How to Master the Art of Social Selling on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the perfect platform for social selling. It allows you to connect with professionals in your industry and build relationships that can lead to business opportunities.

To be a successful social seller on LinkedIn, you need to know how to create a good profile and use the platform’s features to your advantage. Here are four tips for mastering the art of LinkedIn social selling:

1. Use LinkedIn to build relationships.

The first step to being successful with social selling on LinkedIn is building relationships. Connect with as many professionals as you can and create relationships that go beyond business transactions. This will help you get to know the people you’re selling to and make them more likely to buy from you.

2. Build your profile effectively.

Your LinkedIn profile is your main tool for selling on the platform. Ensure your profile is well-designed and contains the right information for potential customers. Include your company logo, a brief description of your business, and links to your website and social media pages.

3. Use LinkedIn’s features to your advantage.

LinkedIn offers a variety of features that can help you sell your services more effectively. Use the “connections” feature to find potential buyers and send them invitations to join your network. Use the “groups” feature to join relevant professional organizations and connect with other social sellers.

4. Stay up to date with the latest trends.

Keep your LinkedIn profile current with the latest trends in your industry. This will show your potential customers that you’re knowledgeable about the latest trends and that you’re dedicated to staying ahead of the competition.

LinkedIn is the top dog when it comes to social selling

A staggering 80% of the total B2B leads solely come from this platform because it’s the best platform for business networking. It has a conversion rate 3 times better than other social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Social selling on LinkedIn means using this platform to find ideal prospects, connect, engage and build strong business relationships with them to generate leads with hopes of driving more sales and revenue.

In this blog, we’ll tell you why B2B marketers and sales reps need to master the art of social selling on LinkedIn and the important steps to do that.

Let’s start by understanding what social selling is.

What is Social Selling?

Using a social media platform to search, connect and engage with ideal prospects, understand them, collect data about them, and engage in meaningful conversations to build healthy business relationships is called social selling.

It’s like putting efforts into creating a chain of conversations leading them towards your products and sales that can organically produce sales conversations.

It’s the opposite of cold outreach, where you bombard your prospects with unsolicited messages and emails.

Why Use Social Selling on LinkedIn

• LinkedIn is the top-used social media platform by Fortune 500 companies
• LinkedIn generate 3 times more conversions than Facebook and Twitter
• Marketers who use social selling on LinkedIn are 40% more likely to hit their sales quota
• Social selling practices on LinkedIn attract 45% more opportunities
• That being said, social selling is a very good practice to get involved on LinkedIn and generate maximum leads.
• Essential Tips to Master the Art of Social Selling on LinkedIn

Many people think that LinkedIn is all about sending promotional messages to potential clients, and they will respond to them like ready-made leads.

1. Connect with the Right People

Social selling focuses on connecting with the right people. If you already have a LinkedIn profile or starting from scratch, you’ll need to start by making relevant connections.

The more relevant connections, the more likely you’re to show up as a related connection which is beneficial for sales outreach.

If you keep on connecting with random people, they won’t benefit you in the long term. You can use the latest LinkedIn automation tools to filter out the niche-specific and relevant profiles that can be your potential leads.

These tools can run very specific searches and create lists of the best prospects with just a single click.

2. Attract People with Great Content

Sharing relevant content on LinkedIn is an effective way to increase engagement, actively drive more traffic and grow your business.

Sharing company content is especially important in order to nurture your leads. Make sure your content revolves around prospects’ interests and business problems and solutions.

It will take you some time to create quality content, but if done well, it will definitely bring more traffic to your site.

To create relevant content, you first need to research your target audience, what type of posts they like, the type of content they engage with, etc.

If you want to start meaningful conversations with prospects in their inboxes, make sure you use tactics that catch their attention immediately.

Many successful B2B marketers and businesses are using the best LinkedIn automation tools that send highly personalized messages along with custom images, GIFs, and prospect’s avatars to catch prospects’ attention right away.

3. Attract Leads from Specific Posts

Apart from content, there are other ways to build strong relationships on LinkedIn. There are a lot of ways you can do this:

• Taking part in a post discussion
• Liking LinkedIn posts and then using them as a conversation-starting point
• Commenting on posts
• Answering prospects’ questions

You can use LinkedIn posts as an opportunity to start conversations. You can even scrape out people from a popular LinkedIn post using a LinkedIn automation tool. Choose a post with a high engagement rate and use the tool to extract out profiles.

This way, you can create a list of highly targeted prospects and then reach out to them with highly personalized messages.

4. Get Involved in LinkedIn Groups

Industry-specific communities can help you connect with potential clients on LinkedIn.

All you need to do is to use the right keywords to find the best groups for social selling. When you get into them, you’ll see people posting different content and questions. You can interact with them by commenting on their posts and answering their questions.

This is a great way to establish your reputation as an industry leader. A LinkedIn group is an awesome opportunity to connect with ideal prospects and build strong business relationships.

Moreover, when you become a member of a group, you can message people directly without connecting with them.

Use the following template to start a conversation:

Hi {First name},

Hope you’re doing great! My name is X, and my background is in X and X. We’re both members of [LinkedIn Group], and I noticed that you had some pretty insightful comments on the topic X [something shared in the group].

If you’re open to it, can we discuss the topic further? Also, let’s connect.

Thanks,

5. Use InMails

InMails is another great way to engage with 2nd and 3rd-degree prospects without connecting with them. Using this message option, you can send professional and to-the-point messages to your prospects. When you send InMails, it pops up on the screen of the receiver when they log into their account,

According to surveys, InMails have a 30% higher opening rate as compared to regular message or InMail. You can use this feature to establish strong business relationships with your clients. Above, we have mentioned some useful tips that will help you scale your social selling efforts on LinkedIn.

Checklist & Takeaways:

• Social selling means relationship building: interacting & engage more
• Social selling leaders are 50% more likely to reach the sales quota.
• Connect with the right people and personalize your outreach
• Build credibility, authority, and trust with content marketing
• Drive engagement by interacting with people on LinkedIn posts
• Establish a reputation in LinkedIn groups that serve your target audience.