At snapADDY, we encourage our employees to be as active as possible on LinkedIn. The potential of the platform is too great not to take advantage of it. To use it, we take our employees by the hand but without giving them specific restrictive guidelines. Here are a few examples from our experience that we hope will help you make the most of LinkedIn for customer acquisition in your company.
1. Profile Design
With a few little tricks, you can quickly improve your profile. Let's start with the basics:
Upload a profile picture – this makes you look much approachable and friendly than the LinkedIn avatar. The face should take up about 70% of the photo.
Customize your profile URL. It is nicer to include a clear URL in signatures or business cards.
Practical tips for optimizing your profile:
Customize your profile headline. This is where your job title and company are displayed by default. The title is the first thing your potential contacts will see. Include the added value you offer. Ask yourself the following question: What should the person I want to network with know about me?
Use the " Overview" section of your profile to briefly introduce yourself or your products. What gives you credibility? Why are you the right person for what they are looking for or offering? Your overview should be easy to read in 30 seconds or less.
In the background section, describe what you have done so far. Use keywords that will allow you to be found. The same goes for the skills section.
Former: Ask former project partners or colleagues to write you a reference or confirm your expertise.
2. Posting
Only 5% of LinkedIn's 800 million members post content, and only 1% do so regularly. Even with a small investment of time, you can stand out from the crowd.
The key here is to understand the algorithm responsible for getting your post to as many people as possible. In our experience: What you should consider regardless of the content you post?
- Keep your post under 1,500 characters and under 10 emojis if possible. Anything more than that will reduce your ability to reach.
- Never edit a post within the first hour of posting.
- Never post multiple times within 24 hours, as this will reduce your audience.
- Use 3-5 hashtags, preferably at the end of your text.
- Include links in your main text if necessary. Being the first to comment on your post will reduce your reach by up to 15%.
Tip: Add the profile section "Spotlight" to highlight your profile posts, links, or activities.
3. Networking
Even the best content is useless if no one sees it. It is therefore necessary to create a network. Avoid arbitrarily doing this. Define some key data that is important to you.
- What language should you publish in? Filter contacts by regions where this language is spoken.
- Do you have a specific target group? Filter by specific job titles.
- Do you regularly post on certain topics? Search for matching hashtags and people posting on the same topic.
Tip: Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator's Spotlight filter to filter people based on their activity. This will help you identify contacts who have posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days.
4. Process
Few employees have time to dedicate to Social Selling outside of work. Therefore, we schedule time for our employees for Social Selling. This time can be used freely to write a post, to respond to interesting posts, or to expand the network independently of the daily sales routine.
We also use LinkedIn's Social Selling Index to calculate success, among other things. Here, LinkedIn evaluates its users on four aspects: Creating a profile, networking with others, social interactions, and creating new contacts. The rating ranges from 0 to 100. Until you reach 75 points, an increase in the SSI has a direct effect on your reach. From 76 you hardly notice any improvement. You can check your rating at linkedin.com/sales/ssi.
5. snapADDY as a support
Our snapADDY DataQuality solution allows you to quickly and conveniently transfer all the people you interact with on LinkedIn to your CRM system. In addition, you can see directly on LinkedIn whether the person or company already exists in your CRM system. This means that you will never again waste time on tedious data maintenance or on contacts that are already being processed by your colleagues.
I hope we have been able to give you some practical tips. We wish you much success in capturing new customers on LinkedIn. Feel free to follow us on LinkedIn and network with me. I would be happy to get your feedback.
Victor Weitzmann works as Sales Operations Manager at snapADDY since April 2021. During his studies in Management, he supported the team as a working student. Earlier, he also gained experience as an intern and working student in IT recruitment and business development.