LinkedIn is a popular social media platform used primarily for professional networking and career development. Many businesses and organizations have LinkedIn pages to connect with customers, clients, and other professionals. A common question that arises is whether one business page can like or follow another business page on LinkedIn.
The Short Answer
Yes, a business page can like or follow another business page on LinkedIn. This allows businesses to connect with, support, and endorse other companies and organizations on the platform.
How Business Pages Work on LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, there are profile pages for individual users and separate pages for businesses and organizations. Business pages function similarly to individual profiles but are specifically designed for companies, nonprofits, brands, and other professional entities to connect with their target audience.
Some key features of LinkedIn business pages include:
- Ability to showcase products/services, company culture, career opportunities, and industry thought leadership
- Metrics like follower count, post reach/engagement, and visitor stats
- Options for posting content like articles, images, videos, and job listings
- Tools to interact with followers including likes, comments, shares, and messages
In many ways, business pages operate like individual profiles. One of the main activities a business page can do is follow or like other company pages to network, share content, and track relevant organizations.
Why Like Other Business Pages?
There are a few key reasons a brand may want to like or follow other companies and organizations on LinkedIn:
- Networking and relationship building: Liking pages is a simple way to connect with potential partners, vendors, clients, or affiliated groups.
- Monitoring the competition: Following rivals allows brands to keep tabs on their content, activities, and engagement.
- Industry tracking: Liking relevant businesses makes it easier to stay on top of industry news, trends, and best practices.
- Thought leadership: Pages can like influencers, experts, and media outlets to showcase alignment with key figures.
- Promotion and lead generation: Brands may want to interact with followers of complementary companies to increase awareness.
- Supporting partners: Liking partner, investor, or supplier pages shows endorsement and strengthening of business relationships.
While individuals connect for networking purposes, brands follow pages primarily for market research, promotion, relationship development, and tracking their niche. It’s an easy way to monitor a company’s broader ecosystem.
How to Like Another Business Page
The process of liking a business page is simple and only takes a few clicks:
- Visit the LinkedIn page of the company you want to follow.
- Click the “Follow” button near the top right of the page, under their cover photo.
- This will turn into a blue “Following” button once you’ve successfully liked the page.
- Updates from that business will now appear in your LinkedIn feed.
- You can unfollow at any time by clicking the “Following” button again.
Liking a page is separate from sending a connection request. Following a company does not connect you with any of its employees – it simply lets you track their page content in your news feed.
Limits and Restrictions
There are not currently any limits on how many business pages an organization can follow. Some restrictions include:
- Pages cannot like their own company page or employee profiles.
- Business pages cannot follow individual member profiles, only other company pages.
- While pages can like each other, they cannot share connections. Only direct employees can become 1st-degree connections.
Within reason, brands are free to follow as many or as few complementary companies and competitors as they want. However, following hundreds or thousands of pages may be seen as inauthentic.
Analytics and Insights
Liking other business pages allows brands to unlock valuable analytics and insights about:
- How often the company posts
- What type of content receives the most engagement
- Key initiatives and announcements
- Staffing changes
- New products and service offerings
- Partnerships and collaborations
- Job openings and hiring trends
These details can reveal a great deal about the page’s overall branding, content strategy, and business focus. The intel gained from following competitors and industry leaders can influence your own company’s direction and priority setting.
Best Practices
To get the most value out of liking business pages, keep these best practices in mind:
- Target strategically: Follow pages aligned to business goals like potential partners, major competitors, and companies in your niche.
- Engagethoughtfully: Occasionally like, share, or comment on their posts to build stronger connections.
- Segment follows: Create lists to group pages by category like Competitors, Prospects, Vendors.
- Track data: Analyze follower growth, engagement stats, and what posts draw attention.
- Be authentic: Follow pages genuinely relevant to your brand so your outreach appears natural.
With a strategic approach, liking business pages can open up all kinds of partnership, branding, and competitive analysis opportunities.
Risks and Downsides
While there are many benefits, some potential downsides of pages liking pages include:
- May appear intrusive or overcompetitive if taken too far
- Can clutter up news feeds if following too many pages
- Provides less deep insights than human intelligence gathering
- Requires dedicating time to monitoring followed pages for value
- Comes across as inauthentic if liking pages unrelated to your brand
As with any social media efforts, there are risks if liking other business pages is not handled thoughtfully. Avoid spamming follows or obsessing over competitors. Focus on quality over quantity.
LinkedIn’s Policies
LinkedIn does enforce policies around how business pages interact on their platform. Some key rules include:
- Pages must accurately represent the business, brand, or entity they are affiliated with.
- Artificially inflating follow counts via paid services or fake accounts is prohibited.
- Pages should not engage in predatory, deceptive, or overly promotional behavior.
- Harassing other companies or individuals will lead to permanent bans.
In general, politely liking and commenting on other relevant business pages is perfectly acceptable per LinkedIn’s terms of use. Just don’t inflate metrics or attack competitors.
LinkedIn Advertising Options
In addition to organic follows, LinkedIn also provides paid advertising options for business pages to increase visibility, including:
- Sponsored Content: Displaying posts in the feeds of targeted members who may be interested.
- Sponsored InMail: Sending customized direct messages to high-value prospects.
- Text Ads: Placing highly targeted text ads along the right rail of the LinkedIn feed.
- Dynamic Ads: Serving customized ads based on member’s profile data and activity.
For major branding and lead generation initiatives, paid promotion can complement more organic engagement approaches.
Alternative Social Platforms
While LinkedIn is the largest professional social network, other sites have similar business page options:
- Facebook Pages – Allow brands to establish an official presence and connect with target demographics.
- Twitter Profiles – Let companies tweet, retweet, and interact with followers to build awareness.
- Instagram Business Accounts – Enable visual storytelling and engagement with customers and niche communities.
- YouTube Channels – Help businesses publish video content to inform, entertain, and convert viewers.
However, LinkedIn remains the premier platform for managed B2B outreach and networking between organizations.
Conclusion
Liking and following other business pages is a quick, easy way for brands to expand visibility, monitor competitors, identify partners, and interact with industry players on LinkedIn. By strategically networking with relevant companies, organizations can gain valuable intel to inform their own marketing, sales, and business strategy.
While liking business pages has great networking and research benefits, brands should be thoughtful in their approach. Avoid indiscriminate spamming and focus on high-value targets. With a little finesse, smart engagement with other companies can yield dividends.
