These social selling tips are inspired and validated by the profiles of the most successful leaders on LinkedIn.
Here are 10 tips on how you can transform your online resume into a professional branding platform.
Tip #1: Create an Effective Executive Profile
Don’t let your LinkedIn profile read like a resume. Customize your LinkedIn experience by:
- Uploading a professional photo: You are 11 times more likely to have your LinkedIn profile viewed if you have a picture.
- Writing a compelling headline: Add your job title, current company and a tagline about how you help customers.
- Adding a summary: Your summary in essence is the ‘story of you.’ Share the vision you have for your role or company.
- Adding rich media like videos and presentations: You’ll maximize your exposure on LinkedIn and better showcase your story.
Tip #2: Efficiently connect with the people that matter
LinkedIn isn’t intended to replace face-to-face interactions, instead, it optimizes your ability to know more about people you’ve met or about to meet. Also, inviting people to connect is a great way to follow up on an in-person meeting.
Tip #3: Leverage your mutual connections
People are five times more likely to engage with you if the outreach is through a mutual connection. See who within your network is connected to your 2nd or 3rd degree connections and request an introduction.
Tip #4: Find your top tier customers
Sales is about people, but nurturing relationships takes time. LinkedIn allows you to find your customers by searching by name, company, or position so you can easily connect and establish better relationships.
Tip #5: Follow your customers’ activity in real-time
If you are connected with your customers, their public activity will appear in your newsfeed. Keep tabs on your contacts’ interests and updates so you can remain top of mind and provide them necessary information.
Tip #6 Listen to conversations and debate
Joining and following Group discussions in your industry is an excellent way to gain customer insights about needs, interests and more.
Tip #7 Use LinkedIn Pulse to stay on top of industry trends
LinkedIn Pulse curates content in real-time based on your interests and the companies and influencers you follow. Share and comment on these articles to demonstrate your insights.
Tip #8 Reach people directly and more credibly with InMail
Effective sales prospecting requires communicating in a way that gets noticed. Identify something personal about the person that you can reference in the message. Then send a follow up InMail 1-2 weeks after the original - it increases the response rate by 500%.
Tip #9 Engage with your customers
Today there’s over 1.5 million unique publishers actively sharing content on LinkedIn. You can become a voice in your industry by sharing relevant blog posts, insights and industry news.
Tip #10 Publish content
Leverage LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform to share long-form posts with your network and beyond. When you publish a post on LinkedIn, your content becomes part of your profile and is shared with everyone, even those outside of your network.
Free Social Selling Tips eBook
33 Social Selling Tips from Social Selling Leaders
In this eBook, you will hear from some of the leading minds in social selling and learn:
- How to optimize your online presence for the buyer
- How to use LinkedIn to prospect and sell socially
- How to win new business with great content
- How to sell social selling to the executive team
More popular sales tips from LinkedIn
