5 ways to engage and connect with your ideal prospects on LinkedIn

With over 706 million members – of whom 63 million are decision makers – LinkedIn is the go-to social platform for the B2B industry.

For three consecutive years, Business Insider has rated LinkedIn the ‘No1 most trusted social media platform’ and business professionals agree – three join every second.

So, if you’re on the hunt for new business, you need to join the 96% of B2B marketers that are using LinkedIn. Particularly as LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter.

Read on to discover how your sales and business development teams can go about connecting professionally, posting engaging content, and organically growing new business on LinkedIn.

Utilise relevant hashtags

If you’re on social media, you’ll know hashtags. But did you know that they were ‘invented’ by product designer Chris Messina in 2007 as a way of grouping topics and information together?

On LinkedIn, hashtags are a great way for you to discover the content your target audience is searching for. This lets you follow along with and contribute to relevant conversations by including the hashtag topics on your posts and articles.

Doing so will help more people discover your content – LinkedIn company pages that post with three hashtags outperform posts with no hashtags by 10%.

Regularly engage with your ideal prospect’s content

You’re an expert at what you do so don’t be backwards in letting your target audience know. In fact, they’re hungry for content that adds value. 69% of professionals say that the most important factor when choosing a vendor is that they demonstrate a ‘strong knowledge of the solution and the business landscape’.

As well as posting thought leadership posts and articles, join existing conversations (by searching for the relevant hashtags) and contribute content that helps prospects through the decision-making process.

Use data

LinkedIn is a treasure trove of data. By connecting with the right people and joining relevant conversations you can discover the pains and problems that your target audience is experiencing.

The time spent mining data about your ideal prospects will be time well spent. It will enable you to post customer-specific content based on their motivations and interests, and 64% of B2B buyers say that vendors who demonstrate a strong knowledge of their company is what makes them reach out to purchase their services.

Make purposeful connections 

On average, 5.4 people must sign off on B2B purchasing decisions. This highlights the importance of connecting with and building relationships with multiple people at your target organisations.

So, whenever you have an interaction with a prospect – whether you’ve met them in a meeting, at a conference, they’ve viewed your profile, or commented or liked one of your posts – be sure to connect with them straight away.

If you don’t have a personal connection to the person you want to reach out to, it’s worth checking if you have a mutual connection in common who can introduce you.

Create content that adds value

While it’s important to strike up conversations with your prospects on LinkedIn – 39% of sales reps who regularly comment on their prospects’ LinkedIn activities exceed their quota – it’s vital that your comments add value.

So, before you engage with a prospect, stop and think about the purpose of your comment and what you can include to ensure it adds value to the conversation. Never comment just for the sake of it. Have a purpose and stay relevant.