What's the Future of Social Selling?

Posted by Mary Coombs on July 8,2014
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As SocialSteve wrote in his blog post, Time To Rethink Social Media, “Facebook is changing the way it treats brand’s posts and their distribution (or lack thereof)."  You really can’t blame Facebook. Free business advertising doesn’t make for a sustainable business model, and I believe their shareholders would agree. So pony up some dough or don’t bother with a Facebook page for business.

So where does that leave social selling? My money is (and always has been) on LinkedIn!  And here's why...

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for searching, reaching, and selling to your B2B target audience (persona).  It was created for business people to connect, much like Facebook was created for families and friends to connect.  So use the right tool for the right job. LinkedIn should be an integral part of your social selling strategy.

Here’s how LinkedIn can work for you:

  • Know who you want to target!  You can search by position, region, size of company (if you have an upgraded account), and number of employees, to name a few search criteria. 
  • Review the profiles of all the people that come up and use Tags to sort and save the profiles you want
  • Reach out and connect with those who fit your buyer persona.  Use a custom invitation and tell them why you want to connect. (i.e. I am the ___ of “x” company. We help businesses do “y”. I’d like to connect to learn more about your business needs and to see if we can create mutual value for each other.”  If they don’t connect, you are getting to “No” faster and you don’t have to waste more time on them.  If they do connect, I take it as permission to ask for more (a phone call, meeting, another communication that takes you further down the sales cycle.)
  • Put out relevant content that talks to their pain-points, something they can use immediately in their business.
  • Lather, rinse and repeat!

As my friend, LinkedIn guru, and author of LinkedIn Success, Wayne Breitbarth wrote in his blogpost, Is Your Boss a LinkedIn Hater? Gotcha Covered. “This is the first time we have had the ability (for free, mind you) to use a keyword searchable database of over 300 million business professionals around the globe for hiring, sourcing, partnering, and information sharing.”  And I would add online lead generation, lead nuturing, and dare I say it, SELLING! 

So why wouldn’t you use it?

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For More Information on Social Selling, Check out these blogs: