Succeeding on LinkedIn is not as easy as registering on the site and waiting for the followers to roll in. You have to put in the work to attract followers, so with that in mind, here are our top tips to increase LinkedIn followers in 2023!

1. Consistency Is the Foundation of Success

One of the most important things you can do to increase your LinkedIn followers and grow your network is to stay consistent. You can almost think of it as an investment with compounding interest – the more you invest, the higher your returns will be. 

Likewise, the more consistently you post, the more likes, shares, comments, and organic reach you’ll get. It goes further than this, though. 

Apart from being consistent in your posting schedule, you should also be consistent with your branding and messaging. If you are, people will recognize your brand and the story you tell over time. 

2. Publish Long-Form Content

Write more detailed, longer content that demonstrates your skills and expertise and the insights you have into your industry. 

Additionally, your long-form LinkedIn posts can show up in Google search results, which means that even people off the platform can find your profile. 

If you’re unsure which topics to cover, you can do the typical keyword research for your LinkedIn content strategy and spice your content up with unique insights from your experience.

3. Use LinkedIn Carousel Posts

Another way to grow your following on LinkedIn is to use carousel posts. 

These posts, which allow you to share documents on the platform, offer numerous benefits. For one, because readers can page through a document on the post, they'll stay on the platform. Because of this, the LinkedIn algorithm promotes these posts, which then gives you increased visibility. 

Another benefit of these posts is that you can include more information compared to typical posts, which leads to a higher click-through rate.

Understanding Your LinkedIn Post Impressions

If it’s worth publishing, it’s worth testing. As Nanette Thelemaque of InEssence Business Solutions, a social media management company, explains:

“I want to measure the engagement of posts and see if the impressions are working with the LinkedIn algorithms.”

Since she manages her clients’ personal LinkedIn profiles, LinkedIn’s native analytics solution isn’t enough. She’s had to pull analytics from her scheduler, and even then, she wouldn’t get the complete picture.

Inlytics helped. As the only tool for LinkedIn personal profile analytics, Inlytics has allowed Nanette to get every data point she cares about in one place.

So, remember: experiment, but measure your LinkedIn KPIs and improve!

4. Stay on Trend to Increase Your LinkedIn Followers

What's one of the best ways to ensure that your content gets the most reach and engagement? Simply put, you have to create content on topics that are popular and trending. 

When you do, you get more organic reach, leading to more likes, shares, comments, and followers. Similarly, followers will want to understand your perspective on the trending topic.

To find out what's on trend, LinkedIn provides you with a trending topics tool. You can even use other social media platforms to see what people are talking about.

For example, Nicole Ayres shares her perspective on product development by commenting on the Spotify Wrapped trend: 

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5. Run a LinkedIn Giveaway to Increase Your Followers

Let's face it; people love prizes. So, one of the best ways to grow your following on LinkedIn is to run a giveaway. 

With these giveaways, you'll provide a valuable resource in return for LinkedIn users liking, sharing, or commenting on your content. This gives you massive organic reach. However, giveaways also have other benefits. 

For example, you can drive traffic to your website, grow your email list, or even promote your product or services.

Here’s a perfect example of such a giveaway, straight from XO Capital’s founder: 

Not only does Andrew’s Super Send get more visibility, but he also uses the giveaway as a lead magnet to capture email addresses. 

6. Stay on the Platform

The LinkedIn algorithm aims to keep people on the platform. So, once your content passes a spam filter, it’s shown to a selection of users. If it generates a lot of reading time, likes, and comments, LinkedIn will show it to more people. 

Moreover, because of how the algorithm works, content that does not contain links to take people off the platform will be promoted more and tends to perform better.

Amanda Natividad of SparkToro popularized the approach, calling it zero-click content:

So instead of trying to get a click-through from your LinkedIn post, try and provide value within the post by sharing the key takeaways.

...but Promote Your LinkedIn Content and Profile on Other Platforms

Check your Twitter and you'll see lots of Twitter threads being repurposed on LinkedIn and vice versa. But it’s even less effort to just cross-promote your LinkedIn profile.

Your followers on Twitter, Instagram etc. have already experienced the value of your content on these platforms, so they are likely to follow you and engage with your content on LinkedIn, too.

This cross-promotional approach also includes email.

According to Robert Weller, who has grown his LinkedIn audience to over 5,000 connections, converting newsletter subscribers to LinkedIn followers can easily be automated:

For example, ask new email subscribers (within your welcome series) to connect on LinkedIn or send a connection request to active subscribers who opened a certain number of emails.

Altogether, this is a low-risk strategy to increase your LinkedIn followers, assuming that your current audience on other platforms is generally interested in your content, no matter where you publish it.

7. Become a Thought Leader

When you create thought leadership content, you’ll be able to demonstrate your skills and expertise and your unique approach to solving problems. 

This, in turn, gives you more credibility, lets you stand out from the crowd, and makes you a valuable resource that others will turn to when they need answers or information.

The journey to becoming a thought leader isn’t easy. However, it helps to have the experience you can use to inspire your content, explaining how you’ve helped customers solve issues previously or sharing your perspective with more context on trending topics. 

8. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile with Data

Finally, you should also optimize your LinkedIn profile. With an optimized, professional-looking profile, your profile will show up more in search results, you’ll build trust, and you’ll get more followers. 

Fortunately, optimizing your profile is relatively simple, and there are only a few things you need to get right. For instance, you need to use the right profile picture, complete your headline and summary section, and use the appropriate keywords. 

When optimizing your personal profile, you should also use a tool like Inlytics. It shows you how well your profile is optimized and what you can do to make it even better. 

It doesn't stop there, though. The tool also shows you how well your content is performing and gives you insight into how you can improve your content to gain more reach and followers.

For Nanette from InEssence, unlocking insights through Inlytics means doubling down on content that works for her social media clients (and doubling her revenue). 

What will it mean to you?

Learn more about Inlytics; get started for free today!

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