Social selling is a big part of Sales 2.0, and there's no better place to begin than LinkedIn.
According to James Burnette, LinkedIn's Director of Marketing Solutions, insurance professionals are power users who engage more than the average job seeker. Here are a few statistics he offered at a recent LifeHappens webinar:
- More than 400,000 insurance professionals have profiles on LinkedIn.
- Insurance professionals are 38% more connected than the average LinkedIn user.
- Insurance professionals are 49% more likely to follow companies.
- Insurance professionals are 27% more likely to join groups.
Whether you're doing social selling on LinkedIn to market your business or just want to keep tabs on the industry, there's always more to learn. LinkedIn is a powerful research tool as well as a marketing tool.
Here are the top tips offered by Burnette:
- Update your profile on a regular basis whether you are looking for a new job or not. Add experience, publications, awards, and more. Remember, your profile is more than an online resume. It's a digital showcase for your professional brand.
- Make your profile SEO-friendly. Include relevant keywords throughout (i.e., "insurance agent," "life insurance sales," etc.). For more on keywords, check out our Tech Corner post.
- Add eye-catching and informative content in multimedia format, including PDFs and SlideShare decks. An entire page of plain text just won't cut it anymore!
- Follow "Influencers." These are thought leaders selected by LinkedIn who publish content that pushes boundaries, analyzes trends, and forecasts the future of everything from digital marketing to insurance to social media. Even if you're not interested in social selling, the content gathered here is a great daily news source for our industry and the world at large.
- Use it as a publishing platform. LinkedIn recently opened up blogging capabilities to all users, making it one of the largest blogging platforms on the web. There are currently 25 million members using this feature. That can make it tough to stand out from the crowd, but it also means those 25 million people are earning web traffic, user engagement, and valuable links to their websites. If you're not publishing original content on LinkedIn, September (Life Insurance Awareness Month) would be a great time to start.
Social selling is only one aspect of Sales 2.0. Find out what else it takes to become a 21st Century Producer in our free eBook:
