How to send invitations to follow your Linkedin Company Page
As a small business owner, I always found the struggle to get followers to my Linkedin Company page.
Quick recap: Linkedin is the leading B2B Social network in the world. We already found and described a great plan to increase the number of followers on your profile. Linkedin Following is key for your professional life, it will bring business connections. Those connections can become suppliers but they can also become clients.
February 21, 2020 Update
Linkedin now is currently offering users to invite 25 of their personal contacts every day as Invite Connections under the Reach subsection of the Admin Tools of your company page.
Inbound or Outbound
There are two ways of getting clients on Linkedin: Inbound or Outbound.
Inbound: You will publish content on your profile and hope that your connections that will view the post will engage and interact with it. Like all inbound marketing, it’s non invasive.
Outbound: I have quite a few Linkedin Connections – 5554 at the time I’m writing this article. And it’s constantly growing as I use the plan mentioned above. Meaning I receive “intro messages” in my inbox of people trying to sell me services, scheduling a call, and more on a daily basis.
Current Solutions for your Linkedin Company Page
Ok, so we recapped the personal connections and messages on Linkedin. Now, the company pages… That is another story. Even though I have 5500+ followers on Linkedin, gathering company followers for The X Concept always has been a little bit more of a struggle because the ways to promote your page until now was:
- Engage your employees
- Promote the page outside the company
- Add a “Follow” button to your website
- Take part in LinkedIn Groups
- Post Careers
- Launch a Follow Ad campaign
Ok, When you don’t have full time employees, it’s harder to engage them. Promote the page outside the company, like on blog posts, newsletters, the CTR is relatively low… so not much result there either.
Adding a follow button to my website… Not really, it’s not the prettiest thing there is. Take part in Linkedin Groups to highlight your company is quite tedious. By posting careers, you will receive applicants that will follow your company page, because the hiring manager will be notified if this is the case. And yes, it looks better if you do. But for this you need to be hiring. Launch a follow ad campaign, that’s true, this is something beneficial, and part of Paid Social marketing. But at the end of the day costs money.
What do all those solutions have in common?
All those solutions have one thing in common, they do not let you capitalize and optimize on a network you already created with your personal profile. Let’s talk numbers, I didn’t follow any of the solutions listed above to try to grow my following, but was posting all blog content from this website on my personal profile as well as on my company profile, and this got me to a whooping 14 followers. Yeah, tell me about it…
Something happened very recently with your Linkedin Company Page
There is a new feature that just happened last week (at the time this article was written). You can now INVITE your connections to follow your page. Yes, just like on Facebook you can invite your “friends” to “like” your page. Is Linkedin becoming more millennial friendly? Or is it just a way for them to open up features to help smaller businesses with organic growth? Let’s put it this way, their motivation does not matter, What matters is how you can use it. So let’s look how you can do it.
First of all, Log onto linkedin, and open your Linkedin Company Page on your laptop (or desktop) you will find that under the “ME” section in the navigation bar on top of the Linkedin profile. There will be a sub menu, and you might need to scroll a little until you find your company page. Click on it. You will then land in Admin Mode, that’s where you want to be.
Now you will look under Admin Tools where you will find under the “Extend Your Reach” submenu the “Invite Connections” link… Click on it, therefore a popup window will appear.
Below you will see how the popup looks like. It will allow you to either search your connections and invite certain people, industry specific or more. Or you can browse through your connections.
After finding your connections, you will be able to invite your connections. As you can see on the bottom left of the window, you can only invite your connections ONCE to your page, meaning the content of your page might be dialed in before you place your invites.
After Clicking on the blue bottom at the bottom right of the page, you can wait until your connections click your page and accept the invite.
Tracking Data
I will be tracking the data on how many people clicked on the invite and liked my Company Page. Providing you with exact number.
June 2019 – Update
After running some tests with Lorenzo and Jan who contacted me in the comments telling me that they couldn’t see the option on their profile. We are still trying to determine what factor a part from being “random” there is in common. I thought it was related to the amount of followers they had on their personal profile (less than 1000). But one of Lorenzo’s colleague with 94 followers had access to the feature. So we know it’s not the amount of followers. We tried with other profiles located in Europe, as they are both from Europe – and had access to the feature with a France based profile with (15000 connections) so we know that’s not it. If someone has an answer on why they don’t have access to the feature, please add it to the comments.
38 comments
Ann Tuomela
June 13, 2019 at 4:39 pm
Nicely written!! That’s on my next task list!
Lorenzo
June 14, 2019 at 12:19 am
Is this option available for everyone? I don’t have it on my company page.
Charles Oreve
June 14, 2019 at 12:22 am
Hi Lorenzo, I have had similar comments from other people, I think it depends how many connections you do have on your personal profile as well. I will email you so we can run tests and publish them on this article.
Jan
June 14, 2019 at 1:17 am
I have the same issue. I am missing the button and would like to know why 🙂
Charles Oreve
June 14, 2019 at 1:21 am
Hi Jan,
Just added you on Linkedin as well as sending you and email, would like to run a few tests with you so we can publish them on the article.
Charles Oreve
November 6, 2019 at 3:40 pm
Hi Jan, Did you get the button this time around. It reappeared for me this morning.
Marcos Dinnerstein
December 28, 2019 at 3:45 am
We were using this feature and it has disappeared. At the time we were using it, you were limited to 50 contacts per day. It would be great if it were available again.
Charles Oreve
December 28, 2019 at 11:17 am
Dear Marcos,
Yes indeed, the November/December version allowed you 50 contacts per day (per profile, and not per company), while the June/July version allowed you to invite your whole list, which in my book was much more practical. Now, I am not sure why it disappeared again, and I would be grateful if they were implementing it permanently. Let’s hope this will happen soon.
Suraj
January 26, 2020 at 2:29 am
I have same issue
Chris Willmus
June 15, 2019 at 10:01 am
Very helpful!! Thank you for sharing, I will try that “invite to follow” button!
David Pansbo
June 18, 2019 at 1:37 am
Hi. Also just tried, however, I don’t have the invite option. Any ideas of how to fix this? Would be very cool to look into.
Charles Oreve
June 18, 2019 at 2:18 am
Hi David,
It seems that it’s still a pilot program, and it has not been added to all profiles yet, I’m sure they are working on a release to all profiles very soon.
Kurt Uhlir
June 18, 2019 at 9:54 am
Great walkthrough article. I do not have the option on any of my company pages yet but am looking forward to it.
Charles Oreve
November 6, 2019 at 3:38 pm
Dear David, the options came back today, did you get it this time around?
Paul Damiano
June 26, 2019 at 1:50 pm
I had the option to invite connections to my company page and then it disappeared.
Charles Oreve
June 26, 2019 at 7:06 pm
Hi Paul,
Actually the same thing happened to my account. Since the beginning, as you can see from the comments below, there was profiles that did not have the option. Now it seems that all profiles do not have the option. LEt’s hope this is a temporary thing, as it was definitely a great feature from Linkedin.
Slavcho
July 22, 2019 at 2:46 pm
Any update? The option disapeared from my menu few days after. Still no option.
Charles Oreve
July 22, 2019 at 7:29 pm
Dear Slavcho, I wish I had more updates for you. Now it’s Linkedin’s decision on when they will be adding this feature again, wa sa great decision for you to do, and I sure hope they bring it back very soon.
Charles Oreve
November 6, 2019 at 3:37 pm
Dear Paul, the invites came back to my account today.
Slavcho
July 23, 2019 at 2:34 am
Dear Charles,
Thanks for the fast response. I hope it will be back 🙂
Charles Oreve
November 6, 2019 at 3:36 pm
Hi Slavcho, The linkedin updates were back today for my account. Sincerely.
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mark Adam
December 26, 2019 at 12:05 am
Dear Charles,
Do you know of a workaround regarding thisoption or is it up to LinkedIn itself. I had the option a while ago, but since 2 weeks it has dissapeared?
Kind regards,
Mark Adam
Charles Oreve
December 27, 2019 at 9:53 am
Dear Mark
Unfortunately I do not know any workaround as it is something that Linkedin decides, I have looked into it and it has nothing to do with either general location, amount of followers of even Linkedin Premium Status. My option disappeared as well, so I guess they are still not 100% happy of how the invitations work. This time around I had issues inviting some of my contacts where the invitations would not go through. I sure hope everything will be back in working order soon and they will be able to release this feature permanently.
Umar Farooq
December 27, 2019 at 2:07 am
Hy,
My invite option is disappeared. It was visible 2,3 days ago I’ve invited some connections to follow my company page but now the option is not visible. I need some assistance.
Charles Oreve
December 27, 2019 at 9:50 am
Dear Umar
I have experienced the same issue, and this is something that Linkedin decides. I am not sure what is their strategy with this, I received the invitations in June last year, and then they disappeared three weeks after. It has pretty much been the same thing this time around, they disappeared again after three weeks. Looking forward to see when they will appear again.
Umar Farooq
January 1, 2020 at 3:55 am
Ohhhh means the reason isn’t disclosed yet, alright, thanks a lot!
Louise Alexander
February 9, 2020 at 2:34 pm
LinkedIn have acknowledged the disappearing feature is a tech issue:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-feature-allows-you-invite-people-follow-company-page-johnson/
Charles Oreve
February 9, 2020 at 2:45 pm
Dear Louise, Yes, I wrote multiple articles on the website regarding the disappearing page invites. Now Linkedin acknowledging it is something very positive, and hopefully will be resolved soon, once and for all.
Charles Oreve
C.E.O.
Patel Nisha
February 11, 2020 at 10:02 pm
I have one issue in inviting the people to like page..!
I have the option, even though, I am not able to invite. It shows error in sending the invitation.
We checked out with our overseas director as well, still having the same issue. Please help us in this case?!!!
Charles Oreve
February 11, 2020 at 10:15 pm
Dear Nisha, did you bring this up to the Linkedin Help desk? If they don’t give you a timely answer, please contact me directly through the form on the homepage of our website and we can schedule an appointment over the next few days. That way we will be able to look at your issue.
Sincerely
Charles Oreve
C.E.O of The X Concept
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Carrie
February 17, 2020 at 6:51 am
As the admin for a business page, we need to make sure our nonprofit members and board and employees are all connected, and not being able to see the connections and folllowers makes it super difficult to ensure this. Also, doing some specific tracking to show success and prove my social media management is working to the board is near impossible! I hope they get this fixed soon. Thanks for this article and for keeping up with everything!
Charles Oreve
February 21, 2020 at 11:44 am
Dear Carrie,
Over the past couple days, the invitations are back with 25 invitations Daily. As far as your board members and employees, they will have to add your company as their current employment, and it will automatically register them as employees within the company, you will have the choice to have them to become admin if you are willing to.
Kaylin Burris
February 20, 2020 at 9:53 am
Is there any way to connect with people as an admin on your company’s page that you are not already connected to? I work for an education nonprofit and I’m trying to build their following within education and literacy.
Charles Oreve
February 21, 2020 at 11:47 am
Dear Kaylin, Yes, there are ways through sponsored update, and that will include a cost. Now when it comes to growing your reach organically, this method is the one that is available, and it includes 25 invitations from your connections. The other way would be for some of your connections to share your updates and generate engagement through it from their second degree connection. Hope this answers your questions.
Prajna
March 7, 2020 at 8:29 am
Is there no way to send invites to people outside the connection list?
Charles Oreve
March 7, 2020 at 8:31 am
Dear Prajna,
There is not at this time, as when you think of it, imagine how many invitations famous business people would get on a daily basis. So at this time you can only invite your connections, this is why developing your connections, personal network while being targeted is key. Build a personal relationship with those people and then send them company invites.