Best Tips For Social Selling on LinkedIn

Social selling is an important skill that has been used by many over the years. LinkedIn can be considered one of the most effective social media platforms that can be used for selling. While other social media platforms such as Twitter and WhatsApp exist, with LinkedIn, you can easily move away from basic chatting and towards business. In this article, we will be going over a simple definition of what social selling is, why you might want to use LinkedIn, and 8 of the best tips you can apply when looking to practice social selling on LinkedIn.

Social Selling Defined

Social selling can be defined as the process of engaging your social network to develop and maintain relationships that can later be leveraged to encourage followers that make up your social network to purchase your services and products. Social media is very popular, with millions of people using it, so when used properly, it can significantly boost sales for you.

Why Choose LinkedIn

Most people are aware of LinkedIn, but some of them consider LinkedIn to be only a professional platform for networking. While this is true, LinkedIn has other features that make it suitable for social selling. For one, as of 2021, LinkedIn has over 700 million subscribers, which means your target audience is likely included. When used efficiently, you can see your brand exposure increase, which can, in turn, lead to increased sales.

8 of the Best Tips for Social Selling on LinkedIn

Here are 8 tips that, when applied, can help boost your sales on LinkedIn:

1.    Create an effective LinkedIn profile

The first step towards successfully using LinkedIn for selling your products is to create an attractive and effective profile. If your potential customers find your profile boring, they might not even give you a chance. This might end up denying you the opportunity to convert these viewers into leads, which is the main reason why some businesses decide to use LinkedIn. To prevent this, let us go over how you can optimize your profile. Here are 5 key aspects of your profile you might want to put effort into:

●      Write an engaging headline

The headline of a LinkedIn profile is among the first things people see, so, as a professional business, you might want to invest time into writing a compelling and engaging headline. It does not have to be long, but instead can be short, simple, and straight to the point.

Here is an example template you can use when looking to craft your own headline: {your job title}, assisting {your target audience} to achieve {goal}.

Now, an example of what a nice headline can look like while using this template:

“Data analyst, assisting startups and small businesses to increase productivity by making data-driven decisions.”

●      Your LinkedIn summary should be compelling

While your headline might have done a good job of piquing the interest of viewers, you now need to convince them further with a well-written summary. Your LinkedIn summary should be brief, ideally 1 or 2 paragraphs but not exceeding 3. You must recognize that your potential clients might not have too much time, so they may choose to skim through your profile instead. That is why it is important to be direct and break your summary down into short paragraphs that are easily digestible. A good profile summary should contain information about what you do, the value you intend to bring to your target audience, why you are passionate about your job, and your qualifications.

●      Upload a professional picture for your profile

According to LinkedIn, you are 14 times more likely to have your profile viewed if you have a profile picture, and when you think about it, it makes sense. People like to feel like they are interacting with you on a personal level. Without a profile picture, and your profile loses that feeling of engagement. Also, your profile, and by association, your business, might appear unreliable.

When looking to select a profile picture, the best option might be a simple headshot. You might decide to use a blank background or one that contains something relevant to your business. Whatever you choose as your background should not interfere with your audience’s ability to see your face.

●      Make sure to include relevant past job descriptions

If you have some relevant job experience, you might want to include this on your profile, as it often helps convince potential clients that you are reliable. When filling in your job descriptions, be sure to include the company, the dates you worked there, your role, and most importantly, the value you were able to deliver.

A good job description might look like this:

• Worked with a pizza delivery company to identify leading causes for delivery delays and ended up reducing average delivery time from 20 to 7 minutes.
• Helped identify communities that were expansion opportunities, leading to a 35% increase in annual revenue.

This is just a sample, but by including some numbers, you might help your target audience better understand the value you aim to bring.

●      Use visually engaging media like pictures and videos

Including pictures and videos where you describe the services and products you deliver is a great way to engage your audience. This is an efficient way to increase your brand exposure. If you are interested, there are online materials and courses you can use to learn how to take quality pictures and record studio-level quality videos.

2. Fully utilize the search

The search feature is one of the main methods you might use when looking to build “connections” on LinkedIn. There are filters you can apply, that will help narrow down people that fit your target audience. You can filter by:

• Companies

You can use this to find people that are currently working in a particular business or company. This might also be used to find people who have worked with a former employer. This is one way of finding people you have a common ground with.

• Schools

You can use this feature to find people that are alumni of a particular school or that have even attended the same school as you. This is another great way of establishing a common ground with potential clients.

• Locations

Filtering by location gives you the opportunity to find customers you might be able to schedule a coffee drink with to better explain what your business is all about.

3.    Send personalized connect messages

When looking to build connections, you can use the search feature of LinkedIn. However, when you find a potential customer you would like to connect with, you might not want to simply press the “connect” button. The reason is that the default connect message can be looked at as quite generic and even lazy by some. To avoid this, you might what to craft a personalized message instead — this is more likely to give your profile connect request a personal touch and make it more effective. When looking to craft a connect message, you might want to leverage some online resources so you are truly effective in your approach.

4.    Upgrade to the LinkedIn Sales Navigator account

If you are looking to increase the number of leads generated, you might decide to invest in a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account. While this is a paid service, it comes with a lot of features that you might find valuable. Here are 2 features of a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account you might find valuable:

●      The Lead builder

The lead builder is a valuable feature that comes with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator account. What this feature does is allow you to save prospects as leads. The advantage of this is that when your prospects make updates to their profile, this is shown on your home page, giving the opportunity to engage by liking or commenting. By engaging frequently, you can build a better relationship with your prospects, and when the time is right, you can approach these prospects with services or products you intend to sell.

●      Saved search

If you find yourself frequently running a particular search query, you might want to consider using a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account. This paid account comes with the saved search feature that allows you to save search queries you run regularly, and LinkedIn then sends messages to your inbox when there are new search results. A great and efficient way to manage your time.

5.    Leverage your customers’ connections

Once you have found a client that fits your target audience, an easy way of finding others might be to look at their connections. When your clients make updates to their profile, you can decide to look through the people that interact with it to see if they are the type of people who might be interested in your services. If you successfully find prospects, you might have a high chance of turning them into leads as your mutual connection (in this case a past or current client) will be able to serve as a referral either directly or indirectly.

6.    There is the “People Also Viewed” sidebar

This feature comes into play when you are searching for new connections. Once you have found someone that you might be interested in or that fits your target audience, you should view their profile. On their profile, there is a sidebar/column called “People Also Viewed”, to the right of their profile, that contains the names of profiles that share similar attributes to the profile you are viewing. Each person on this list is a potential client, so you might also want to engage with them by sending personalized connect messages to them as well.

7.    Use LinkedIn pulse

One way to convince a potential client that you are reliable is by providing value to them. This does not have to be free work, but it can be an article that provides valuable information to your target audience. When you are ready to publish an article, you can use the LinkedIn pulse to reach hundreds to thousands of people. As a way to encourage engagement on your LinkedIn pulse post, you might want to tag relevant contacts. It is important your post contains information that is current and valuable.

8.    Researching LinkedIn profiles

LinkedIn profiles can contain a lot of information about potential clients, and it is often rewarded to do a bit of research into LinkedIn profiles so you have a better idea of the traits that your clients have. Understanding these traits might prove `useful in identifying and attracting new customers. Here are 3 things to look out for:

●      Pay attention to the key terms

You might want to pay special attention to the key terms potential clients use when describing themselves. By incorporating these terms into your vocabulary as you communicate with them, you might stand a better chance of being more relatable.

●      Look for potential conversational icebreakers in profile highlights

The highlight of a profile contains information such as mutual connections and even similar past employers. This sort of information can be used to establish a connection with the potential client and serve as an icebreaker when trying to start a conversation.

●      Have a look at the activity of the profile

The activity of a LinkedIn profile contains information on the type of content a particular prospect has interacted with in chronological order. This might include information such as articles read and posts interacted with, even content they may have published. This information can be used to determine if a profile matches your target audience.

●      The interests

This section contains information on the type of business, schools, and influencers that a particular profile follows. It is a great way to determine if they match your target audience and also to find common ground for conversations.

Final Words

When practicing social selling on LinkedIn, don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone and try to broaden your outreach with any means you can think of. Remember to follow our tips, work on presenting yourself well, be polite and informative, try to bring value to your audience, and success will be within your reach!