The benefits for using LinkedIn for prospecting are many:
-- > Using search tools for identifying those prospects
-- > Receiving introductions from connections
-- > Discovering information about prospects that help make connecting more effective
-- > Obtain intelligence from target company business profiles
-- > Sharing content with prospects within specific shared groups
-- > Saving searches of target prospects and using LinkedIn as a CRM
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Joemktg's insight:
For Premium users. Not difficult. A bit slow, but you may pick up a pointer or two.
From what we’re seeing deliver solid ROI for leading B2B marketing organizations today, as well as the focus areas we believe will continue to deliver high-leverage results in 2014, here are six strategies we recommend you consider for investment in your new budget:
1. Advocate marketing platform & resources I’d encourage you to check out what Influitive is doing to create Advocate Hubs that are accelerating the mobilization of their happy customers, partners, employees and more.
2. Content strategy Think carefully about the content you need in 2014, and budget the resources to create and capitalize on it.
3. Marketing automation support People and content are sorely underfunded, and are the primary reasons why many marketing automation efforts are less than successful.
4. Influencer engagement Most companies engage the press and analysts, but few go the extra mile to engage the bloggers, Twitter users and other “social” influencers that, together, may have even greater reach and sway over your target market.
5. Sales enablement tools Forward-thinking sales reps are already doing this for themselves. They’re using tools such as OFunnel, Newsle and others to filter the noise and find for themselves buying signals from their existing networks. They’re using ToutApp to get real-time alerts when prospects engage with their follow-up emails.
6. Social lead generation With social, the media is free. But it’s like the best library of buying signals in the world with all the books on the floor. Tools such as Socedo, SocialBro, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, GaggleAMP and Papershare can help you mine the social web for qualified leads at a fraction of the cost of other paid media.
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Joemktg's insight:
Pay special attention to #5 and #6: this makes all the sense in the world, and you'll want to jump on this sooner rather than later.
Here are three tips Adriel shared with the audience to help you use social media to aid your lead nurturing efforts.
Tip #1. Listen for what people aren’t telling you directly
Adriel explained SAP uses social listening tools to follow social media conversations by:
-- > Filtering for keywords that indicate lead-relevant activity
-- > Following key accounts directly
-- > Understanding the needs of your customers’ customer
Tip #2. Seed the conversation with what you want to talk about
Adriel advised if you want to steer the conversation toward your solutions in the marketplace, your approach should be consistent, but also smart. Here are some of the key strategies he revealed SAP uses to guide social conversation:
-- > Implement a pragmatic approach
-- > Reward top contributors
-- > Enterprise-wide advocacy management tool
Tip #3. Engage judiciously and in the right context
Adriel explained once you’ve identified lead-relevant conversations, the next challenge is engagement. Adriel also explained the context of how you engage in the social media channel is vital to success.
“You could be talking to the right people, have a great offer and terrific creative, and while that may work in email, it can fail in social media because the context is different.”
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Joemktg's insight:
Tip #3: that's tough and a challenge when you don't quite know the person. It may have to come from repeated conversations so that you can get a feel for how to approach.
LinkedIn is making the shift to mobile. It now sees 38 percent of unique visits from mobile, which is up from 8 percent in the first quarter of 2011, and users who access via mobile are 2.5x as active as desktop-only users. At an event in San Francisco this morning, CEO Jeff Weiner said LinkedIn will release a slew of new mobile apps.
These new apps include an upgraded version of the Pulse news reader that integrates your LinkedIn info, an iPad redesign, but most excitingly, a new experience called Intro. It leans on LinkedIn’s acquisition Rapportive to integrate professional info from LinkedIn profiles directly into you Apple Mail app on your iPhone or iPad. Intro can show the LinkedIn profile photo, company, and job title of the people who you email with, and let you connect with them on LinkedIn.
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I've seen a few articles denegrate Intro, and it's a wait-and-see. But the real point is this: if you are engaging in social selling, you'll need to ensure that your responses, if digital, are in a responsive format.
Here are five ways to measure the success of your personal branding strategy on LInkedIn.
Digest...
-- > Get Your LinkedIn Profile to Show Up On Search More. The more times that your LinkedIn profile show up in search; the chances that you will be found are increased! Keeping your profile’s headline, summary, and job experience current and refreshed with relevant key words will increase the amount of times that you will show up in search.
-- > Increase The Potential Reach Of Your Personal Brand And LinkedIn Profile. More daily updates and LinkedIn Group updates will increase your potential brand impressions. When you send out a LinkedIn update more than your followers see you message.
-- > Increase The Amount Of Times Your LinkedIn Profile Is Viewed And Considered. Many things affect profile views, ranging from who you just met at a conference to the quality of content that you distribute on LinkedIn. When your weekly profile views increase on an ongoing basis, then you know you are likely doing something right on LinkedIn.
-- > Increase The Amount Of Expertise LinkedIn Endorsements That You Receive. When your network sees regular updates with great content, then you are likely to come to mind when they have the chance to give you a Skills and Expertise endorsement. Skills & Expertise endorsements are a key driver that impacts your search results, ranking your higher based on the amount of endorsements that you maintain.
-- > Increase The Amount Of LinkedIn Invites You Receive. Your inside-LinkedIn activity and your outside-LinkedIn activity, such as thought-leader blogging, speaking or networking, should lead to an increased amount of people who want to connect with you on LinkedIn.
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In using LinkedIn as a sales machine, two critical areas must be discussed and considered: LinkedIn Company Pages and LinkedIn Groups.
Digest...
Using LinkedIn Groups in B2B Sales
Groups enable their members to lead and participate in business discussions, promote their own products, events and services (in the Promotions tab), as well as like, comment and share other group members' posts. There is a group moderator or owner who sets the group rules, can open the group to the LinkedIn universe or make private, and approves all member-related posts.
Finding and engaging in qualified LinkedIn Groups for the purpose of developing business relationships that lead to sales and ongoing referrals requires a good bit of planning and daily proactive effort. As a B2B Sales professional, finding "low-hanging fruit" through LinkedIn Groups can be achieved by listing any current strong networking groups and associations of which you may be a member. These can be industry or target-specific.
LinkedIn Company Pages for B2B Sales Pros
LinkedIn Company Pages are another area on LinkedIn that B2B sales professionals cannot ignore if they expect to use LinkedIn as their selling machine. The Company Page is where over 2 million companies promote their own products and services, list jobs and share their latest news and event information on LinkedIn.
By following target companies, a B2B sales professional can view the profiles of important company executives and identify the decision-tree. Similar to LinkedIn Groups, by following a LinkedIn Company Page, you can get involved in adding value to the discussions by commenting, liking and sharing posts with your networks and groups on LinkedIn, as well as on Twitter.
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We have many more LinkedIn Sales articles if you search the tag "social selling". Jill Rowley is the master of Social Selling, and you'll want to review her content.
Having your personal social selling command center will help you put all of the important social media tools at your fingertips!
Summarized...
I use HootSuite, after a few years of trial and error testing, as MY social selling command center. There are other tools, so you will need to pick one that is comfortable for you. You will need to build out these five screens to help you navigate and respond to the many sales opportunities flooding in via Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging and other social media channels.
Listen For Key Selling Triggers. Set up a stream to listen for key sales triggers. This action will give you real-time data on what’s being said about your discrete and multiple streams of relevant information, like Big Data and Cloud Computing.
Observe Social Media Activity Of Key Contacts, Media Publications and Relevant Social Media Channels. Devise a stream for your command center that shows you all the social media messaging of your customers, completion, thought leaders and media publications. You can have all of your key contacts in one stream, or add streams to cover separate customer, competition, thought leaders and media publications.
Message And Respond To Your Contacts. From your command center screen use a stream of your contacts or listed people to direct message (i.e., like an email for Twitter) your customers to start or respond in a private conversation, to reach out to non-followers with a Twitter mention to engage in a public or semi-private conversation, or to reply to any message that is directed to you.
Schedule Your Content. Regular content creation, curation, and deployment are the dilithium (that’s the Enterprise’s fuel) to your personal branding engine! A command center, like HootSuite, will let you schedule messaging so you can ration your “content fuel” over time for better performance.
Measure The Performance Of Your Messaging. If your content and social selling messaging activity is working, then you want to do more of it. When it’s not working you need to change it. However, if you are not able to measure your work, then you cannot make these changes. Your social selling command center can help you easily make that decision since that measurement data is just a click away!
Joemktg's insight:
You have three social selling blueprints in front of you: this one and the two adjacent scoops. With these three scoops, you can plan out your social selling strategy. You're welcome.
Here are 10 tips to get you rethinking what you know about social selling, and on the right track:
To build your company’s page following, start running campaigns geared toward people already engaged your company to drive awareness and call to action to follow your LinkedIn page.
Make your Twitter profile as professional as your LinkedIn profile. Use the same photo across your social networks so you’re easily identifiable, and make sure to link up to your LinkedIn profile in your Twitter bio.
Don’t be afraid to get personal on Twitter. It’s a channel to share professional insight, as well as things that interest you outside your every day that support your personal brand.
Get your employees in on the discussion.
Stop thinking of LinkedIn InMail as a general email channel. Leverage the insights you can gather form profiles and other social networks to indicate that you’ve done research on the person you’re connecting with.
“Who’s viewed your profile” is a goldmine for helping you make connections with people who already demonstrate an interest in your personal brand. Monitor these visits and send personalized emails from sales reps who manage that particular account with a link to their individual sales rep profile.
Cross-reference your profile viewer’s names with your nurture functionality in marketing automation and establish parameters for when it’s appropriate to shift from nurture communication to a one-on-one dialogue.
Be insights driven and gather intelligence and social information that helps you prepare for sales conversations.
Leverage LinkedIn to create personas based on activity, groups they participate in and, topics of interest. Look for correlating behaviors and defining attributes that align with your target buyers to establish propensity to engage, and even buy.
Demonstrate real value in groups by participating in discussions and sharing relevant content. Sexton suggests a “4 to 1 approach”, to share four update items about news in your industry, customer and partner networks, and one promotional item that supports your company news.
Joemktg's insight:
OK, now add this to the adjacent scoop where I said you need to seriously examine eGrabber Account-Researcher. One more social selling scoop coming up...
A cool social media tool that has helped me get a better handle on effectively managing my Twitter account is ManageFlitter.
Socialbakers has an effective tool called Analytics Pro, which provides an understanding of how your brand stacks up against your competitors.
Post Planner is a content management tool that runs as an application within Facebook.
That’s why it was refreshing to discover a new free Facebook page analytics tool from Komfo.
An interesting tool I recently discovered is Rignite, which helps monitor several social media platforms.
One of the coolest social media marketing tools that I’ve discovered and used is SocialOomph.
Zapier has changed the social media marketing game for me in the most dramatic of ways.
She recommended two tools: FixYourFunnel (an Infusionsoft-specific tool) and Mobivity.
Joemktg's insight:
Your Action Item: click through on each (and article for additional feedback), and incorporate those that are appealing. For those involved with Social Selling, don't ignore eGrabber Account-Researcher.
Here are four ways that content marketers can use LinkedIn for social listening:
1. Join active groups that are relevant to your market: With Groups, content marketers don’t need to know exactly what topics they’re looking for. Let your audience do the talking for you. Monitor conversations and see which ones generate the most engagement from group members.
2. Refine your newsfeed: Just mouse over the “All Updates” box in the top right corner of your newsfeed for quick customizing options. Click on the “Customize” link to place automatic filters that kick in whenever you log on.
3. Take advantage of strong search functionality: There’s more to LinkedIn’s search feature than meets the eye. Many of you probably use it to find contacts and brands. But try searching for a topic, and you’ll find out that the search feature has much more relevant applications for content marketers.
The search function scours five different criteria: people, jobs, companies, groups, and your inbox. Try isolating the topic based on “people.” LinkedIn returns a great sampling of the people you could be engaging with your content.
4. Work with one of LinkedIn’s API partners: Social management partners leverage LinkedIn’s API to simplify social listening. Thus far, those partners include HootSuite, Percolate, Shoutlet, Spredfast, Sprinklr, and Thismoment. Through these partnerships, you can plug into LinkedIn’s Company and Groups API to track engagement across company posts, comments on company posts, and select group discussions.
Joemktg's insight:
The aforementioned is a critical part of social selling, and you need to take advantage of these tips to improve your lead gen efforts. The obvious additional benefits include content topics and marketing identification.
To influence buyers via social media, you need to understand how they’re using the networks. Here are 3 steps you can take towards a stronger social influence.
Condensed...
Focus on Forums
Believe it or not, your buyers are using communities and forums quite heavily. A recent Forrester report found that 80% of B2B buyers use vendor support forums or discussion forums on vendor or brand websites (for that specific vendor or brand), with 23% doing so primarily for business reasons.
Liven Up LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great tool for social selling and connecting with prospective customers. According the Forrester report, 88% of B2B customers have connected with peers or colleagues in the past month on LinkedIn.
Spoil the Spectators
Spectators, or those who read blogs, watch videos, etc., make up a large majority of B2B decision-makers. 98% of B2B decision-makers are spectators and use the major social media platforms for both consumption and interaction.
Joemktg's insight:
You'll want to email this scoop to the sales team. Note on LinkedIn: there are plenty of posts on the value of social selling using LinkedIn.
If you want to learn more, go here, click on Filter, and then search LinkedIn or social selling.
This article demonstrates how businesses can use social media to influence b2b consumers to purchase products from them. It talks about businesses focusing on forums and social media sites such as linkedin. This can lead to b2b consumer and business interaction which can form a strong relationship between both parties.
LeadSift has launched its cloud platform that scans millions of conversations across social media channels to find and deliver potential leads to businesses while also giving each lead a metric that classifies intent.
LeadSift makes it easy by delivering relevant leads.
Sift Through the Noise – LeadSift finds the conversations on social media that matter to you and filters out the conversations that are irrelevant.
Deliver Quality Leads – Leadsift looks at users demographics, psychographics and existing conversation to ensure your lead is relevant.
Engage with Ease – Keep track of LeadSift leads in their engagement platform and interact with them to build your customer relationships.
Joemktg's insight:
I rarely scoop anything product announcement-related, but this one caught my eye given the ongoing emphasis on social selling.
So how do you build that rapport and start the conversation? The following touch points and tactics will guide you through the next steps.
Light Touch
A light touch is normally very quick and only takes the click of a button. Follow your lead on Twitter, favorite their Tweet, Share/ReTweet their content and view their profile on LinkedIn. This gets you noticed and builds some rapport as you are endorsing their content on the social web. This gets the lead’s attention and they start to wonder about you.
Medium Touch
A medium touch is a reply to a post/conversation that your lead started. The goal is to get them talking to you so that you can move the conversation towards the product or service that you have to offer. There are three components to a good reply on social media sites:
Address the lead by name so it feels personal.
Make a comment on the topic of the initial post.
Ask a light question that is easy to answer in a few words. It’s best if this question helps to move the conversation towards your area of expertise or if it helps uncover the lead’s problem/needs.
Heavy Touch
A heavy touch gives you the opportunity to tell the lead a little bit more about you and your company. This can be the quickest way to get straight to the point and enter the transactional portion of the sale. You can leverage this tactic by calling the lead directly, emailing them, Facebook Messaging or using a LinkedIn InMail.
Joemktg's insight:
Jill Rowley's February post in the Eloqua blog introduced all of us to "Always Be Connecting" and it's a notion that needs to be a steady part of every salesperson's strategy. The scoop above gives you a quick overview on the three different ways to approach a potential opportunity.
Great topics and I agree with this three important steps as it creates good relationship with customers. Social media is convenience and I personally feel more secure in order to know about products or services rather than face to face promotion. I had some experiences 'Light Touch''Medium Touch' and 'Heavy Touch' through my tweeter, facebook and own blogs. It was really natural and also felt connection with the company somehow as they personally contacted with me.
This three steps will definitely be essential for consumer engagement in the future.
Analiese Rands's comment August 14, 2013 6:22 AM
I agree with Sally as the 3 steps are important and essential with consumer engagement and i myself have experienced the 3 steps aswell. great article and topic.
I agree with You Sally, it is really important to know and understand the 3 steps as it it useful and essential with consumer engagement. Great Article Sally
This social selling infographic and blog post is a one-stop shop to understand how today's B2B decision-maker is using social media as part of their buying.
And...
Once you have fine-tuned your approach to your B2B decision-maker social selling anatomy you might find these other social selling resources useful to perform the following operations:
Gerry Moran is one of my favorite marketing thought leaders: his messages are simple, direct and insightful. See the graphic above, and take the time to explore the five links.
If you want to learn more, go here, click on Filter, and then search MarketingThink.
Make sure that they have accounts set up on all of the major social sites that your prospects actively use, whether that’s Twitter, LinkedIn, or another site. Encourage them to share content and start actively participating in conversations surrounding your brand, product, and industry.
Step 2. Set Up a Social Media Monitoring Tool.
The easiest way for your sales reps to stay updated on what’s going on in their social media networks is through a social media monitoring tool like HootSuite, TweetDeck, or CoTweet. Using one of these tools, have them set up filters to track mentions of your product or service, your company name, and any (or all) of your competitors.
Step 3. Have Them Monitor Applicable LinkedIn Groups.
Many prospects take to LinkedIn when they want to have discussions about products or services, especially in B2B.
Step 4. Have a Process In Place for Social Media Leads.
Having a process in place ensures that your sales reps know just what to do when they find a lead on Twitter or LinkedIn, and can act as quickly as possible.
Joemktg's insight:
Social selling 101, but it you haven't taken the course, this is a good first read. For more relevant articles, search our Filter for "social selling."
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I really agree with ahmeds insight as it covers how social media creates a way to continue to talk to consumers outside of their store. Also the mention of the likes of linked in which allows business people to interact and see other peoples skill and compare of also look at recruiting of there which is a big advantage and a way to narrow down job opportunities
I agree with your insight Ahmed as social media is playing a huge part in society today. Social media platforms are making it easier for marketers and companies to communicate with their customers and for these customers to communicate back. All of this then links back into consumer engagement.
I agree with ahmeds insight as it conveys the netowrking effect of consumer engagement. By getting consumers engaged in the company you are able to create a lasting memory of the brand within the consumer that helps create future sales.
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For Premium users. Not difficult. A bit slow, but you may pick up a pointer or two.