Having a strong presence on LinkedIn is crucial for companies looking to build their brand, attract talent, generate leads, and drive sales. One important metric on LinkedIn is the number of followers your company page has. But what constitutes a “good” number of followers? There is no one-size-fits-all answer, as the right follower count depends on your industry, company size, and goals. However, there are some general benchmarks you can use to assess whether your current follower count is meeting your needs.
In this article, we’ll look at:
– The benefits of having more LinkedIn followers
– How follower count varies by industry
– Tips for growing your followers organically
– Paid tactics to increase followers quickly
– Ideal follower count based on company size
– How to calculate if you have enough followers
Let’s explore these factors in more detail so you can determine the right follower goal for your company.
Benefits of More LinkedIn Followers
Having a substantial follower base on LinkedIn can provide many advantages, including:
– **Increased brand awareness** – With more followers, more people see your brand name and content in their feed. This drives brand visibility and recall.
– **Social proof** – A high follower number conveys authority and trustworthiness to prospects. It indicates other people value your brand.
– **Enhanced thought leadership** – More people will see your thought leadership content, allowing you to highlight your industry expertise.
– **Improved talent recruitment** – Followers see your job posts and employer brand content. This expands your talent pool.
– **Bigger audience for promotions** – Special offers, discounts and events reach more potential customers when shared with more followers.
– **Higher post engagement** – Posts generally get more likes, comments, clicks and shares as your follower count grows.
– **More sales leads** – With a larger follower base, your LinkedIn Sponsored Content and Sponsored InMail campaigns can generate more sales prospects.
The more relevant, targeted followers you have, the more amplified these benefits become. Raw follower count is less important than having followers genuinely interested in your brand. But in general, increased followers translate to increased brand impact.
Follower Count by Industry
The average number of LinkedIn followers varies greatly depending on which industry a company operates in.
Some industries naturally attract more followers than others based on how consumer-facing they are, or how much emphasis professionals in that market put on networking.
Here are the average follower counts for company Pages across some major industries, according to Social Insider:
| Industry | Average Followers |
| Computer Software | 19,701 |
| Internet | 17,483 |
| Higher Education | 14,995 |
| Nonprofit | 10,413 |
| Hospital & Health Care | 9,792 |
| Financial Services | 8,965 |
| Consumer Services | 7,205 |
| Retail | 6,554 |
| Restaurants | 5,789 |
| Supermarkets | 4,123 |
As you can see, industries like software, internet services, and education tend to attract larger followings, while more product-driven sectors like retail and restaurants have fewer average followers.
Knowing these industry averages provides helpful context when evaluating your own company’s follower count. Rather than comparing yourself to all brands on LinkedIn, focus on follower counts within your specific industry.
That said, these are just rough averages across all company sizes. Follower goals still depend heavily on your individual business objectives and target audience.
Growing Followers Organically
While paid tactics can quickly increase followers, the best way to build an engaged, loyal follower base is through organic growth over time. Here are some tips:
– **Post valuable content daily** – Share a mix of relevant industry news, thought leadership articles, behind-the-scenes photos, employee highlights, and other content followers would find interesting. Post at least once per weekday.
– **Engage with followers** – Reply to comments, like posts, and interact directly with followers. This builds relationships and loyalty.
– **Follow others proactively** – Follow companies and professionals in your industry, customers, and prospects. Many will follow you back.
– **Use relevant hashtags** – Include hashtags like #industry, #niche, or #product in posts to be discovered by people searching those tags.
– **Run giveaways/contests** – Offer prizes or free samples to followers who like, comment, or share posts. This can go viral.
– **Advertise your page** – Mention your LinkedIn page on other marketing channels and make it easy to find from your website.
– **Join relevant LinkedIn Groups** – Become an active member in industry or niche LinkedIn Groups to get in front of a targeted audience.
– **Enable “Follow” button on posts** – Turn on the option for people to follow you directly from individual posts in their feed.
The key is providing ongoing value that makes people want to follow your brand and engage with your content. Focus on quality over quantity of followers.
Paid Tactics to Increase Followers
While organic growth takes patience and work, you can speed up follower acquisition through paid LinkedIn advertising such as:
– **Sponsored Content** – Pay to boost the reach of your posted content to get more likes, clicks, shares and followers.
– **Text Ads** – Run text ads guiding people to your company page to follow you. Target by job title, company, location, etc.
– **Sponsored InMail** – Send targeted direct messages to prospects inviting them to follow your page to receive special content.
– **Lead Gen Forms** – Offer a downloadable content asset in exchange for someone following you and filling out a lead gen form.
– **Company Follower Campaigns** – LinkedIn campaign specifically optimized to add more followers to your page.
These paid tactics can help you gain followers rapidly. But beware of buying fake follower accounts or using bot nets, as this will likely get you banned. Stick to legitimate advertising through LinkedIn itself.
Ideally use a mix of paid acquisition and organic community-building for the best long-term follower growth.
Ideal Follower Count by Company Size
In addition to varying by industry, target follower counts differ quite a bit based on company size. For example:
– A 10-person startup with a new LinkedIn page will likely aim for 100-500 followers initially.
– A mid-sized company with 100-500 employees may target 2,000+ followers.
– Enterprise corporations with thousands of employees often reach 20,000+ followers after a few years.
Here is a general guide for LinkedIn follower goals based on company size:
| Company Size | Ideal Follower Count |
| 1-10 employees | 100-500 followers |
| 10-100 employees | 500-2,000 followers |
| 100-500 employees | 2,000-10,000 followers |
| 500-1,000 employees | 5,000-20,000 followers |
| 1,000-5,000 employees | 10,000-50,000 followers |
| 5,000-10,000 employees | 25,000-100,000 followers |
| 10,000+ employees | 50,000-500,000+ followers |
These ranges provide a rough benchmark for follower counts, but many variables impact goals. A B2C brand may aim for more followers than a B2B company of the same size. Highly-active pages can build bigger communities than inactive ones.
Look at competitor follower counts, analyze your engagement metrics, and consider your specific business objectives to refine your target.
Calculating if You Have Enough Followers
Rather than arbitrarily picking a follower number goal, you can take a more analytical approach to determine if your current followers are sufficient. Here are two methods:
**Benchmark follower-to-employee ratio**
Divide your current followers by the number of employees at your company. Compare the ratio to similar companies in your industry or niche.
For example, if you have 2,000 followers and 100 employees, your follower-to-employee ratio is 20:1. If competitors tend to have 50:1, you likely need more followers.
**Measure engagement rate**
Engagement rate measures the percentage of followers interacting with your posts through likes, comments, clicks, reshares, etc.
To calculate:
– Add up all engagement on posts over a 7-day period (likes, comments, shares, clicks, etc).
– Divide that total engagement by your number of followers.
– Multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
If your engagement rate is less than 3-5%, you may need more relevant followers. But if it’s higher than industry benchmarks, your followers are sufficiently engaged.
Analyze these metrics regularly to evaluate if your follower growth is on track or if you need higher follower counts to achieve your goals.
Key Takeaways
– More LinkedIn followers bring branding, lead generation and recruiting benefits. But quality matters more than pure quantity.
– Average follower counts vary greatly by industry. Compare your followers to companies in your specific field.
– Build followers organically through great content, engagement and value creation over time.
– Paid tactics like Sponsored Content and follower campaigns can quickly supplement organic growth.
– Follwer count goals differ based on company size and business objectives. Benchmark vs. competitors.
– Measure engagement rate and follower-to-employee ratios to analyze if your current followers are sufficient.
Rather than chasing arbitrary follower numbers, focus on providing value to your target audience. The right followers will follow. But analyze your growth regularly to ensure you have enough to support your business goals.
Conclusion
LinkedIn company page followers are not a vanity metric. They directly impact how many professionals you can reach, engage and convert on the world’s largest professional network.
But growing followers for the sake of numbers won’t provide true value. The ideal follower count depends on your industry, company size, target customer profile and business objectives.
By benchmarking competitors, tracking engagement metrics and focusing on organic community-building, you can determine the right follower goal for your brand. Then mix organic and paid tactics to build an audience that boosts brand awareness, thought leadership and lead generation.
With a defined follower strategy tailored to your business, you can leverage LinkedIn’s unmatched professional audience scale and deeply engage the right followers to drive measurable results.