When talking about lead generation on social media, a lot of attention is given to the big social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook. But LinkedIn, even if it is a little bit smaller than the big two, has many more opportunities. Since everyone on LinkedIn is there for professional/work-related reasons, it makes a great playground for sales. However, it's not as easy as making an account and sending out cold messages. Here are our tips to find sales leads on LinkedIn:
LinkedIn has thousands of groups on all different subjects, and lead generation has many of its own to learn from. Just searching for "lead generation" "lead buyers & sellers" and other variations on industry terms should turn up a lengthy list. The same is true for pretty much any business you can think of. From there, follow away. Many people pick out the two or three biggest in the list, but tools like Hootsuite make it easy to operate in way more groups than that - even as many as fifteen or twenty. Obviously, it's up to your discretion, but it's not a bad idea to cover more ground.
Once you've found your groups, you can start doing your research. Content like whitepapers and blog posts are important to your promotional strategy, but the most important reason to join the groups first is to see what they're interested in. Look for questions being asked frequently, points of dispute in comment sections, and other bits of inspiration for writing. Building your content off of this research will make it much more relevant & useful to your readers.
The number one rule on LinkedIn is that, if you're spamming, you're not welcome. Jumping right into your own self-promotion in groups is a quick way out the door. Join the discussions of groups with authentic advice at first. After a few posts, once you've gained some name recognition, then you can start posting your own content. And as long as your content is useful, nobody will really mind.
Still, once you have started posting your own blog content, there's no need to post it all the time. It should be used sparingly to make sure you're not losing the credibility you built up.
Working in groups on a regular basis will get you in touch with a number of other people with common interests. Interacting with them on the group is the bridge to reaching out to them personally. This is the best place for you to offer your services to solve any problems individuals might have. Feel free to send personalized messages asking about what pain points you can solve with your system, and provide them with the information they need to make an informed decision.
With your content created, your posts out in the wild, and your audience swooning over your (undoubtedly) awesome content, your last step is to sponsor your content. LinkedIn allows you to pay for exposure to wider audiences. Reach out to the rest of the LinkedIn community with highly customizable sponsorship and watch the leads flow in.
That's about it for our guide to LinkedIn sales leads. You can find our LinkedIn page here. Keep an eye out for our future posts, where we post them, and let us know if you need any help with distributing the leads you're generating. boberdoo has been working with lead distribution since 2001, and we know the ins and outs of this sort of business. Give us a call or reach us on the Contact Us tab to set up a free demo!