When it comes to B2B sales, LinkedIn is the reigning king of social media.
Many B2B enterprises have moved the majority of their prospecting onto the platform and are doing a healthy trade. Even if your strategy is a bit more varied, however, LinkedIn should be a major pillar of your efforts.
Since it was purchased by Microsoft at the end of 2016, LinkedIn has rolled out a number of great new features. It also has a more streamlined design intended to make it easier – and even more fun – to share useful information with colleagues around the world.
Still, it can be hard to sort out what’s most important among all the bells and whistles.
If you’re not sure you’re maximizing your value from LinkedIn, start with these five steps:
A company page on LinkedIn is to B2B what a company page on Facebook is to B2C: A major sign that you are serious about this whole “business” thing and want to be proactive in connecting with your customers.
Your company page should be fully filled out and optimized, including a high-res logo and appropriate keywords peppered throughout your descriptive text. Consider adding your page address to your email signature and stationery.
LinkedIn Groups are among the main ways sales and marketing professionals are meeting buyers genuinely interested in what they have to offer. A good Group title for prospecting doesn’t mention a brand or product, however – it’s fully focused on producing value by regularly sharing helpful content and answering questions. Once a rapport has been built up, then you can schedule a discovery call. Groups are a good way to drive traffic to relevant content and videos, too.
Publishing articles on LinkedIn is one of the most potent ways to bolster your thought leadership and get out in front of fresh audiences. While posting directly to Groups is useful for sparking one-on-one interactions, articles are the one-to-many platform that burnishes your whole brand. As with anything in content marketing, however, consistency is the key to real results. Be certain about what you’re doing, but flexible enough to incorporate breaking industry topics into your posts.
Ideally, all roads should lead to your company page. While you shouldn’t pressure colleagues to spotlight your company on their profile, it’s nice for major players to add a paragraph to their summary discussing what they are up to and sending readers on to the company with a CTA. Their enthusiasm for doing so can give you some insight into their thought process and priorities, too.
LinkedIn’s targeted self-service ads are becoming better and better at reaching qualified buyers. Anyone familiar with Facebook or AdWords advertising will have a running start on LinkedIn marketing best practices, making it that much easier to build bridges to a lucrative new audience. LinkedIn ads are still underutilized, so there is a wide open space for success and not much competition. To get started right, consider using LinkedIn to spur more traffic on already-successful offers.
LinkedIn’s unique place in the social media ecosystem means no B2B firm should pass it up. Luckily, it’s similar enough to other platforms that you can get started quickly.
Think of it as Facebook with a tie: Observe business decorum and always look for innovative ways to add value for those you connect with. Before you know it, those online relationships could have bottom line impact in a big way.