Yes, businesses can follow other pages on LinkedIn. LinkedIn provides companies and organizations with Company Pages that allow them to establish an online presence, connect with customers and partners, share content, and more. Just like individual users, Company Pages have the ability to follow other pages in order to see their updates in their feed and stay informed on industry trends, thought leadership content, potential partners, competitors, and more. Following relevant pages is an easy and effective way for businesses to use LinkedIn to research, monitor competitors, network, build awareness, and engage their target audiences.
Why Businesses Should Follow Pages on LinkedIn
There are several key reasons businesses should make use of the follow feature on LinkedIn:
Stay Up-To-Date on Your Industry
One of the main reasons for a business to follow other pages on LinkedIn is to stay on top of trends, news, and developments within their industry. By following industry thought leaders, publications, influential brands, and key organizations, companies can use their LinkedIn feed as a source of real-time industry intelligence. This allows them to keep a pulse on what competitors are doing, what customers are interested in, and what trends are shaping the landscape.
Conduct Competitor Research
In addition to following industry pages broadly, companies can use LinkedIn to follow direct competitors. This provides visibility into product launches, marketing campaigns, hiring initiatives, partnerships, and other competitive intelligence. Businesses can use this information to analyze strengths and weaknesses, identify gaps or opportunities, and respond with their own strategies. Competitor research is a key part of social media marketing and following rival companies on LinkedIn is an easy way to incorporate it into your activities.
Discover Potential Partners
By expanding the network of pages a business follows, they can discover potentially valuable partners or collaborators. Whether it’s finding agencies and service providers to work with, connecting with brands that could make good mutual marketing partners, or identifying startups and technologies that could contribute as vendors or channel partners, LinkedIn is a great source of partnership opportunities. Following and engaging relevant pages allows relationships to develop more naturally in the LinkedIn ecosystem.
Interact With Influencers
In addition to following Company Pages, brands can follow and connect with LinkedIn’s extensive network of Influencers. LinkedIn actively curates these thought leader professionals to share their expertise and perspectives through long-form posts. By following relevant influencers in your space, companies can amplify their thought leadership content to their own follower base, engage these experts with questions and discussion, and potentially collaborate on content partnerships.
Stay on Top of Customer Interests
While B2C companies can follow relevant individual profiles and customers, B2B companies can follow their target client companies to gain insight into what their customers are interested in. This could include challenges they want solved, technologies they’re adopting, approaches they find appealing, and other factors that influence their buying decisions. With this kind of customer intelligence, B2B marketers can craft more tailored and relevant messaging, campaigns, and content.
Monitor Your Own Brand & Content
Lastly, businesses should follow their own Company Page as well as employees and executives with LinkedIn Profiles. This allows you to monitor engagement on content you post, comments and questions on your page, and commentary related to your brand on other users’ posts. It provides visibility into how your brand is perceived and what resonates with your audience.
How to Follow Pages on LinkedIn as a Business
The process of following Company Pages, influencers, and other profiles on LinkedIn is simple:
1. Search for Relevant Profiles & Pages
Take advantage of LinkedIn’s powerful search functionality to find profiles, groups, companies, influencers, and hashtags to follow. You can search by keywords, job titles, groups, locations, skills, companies, and more. Think expansively about all the types of pages that could provide value.
2. Visit the Profile You Want to Follow
Once you’ve found profiles or pages that look promising, click through to visit them. Review the content, profile details, followers, and activity to determine if it’s worth following. Assess whether they actively post valuable updates, have strong engagement, and represent a perspective you want in your feed.
3. Click the Follow Button
If it looks like a page you want to follow, click the “Follow” button on their profile. This will make their public content appear in your Company Page’s feed. Consider creating LinkedIn Lists to organize profiles into categories like Competitors, Industry Leaders, Potential Partners etc.
Here is an example of the Follow button on Company Pages:
4. Engage With the Content
Once you start following a Company Page or Influencer, be sure to regularly engage with their content. Like and share posts, ask questions in the comments, and post your own responses and perspectives. This helps build relationships and also amplifies the reach of their content to your own followers.
Best Practices for Businesses Following LinkedIn Pages
To get the most out of following other pages on LinkedIn, keep these best practices in mind:
Follow Consistently
Checking in and following relevant pages should be an ongoing business activity, not a one-time effort. As new industry connections emerge and your business interests evolve, you can continually discover valuable new profiles to follow.
Curate a Diverse Mix
Aim to follow a diverse mix of page types: competitors, partners, industry experts, media/publishers, brands you admire, influencers, target client companies, alumni, and more. Variety creates a rich tapestry of insights.
Listen and Learn
Approach following pages on LinkedIn with an open mindset, aiming to listen and learn rather than self-promote. Let this inform your content and marketing approach.
Engage Thoughtfully
When engaging with followed pages, add value for others following the conversation. Ask intelligent questions, provide helpful ideas, and contribute meaningful perspective.
Apply Insights
Learn from the pages you follow and apply those insights to improve your business. Let it influence product development, hiring, partnerships, and more. Information is only powerful if put into action.
Limitations of Following Pages on LinkedIn
While following Company Pages comes with many benefits, it’s important to keep these limitations in mind:
One-Sided Visibility
When you follow a profile on LinkedIn, they do not automatically follow you back or gain visibility into your content and activity. The intel flows in one direction unless they proactively choose to follow you back.
Limited Analytics
Unlike social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn currently provides limited analytics on followers. You can’t view demographic data or other stats beyond your total follower count. The information Facebook gathers about followers and their activity is much more extensive.
Controlled Reach
Even if you follow a Page with 500,000 followers, you likely won’t reach all of those people organically. Only a % of their followers will see any given post unless they pay to boost it with ads. So following does not guarantee true access to the full follower base.
Passive Consumption
While you can interact with Pages you follow, many followers passively consume content without actively engaging. So you may not receive likes, shares, and comments even from relevant followers.
Automated Engagement
Some follower growth tactics used by businesses include automated tools to drive follower counts through fake engagements. The quality of followers and engagement could be inflated.
Conclusion
Following Company Pages, Influencers, industry experts, partners, competitors, and other profiles on LinkedIn can provide businesses with a wealth of valuable intelligence, networking opportunities, insight into customer perspectives, visibility into competitors, and more. While passive following has some limitations, companies that actively curate, engage, monitor, and apply learnings from the pages they follow can gain a strong competitive advantage from these activities. Used strategically as part of a broader social media and content marketing strategy, following relevant pages should be a foundational LinkedIn best practice for organizations looking to derive business value from the platform.