Recently, I came across Koka Sexton, (Global Senior Social Marketing Manager at LinkedIn) words: “Social selling is the process of using your professional brand to fill your pipeline with the right people, insights, and relationships.”

This got me think about the impact LinkedIn has in today’s world, as opposed to other social media platforms. An excellent place for building relationship with like-minded professionals, LinkedIn plays a lot more impact towards expanding a business as it is more about social selling rather than likes, shares and retweets!

Social Selling on LinkedIn? What’s it's all about?

As said above, social selling the ability to pull in the right kind of target audience towards your brand by building your LinkedIn profile. Today we are going to address a simple ways which helps you expand your business via social selling on LinkedIn.

Before I get to the gist of these points, first and foremost, let’s look at the basics.

Businesses today, although aware, don’t really interpret the importance of social selling on LinkedIn. However, this is not the case when it comes to bigger companies.  According to a recent case study with SAP, the sales pipeline increased by more than 40 percent when SAP’s Inside Sales team implemented LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. In other words, social selling has crossed the proverbial chasm. We know that social improves the selling and buying process for all parties. Companies such as SAP, Microsoft, and EY are going all in on social selling. (Source)

Therefore, taking a feather out of their cap, here are a few reasons to expand your business via social selling on LinkedIn.

Killer Profiles reflect your Business Ideology!

Your profile is not a resume anymore. Therefore, don’t just make it about you or your achievements. It should be more about your business, your vision and what your plans of your career.

Make your profile a package of your thoughts, actions and future goals.

Your LinkedIn profile is an embodiment of your business goals. This means, before you get into social selling, your profile must cover the following details:-

• Well summarized and crisp information of your goals and how you work as an important contribution to your team.
• What are you looking forward to with building connections and conversations on LinkedIn?
• A platform to build the expertise of your company.
• Future aspirations and goals.

For example, take a look at the image below (Source)

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No more Cold Calls, Connect with the right Target Audience

Gone are the times when your sales team start their day with cold calling. Today it's all about social selling on LinkedIn. Social profiles have to be tailored to connect with the right target audience. The key to social selling is to figure out your customer persona and identifying those who are in need of your services.

To make targeting your audience group easier, LinkedIn uses tools like Sales Navigator. Quite an interesting tool by LinkedIn, Sales Navigator helps you to target the right buyers, understand key insights, and engage with personalized outreach.

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Build Relationship with Honest Conversations!

Social selling doesn’t just give you the opportunity to sell your ideas but also build honest conversations with prospects. Building conversations with like-minded professionals is also extremely important as it helps you in establishing second-degree connections with individuals. Statistics from Inc, show that buyers are 5X more likely to engage with salespeople who are introduced through someone in their network versus cold outreach. These people also have a 22X more favorable impression of those who are introduced through someone they know.

Make a mark with Curated Content Sharing

The advantage of engaging with social selling is unlimited. For instance, apart from reaching out to your targeted audience and building meaningful conversations, social selling on LinkedIn also gives you a chance to build and expand your personal profile.

For example, work on increasing your reach by sharing latest and interesting news happening in your field. Drive traffic through LinkedIn by sharing content via your Pulse network. Brand yourself as a thought leader in your domain before you socially sell for your company.

According to business facts from LinkedIn, 82% of BDM’s say thought leadership increased their trust in an organization. Therefore, social selling on LinkedIn is not just about explaining and expanding your reach but also about establishing yourself as a thought leader in your domain.

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Conclusion

LinkedIn has become an enormously powerful platform to build your thought leadership, expand your relationships and build qualified leads for your business. Just like any other great combo, LinkedIn and Social Selling is making a mark in the world today!

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