The world is rapidly changing due to technology, the business ‘remains the same’. Every day you can discover a new technology, update, new feature. These advancements can improve our daily routine, enable you with more powerful tools and artificial intelligence so that you can more efficiently achieve results. However, a high percentage of doing business relies on the capacity of empathizing with your client/prospect. Therefore, social media has become the digital space where marketers and sales leaders want to be. The massive statistics you can find in the latest reports are yelling at digital marketing & sales leaders to build their online presence and leverage from the benefits that social networks are bringing.
When it comes to B2b, the most important platform where you can develop your professional brand is LinkedIn. More than 600 millions of users, from which, 50% are business-decision makers. Convincing numbers for marketers to show up on the platform. In fact, 94% of B2b marketers are constantly sharing useful content. Interestingly enough, decision-makers consume at least 5 pieces of content on the platform before event talking to sellers, representing more than 67% of the buyer’s journey completion. Don’t you want to benefit as well?
LinkedIn is evolving every day to become a more complete platform not only to deliver a greater user experience but also to enable digital marketers and sellers to have more possibilities of growing their business opportunities by, for instance, active listening to their network, understanding them, therefore, increasing their level of empathy. Some of the advances or usage we constantly find on LinkedIn can cause some dilemma. Are we going too social or are we creating new possibilities of connecting with professionals (people) to get closer to personal connection? We want to believe the second. Here it is why.
Business & Trust
More than 90% of the business is influenced by soft skills, emotions – Lennart Sloof, Manager Digital Marketing Strategies at Accenture Netherlands
Technology is enabling many business opportunities through easier finding the right people you need to influence as a marketeer or convince as a seller. However, business is business everywhere. PowerPoint presentations, meetings, proposals… There are all almost the same in each of the business you are immersed in. What it truly matters is that you are able to generate trust with your clients or prospects. Every day you can find a technological advance or development. As a result, many professionals are experiencing anxiety due to change. That is why it becomes fundamental that you, as sellers or marketeers, can understand their business problems, their anxiety. If you are able to demonstrate that level of empathy, the trust will shine by itself. Therefore, you will increase the chances of getting more business opportunities as a result of mutual trust.
Business & Digital Platforms
As stated before, trust is a crucial element when it comes to close a deal. Many business deals are closed based on emotions (Lennart Sloof). Social platforms are developing more and more to keep relevant one important element behind: people. Whether you do business offline or online, when it comes to making a decision, people’s feelings play a decisive role. Focusing on LinkedIn, it’s been rolled out new functionality to enable users to get closer to express what they really think about any piece of content they come across: LinkedIn Reactions.
So far, there’s been available only three options to react to a publication: like, comment or share. The like button can be quite often not enough to truly express what your thoughts are without leaving a comment.
Celebrate any accomplishment or achieved a milestone of your audience.
Love by supporting any cause that you can find across your network.
Insightful to acknowledge a good idea, article or any kind of content.
Curious to know more about the content you’ve just reacted from.
From now on, marketeers and sellers can differently measure the engagement of their content with their network. Wouldn’t you be interested to know whether your content has caused more curiosity or insightful reactions? Additionally, along with your company’s or professional’s life, you might experience some achievements or celebrate any kind of event. Wouldn’t it be gratifying or an interesting opportunity to virtually share that feeling with your network? Eventually, this new feature is enabling the users of the platform to get closer to express feelings that, ultimately, are adding up points towards the level of required trust between individuals.
We have created an easy-to-watch video to explain to you how to use this fantastic development in our next article. If you want to know more, download our Social Selling´s best practices guide here. We want to continue supporting organizations worldwide through made-to-measure Marketing & Sales solutions.
Author: Javier Dominguez – Business Social Selling Coach & Marketing Manager
