The professional social network LinkedIn offers many advantages for business activities. The number of companies and organisations, as well as the number of users, is growing rapidly on the platform. Anyone looking to engage in B2B marketing simply cannot afford to ignore LinkedIn these days. However, most members are not yet making the most of the network. Cim Bayer specialises in social selling and ensures significant growth in leads for his clients. In conversation with Martin, he explained what is possible with LinkedIn.
Cim (pronounced like „Kim“) is joining us from Vienna. He says his professional background is what led him to the topic of social selling. Cim is a Sales Enablement Manager at a Viennese start-up. There, he spends virtually all his time dealing with sales and marketing topics such as email marketing, cold calls and, indeed, social selling. As a result, he is constantly working to optimise the methods and strategies used on social media. The livestream will focus on how tax advisers should build their profiles, how they can use LinkedIn to generate leads and capitalise on opportunities.
The first question is: What is social selling? Cim Bayer answers the question as follows: It’s all about social media, and today we’ll be focusing on LinkedIn. Millions of companies are registered on the platform. The advantage of LinkedIn is that you can see the contact persons’ photos and names. You can also view information about the person’s background, as well as what the company stands for. This makes the initial contact much more personal than, for example, via company websites or cold calling.
Employees should also make active use of LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, companies can set up their own company page. Tax consultancy firms and law firms should also do this in order to establish a presence and communicate with current and potential clients. Apart from that, however, employees should also have their own profiles on LinkedIn. According to Cim, these are the face of the company. Even for smaller firms, all these profiles can lead to enormous reach and opportunities.
But how do law firms get their staff to sign up to LinkedIn? Cim recommends emphasising relevance and reach. Any professional can establish themselves as an expert on LinkedIn by posting regularly. From his sales experience, Cim knows that people buy something when they trust the salesperson and recognise their expertise. LinkedIn is ideal for this. It allows professionals to build a network. This can be achieved through personal interaction in comment sections, via direct messages, tags and links, and by regularly sharing relevant content. Interactions and reactions to these activities automatically increase reach and reinforce one’s status as an expert.
Building a productive network through personalised content
What counts as relevant content? Cim emphasises that it is not about constantly sharing company posts. As a rule of thumb, he suggests an 80:20 ratio: 80 per cent original content, 20 per cent company content. This is because if someone constantly posts company content, it is simply perceived as advertising and is more likely to be rejected. To boost one’s own visibility, Cim recommends following opinion leaders and key figures and commenting regularly on their posts. Naturally, care should be taken to ensure that comments are relevant in terms of content. In particular, well-informed, expert comments encourage discussion and strengthen one’s own reputation.
Cim then goes through the elements of a LinkedIn profile step by step. As he does so, he explains how they can be optimised.
Profile picture: A striking profile picture really catches the eye. Many people keep using the same photo from a business photoshoot for everything. A suit, a tie, a grey or white background. A photo showing you in different clothes, with a coloured background, or making a distinctive gesture – there are many ways to stand out.
Profile slogan: The profile slogan is a piece of text that appears in your profile beneath your name. Cim recommends summarising what you do in a single sentence to highlight the value you bring. Note from the hsp editorial team: The text is fully visible in the profile. However, this text is also displayed when the person writes a comment or posts content. In these cases, the profile slogan is truncated once it exceeds a certain length. When drafting the text, you should therefore ensure that it still works well even when shortened. Cim notes that hashtags can also be used in the profile slogan.
Background image: The background image refers to the large banner behind the profile picture at the very top of the profile page. You should choose an image or graphic that gives your profile an attractive, professional and distinctive look. LinkedIn uses the 1128 × 191-pixel format for the background image. Note from the hsp editorial team: When using text, care should be taken to ensure that the profile picture does not obscure it. This should be checked on both a laptop and a smartphone.
Activity: It is advisable to post subject-related content on a regular basis to demonstrate your expertise. These include interesting information, personal insights on professional topics or descriptions of experiences related to your professional environment. Posts of this kind can quickly generate three-, four- or even five-figure impressions. „Impressions“ refers to the approximate number of times the post has been displayed on screen. On your own profile, you can find this metric for your own posts. By clicking on it, you can view the analytics for the post.
Info: The profile description is included in the profile and should contain a sort of short biography. Cim recommends starting this text with the profile slogan. This can then be followed by, for example, a list of your own clients, areas of expertise and experience. Cim sees the third part as the „call to action“. This could include an invitation to a personal conversation. In addition, Cim has listed his hobbies on his profile to make it even more personal. In his view, this sort of information helps to find a common ground straight away during face-to-face meetings or in conversations.
Work experience: There is plenty of space in the section on your professional career to list your skills and areas of expertise. You should make use of this space.
Skills: On LinkedIn, you can confirm skills and have your skills confirmed by others. Cim recommends confirming specific skills for professional contacts from time to time. This sends the person a notification, strengthens the connection, serves as a reminder of who you are, and, in the best-case scenario, results in you receiving a skills endorsement in return.
Personal URL: When you create a LinkedIn profile, the link to that profile is initially a long string of characters, which you can see in your browser’s address bar. However, it is possible to create your own custom link. It looks like this: linkedin.com/in/beispielname. To set this up, simply click on „You“ in the top right-hand corner beneath your profile picture, then on „View profile“ and finally on „Edit public profile“ in the top right-hand corner. A new tab will open. You can now change the URL name by clicking on the pencil icon on the right.
Furthermore, as already mentioned, Cim recommends following opinion leaders and joining industry groups. Hashtags in posts are useful for appearing in search results. Users should limit themselves to using terms that are genuinely relevant. In tax consultancy, this means that, as a German-speaking professional with a German-speaking target audience, you should not use English tags, or, if you do, combine them with German terms.
A wide range of opportunities to make contacts and network
Another tip: every major event is listed on LinkedIn as an event. On the event page, you can view the attendees with a single click. If potential clients are attending, you could reach out to them in advance and initiate conversations.
If you want to message people on LinkedIn, you should do so in a personalised and relevant way. Nobody wants to receive standardised, mass messages that are completely irrelevant. However, if you take the time to do this, you can reap the benefits surprisingly quickly and significantly. It’s all about building relationships with customers.
Two final sentences, added by Cim:
Social selling is: underrated.
Social selling is definitely not: a place where you should start pitching straight away.
In our Sales training The aim is to teach you the sales techniques and tools that will enable you to achieve even better sales results whilst having more fun and feeling more motivated.
German 
English