Why Engagement Is Key To Social Selling On LinkedIn

The key to Social Selling effectively on LinkedIn is Engagement. Or any platform for that matter…

Hands down this is the most important component part of your strategy, but unfortunately it’s often disregarded by most people when they get started. They just don’t see the value in it.

What do we mean by Engagement? Well, it’s the process of communicating back and forth with your target market on the platform.

If you see a good post from someone on the platform, you like and comment providing some value and commentary around their share. It’s that simple.

Now after training over 20,000 people in 35 countries we’ve found that the people who engage effectively on LinkedIn are the ones who stand out, generate more leads and close more deals. As well as that throughout our analysis of our client results as well as our own, we’ve found there are three key principles that you need to follow to create an effective engagement strategy.

Following these principles has helped us land some of the biggest companies in the world (KPMG, Westpac, NAB) as well as helped our clients do exactly the same. So in this article we’re going to share those principles with you so you can really maximise this important component of your social selling strategy.

Authenticity:

When it comes to engagement because the platform is so tied to your personal brand you need to make sure everything you do is authentic. What this means is that when you are engaging with people and their posts on LinkedIn you need to be doing so to provide value rather than just doing it to try and generate leads.

Some mistakes people make is that they try to rush it and they outsource their profile to someone else to like and comment on their behalf. Basically they’re being lazy and only thinking short term wins.

Yes LinkedIn is amazing for lead generation, but if your purpose is just to generate leads then you’re not going to come across authentic in your communications with people on the platform. The people who are really excelling at social selling, genuinely enjoy reading posts of their target market as well as responding in an intelligent value first mindset. Doing so sets you apart from the rest of your competition.

Through authenticity you are showing people you care. Once people know you actually care they are more likely to want to chat to you because you’re not like everyone else just trying to sell them stuff without having their best interests at heart.

Start by being genuine and if you aren’t ready to invest the time and energy LinkedIn needs to become a powerful tool for you, best to forget about it for now. When you see someone post something relevant to you, add some value back, maybe you have a resource you have found that’s related that you could share with them. The possibilities are endless so get creative with your engagement strategy and think authenticity first.

Patience:

Not everyone you connect with on LinkedIn is going to be ready to buy your product or service right now. And this is why a lot of people fail and give up early, they just don’t have the patience.

Building a big network takes time, engaging with them takes time and sometimes results from your engagement efforts takes time. Anything worth having takes time so you need to understand your LinkedIn marketing efforts are no different.

However your long term strategy is engagement – building a big network takes time, engaging with them takes time and sometimes results from your engagement efforts takes time. Anything worth having takes time so you need to understand your LinkedIn marketing efforts are no different.

Although someone you connect with today is not ready to buy your service now in 6 months time when they are, they could become your best client because you spent the time building a relationship with them online through engaging. Engagement keeps you top of mind for when they are ready for your services.

Think about it, if you’re a business coach and you’ve been adding value to them online when they’re ready for a business coach, who is going to be one of the first people they chat to? YOU.

However in saying that, to really increase your chances of working with the right people as early as possible you need to ensure you are building a network of serious LinkedIn users in your target market. A lot of people forget about this part, they build a list of non active users by connecting with anyone and end up not having many people to engage with. So start by building a list of people who are engaged on LinkedIn in your target demographic.

From our research there are two types of LinkedIn users. Ones that are serious users and those that are curious. Curious members do not see LinkedIn as an integral part of their business or career and only login every now and then.

Therefore they don’t check their messages often, they are not posting regularly and not someone you want in your network especially if you are really trying to leverage it to build a quality network. To identify curious users they:

– Don’t have a profile picture.
– Have less than 250 connections.
– Have completed less than 50% of their profile and it isn’t up to date.

Avoid these users when deciding who to connect with.

On the other hand serious users are those who are actively using the platform and therefore much more likely to connect and engage with you back. This makes them a much better opportunity to connect with. Serious users are:

– Have posted in last 30 days.Using LinkedIn premium.
– Using LinkedIn premium.
– Have than 50% of their profile complete.
– Have more than 250 connections.

So although you need to be patient in your results, you’re going to maximise your chances of success by connecting with the right users

Consistency:

Next up you need to be consistent. Patience and consistency go hand in hand. You need to be patient in your results, but consistent with your efforts.

Don’t come on the platform for a bit sporadically and expect to get results. Get in a routine and set up a schedule of checking in for 20 – 30 minutes a day Monday to Friday and engage with your target audience.

To really streamline your efforts you need to sign up for the sales navigator as that allows you to segment your potential clients so you can just see their content. This allows you to filter out people you might have connected with a while ago such as old work colleagues, but they are irrelevant parts of your network.

This is so you are not having to look through a lot of irrelevant content that may not be applicable for you at the time shared by people in your network, but not in your target demographic. Consistency is key to really stepping up your game with your LinkedIn efforts.

So to conclude this article you need to be authentic with your communications and engagement on the platform, be patient in your results and stay consistent with your efforts. Follow these three key principles when social selling and you are guaranteed to see success through more leads turning into more clients.