Social selling is a hot topic. In a recent post, we discussed some specific ways B2B sales professionals can apply social selling to achieve real results. We had also conducted original research on why Twitter is becoming an integral part of social selling.
While Twitter is still somewhat uncharted territory for some sales professionals, LinkedIn is fast becoming a staple for social selling. In her recent eBook “Can LinkedIn Increase Your Sales?” Jill Konrath discusses how LinkedIn can support and often help accelerate the entire sales lifecycle.
To push the thinking on social selling further, Lattice Engines conducted original quantitative research on LinkedIn network activity. We created a composite LinkedIn user by aggregating actual LinkedIn network activity across multiple, real-life LinkedIn users on a confidential and anonymous basis.
The resulting composite LinkedIn user has on average 185 1st degree connections (where average means the total number of unique 1st degree network connections across our sample users divided by the number of sample users). We analyzed the network activity — the Update feed — of all the connections over a 34 day basis to glean insights into how sales reps can gain incremental benefit from their social networks:
- How often do people post updates? Do they generate update in spurts? Should reps be monitoring LinkedIn activity more frequently?
- Do people in your network update with roughly the same frequency? Or, are there a handful of connections that account for the lion’s share of your network activity and, therefore, merit more of your time?
- What are the most popular types of updates (e.g., sharing content, adding new connections)? Can you segment your connections based on update behavior? Do some people post lots of valuable industry insight? Who are the most active networkers?
We’ll share results from our research in Part 2 of this series. In the meantime, let us know what techniques you’re using for social selling on LinkedIn and the other social networks.
