Key takeaways
- A connection is two-way; a follower subscribes to your posts without your approval, so followers are the number to grow for an audience.
- A one-sentence follower promise in your headline tells visitors what they get by following.
- Followers arrive through many routes: posts, comments, reposts, newsletters, events, mentions and links outside LinkedIn.
- Frameworks, visible series and honest stories with a lesson turn readers into followers more often than off-topic viral posts.
- RB2B's author grew from 4,000 to 140,000 followers in 24 months, so plan by the quarter and track follower quality monthly.
How to get more followers on LinkedIn, in short: tell visitors in one sentence what they get by following, open several routes into your profile, publish posts that promise more of the same, and track who follows you as well as how many. This free 7-day course covers each step with one lesson and one action a day, for personal profiles and company pages.
What does the course include?
7 daily lessons
Programme. One lesson and one action to take each day.
About 95 minutes of reading
Time. Plus 20-30 minutes of practice each day.
Intermediate level
Level. Works best once you have a profile and a handful of posts.
Online and free
Format. Go at your own pace. No login and no email needed to read the lessons.
Updated October 2026
Updated. Covers personal profiles and company pages.
Why is your follower count stuck?
Your posts get some reactions, yet the follower number hardly changes. Often the posts aren't the problem. Visitors can't see a reason to follow, the feed is the only way people reach your profile, and the posts that do get attention are off topic, so they bring readers who never return.
This course is about the follow itself: the promise, the routes in, the posts that turn readers into followers, and the quality of the audience you build.
What will you learn?
How to write a follower promise
One sentence telling visitors what following you gets them.
How to open more routes
Posts, comments, events, mentions and links from outside LinkedIn.
How to post for follows
Frameworks, series and stories that leave readers wanting the next one.
How to play the long game
Quarterly themes and a posting rhythm you can keep up for two years.
How to grow a company page
Employees, connections and customers as the page's first followers.
How to measure audience quality
Track who follows you, not only the total.
Who is this course for?
Creators and experts
You post regularly and want an audience on top of a network.
Founders
You'd like followers who might later become customers, colleagues or investors.
Company page admins
You need the page followed by the people who matter to the brand.
Consultants
You want today's followers to become tomorrow's client list.
Who should start somewhere else?
Haven't posted yet, or still choosing a topic: the LinkedIn growth course is the better place to begin. Posts that get zero replies: the LinkedIn comments course will help you faster.
What do you need before you start?
- A profile with a photo and at least a few posts
- Access to your profile's analytics
- Admin rights on the company page (Day 5 only)
- Somewhere to keep notes on your promise, routes and baseline numbers
How much time does it take?
Each lesson is a 12-15 minute read, and its action takes another 20-30 minutes. After the course, set aside one writing session a week and a short daily slot for comments and replies.
What results should you expect, and when?
- Week 1, the setup: your promise, your routes and your first post designed to earn follows are in place.
- Month 1, the first quarter begins: new followers arrive by more than one route, and you can see which posts turn readers into followers.
- Quarters 2-8, compounding: follower growth takes time. The author of RB2B describes growing from 4,000 to 140,000 followers over 24 months.
The route plan: from visitors to an audience
- Promise: give visitors a reason to follow (Day 1).
- Routes: open more ways into your profile (Day 2).
- Content: write posts that earn follows and plan by the quarter (Days 3-4).
- Reach: grow a company page and collaborate with peers (Days 5-6).
- Quality: check who is following and change course (Day 7).
Four frameworks to practise
The follower promise
"People who follow me get ___ every week."
Several routes in
Never rely on a single way into your profile.
Series beat one-off posts
A visible series gives people a reason to follow.
Quality counts more than the total
Track what share of your followers belongs to your target audience.
7 days to more of the right followers
Day 1: what should a follower get from you?
On LinkedIn, a connection is a two-way link, while a follower subscribes to your posts in one direction. Every connection follows you as well, but followers don't need your approval and aren't capped the way connections are. If you want an audience, followers are the number to grow.
Decide what followers get. Before chasing numbers, finish this sentence: "People who follow me get ___ every week." Such as: "practical hiring lessons for first-time engineering managers". That sentence becomes your headline, the opening of your About section, and the test for every post.
Make following the obvious choice. Look at your profile the way a stranger would. The top should say who you help and what you post about, and give a reason to follow on top of a reason to connect. If you want strangers to subscribe instead of sending requests, look in your profile settings for the option to make Follow your main button.
Accept the right connections and invite everyone else to follow. Nobody says you must connect with everyone who finds you; people outside your niche can simply follow and read.
Common mistake: counting connections as the only growth number. A large network of people who never read your posts isn't an audience.
- Weak headline: "Engineering Manager at Acme".
- Strong headline: "Engineering manager | Weekly hiring and team-building lessons for first-time managers".
Today's action: draft the promise sentence, then paste it into your headline and open your About section with it. The LinkedIn headline generator can suggest wording.
Day 2: how many routes lead to your profile?
Leaders Social's lesson on company page followers has a principle that works for people too: build several routes into the page. Followers rarely come from one source; they arrive through lots of small entrances that all open onto your profile.
Routes inside LinkedIn:
- Your posts: the biggest route, once you publish regularly.
- Your comments: each comment on a larger post shows your name and headline to a new audience.
- Reposts with your own take: a short opinion added on top of someone else's post.
- Newsletters and events: subscribers and attendees see your name again and again.
- Mentions and collaborations: when others tag you, you appear in their followers' feeds.
Routes outside LinkedIn:
- A link to your profile in your email signature and website bio.
- Talks, podcasts and webinars where you say where you post.
- Other social profiles that send people to LinkedIn for your professional content.
Map your routes. List every route you already have and every one you could open this month. Most people use one or two, and adding three more often makes a bigger difference than writing a better post.
Common mistake: depending on the feed alone. When a post does poorly, a profile with several routes keeps gaining followers anyway.
Today's action: list every route that could bring people to your profile, then add your LinkedIn link in two places outside LinkedIn.
Day 3: which posts turn readers into followers?
A post can collect plenty of reactions and bring almost no followers. A like says the reader agreed with one post. A follow says they want the next one too, so the posts that win follows are the ones that hint at more to come.
Three post types that turn readers into followers:
- The useful framework: a step-by-step method from your own work. People save it and wait for the sequel.
- The series: "Hiring lessons, part 4". A numbered series signals there's more coming, and a follow is the way to catch the next part.
- The honest story with a lesson: a mistake or a moment that changed your direction, closing with what you'd do differently. It builds trust in your judgement.
Close with a reason to follow. Skip "follow me" and make a specific promise instead: "I share one hiring lesson like this every Tuesday." A reader who liked the post now has a concrete reason to follow, and you don't come across as begging.
Keep to your promise. If you promised hiring lessons, a widely shared post about your holiday may bring reactions, but the wrong followers. Check every post against your Day 1 sentence and make sure it delivers what you promised.
Use the length if the idea needs it. LinkedIn allows 3,000 characters per post, which fits a full framework. Keep the opening lines tight, because they're what shows before "see more". The LinkedIn character counter shows how close you are to the limit.
Common mistake: chasing reach with off-topic posts. You get attention from people who won't read your next post.
Today's action: write a framework post on your main topic and end it with one line saying what followers get every week.
Day 4: what does the long game look like?
RB2B's newsletter author puts it this way in his free course: "I went from 4,000 to 140,000 followers on LinkedIn in 24 months." Read the end of that sentence as closely as the start. The growth took two years of steady work.
What the long game involves:
- A schedule you never break. Three posts a week for two years beats a post every day for two months.
- A narrow topic kept for a long time. People follow you for something specific, and switching topics starts that over.
- Formats you repeat. A format that works becomes a regular slot followers look forward to.
- Comments that add up. Each week of good comments adds people who recognise your name.
Plan by the quarter. Pick a quarter-long theme inside your topic (such as "first 90 days as a manager") and plan 12-13 weeks of posts under it. At the end, check which posts brought the most followers and use that to plan the next quarter.
Protect the habit. Write posts in advance before busy weeks, keep a bank of drafts, and accept that some weeks will be ordinary. Consistency is what gets you through a bad week.
Common mistake: comparing your first month with someone else's second year.
Today's action: pick a theme for next quarter and list twelve post ideas under it, one per week.
Day 5: how do you grow a company page?
If you also run a LinkedIn company page, Leaders Social's lesson "How to Get More LinkedIn Company Page Followers" sums up the main idea: grow the page's audience through relevant content and active participation, instead of waiting for people to find it. Our guide to free LinkedIn company page followers goes into more detail.
Begin with people who already know the brand:
- Employees: have everyone set the page as their current employer and share page posts with a sentence of their own above them. Members tend to follow individuals before companies.
- Connections: from the admin view, send follow invitations to the connections who fit.
- Customers and partners: link the page in welcome emails, newsletters and case studies.
Give people a reason to follow the page. A page that only posts announcements offers little. Mix in useful posts: how-tos, customer stories, behind-the-scenes and posts from the team.
Act as the page. A page can react and comment like a person, so leave comments as the page under industry posts, with the care you'd give from your own profile.
Link the page and the people. Founders and employees who post regularly should mention the page when it fits. Every mention is one more route in.
Common mistake: treating the page and the founder's profile as competitors. They grow best together: the person brings attention, and the page holds the brand.
Today's action: get three colleagues to share the page's next update with a line of their own, and send follow invitations to twenty connections who fit.
Day 6: how do collaborations bring new followers?
Your current followers can only pass you on to their own networks. A collaboration puts you in front of someone else's audience, with that person's trust attached.
Four ways to collaborate on LinkedIn:
- The expert round-up: ask five people in your niche one question, publish their answers and tag each of them. Many will reshare.
- The co-written post: write a post with a peer on a shared topic, each adding a section, and both of you publish or reshare it.
- Live sessions and events: host a short conversation with a guest, whose followers get invited too.
- Newsletter swaps: recommend a peer's newsletter in yours and ask them to do the same.
Choose partners for audience fit; size matters less. A peer with 3,000 followers right in your niche can bring better followers than a large general account.
Give first. Comment on a potential partner's posts for a few weeks before you ask. A request from a name they recognise is received very differently from a cold message.
Tag carefully. Tag people only when they're part of the post. Tagging for reach alone irritates them and their audience.
Common mistake: asking for a shout-out and offering nothing back. Make the collaboration useful to both audiences.
Today's action: choose three peers whose audience is close to yours and draft a one-question round-up post to invite them to.
Day 7: how do you measure follower quality?
Leaders Social ends its followers lesson with advice that's easy to skip: measure audience quality as you grow. A thousand followers inside your market beat ten thousand outside it.
Where to look: LinkedIn analytics give you a chart of total followers and a demographics breakdown by job title, industry, company size and location. Page admins get the same view for the company page.
Set a quality target: name the two or three titles or industries you care about most, and once a month calculate the percentage of new followers who fit.
Numbers to record each week:
- New followers: the week's total and the number your strongest post brought in.
- Target share: the percentage of followers with the titles or industries you want.
- First-time commenters: evidence that new followers actually read your posts.
- Profile views: tell you whether your routes still bring visitors.
Read the trend, then act. If followers grow while quality falls, recent posts may be drifting from your promise. When quality holds but the count barely moves, add a route (Day 2) or set up a collaboration (Day 6). To see where a steady quarter could take you, enter your current followers and weekly growth in the LinkedIn follower growth calculator.
Write down today's numbers: follower count, target-audience percentage, last week's profile views, and the date. A month from now, that's what you measure against.
Common mistake: cheering the headline number while the demographics tab stays unopened.
Today's action: note today's follower count and target-audience percentage, plus the two job titles you'd most like to reach.
The 7-day checklist
- Follower promise written and added to your headline
- LinkedIn link added in two places outside LinkedIn
- Framework post published, ending with a follow promise
- Quarterly theme chosen, with twelve post ideas
- Follow invitations sent for your company page, if you have one
- A round-up post drafted with three peers
- Baseline numbers written down
What materials come with the course?
- Seven lessons, each with a worked example and a typical mistake.
- A template for the follower promise: the sentence your profile and posts are built around.
- A map of routes: all the ways people can reach your profile, on LinkedIn and off it.
- A quarterly planner: a single theme with twelve weeks of post ideas.
- A sheet for audience quality: weekly new followers and the target-audience percentage.
- Ten self-check questions to see what stuck.
Self-check: 10 questions
Answer each one in a sentence; the day in brackets covers it.
- Explain the difference between a connection and a follower. (Day 1)
- Say what your follower promise should describe. (Day 1)
- Explain what "build several routes into the page" means. (Day 2)
- Name the type of post that tells readers more is coming. (Day 3)
- Describe the best way to end a post if you want follows. (Day 3)
- State how long RB2B's free course says the growth from 4,000 to 140,000 followers took. (Day 4)
- Name the people to start with when growing a company page. (Day 5)
- Explain how to pick collaboration partners. (Day 6)
- Say what audience quality measures. (Day 7)
- Give the likely cause when followers rise but quality drops. (Day 7)
Where does the information come from?
The lessons name their sources: the story of growing from 4,000 to 140,000 followers in 24 months comes from RB2B's free course; the "build several routes into the Page" and "measure audience quality as you grow" lessons come from Leaders Social's free LinkedIn course; and the post length limit comes from LinkedIn Help.
What does the course cover, and what does it leave out?
Covered: organic follower growth for personal profiles and company pages, including positioning, routes, content, collaborations and audience quality.
Left out on purpose: paid follower ads, sponsored content and job-search tactics.
How should you use this course?
What it is: seven days of lessons on LinkedIn follower growth, mostly for personal profiles, with Day 5 given to company pages.
How to use it: work through the days in sequence, because each lesson leans on the Day 1 promise. If you don't run a company page, use Day 5 to help a page you care about, or skip ahead to Day 6. Tick off the checklist as you go and answer the self-check at the end.
What should you do after the 7 days?
- Run the first quarter: publish on the theme weekly and protect your daily commenting time.
- Review quality monthly: check what share of new followers is in your target audience.
- Add one route each month: a collaboration, an event or a link from outside LinkedIn.
- Get your best post in front of more people: on LinkedInLikes, members like and comment on it by hand from their own accounts.
When your profile is ready, you can also ask members to follow your LinkedIn profile. LinkedInLikes is free: you get 100 starter points after confirming your email and more by doing other members' requests. Members choose whether to follow, and we can't promise a number.
The course and LinkedInLikes are independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by or officially connected to LinkedIn Corporation.
More free courses and guides
- LinkedIn growth course
- LinkedIn comments course
- How to get more followers on LinkedIn: the full guide
- How to get more newsletter subscribers on LinkedIn
- Free LinkedIn tools
Grow on LinkedIn
- How LinkedIn pods work
- Swapping likes and comments on LinkedIn
- Connect for connect on LinkedIn
- Like for like on LinkedIn works when you give first and share early
Next step: start Day 1 now. It takes about 12 minutes and ends with a new headline.
Frequently asked questions
Write a one-sentence follower promise and put it in your headline, open several routes into your profile, post frameworks, series and stories that promise more of the same, and check who follows you each month.
Everything in this course is free: a clear promise, comments on bigger posts, outside links to your profile, collaborations and steady posting. You can also use LinkedInLikes, where members follow profiles by hand and there are no paid plans.
Followers, if you want an audience. Connections are two-way; followers subscribe to your posts without needing your approval and aren't capped the way connections are.
It takes time. RB2B's author grew from 4,000 to 140,000 followers in 24 months by posting steadily on one topic.
Start with the people closest to the brand: employees who repost with a personal line, connections you invite, customers and partners. Then give the page useful posts and comment as the page.
Posts that promise more of the same: useful frameworks, visible series and honest stories with a lesson, ending with what followers get every week.
Open follower demographics in LinkedIn analytics and track what share of new followers matches your target job titles or industries.
Yes. All seven lessons and the self-check are open to read without a login or an email address.