LinkedIn Launches Company Follow Button (How to Add It Now)

Looking to generate more followers for your awesomely optimized LinkedIn Company Page? (It is awesomely optimized, right?) This morning, LinkedIn made it just a little bit easier to generate company followers with the launch of its new follow button. Like Twitter's follow button and Facebook's like button, LinkedIn's version makes it simple for your website visitors to follow your company's LinkedIn page with just one click. No navigating to the LinkedIn website required!

And yes, you should want some more followers. In a recent study of over 5,000 businesses, HubSpot found that traffic fromLinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, almost 3 times higher (277%) than both Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%).In other words, increasing your reach on LinkedIn will likely increase your website's LinkedIn referral traffic, and because of the powerful conversion rate of LinkedIn traffic, you'll likely see an increase in leads, too!

Convinced you should spend some time building the reach of your LinkedIn Company Page? Here's how to add the new follow button to your website. It's easy!

How to Install the LinkedIn Follow Button

1)Visit https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/follow-company

2)Enter your company name or ID. (Or select your company as you begin typing and the dropdown menu appears.)

3)Choose your button's count mode preference -- whether or not you'd like the button to display your LinkedIn Company Page's follower count.

4)Click "Get Code," and voila! Copy and paste this code onto your website and blog where you'd like the button to appear (your About Us page, your blog's sidebar, and your homepage are great places to start). Now you'll start easily converting website visitors into new LinkedIn Company Page followers.

But ... Do More Than Just Add the Button

When your website visitors click the LinkedIn follow button on your website, they'll automatically follow your company if they're already logged in to LinkedIn (or they'll get prompted to log in first if they're not). As a result, these visitors will start receiving the status updates you publish to your LinkedIn Company Page in their LinkedIn homepage's updates feed.

But the value of adding the LinkedIn follow button is dependent on how effectively you use your LinkedIn Company Page to begin with. If you rarely or never post status updates to your company page, the value of the new followers you generate from the LinkedIn follow button is moot.

So if you don't have company status updates installed on your company page, learn how to do so here. And start using them regularly! While you're at it, start improving your company page so new followers have a reason to follow you to begin with. Here are a few blog posts that will help:

• "How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Page in 15 Minutes"
• "The Ultimate Guide to Optimized Social Media Updates"
• "10 Type of Updates to Power Your Social Media Presence"
• "How to Boost LinkedIn Lead Gen With Targeted Company Pages"

And, what are you waiting for? Go add the LinkedIn follow button now! And start following HubSpot's LinkedIn Company Page while you're at it ;-)

Image Credit: Coletivo Mambembe