Your LinkedIn company page is a great outlet to share, influence, educate, and attract your target audience—but only after 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 (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 list your company as their current employer. Your company logo will then show up on their profile, and it will 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. More views = more followers. (Note: Employees are automatically followers of their employer's company page.)

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

7.  "Follow" other companies on LinkedIn, and "share", "like" and/or "comment" on their status updates. Clients, potential clients, and industry experts are a great place to start--and don't be surprised if a good share of them follow you back.

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

9.  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 "15 Tips for Compelling Company Updates" and "LinkedIn Company Pages: Status Update Best Practices." 

10. 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 for my company page when I shared my free ebook 10 LinkedIn Mistakes Companies Make with that audience 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 do so.

Oh, yeah--as long as we're talking about it, why not take this opportunity to follow my company page. You never know what I'm going to send your way. Click here and then click the yellow Follow button.