Do you also love those cold messages – or better yet, calls – where sales people send a generic template with an obvious sales pitch?
Me neither.
My first job was as a call agent at a callcenter where I needed to cold call between 100 – 200 random numbers every single day, often with close to zero result.
I quit that job after three weeks and swore to myself to never do cold outreach again.
Luckily, I learned about a much better (+ more fun, effective & human) alternative: I like to call it Strategic Social Selling™.
In short, Strategic Social Selling™ is about using social media data and insights to reach out to the right person, at the right time, with the right message to reach sales objectives in a smarter and more efficient way.
The best part: LinkedIn provides a score that measures exactly how effective you are at social selling™ on the platform with their “Social Selling Index” (SSI) score.
Here’s how the SSI dashboard looks like:
Now why is this important?
Well, LinkedIn data shows that those with a high SSI score create 45% more sales opportunities than peers with a lower SSI score. This is huge!
Having a Strategic Social Selling™ strategy in place can help you drive high-quality leads to kickstart or grow your business— without expensive advertisements or cold outreach.
In this blog post, learn how to get started with Strategic Social Selling™ on LinkedIn for small business using below 4 key pillars:
1. Establish your professional brand
Did you know that 81% of buyers are more likely to engage with those who have a strong professional brand? Invest time in building your unique professional brand on the platform to establish yourself as a thought leader in your area of expertise.
Make sure your profile is complete and up-to-date and have a content strategy in place to stay on top-of-mind with your network. Will you post regular status updates? Blog articles? Videos? All of them? How often?
2. Expand your network with ideal clients
Next, it is important to understand that your content will be shown on the Newsfeed of your “first-degree network” (a.k.a. your connections). Hence, it is important to grow your network with your ideal clients to get noticed by the right people.
Figure out exactly who your ideal client is: what do they do? what type of content do they engage with? what groups are they most likely to follow? what keeps them up at night? This will help you to leverage the LinkedIn search bar to quickly find your ideal clients within the 675+ million network!
3. Engage with warm outreach
Did you know that less than 2% of cold outreach results in a meeting with a potential client? With so much data available on LinkedIn, it would be a waste to not leverage these insights for sending a warm, personalised outreach to increase success rate.
Do you have a common connection? Did you go to the same school? Are you part of a common group? Use these social selling™ insights to turn cold outreach into a warm conversation and drive high-quality leads + sales in a fun (and more successful!) way.
4. Elevate your relationships
Finally, it is important to note that a successful Strategic Social Selling™ strategy doesn’t come overnight. You need to invest time and effort to build authentic relationships with your network. Check your LinkedIn Newsfeed every day, engage with relevant people in your network, and reach out to the right person, at the right time, with the right message. This way, you are more likely to convert your connections into clients— without sending cold generic templates!
Are you curious about your personal SSI score? Click here to find out!
Do you want to take your LinkedIn presence to the next level? Download my free LinkedIn profile checklist to create a complete, well-optimized profile and create a killer first impression with your target audience.
