Social Selling on LinkedIn: 11 Best Practices + Examples

Social selling: so hot right now, right? 

Posting on LinkedIn won’t replace your tried-and-true prospecting and cold email strategies, but social selling can seriously help you make inroads into new industries and marquee accounts. Not to mention: it can show your prospects who you are and what you’re all about.

Just remember: unless you’re selling to other salespeople, don’t spend all day, every day, talking about sales on LinkedIn. To get you started on your social selling journey, we’ve put together a list of our top 11 social selling best practices, including examples of how successful LinkedIn creators leverage the platform. 

11 tips to become a pro at social selling

Engaging with people on LinkedIn isn’t going above and beyond in 2022, in fact, it’s table stakes. 

Today, the majority of prospecting is done remotely, and almost 75% of sellers said they planned to expand their LinkedIn network last year. If you’re ready to get the most out of LinkedIn, here are our best practices for posting content, adding value, and growing your audience. 

1. Post consistently 

The most successful sellers on LinkedIn have thousands of followers. That’s because they consistently post content that’s useful to their audience. Start by creating a LinkedIn promotional calendar that includes posts, articles, and topical content, like related business news. 

When designing your calendar, try to make the most out of the content you already have. A blog article from your company about the top 10 best practices on cold calling can be turned into 10 LinkedIn posts over the course of a month. Make sure that your content is meaningful, and not just filler. Leverage your subject expertise without sounding like you’re bragging.  

One of Salesforce’s top sales influencers, Belal Batrawy, regularly posts sales advice that’s actionable and helpful to frontline sellers who need guidance on tricky sales questions. He also mixes in non-sales content, like posts for Black History month and amusing memes. 

2. Write a clear and effective headline

LinkedIn users will see your headline before they open your profile, so make sure it’s catchy. 

On a more technical level, the keywords you include play a large part in LinkedIn’s search algorithm. Do yourself a favor and list out what you do instead of what job you have or where you work. 

Here are three examples: 

• Coach, mentor, and people connector
• Delivering AI and machine learning to the word
• Customer advocate | sales leader | story teller 

Cynthia Barnes, a LinkedIn Top Voice, is a sales leader with a clear and direct headline: 

Champion for Women in Sales | LinkedIn Top Voice | Sales Influencer | Keynote Speaker | Storyteller | Encourager

3. Respond to messages and comments 

Your LinkedIn platform is not for speaking at people, it’s for speaking with people. 

The more you post on LinkedIn, the more views you get. Users from all over the world will reach out to you with connection requests, questions, and to share their own stories. 

If a potential customer engages with your content or sends you a LinkedIn message, you’ll obviously be quick to reply – after all, that’s the point of all your social selling. But remember that it’s just as important to respond to people that won’t become customers, at least right now. 

The more engaged you are with your LinkedIn audience, the further your reach will spread. Ignoring messages from up and coming sales reps communicates that you’re not focused on helping, but only on leads. 

Comments are even more important. When someone replies to one of your posts, they bring you into their LinkedIn feed. Make the most of that with thoughtful replies and avoid responding to touchy discussions too emotionally. Be professional and avoid getting defensive or dismissive.

4. Be proactive and engage with others’ content 

LinkedIn offers remote networking, which is more important in 2022 than ever before. Your ideal customers and advocates are posting their own content so be proactive and engage with a reaction or comment. Not only does this establish you as a part of their community, but it will increase your connection requests and followers. 

As with your own posts, keep things professional. If offering helpful advice gets you noticed on LinkedIn, engaging in arguments will too, but not in a good way. Your entire LinkedIn persona is tied to your professional career, so approach every discussion with thoughtful words that add to the conversation. 

5. Don’t post sales pitches 

Even though you might talk about your product and company, your content should always offer a resource for your audience. If you’re sharing a new company blog post, offer up a personal experience that relates, and ask your readers to share theirs too. 

Social Selling is about building relationships, not closing deals. Focus on creating interest in your posts, gaining insight into your ideal customers, and moving sales-ready conversations from LinkedIn to email. Then you can dive into how your product can serve this prospect’s unique needs.  

6. Leverage your LinkedIn conversations off platform

As a social media platform, LinkedIn helps you share ideas and spark conversations. It’s not the right place to get into the details of a prospect’s business. Instead, take those conversations off line and set up a phone call or email conversation. 

The best way to get leads from LinkedIn into your CRM and email tools is to export them from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Wiza can help you find leads, filter your requirements, and export them easily through our LinkedIn extension in just three steps. 

7. Follow other leaders in your niche

If you need to beef up your LinkedIn network, start by connecting and following people who have something interesting to say and who catch your attention. You should also grab low hanging fruit like your colleagues and company leaders, past colleagues, bloggers, industry influencers, and customer contacts. 

Don’t forget to follow your competitors. Not only will that help you stay up to date on new products, services, or announcements, but it gives you a better idea of how they sell and how people react to their content. 

8. Give people a reason to accept your connection request

No one knows what to do with connection requests from strangers who we have nothing in common with and who offer no compelling reason to connect. 

Always tell people the reason that you’re trying to connect with them. Perhaps you saw an interesting post, or have a mutual connection. A simple message can go a long way, like in these examples: 

• “I really liked your blog post on [subject]. I’d love to connect and hear more from you in the future.”
• “Your conversations on LinkedIn are always so insightful. I’m always looking for experts in [industry] to learn from.” 
• “I’m connected with [mutual connection] and your posts have popped up in my LinkedIn feed more and more.”

9. Participate in LinkedIn Groups  

LinkedIn has many industry specific groups for people to meet and discuss topics important to their community. Conduct a LinkedIn search to find the ones that match your keywords, then ask to join. Some need to approve new members and others are open to all. 

There’s a LinkedIn group for everyone including B2B sellers, university alumni, women in tech, local and regional groups, LGBTQ+, and much more. Join in on the conversations. Your ideal customers are in these groups – and you’ll probably learn a lot from all these experts. 

10. Refine your LinkedIn summary

As a LinkedIn content creator, you’ll attract people to check out your profile page to learn more about what you do and to see your past posts, featured articles, and background. The advice on how long to make your summary seems to vary widely. Some people say to keep it to one or two paragraphs, while many successful LinkedIn influencers will have walls of text and details about their work. 

Whichever way you choose, make sure your summary is clear, easy to skim through, and aligns with your personal and company brands.  Justin Michael, Co-Founder at HYPCCCYCL,  keeps his “About” summary short and direct, which aligns well with his company, HYPCCCYCL, an invite-only community for B2B revenue leaders.  

11. Make trust your foundation

There are plenty of people on LinkedIn who are pushing their products, spamming their connections with InMails, and who approach networking with a scorched earth policy. Don’t be one of these people. For social media to be the most effective, you need to build and maintain trust. 

Think about what you like, post, and share on your LinkedIn feed. Make sure that it aligns with your personal brand, and your company brand. Try to provide value wherever you can, support your connections, and even be vulnerable and acknowledge when something doesn’t work out for you. 

Improve your prospecting strategy with social selling

LinkedIn is the most active social media platform for professionals that facilitates conversations that lead to sales. Not only that, it’s a great place to build your own brand, help others, and show the value of what you have to offer. 

Try out these eleven best practices to help improve your social selling results. (While you’re at it, follow the LinkedIn influencers mentioned above, too.)