The best social media platform for B2B sales is LinkedIn. It is a very powerful tool even when using the free version. There are over 3,000,000 Canadians on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn offers users personal profiles with ways to list their professional work experience, education, certifications, languages and publications. It also allows for company pages and groups that users can join to connect with other professionals.
Here’s some tips on how your business can start using LinkedIn:
Getting Started
The first step is to create a complete profile with picture, job summaries, and education. Everyone on your sales team, as well as every employee at your company, should ensure they are connected back to the corporate LinkedIn company page.
Create a Plan
This plan could include:
- Some time everyday
- Connect one new contact a day
- Research and join groups
- Update status at least once a week
- Review network updates frequently
Connect
The power of LinkedIn is the connections that you make. A good rule of thumb is to try and add one connection every day. The best source of connections is:
- Colleagues
- Classmates
- Customers
- Business partners
- Other service/solution providers
Groups
One of the most useful features in LinkedIn is the groups. This is an excellent way to find targets, engage in discussions, and become aware of events. Some recommendations for groups include:
- Join the Groups your customers and prospects are in, not just others like you
- Focus on niches based on geography and verticals.
- Use as a research tool for prospecting
- Participate and join discussions
Companies
Organizations can set-up a profile and their employees can link to the page. This is one of the best research tools in Linkedin with some of the highlights being;
- Determining if you have any connections
- New hires and changes
- Summary of company
- Blog posts and Twitter feeds
- Ability for people to ‘follow’ your company
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