How Can I Use LinkedIn for Social Selling – Re-Interpreting a Classic Sales Approach

LinkedIn boasts a massive user base of professional-minded people, brands, B2B sales opportunities, and more. Have you ever used it to do some old-fashioned cold-pitching – most haven’t. Sadly, though an effective sales strategy, this style of cold-calling or ‘direct marketing’ isn’t taken on by many.

We advocate for a re-think to anyone who has dismissed this type of old-fashioned sales technique. It may not be the most advanced or trendiest strategy for LinkedIn but it gets you results. In fact, big rewards exist for those who make the effort to gather new prospects, pursue leads, and focus on getting the word out. No matter what you’re selling, LinkedIn social selling strategies can help you boost engagement. Here are some tips, tools, and guidance on how to sell on social media the right way.

What is social selling?

Social selling is cold-calling prospects to find leads. It’s a classic lead generation technique, focused solely on generating interest and leads. This used to happen in the form of calling individuals from the phone book or door-to-door sales. On LinkedIn and other forms of social media, this selling’s done a little differently.

What are some facts about social selling on LinkedIn?

 62 percent of B2B buyers respond positively to a salesperson providing them with opportunities and relevant insights.
 75 percent of B2B buyers use social media platforms like LinkedIn prior to making a final buying decision.
 76 percent of B2B buyers will leverage recommendations from their personal networks in making purchasing decisions.
 Sellers who adopt a ‘social selling’ approach, compared to those who do not, experience on average 19 percent faster growth in sales.
 Social selling brands create up to 45 percent more lead opportunities than their non-social selling counterparts.
 LinkedIn is the #1 social selling social media platform in the world, exceeding ROI on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and elsewhere.

Is social selling effective on LinkedIn?

If you want leads, social selling will get you leads on LinkedIn. Social selling can be the start to building a relationship you eventually turn into a sale. Social selling works because it gives a connection to interested parties in your field. You can share information, let them know you’re there, educate or help others, and create conversation.

How can I use a LinkedIn profile for B2B social selling?

On LinkedIn, you get to see your customer’s contacts, their interests, ‘people also viewed’ and more. Use this information to get a sense of who’s out there, who’s most likely to respond in a positive sense to your message, and where to take your social selling on LinkedIn. Set up some saved searches where you get email alerts on new results as they come up. Monitor your professional network for potential lead opportunities. Publish your content marketing posts on LinkedIn and Slideshare as a way to establish authenticity, authority, and expertise. These all create the perfect setting on which you can cultivate leads.

What are some social selling tools to help me on LinkedIn?

There are over a half-dozen high quality social selling tools to use on LinkedIn to help find and grow leads.

 LinkedIn Sales Navigator will help to keep track of what’s happening in your network, offering contact recommendations in real-time as well as monitoring who visited your profile.
 eLink Pro is a great way to find new leads based on simple keywords. Put your keyword in the finder and it will connect you to matched profiles. eLinkPro also has a Twitter feature, allowing to do something similar with this other platform.
 Leadfeeder monitors web traffic and can be linked to other Analytics modules you may maintain. Leadfeeder’s best purpose is to help determine why some leads aren’t converting. Although social selling’s all about lead cultivation, this sort of follow-up is key to ensure the efforts put forth at the front end isn’t being squandered further down the sales funnel.
 Detective is an AI – that’s right, an AI! – that will help your lead generation efforts with automated browser searches. This can help give you info on certain data sets, hopefully enhancing the quality of your pitches long-term.
 Nimble is an app that centers on data aggregation, helping save you time and effort in identifying patterns and a way forward on future lead generation strategies. Nimble encompasses many research categories, if you allow it, and is well worth experimenting with.

Do you have to use social selling on LinkedIn?

Social selling on LinkedIn takes you into waters you wouldn’t otherwise find yourself in. It encourages you to reach out to people you may not otherwise connect with and see if there’s opportunity there. There is both good and bad social selling. The best social selling strategy on LinkedIn is reaching out to people who are the most likely to turn into a lead. We know it sounds obvious but it’s worth saying. You wouldn’t go selling vacuums to households exclusively of hardwood flooring. Find the most qualified, the most likely people to respond positively to your product, service, and brand. Know your audience.

How do I create the perfect social selling profile on LinkedIn?

An empty profile can really hurt your social selling numbers on a platform like LinkedIn. For this reason, always ensure your profile’s filled in and that you’re making regular posts. Content marketing plugs in here and plays a key role. If you aren’t consistently generating your own content, you can also keep a profile active by curating and repurposing others’ work. A mix of self-generated content and posts curated from other places is a smart approach. This will communicate to people who don’t know you that you’re a real and active brand.

Can I do social selling on other social media platforms other than LinkedIn?

Although social selling’s most closely associated to LinkedIn because of the platform having a high success rate, you can absolutely apply this approach to other sites as well.

 LinkedIn may be the recommended channel for B2B digital marketing but there’s also Pinterest which is perfect for eCommerce brands. A lot of users use Pinterest for future purchase ideas which makes it an important platform for anyone in fashion, art, house wares, or similar categories.
 Facebook is the most widely used social media platform which means it has the most competition. Facebook and social selling don’t go hand in hand, at least from a ‘cold calling’ perspective but it can still be a great relationship builder.
 Instagram is a great platform on which to target the under-30 audience. In terms of social selling, the rules are a little different and care must be taken as not to spam accounts. Another very tricky platform to operate from a social selling standpoint.
 Twitter is a great place for time-sensitive, news-driven, in-the-moment connections. Maximizing Twitter’s social selling resources will take time and effort, precisely why most dedicate their marketing resources elsewhere.

How do I know when to convert a lead from social selling?

It’s a fair question but there aren’t really any ‘convert a lead’ times when we’re discussing relationship building in digital marketing. As you cultivate a lead, if there are relevant sales opportunities, you can certainly present these to them. That said, social selling’s all about the relationship. Once you have the lead, if you can demonstrate you have something of value, eventually those that are interested will make a purchase. As with any type of sales, you can’t force it. All you can be is present, as a sort of facilitator. All in all, anything you do offer to a lead should have value to them. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and possibly turning off your prospect.

Social selling and other LinkedIn digital marketing strategies can grow your business or brand in short, sustained bursts. If you have the ability to dedicate a part of your marketing to B2B social selling, it’s worth it.