How to get more LinkedIn followers: a free 7-day course

On LinkedIn a connection is a two-way link and a follower is a one-way subscription to your posts. Every connection also follows you, but followers do not need your approval and are not capped the way your network of connections is. If your goal is an audience, followers are the number to grow.

Decide what a follower should get. Before you chase numbers, write one sentence: "People who follow me get ___ every week." For example: "practical hiring lessons for first-time engineering managers". That sentence becomes your headline, your About opening and the filter for every post.

Make following the obvious action. Look at your profile as a stranger would. Does the top of it say who you help and what you post about? Is there a reason to follow rather than only to connect? Check your profile settings for the option to make Follow the primary button if you want strangers to subscribe rather than send requests.

Accept the right connections, invite people to follow. You do not need to connect with everyone who finds you. People outside your niche can follow and read along.

Common mistake. Measuring growth in connections only. A big network of people who never read your posts is not an audience.

Before and after.

• Weak headline: "Engineering Manager at Acme".
• Strong: "Engineering manager | Weekly hiring and team-building lessons for first-time managers".

Leaders Social's lesson on company page followers gives a principle that works for people too: build several routes into the page. Followers rarely come from one place. They come from many small doors that all lead to your profile.

Routes inside LinkedIn.

• Your posts: the main route once you post consistently.
• Your comments: every comment on a bigger post shows your name and headline to a new audience.
• Reposts with your take: a short opinion on top of someone else's post.
• Newsletters and events: subscribers and attendees see your name repeatedly.
• Mentions and collaborations: being tagged by others puts you in their followers' feeds.

Routes outside LinkedIn.

• Your email signature and website bio with a link to your profile.
• Talks, podcasts and webinars where you mention where you post.
• Other social profiles that point to LinkedIn for your professional content.

Map your routes. Make a short list of every route you already have and every one you could open this month. Most people use one or two. Adding three more often matters more than writing a better post.

Common mistake. Relying only on the feed. When a post underperforms, a profile with several routes still gets new followers.

A post can collect many reactions and bring almost no followers. Likes say "I agree with this post". A follow says "I want more from this person". The posts that earn follows promise more of the same.

Three post types that convert readers into followers.

1. The useful framework: a step-by-step method from your work. Readers save it and want the next one.
2. The series: "Hiring lessons, part 4". A visible series tells readers there is more coming, and following is how they get it.
3. The honest story with a lesson: a mistake or a turning point, ending with what you would do differently. It builds trust in your judgement.

End with a reason to follow. Not "follow me", but a specific promise: "I share one hiring lesson like this every Tuesday." It turns a satisfied reader into a follower without sounding needy.

Stay on promise. If your follower promise is hiring lessons, a viral post about your holiday may bring reactions but not the right followers. Check every post against yesterday's sentence: does it deliver on the promise?

Use the full space when it helps. A LinkedIn post can run to 3,000 characters, enough for a complete framework. Keep the first lines tight; they show before "see more".

Common mistake. Chasing reach with off-topic posts. You get attention from people who will never read your next post.

In his free course, the author of the RB2B newsletter writes: "I went from 4,000 to 140,000 followers on LinkedIn in 24 months." Read the second half of that sentence as carefully as the first. The growth took two years of steady work, not a lucky week.

What a long game looks like in practice.

• A cadence you never break. It is better to post three times a week for two years than every day for two months.
• A narrow topic, held for a long time. People follow you for something specific; switching topics resets that.
• Formats that you repeat. When a format works, it becomes a recurring slot that followers look forward to.
• Compounding comments. Every week of good comments adds people who recognise your name.

Plan in quarters, not days. Pick a quarter-long theme inside your topic (for example "first 90 days as a manager") and plan 12-13 weeks of posts under it. At the end, review which posts brought the most followers and use that to plan the next quarter.

Protect the habit. Batch posts ahead of busy weeks, keep a bank of drafts and accept that some weeks will be average. Consistency is what survives a bad week.

Common mistake. Comparing your month one with someone else's year two.

If you also run a LinkedIn company page, Leaders Social's lesson "How to Get More LinkedIn Company Page Followers" shows the main idea: grow the page audience using relevant content and active participation, not by waiting for people to find it.

Start with the people closest to the brand.

• Employees: ask the team to list the page as their employer and to repost page posts with a personal line on top. People follow people first, then brands.
• Your connections: invite relevant connections to follow the page from the page admin view.
• Customers and partners: mention the page in onboarding emails, newsletters and case studies.

Give the page a reason to be followed. A page that only posts announcements gives little reason to follow. Mix in useful content: how-tos, customer stories, behind-the-scenes and team voices.

Participate as the page. Pages can react and comment too. Comment as the page on posts in your industry with the same 3C care you use on your personal profile.

Connect page and people. Founders and employees who post regularly should mention the page when relevant. Each mention is another route into it.

Common mistake. Treating the page and the founder's profile as rivals. They grow best together: the person brings attention, the page keeps the brand.

Your current followers can only share you with their networks. Collaboration puts you in front of someone else's audience, with their trust attached.

Four collaboration formats on LinkedIn.

1. The expert round-up: ask five people in your niche one question and publish their answers, tagging each of them. Many will reshare.
2. The co-written post: write a post with a peer on a shared topic, where each of you adds a section and both of you publish or reshare.
3. Live sessions and events: host a short conversation with a guest; their followers get invited too.
4. Newsletter swaps: recommend a peer's newsletter in yours and ask for the same.

Choose partners by audience, not by size. A peer with 3,000 followers in exactly your niche can bring better followers than a big generalist account.

Give before you ask. Comment on a potential partner's posts for a few weeks first. A request from a name they recognise lands differently from a cold message.

Tag with care. Tag people only when they are part of the post. Tagging people for reach alone annoys them and their audience.

Common mistake. Asking for a shout-out without offering anything. Make the collaboration useful for both audiences.

Leaders Social closes its followers lesson with advice that is easy to skip: measure audience quality as you grow. Ten thousand followers outside your market are worth less than one thousand inside it.

Where to look. Your LinkedIn analytics show follower totals over time and follower demographics such as job titles, industries, company sizes and locations. Company pages show the same for page followers.

Set a quality target. Write down the two or three job titles or industries you want most. Each month, check what share of new followers matches them.

Weekly numbers to record.

• New followers: total and from your best post.
• Share of followers in your target titles or industries.
• Comments from new names: a sign that new followers actually read you.
• Profile views: shows whether your routes still send people in.

Read the trends, then act. If followers grow but quality drops, your recent posts may be drifting off promise. If quality is high but growth is slow, open another route from Day 2 or add a collaboration from Day 6.

Record your baseline today. Followers, target-audience share and last week's profile views, with today's date. You will compare against it in a month.

Common mistake. Celebrating the total and never opening the demographics.