Top 3 LinkedIn Profile Hacks – How to Successfully Use LinkedIn to Address Leaders & Increase Your Social Selling Index
In the period before social media, new contacts were made mainly at trade fairs and events. They put on their best suits, hoped to talk to some business decision makers and collected business cards. Thanks to networks like LinkedIn, every day today is a digital cocktail party. And best of all, all the big names in the industry are present.
How can one use this network effectively for lead address and increase one’s own social selling index?
Social Selling Index (SSI) – what is behind it?
Anyone registered with LinkedIn can view their personal SSI here:
https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi
In 4 categories, each with a maximum of 25 points, LinkedIn assesses how successful you are in building a brand. To be evaluated:
- Finding the right people in the right place
- Arousing interest through insights
- Build relationships
This also results in the most important points that should be considered in relation to your own LinkedIn profile.
A well-maintained profile is the be-all and end-all
Just like a well-groomed appearance at a trade fair, this point should also be a matter of course in the digital world – but unfortunately it is not.
See your LinkedIn profile as a digital business card and your personal landing page for your own sales activities. The more a visitor gets the feeling of talking to an expert, the more likely he will respond to any enquiries.
In addition to an appealing and professional profile picture, this also includes a professional career.
Don’t just enter the employer and the position here, but also the specific tasks and successes. Please also state your knowledge and skills, such as “project management”, “business management” or “cloud computing”. This will give your virtual counterpart a direct impression of which area you belong to.
This is particularly exciting because you can have these skills confirmed by your network. You emphasize that you have special expertise in a particular field, verify this information with colleagues and partners and also show that you are able to activate your network.
Hannes Beierlein, co-founder and CCO of the Evernine Group, summarizes:
“Digital Me is not taken seriously enough by many executives as an integral part of a corporate culture. All in all, they rely far too much on the often good personal network, but don’t see that it is accessible to almost everyone today, at least for a first contact. In the long run, the sales process, at least as far as first contact and “search contact” are concerned, will shift more and more into the digital world. If you don’t build up a professional personal brand in time, you will have more and more a problem with professionalism in the real world”.
Expand your network
Your network should grow steadily. While LinkedIn newcomers should start by adding current and former colleagues, business partners and acquaintances, advanced social selling fans need to go one step further. Many are afraid to send a contact request to supposedly strangers or don’t know how to approach it.
It also helps to transfer this digital situation into the real world. Do I have common contacts with this person? Do I have any topics of intersection with this situation?
In most cases you will be able to answer both questions with “Yes” – so go. Make reference to a common contact or a topic that is currently of concern to your interlocutor. He recently shared or commented on an article on Modern Workplace – great, exactly your hobbyhorse. If you make reference to it and send a content recommendation with it, you can build up a dialogue step by step, the rest often happens all by itself.
Show interest and get involved
Except in Hollywood movies, very few people are interested in the taciturn outsider at a party. It’s the same on LinkedIn. Every day, people from your network share their own content, external content, or just internal or personal news.
What would you do if you were at that cocktail party and the gentleman or lady on your right was talking about a personal success? – You congratulate and if necessary start a conversation. That’s exactly what you should do in the digital world. While a “like” still goes easily by the hand, many lack creativity when writing comments. This feature is particularly important for your reach. According to current evaluations of the LinkedIn algorithm, a like, in contrast to a comment, has only 50 percent of the impact, a share only 25 percent!
Simply start with a “Thank you for the exciting input” and gradually give all comments an ever stronger own (content) note. Do you think that the article on agile corporate communication does not go far enough, because there is still talk of strongly separated departments? Write it. You should only be careful with strongly political or socially critical opinions, whereby the same rules apply here as in the real world.
Soon you will get contact requests and messages from people who want to talk to you about your topics.
If you are more interested in this topic, please contact us – our consulting team is looking forward to hearing from you. The Evernine Group offers workshops and training courses as well as support for your sales.
Whether you are building a powerful digital sales force or want to optimize your existing team, we will be happy to advise you.
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