinkedIn contacts on her behalf using her LinkedIn account. In an article back in 2014, I analyzed the components of a good message to build up your LinkedIn followers, which we used to develop Laura’s message.
Here’s the message we ended up with:
I hope everything is going well with you.
I need a favor and it’s definitely okay if you are not willing or able to do this. I am building up the LinkedIn presence of my relatively new consulting company and would like your help.
If you are willing and able to follow my organization on LinkedIn, just click this link, then click the Follow button on the top right:
http://bit.ly/redbudlinkedin
Thank you!
After that, we exported Laura’s LinkedIn contacts. At this stage, she also had the option to go through her list and remove any she didn’t want us to send the message to.
Fortunately, Laura had been building her personal presence on LinkedIn for a while, and she had a good number of connections. After she went through her list, we ended up with 610 contacts we were going to send messages to.
We knew based on past experiences to plan on 10% of those connections becoming followers of her page. But we also knew there was a decent chance we would get even more.
So our projection we shared with her was approximately 60 followers for her Company Page.
Then we started in on the grunt work of sending out the message through LinkedIn. There are a few guidelines we followed:
- We limited our activity to 50 messages a day so we wouldn’t be flagged as a spammer by LinkedIn. We used to limit it to 100 a day, but now we’re more conservative, just to be safe.
- We tracked who we had already messaged in a spreadsheet so we wouldn’t accidentally message someone twice.
- If one person had two LinkedIn accounts, we assumed only one was active but didn’t know which one it was. So we messaged them both.
- If someone replied to the message while we were still working on sending a batch of messages, we let Laura know immediately so she could respond.
If you are better at math than I am, you know that the entire process of sending the messages took about thirteen business days. In fact, the entire process took us just under a month, but obviously that can go quicker if you have fewer connections, are okay with messaging more people a day, or work the system on weekends as well.
The results
As is our habit, we tracked the results for a couple weeks after the process ended. Most of the people that are going to follow will do so within a few days. But there are always some stragglers, because not everyone checks LinkedIn as often.
After two weeks, the final numbers were in. Laura ended the campaign with 142 followers on her Company Page!
If you like numbers, here are the stats:
- Followers starting: 2 (I’m pretty sure those two were Laura and me.)
- Followers ending: 142
- Messages sent: 610
- Rate of return: 22.95%
As impressive as that is, even more impressive was the interaction that happened as a result. Multiple people responded to Laura, which included several leads.
Laura had this to say:
I appreciate the LinkedIn Page and the contact building. It generated lots of interest and responses from people I hadn’t talked to in years. Best of all, it also directly resulted in several new business opportunities!
I think this service is very valuable to business owners. Your team made the entire process extremely easy, and it’s been extremely beneficial.
LinkedIn Resources
We’ve been working with clients on LinkedIn long enough that we’ve put together a number of resources ourselves. Here are some articles we’ve written:
- Improving your organization’s presence on LinkedIn
- Outperform 51% of LinkedIn members in an afternoon
- How to create a great LinkedIn post
Second, you might check out our ebook on improving your LinkedIn profile. It provides guidance on best practices to make the most of your profile by going beyond the bare minimum that LinkedIn requires.
Finally, we do help clients with their LinkedIn profile and Company Page. If you need help setting things up, managing LinkedIn, or building your audience, those are all things we would be happy to talk about.