Increase inbound sales leads with engaging content on LinkedIn

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LinkedIn, a Microsoft-owned professional social platform, is the largest of its kind in the world, with 800 million users across 200 countries.

For salespeople, corporate C-Suite leaders, investors, professionals in every sector, and small and medium business owners/founders, it’s an essential element of the sales funnel.

When LinkedIn is used effectively, salespeople can generate leads, nurture them, and bring new revenue into the pipeline every day of the working week. The challenge is, doing this the right way. Too many people on LinkedIn either don’t use it effectively or create such awful or fake content that it backfires, having the opposite effect.

Pro Tip for LinkedIn Content: Don’t use children — real or fake — and things they almost certainly haven’t done or said, acts of charity, moments of bragging and other clearly cringe-worthy moments to create content. It doesn’t look authentic.

Fake or clearly cringe-worthy content won’t increase sales leads in the pipeline. Chances are, it will only alienate those you want to connect and do business with.

Now we’ve covered that, let’s think about the best ways to use LinkedIn effectively to increase sales leads, and why LinkedIn is so powerful for sales teams.

Why LinkedIn is good for business?

  • According to SocialPilot, “89% of B2B marketers rely on this platform for lead generation”.
  • 50% of all social traffic to B2B websites and blogs comes from LinkedIn (underlying the value of a proactive content marketing campaign)
  • At least 61 million of LinkedIn’s users are now “influencers”;
  • There are 9 billion content impressions on LinkedIn every week!

Just imagine how many more sales leads you could generate into the pipeline if it was used effectively!? Let’s look at 5 ways you can create content on LinkedIn that generates more sales leads, nurtures them, and supports an increase in the conversion rate.

5 ways to create killer content on LinkedIn

  1. Start with your LinkedIn Summary. Leverage this bio/summary
  2. Add value and write about what you know
  3. Create social posts
  4. The Golden Rule: Engage with other people’s content
  5. Create useful LinkedIn Surveys

1: Start with your LinkedIn Summary

LinkedIn gives everyone 2,000 words to write a professional summary or bio. It’s the equivalent of an ‘About’ bio on a company website. Make the most of this section of your profile.

Every summary should be focused on attracting potential buyers, customers and sales leads. It’s a chance to introduce yourself, showcase skills, the ways you add value, and how you solve problems for clients.

Make sure to use the relevant keywords. Depending on your skills, expertise, and services your company provides. Use a strong opener. Whenever possible, use statistics and data. Be clear about the services your company provides and its competitive advantages. Always end a profile with a call-to-action and your contact details.

2: Write about what you know

Or have a marketing team, or a content marketing agency write this for you. To save time. Most salespeople don’t have the time to create content every day. But that’s the role of marketers and content marketing professionals in the sales funnel.

Companies that outsource outbound lead generation and sales (business development), can also tap into these services.

So don’t worry if you can’t, or don’t have the time to write a 1000 word article and 3 LinkedIn posts every week. Most companies can plug in a marketing team or service provider to deliver what you need.

The most important rules of posting content on LinkedIn

When it comes to writing posts and articles on LinkedIn, stick to these rules:

  1. Always aim to add value
  2. Be informative and engaging
  3. Link everything (in a subtle but not too subtle way) with what your company does/products and services
  4. One post, or article = one core theme/thesis. Keep it simple
  5. Use a conversational tone, avoid jargon, and aim to be as relatable as possible
  6. Imagine you are writing for someone with the reading age of an 11-year old? It’s a universal rule SocialPilot recommends.
  7. Leverage other marketing assets, such as case studies, landing pages, and downloadable content
  8. If you have videos, make use of them too (especially client testimonials)

3: Create social posts

Don’t only stick with articles and videos. Be social.

Use surveys and other social pieces of content to engage your audience.

Within your connections, there’s a list of potential sales leads and customers you’ve not engaged with yet. Or want to interact with, but haven’t until now. Use LinkedIn to interact with them.

Making yourself visible puts you/your company in their mindset. Not only will this nurture leads in the pipeline more effectively, but it will also generate new ones and make it easier when doing outreach and outbound sales campaigns.

4: The Golden Rule: Engage with other people’s content

Something too many people forget about on LinkedIn.

Take the time (or outsource this), to comment on other people’s posts and content. Put a like on articles. Write comments on posts. Share the content and updates of your connections, especially when these are sales leads and contacts you need to engage with.

Investing 30-minutes a day — at lunchtime, between meetings/calls or demos — is worth it when sales leads are paying more attention. And more leads will be coming in, thanks to your efforts on LinkedIn.

5: Create useful LinkedIn Surveys

LinkedIn surveys are LinkedIn’s equivalent to Stories on other platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. Quick, easy ways to engage with connections, while at the same time addressing specific pain points your audience should understand.

Everyone has seen a lot of pointless surveys on LinkedIn, as a way of generating any kind of engagement. Such as, “What time do you wake up?”, or “How many coffees do you have every day?”

Don’t waste your time. A survey like that won’t help you qualify leads; but, let’s imagine you are a salesperson for an accountancy software company.

A question such as: “What do you hate doing those most?”

With answers including Company Taxes, Personal Tax Return, Payroll, Other Government taxes, e.g. sales tax, VAT, etc., is the perfect way for potential sales leads to pre-qualify themselves. It shows they are actively thinking about needing a solution that your company provides.

When you create a more useful survey, the answers you get and the people responding could be entered into the sales pipeline.

Key Takeaways

LinkedIn is a powerful platform for B2B lead generation and nurturing sales leads. It’s a key part of the sales funnel, providing you remember the following 5-steps to take when creating killer and high-converting content

Start using CrankWheel today, a zero hassle screen sharing software, designed to help salespeople increase conversion rates and engagement with prospects.

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