I’m Maxine, and for three years, I was part of Slush’s marketing team, leading the marketing and comms teams for the last two. During that time, I was tasked with growing Slush’s LinkedIn presence, and over the course of three years, we managed to increase our followers by 45,000—about 15,000 per year. Here’s how we did it, and why it wasn’t about the hard sell.
The Numbers:
- LinkedIn Followers Increase: 45,000 in 3 years
- Growth Rate: ~15,000 new followers per year
- Approach: Prioritizing customer value over product selling
The Strategy
When you’re working on a company page, especially in a space like Slush, getting organic engagement on LinkedIn can be tough. Unlike personal profiles, where people are more willing to engage with you directly, a company page requires a different approach.
We made it a priority to provide value—and not through constant sales pitches. Our focus was on exceptional copywriting and research-backed content that directly spoke to what our audience needed. We understood that people don’t want to be sold to; they want to feel like the content is tailored to their problems and needs.
One example: We would mix in real research with our actual offerings. Instead of just promoting Slush events, we’d address pain points, like how people were struggling to find women founders in their ecosystem. Then, we’d present the statistics and follow it up with how we could help solve that specific problem (e.g., hosting a workshop focused on gender diversity). This approach made the content feel more like a solution, not just an advertisement.
The Power of Storytelling
A big part of our strategy was tapping into the human connection to storytelling. We did this by weaving a cohesive story throughout the year—each year had a thematic focus that shaped our content. This wasn’t just about pushing out random posts; it was about telling a larger story that we could refer back to regularly. And guess what? People connected with it. They engaged because the content felt relevant to them.
Story + statistics + exceptional writing = success.
Why It Worked
The LinkedIn algorithm favors content that keeps people on the platform, not content that’s trying to push a sale. So, we made sure to keep this in mind when building our content strategy. Instead of focusing on hard-hitting CTAs or pushing our products, we created content that people wanted to interact with, share, and comment on.
In the end, it wasn’t about the quick sell or the flashy call to action. It was about genuinely providing value to our audience and focusing on what they needed—whether that was information, insights, or a place to start a conversation.
We didn’t just grow followers. We grew a community.
