Social selling on LinkedIn has become an essential part of B2B sales. It's a powerful tool that can help sales professionals connect with potential customers, build relationships, and ultimately, drive sales. As a CEO, CMO, or Sales Director, leveraging social selling on LinkedIn can help your business grow and thrive.
In this guide, I will cover everything you need to know about social selling on LinkedIn for B2B businesses. I will provide you with insights, tips, and best practices from industry experts and successful businesses. By the end of this guide, you will have a comprehensive understanding of social selling on LinkedIn and how to leverage it for your business.
Why Social Selling on LinkedIn is Important for B2B Businesses
Social selling on LinkedIn is important for B2B businesses for several reasons. First, social selling can help you connect with potential customers and build relationships with them. By engaging with potential customers on social media, you can establish trust and credibility, which can lead to more sales over time.
Second, social selling can help you stay top-of-mind with potential customers. By sharing valuable content on social media, you can position yourself as an expert in your industry and build brand awareness for your business.
Finally, social selling can help you drive revenue for your business. By using social media to connect with potential customers, you can generate leads and ultimately, drive sales.
How to Leverage Social Selling on LinkedIn for B2B Businesses
To leverage social selling on LinkedIn for your B2B business, you need to follow a few key steps:
Step 1: Create a Strong LinkedIn Profile
The LinkedIn profile is the first impression, so it's important to make it count. This should be applied to your company page, your CEO and your sales team. To create a strong LinkedIn profile, follow these tips:
Think about your profile as a landing page. It should make clear what is the benefit for your clients, why and how they should contact you.
Make sure your profile is complete, includes relevant keywords, and highlights your expertise.
Use a professional profile picture and cover photo that reflects your (personal) brand.
The default header image many people are using should be replaced by something that tells a story about the benefits and service/product you are selling. Plus elements of trust and a call-to-action e.g. to follow you.
Craft an attention-grabbing headline that highlights your skills and expertise.
Add a summary that showcases your personality and experience.
Create three posts that you can fix in your focus section. These three posts should explain what challenges you help solving, what your work is about and showing your expertise.
Highlight your education and work experience in detail, including any relevant skills and certifications.
Solicit endorsements and recommendations from colleagues and clients to add credibility to your profile.
Step 2: Share Valuable Content
The key to social selling on LinkedIn is to share valuable content. This could be in the form of blog posts, industry news, or insights from your own experience. By sharing valuable content, you position yourself as an expert in your industry and build trust with potential customers. Here are some tips for sharing valuable content on LinkedIn:
Create content that is relevant to your target audience and provides value to them.
Use visuals, such as images and videos, to increase engagement and catch the reader's attention.
Use LinkedIn's publishing platform to share long-form content, such as blog posts and articles.
Share content from other industry leaders and thought leaders to show that you are staying up-to-date with industry trends and news. But instead of reposts make your own post and add your point of view to it in the post. Don't forget to tag the author of the cited post. This will get you more engagement than a simple repost.
You can hire a VA to scrape a list of the industry leaders of your niche, their best performing content and consolidate this information into an excel file
Step 3: Engage with Potential Customers
Engaging with potential customers is key to social selling on LinkedIn. By responding to their comments, sharing their content, and participating in conversations, you can build relationships with them and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Here are some tips for engaging with potential customers on LinkedIn:
Respond promptly to comments and messages from potential customers.
Share and comment on their content to show that you are paying attention to them. An AI browser extension like https://filtpod.com/engage-ai/ helps introverts and sales people to speed up the process of commenting.
Participate in relevant LinkedIn groups to engage with other professionals in your industry. There are a lot of groups that are full of people making self-promotion. Avoid these one way communication channels and find those that are actually active and meaningful.
Comment on posts from other industry leaders and thought leaders to add your own insights and build relationships. Activate the bell on their profile to ensure you get notifications when they post something. If you act quickly you will be among the first to leave a comment and will be seen by more people.
Hire a VA to scrape more data with a list of followers from your competitors and consolidate these into an excel for potential targeting of campaigns and DMs. Additionally you could scrape their email addresses and company names from Apps like Apollo to enrich the data and target these with email acquisition letters.
Step 4: Build Relationships
The ultimate goal of social selling on LinkedIn is to build relationships with potential customers. Once you've connected with someone on LinkedIn, reach out to them and start a conversation. This could be in the form of a message or a LinkedIn InMail. By building relationships with potential customers and other influencers, you increase the likelihood that they'll become paying customers. Here are some tips for building relationships on LinkedIn:
Personalize your messages to potential customers to show that you have taken the time to research and understand their needs.
Use LinkedIn's Sales Navigator to find potential customers and filter your search based on location, industry, job title, and more.
Use LinkedIn's InMail feature to reach out to potential customers directly, even if you are not connected with them.
Follow up with potential customers regularly to keep the conversation going and build a relationship.
Consider the barter principle by inviting others to an industry talk or get the chance or becoming a sponsor of an industry newsletter or to hop on a podcast or video. This in return will give you more exposure and content material to distribute.
If people follow you they will see your engagement and your comments as well as your posts. So if an influencer likes a post of yours it will be shown to all of his contacts as well.
Consider sending personalised loom videos in the DMs in a conversation of more complex thing you want to share or explain.
Step 5: Get Your Whole Team Involved
Social selling isn't just for the sales and marketing teams. Encourage employees from all departments to share relevant content on their LinkedIn profiles. Not only does this help to build your company's brand, but it also positions your employees as experts in their respective fields. Here are some tips for getting your whole team involved:
Provide training and resources to employees to help them understand how to use LinkedIn for social selling. Remind them on a regular basis and share an inhouse email to activate their engagement. It is easy to forget about this in the day-to-day business.
Encourage employees to share relevant content on their LinkedIn profiles and to engage with content from others in their industry. The marketing team then can find that content and reuse it in another format for the company page.
Use employee advocacy tools, such as Hootsuite Amplify or octopost, to make it easy for employees to share content on their LinkedIn profiles. Why should they do that? Because this will increase your organic social reach. On average employees have 10x more connections than the company page.
Encourage employees to connect with their clients they have personal contact on LinkedIn.
Step 6: Stakeholder Management
To ensure that your team is receiving relevant content from various departments within the company, set up stakeholder management in-house. This will help to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that the content being shared is aligned with your company's goals. Here are some tips for setting up stakeholder management in-house:
Identify stakeholders within your company who can provide valuable content, such as subject matter experts and thought leaders.
Develop a content calendar to ensure that relevant content is being shared regularly.
Use a content management system to track content ideas and ensure that deadlines are being met.
Step 7: Document Social Events and Meetups
Documenting social events and meetups is another great way to build your company's brand and position your team as experts in their respective fields. Take photos and share them on LinkedIn, and encourage your team to do the same. Here are some tips for documenting social events and meetups:
Assign someone to be responsible for documenting social events and meetups, such as a marketing or communications team member.
Use a tool like Canva to create eye-catching graphics to accompany your posts.
Encourage your team to share their own photos and insights from social events and meetups on their LinkedIn profiles.
Step 8: Prepare for Demand Generation
Marketing should be prepared to go strong into demand generation. That means building profiles, landing pages, content, and posts around the company's topics. By doing so, you'll attract potential customers and drive sales. Here are some tips for preparing for demand generation:
Conduct thorough keyword research to ensure that your content is optimized for search engines.
Build landing pages that are optimized for conversions, with clear calls to action and valuable content.
Use LinkedIn's targeting options, such as job title and industry, to ensure that your content is reaching the right audience.
Use A/B testing to optimize your content and landing pages for maximum engagement and conversions.
Step 9: Use a CRM for Lead Tracking
To ensure that you're tracking success in the long run, use a CRM to track leads and engagement. This will help you to determine which strategies are working and which ones need to be adjusted. Here are some tips for using a CRM for lead tracking:
Choose a CRM that fits your company's needs and budget, such as Zoho, Salesforce or HubSpot.
Integrate your CRM with LinkedIn to ensure that data is being automatically updated.
Set up lead scoring to prioritize leads based on their level of engagement and likelihood to convert.
Use reporting and analytics to track the success of your social selling efforts and adjust your strategy as needed.
Step 10: Get Sales on Board
Get at least 1-2 sales persons on board that are familiar with social media and are willing to DM people on a large scale. They typically should have the role as appointment setters and closers. Of course, this needs a good step-by-step lead handling strategy that can differ in each industry and company. Here are some tips for getting sales on board:
Provide training and resources to salespeople to help them understand how to use LinkedIn for social selling.
Develop a step-by-step lead handling strategy that is tailored to your industry and company.
Use LinkedIn's Sales Navigator to help salespeople find and engage with potential customers.
Provide regular feedback and coaching to salespeople to help them improve their social selling skills.
Additional Resources
For more information on social selling, check out these resources:
By leveraging the insights and best practices outlined in this guide, you can take your social selling efforts to the next level and drive more revenue for your B2B company. Understanding your target audience, creating valuable content, engaging with potential customers, building relationships, and getting your whole team involved are all key components of a successful social selling strategy. So what are you waiting for? Start leveraging social selling on LinkedIn today!
Let's talk business:
Are you ready to take your B2B business to the next level? Contact me now for a free 30-minute strategy call on marketing growth consulting. Let's discuss how I can help you achieve your business goals through effective marketing strategies.
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