Making Sales Social Live Episode # 4- LinkedIn Listening
| July 15, 2021
In this episode…
In this episode, the Social Sales Link Team continued their conversation about “Social Listening”, or LinkedIn Listening.
It is really purposeful to use LinkedIn to socially listen and understand what our prospects and network care about. And by knowing what you want to say, what we want to do is listen first, so we know that we’re saying the right thing.
In LinkedIn, there are some places and ways where you can socially listen with your eyes and find out what your prospects and clients care about.
For companies
* Check out your prospects’ company page – getting the perspective on how your prospects see themselves is a great way to start, check their company page and see the type of content they’re sharing. By doing that, you’ll have an idea of how they’re trying to educate their end users and you can find a way to resonate with the decision-makers you deal with, more so if you find more content that answers their questions.
* Check out their Hashtags – by checking their hashtags you will also have an idea of the top topics they care about. Check the hashtags they’re following and look at the content that’s being shared in there because the main purpose of hashtags is to keep them updated and making sure that they engage on those. Pro Tip: Make sure you also engage a little bit on those content that they follow just to keep you on their radar.
For individuals
* Check their profile (Headline, About, Activities & Posts) – check your prospect’s headline to understand how they view themselves and how they want to come off to their audience. Their about section will tell you what you want to know about them and finally, on their activities and posts you can see what kind of content they share and only that means, it is something that is important to them.
* Check out their skills section – if they have determined this is their expertise, our social listening allows us to leverage the way they see themselves.
* Check out their recommendations – by looking at their recommendations, you will have an idea about their clients, who they helped, how they helped, and the solution they bring, and it will help you understand them better.
In conclusion, what we’re looking to do is to find a point of context with them that will allow us to connect with them, to start a conversation that may lead down to a sales conversation when the time is right, but we have to start somewhere and the above points might be that starting point.
Connect with Brynne, Bill, Bob, and Sally Jo on LinkedIn or you can also visit our LinkedIn page to watch this episode again and get daily tips from the Social Sales Link team!
Important points on this video
Things you will learn in this episode:
* Checking a person’s LinkedIn profile is another big part of social listening. In their headline, for example, you can see not only how they view themselves but how they want to appear to their own audience. You can also reach their newsfeed shares, which is important because that’s the content they care enough about to bring to the attention of their connections.
* When social listening, visit the LinkedIn (Company) page to understand the business’s priorities. Start with the “About” section, as it describes them and what they do for their clients. Next, take a look at the content they are sharing and who is engaging in it. Check out the hashtags, as these are often related topics that your prospective customer cares about. In addition, take a look at groups that they highlight, and consider joining them to both learn more and engage.
* One of the main reasons why we want to practice social listening is that we can discover topics to discuss that are important to our clients and prospects. As sales professionals, we’ve been taught to highlight our products and services and be able to recite them at a moment’s notice. But when we do that we sound just like everyone else, and we end up leading with our solution. By socially listening to the content our prospects are sharing and engaging on, we can create content and engagement on the topics that matter the most to them, and in turn, we’ll build relationships and credibility.
