Your LinkedIn company page has several important purposes and none more important than to share, influence, educate, and attract your target audience—but none of that will be effective unless people make the choice to "follow" your company.

Here are the best ways to get more company page followers.

1.  Install a LinkedIn Company "Follow" Button on your website and blog.

2.  Ask people to "follow" your company in your other channels of corporate communication (snail mail, email, newsletters, advertising, etc.). And it's kind of lame to simply say, "Please follow our company page on LinkedIn." Instead, share with them what's in it for them. For instance, explain what interesting information you are going to make available to followers, like special promotions, job postings, articles, video, checklists, events, etc.

3.  Get more employees from your company to join LinkedIn, and be sure they correctly list and attach to your company as their current employer. This has been done correctly when your company logo shows up on their profile, and it will then click through to your company page.

4.  Show your employees how to include a link to your company page in their email signature.

5.  Discuss with all employees the importance of "liking," "sharing," and/or "commenting" on status updates that come from your company page. Your company's updates will then go to each employee's network—of course, based on the LinkedIn feed algorithm. More views = more followers. (Note: Employees are automatically followers of their employer's company page.)

You can use the new employee notification feature that you should have received by now. This is one of the best new features LinkedIn has come up with for improving the effectiveness of your company page posts.

6.  Mention and link your company page on your other social media platforms.

7.  Refer to your company page when interacting with people in your LinkedIn industry groups.

8.  Share good, helpful resources and information via company status updates on a consistent basis. If you do this well, over time you will acquire lots of followers. LinkedIn has shared great information on what people want to hear about in its Publisher Pocket Guide—How to Spark Meaningful Conversations on LinkedIn.

9. Attract new followers by offering unique content that is only available to your LinkedIn company page followers.

In three weeks, I picked up close to 300 followers Free PowerFormula LinkedIn eBookfor my company page when I shared my free ebook 10 LinkedIn Mistakes Companies Make. I gave my followers access to it before I released it to anyone else.

If you haven't gotten your copy of 10 LinkedIn Mistakes Companies Make (and how to fix them before they damage your company's reputation), click here to download your free copy.

And as long as we're talking about it, why not take this opportunity to follow my company pageYou never know what I'm going to send your way. Click here and then click the blue +Follow button.

Increase the number of your company page followers, and then watch your bottom line increase as well.