Supercharge Your LinkedIn Company Page: Expert Strategies with Michelle J Raymond

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Michelle J Raymond: Welcome to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, AKA a LinkedIn Company Pages Expert. And this week's show I'm gonna be doing by myself to give you all the various ways that I've learned to grow your page as fast as possible. Now, this is probably the most popular question that I always get asked "Michelle, what is it that I have to do to grow the page?"

[00:00:22] Michelle J Raymond: Because quite often it's gonna be the KPI that most people are measured on. So you're gonna be measured on follower growth, most likely impressions, but if you don't have followers, you know what? You're just talking to yourself and that's the last thing that we want. If you're just starting out with LinkedIn Company Pages, I love them so much that I was co-author of the World's first book "Business Gold" and Business Gold is all about building awareness, authority, and advantage using your LinkedIn Company Page.

[00:00:53] Michelle J Raymond: It's still the only book that's been written on LinkedIn Company Pages, so make sure you jump onto Amazon and grab a copy if you are starting out. Honestly, it's gonna step you from start to finish on everything that you need to pay attention to, to set yourself up for success. So let's talk about the different ways that we can grow the page as fast as possible.

[00:01:14] Michelle J Raymond: Now, first of all, make sure that your page has been optimised and set up correctly. We don't want to have everyone coming across onto the page and then it being a massive letdown. There is nothing worse than that. Spend some time up front, make sure it's optimised, make it really clear what it is you do, who you help, and how you help them focus on that transformation.

[00:01:37] Michelle J Raymond: And it doesn't matter whether you're a small business, a multinational, everywhere in between. Company Pages, if you own a business, everybody needs one.

[00:01:46] Michelle J Raymond: The easiest way that you're gonna grow your page each month is you're gonna use your invite credits. Now, each month you get 250 page invite credits that can be used to invite first degree connections.

[00:01:59] Michelle J Raymond: There's a disclaimer on this one that if your page has over 5,000 followers, unfortunately you don't have this option available to you, which is a bit of a shame. For everyone else though, the good news is this is gonna be a really quick wait. Every month you get 250 invites. I want you to send them out as fast as possible.

[00:02:18] Michelle J Raymond: Don't wait. The faster you get them to follow your page, the faster that they're gonna see your content and the faster you're going to build your community. As you send them out, if somebody accepts, they're going to then give you a credit back. You can resend them out. Now, if you use the filters by industry, locations, schools, things like this, it means you can be really targeted about who you invite. The more targeted, the more likely that you're gonna get a yes, which means you get that invite credit back again.

[00:02:50] Michelle J Raymond: It can be spread amongst page admins. If you have multiple page admins, good news is you can leverage everybody else's connections. Now the problem becomes that if you're a page admin, that's not necessarily out connecting with everyone, then you're gonna need to call in some of the team. So maybe your

[00:03:06] Michelle J Raymond: CEO, maybe your sales team, your customer service team, whoever's got relationships out on LinkedIn and that's because we need first degree connections to be able to invite. Rotate it around is what I would always say.

[00:03:20] Michelle J Raymond: But if you are the person that's managing the company page, you know, go ahead and grow your own personal connections just as much as the page .You will thank yourself for it one day down the track.

[00:03:31] Michelle J Raymond: The other way that we can do this is you may not actually realise, but you get as an employee 30 invite credits to invite your first degree connections to follow your company page. Now again, the disclaimer has to have 5,000 or less page followers.

[00:03:49] Michelle J Raymond: What I don't want you to do is not use those and mostly when people don't use 'em, it's because they don't even know that that option is there. So you can rotate around your team, use up those 30 invite credits every month as well.

[00:04:03] Michelle J Raymond: Now, here's something, and again that a lot of people don't know, cause LinkedIn's not doing a great job of letting everybody know the new features that roll out, but a little while back, we also got the ability as individuals, so say it's myself, I get 50 invite credits per month to invite my first degree connections to any Company Page that has under 5,000 followers.

[00:04:27] Michelle J Raymond: Now, some of you might be listening going, why would I wanna do that? Well, the answer is this. Sometimes I work with clients who are after complimentary services that I don't offer, and I've got a really great referral network that I wanna introduce them to. So I have the opportunity to easily and quickly invite them to follow those pages.

[00:04:47] Michelle J Raymond: And I'm always a big believer, guys, that if you're listening, that what goes around comes around on LinkedIn. Really show other people the kind of person, the kind of business that you wanna be, so that the same people out on the platform are going to give you options.

[00:05:01] Michelle J Raymond: Invite credits that's where we're starting every single time, every single month. Don't let them expire because if you don't use them, you lose them. And it's a huge missed opportunity.

[00:05:13] Michelle J Raymond: So after we've done our invite credits at the start of the month, there's a couple of other places that I'm gonna go through with you .So grab a pen and paper, make sure that you capture all of these and see how many of them you are actually already doing, and give yourself a tick for every one that you can mark off.

[00:05:30] Michelle J Raymond: You may not know, but there's actually a follow button that you can insert onto your website, which is some code that LinkedIn themselves have written up that you can insert on any page on your website. And essentially what happens is when someone's on your website, has a little LinkedIn logo and it says, follow next to it. And if someone clicks on that, they'll automatically become a follower of your Company Page. Some of you may already have a logo on there, which then has a hyperlink to take them to your Company Page.

[00:06:03] Michelle J Raymond: What happens then is if you do it that way, as they go across, if they get distracted and don't press the follow button on the Company Page, you've lost them, which is a damn shame. But with the follow first button, which comes from LinkedIn, if you insert that, then they automatically become a follower so you don't lose them.

[00:06:23] Michelle J Raymond: So that's always a good one. The problem is you can't customize the button, so it doesn't look that great, but it certainly does the trick and is functional.

[00:06:32] Michelle J Raymond: How else can we get people to our Company Page? Well, if you are using other socials, quite often people have something like Linktree or some kind of quick links. Something that you use to direct people to places of interest. Now, don't forget to include your LinkedIn Company Page as part of that. I have mine on a page on my website so that people can come across and have a look. They can find my books, they can find the podcast, they can find my YouTube channel.

[00:06:57] Michelle J Raymond: All of these kind of things are on this one link. So if you have something like Linktree or an equivalent, don't forget to include your Company Page on that. What else do we have?

[00:07:07] Michelle J Raymond: My favourite one and one that's really effective is when you connect with somebody, at the very first time. You've found them in the feed or in the search, or they've just reached out to you to connect. It's a really warm phase of the relationship, right? Everybody's keen, everybody's connecting. They're in that mode. I quite often say to them at that stage, "Thanks for connecting. I also have a Company Page where I give away a lot more tips. Would you mind if I shared that link for you, cause I think it's a great resource?"

[00:07:39] Michelle J Raymond: I always ask for permission. It's not a rule, there's no law that says I had to, but I just think it's nice and good etiquette rather than almost feeling like it's spam. So I share the link and after they've given me permission, and quite often they'll actually straight away they become a page follower.

[00:07:57] Michelle J Raymond: And then you've got two places that you can nurture people as a first degree connection, which is always the best, or as a Company Page follower. So you've got two opportunities to get them. After we've done that, so let's say our new connections, we've got a really good process in place so that we can make sure that we're taking advantage of that warm start to the relationship.

[00:08:19] Michelle J Raymond: Other ways that you can do it, quite simply, if you're doing a personal post, I'm not a fan of personalised hashtags. Never have been, never will be. I think they're a complete, not a waste of time for the most part. Now, yes, they're good for branding, I'm not saying that there's not an occasion where they can be helpful for recognition, but ultimately for functionality, I don't think that they're great because you can't do a lot of things with them.

[00:08:44] Michelle J Raymond: So instead of using an personalised hashtag, why don't you tag your Company Page? Why would you do this? Again, you've got two opportunities. You can invite them. You've got different ways that you can start to use this. Now, this is a thing that I want people to understand. You may not right now, have a need for a Company Page, but if you're sitting there thinking maybe in the future you'll have employees, maybe in the future you'll wanna sell your business.

[00:09:14] Michelle J Raymond: Maybe in the future it's gonna be more than just you. It might be some other contractors that you wanna work with. Building up your company brand will only help you build your personal brand and vice versa. ; The more times that you can tag your company page and say, don't forget, come and follow this for a second lot of great info. Focus on value, always value first. This is what I've successfully done. So Good Trading Co has built up Michelle Raymond and Michelle J. Raymond has built up Good Trading Co and together over the last few years, it's basically created a perception of the business is bigger, better, stronger. And now I'm sitting here thinking, I'm so glad that I actually invested the time to build it.

[00:09:59] Michelle J Raymond: What else can we do? LinkedIn has given us the option now where we can comment really easy as a Company Page. This is a great way to get your page recognised out on LinkedIn in the home feed .In a place where it's really hard for our posts to show up the cool thing is you can comment on any post as your Company Page. My disclaimer always comes, don't go be a spammer. Don't go and crash somebody else's post that you are blatantly trying to sell your products when they offer the same thing. That's just like totally uncool and really gonna damage your brand. So please don't do that if you're listening in today. That's my public service announcement, no spamming with your Company Page comments please.

[00:10:44] Michelle J Raymond: We've tagged in a post and we've used our page to comment. We are also able to add the links into, say, our email signature.

[00:10:53] Michelle J Raymond: So the cool thing is with our email signatures is quite often they've got little icons where we can hyperlink them to take to different socials. Don't forget, you can use your LinkedIn company page there just as much, and that can be for employees as well as business owners. The more that we bring everybody together, the better the results are for everybody.

[00:11:15] Michelle J Raymond: Having something that's standardised on your email signature is always great. So again, the more people in the team that use it, the more chance that you've got.

[00:11:24] Michelle J Raymond: On LinkedIn, if you have a premium account, the option to have an out of office in your LinkedIn inbox is also there. I know that people use this very creatively, use your out of office in your personal inbox and put a note about the Company Page and how to get there. Again, keeping top of mind, keeping the personal brand and the business brand connected so that they're working in synergy.

[00:11:51] Michelle J Raymond: Can you believe like we've got so many different ways that we can do this. Another cool way that you can do it is if you have a LinkedIn newsletter or a newsletter off LinkedIn for that matter. Don't forget to include the details in there. So quite often on my personal newsletter, I'll always tag my company or have the company name down in the footer as I'm the author of the newsletter, and you can do that on your newsletters off LinkedIn just as easily.

[00:12:19] Michelle J Raymond: With everything, you have to have a strategy. Make sure that it aligns with everything else that you're doing and not just plonking it on there, making it look ugly butting heads with other members of the team because it, isn't helpful. Always think about how can you use this best?

[00:12:37] Michelle J Raymond: Ultimately, I think if we're talking about ways that we can grow page, if your content is rubbish and you're not putting valuable content out there that's helpful for other people, your Company Page has got zero chance. As we know in the LinkedIn home feed, it's really hard for company pages to show up, so we have to try harder.

[00:12:59] Michelle J Raymond: What are the ways that I recommend that we can do that? You know, just make it really personalised. Make it humanised. Try not to use too much heavy branding because people think it's an ad. And what do we do? We scroll past ads. That's the worst thing. So sorry to all my marketing friends that are out there.

[00:13:16] Michelle J Raymond: It's time to pare it back if you want success on LinkedIn. When you are creating your post on LinkedIn for your company page, don't forget to include hashtags. Current number, probably sitting around three to five. Use some really big ones and use some specialised ones. The reason that you wanna do that is other people can use those hashtags to find your content in the search bar.

[00:13:42] Michelle J Raymond: So without the hashtags, there's really no way that LinkedIn can file your post under a particular topic. So hashtags are really quite helpful .If you want people to hang around your page, be social as a Company Page, if someone comments, don't forget to have someone in the team commenting back to them.

[00:14:01] Michelle J Raymond: Another one of my favorite ways to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn event. So whether it's LinkedIn Lives or LinkedIn audios. We know that when you run those on LinkedIn, you are going to have probably more chance of getting more attendees running it through your personal account unless you do a lot of effort to use the invites of which you get a thousand per week as an individual to invite to any event on LinkedIn.

[00:14:27] Michelle J Raymond: If you take advantage of that, run it through the Company Page. No problems. But at all times take the opportunity to mention the brand. It's, totally fine when you are using it in the context of it's like a company event and you're running it for the company. It doesn't make sense, again, if we're spamming somebody else's event, we never wanna do things like that.

[00:14:51] Michelle J Raymond: But ultimately where you get the chance ,where it makes sense, don't forget to mention the Company Page and ask people to come and follow. If we never ask people to do it, they never will. That comes to what happens if you do a LinkedIn post and you literally say to people, please come and follow my Company Page.

[00:15:12] Michelle J Raymond: That's another option that you have. Be blatant. Put it out there. Leverage your personal connections to build your community over on your Company Page. There is so many different ways that we can do it. I've just covered probably 15 or 16 different ideas for you to grow your Company Page.

[00:15:31] Michelle J Raymond: For all of these, you need to take action. Growing a Company Page is not something you can do passively. ie You can't just sit back and hope it will happen by magic. I don't have a wand that can fix it for you. I wish that I did, and I promise you the second that I find a shortcut, I will be back on here to share it with you all.

[00:15:52] Michelle J Raymond: If you're just starting out and you've got a low page follower number, the good news is the tips that I've given you today are a really fast way for you to grow your page. I would expect most businesses to be able to easily grow to a thousand followers within three or four months, especially if you have the whole team helping in that early phase.

[00:16:13] Michelle J Raymond: I think for most small businesses, a number of one to two thousand is more than enough for covering your industries. The bigger the company, the bigger the industry, the bigger the numbers.

[00:16:25] Michelle J Raymond: But ultimately, don't be upset if you've only got a few thousand Company Page followers. It's not a numbers game. It's about having a niche targeted audience. Now, I've given you so many tips today. I hope that's helped everybody that's listening in. If you're a page admin, a B2B marketer, or maybe you're a business owner that's responsible for marketing, if it's something that you're struggling with and you need help, at Good Trading Co I also have a specific LinkedIn page admin course just for page admins to help them grow B2B communities on LinkedIn. So reach out, connect with me on LinkedIn if you wanna know more. It's also on the website at goodtradingco.com.au. I'll put that in the show notes. But I appreciate everybody that's joined.

[00:17:12] Michelle J Raymond: I hope you've enjoyed this episode as I've done it by myself. Next episode, we'll be back to having another amazing guest. Until then, cheers.