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#Celebrating1Million: How Our Team Grew Its LinkedIn Following by 10x in Just 2 Years

Today, October 9th, is a special day.

Not just because it’s shaping up to be a warm, sunny Tuesday here in our San Francisco offices. Or because it happens to be the birthday of both Beatles legend John Lennon AND reality TV star Sharon Osbourne. (Though those are important, too!)

But because today we reached a milestone we once thought nearly unattainable: 1 million followers on our LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Showcase Page! And we couldn’t have done it without your unwavering support.

Together, we’ve built a massive community of marketing movers and shakers — a place where LinkedIn members come for campaign advice and inspiration; A destination where we share tricks of the trade, marketing humor and more; A digital home away from home for marketing professionals on LinkedIn.

To celebrate the occasion, it’s only right that we thank you for helping us get here. But instead of giving you swag that (let’s be honest, here) you’d probably never wear, we figured the best way to say “thank you” was to share the very practices that helped us reach this goal.

Hopefully, what worked for us will work for you, too.

So, How Did We Do It?

Our journey to 1 million followers began on May 17th, 2016. A mere 875 days ago. My colleague, Alex Rynne, wrote this blog post about the tips, tricks and best practices we leveraged to take our LinkedIn following from 0 to 100,000 in two years’ time.

Tips like embracing A/B testing, keeping copy succinct and adding rich media to each post helped our LinkedIn Page soar. So after celebrating 100,000, we wanted to dream big: What would happen if we could double down on our success and take the page to 1 million followers in the next two years?

You see, reaching this goal in just 875 days would require us to earn:

  • 7,200 new followers each week
  • 1,028 new followers each day
  • 42 new followers each hour

This means that we would need to acquire more than one new follower every two minutes!

But we didn’t need a miracle to see this kind of rapid growth. All it took was a really solid content strategy, details of which we’re sharing below.

5 Ways to Grow Your Brand's Following on LinkedIn

I won’t sugar coat it — building a strong following on social media is tough. It requires good content, a regular posting cadence, beautiful creative and more. But it’s an investment that’s well worth it in the long run.

And two years (plus a few months) may sound like a huge investment for a time-strapped marketer, but remember that when thinking about a social media presence, you’re thinking about building something of significance. Something that will drive ROI for your business for years to come.

1. Identify Your Goals

Your social media presence (and the content that you share) should always serve the goals of your business -- be it building brand awareness, demonstrating thought leadership or driving leads.

For example, lead generation-focused social media efforts often promote content downloads, encourage webinar registrations and more while thought leadership-focused social efforts may share helpful videos or quotes.

No matter your goal, make sure that your LinkedIn Company Page is working for you and that it’s delivering the value that you need to see to make your time investment worthwhile.  

2. Add Value

The best social media content is helpful content. It’s engaging. It entices your audiences to click and engage further with your brand.

Make sure that you’re adding value for your customer at every step of the way. Your engagement metrics and follower counts will thank you in the long run!

3. Post Daily

If a tree falls in the forest but nobody’s there to hear it, does it even make a sound? That’s how I like to think about pages without a regular posting cadence. In today’s always-on social media ecosystem, audiences have come to expect a constant stream of communications from their favorite brands.

That’s why posting (at least) daily is critical to bolstering engagement. Feed into your audience’s desire for helpful content by providing them with inspiration at every step of their buyer’s journey.

4. Invest in Video

There’s no better way to tell your brand’s story than with video. Videos are emotive, personable and can showcase your brand in a new light. And did we mention you can post them directly from your Company Page on LinkedIn?

We’ve written extensively on the topic of video marketing -- why it’s important, how brands are succeeding with it and how you can do it yourself on the cheap. Take a look here.

Develop a Paid Strategy

Your best social media content deserves to shine. It also deserves to reach more LinkedIn members and advance your business goals. Make sure that you’re sponsoring the content you know performs well with your Company Page audiences. This way, even more LinkedIn members can see your content in the feed, and hopefully give your page a follow as a result.

And because a robust paid and organic strategy is critical to your brand’s long-term success on LinkedIn, we’ve created a guide to help you navigate the intricacies of building one.

Bringing It All Home

Armed with these tips, we hope that you can see as much success with your LinkedIn Company Page as we have.

All this week, we’ll be celebrating our milestone with the #Celebrating1Million hashtag on LinkedIn -- follow along and keep your eyes peeled for daily tips on how to grow your brand’s influence on LinkedIn and beyond.

And, if you haven’t already, help us keep building one of the largest hubs of marketing inspiration on LinkedIn by giving us a follow. We promise, our content won’t disappoint.