Introduction
Social Selling is easy. Yes, you read correctly it's easy if you study the right examples!
To put in my place my own social selling strategy on both LinkedIn and Twitter, I've studied many social sellers out there.
This article won't talk about some aspects of social selling that we already covered with this two articles:
1°) Social Selling Example with Justin Welsh: a content marketing approach
Justin Welsh is well-known in the social selling space. He started doing social selling exclusively with LinkedIn before expanding lately on Twitter.
His strategy on LinkedIn
Justin's strategy on LinkedIn is to maximize profile views as possible to ultimately sell his info-products. To achieve that, he applies the below principles.
1/ Consistency of the posts
For almost 3 years in a row now, Justin posted every single day on LinkedIn. That's a massive posting streak.
LinkedIn algorithm loves consistency and will push more you content in the long-run. Moreover, if you post every single day people will remember you over time, that's how you build online authority.
People will like your posts (i.e. giving you reach) because they like you / or became a recurring person in their feed.
2/ Engage with his comments
Justin Welsh has 1 simple rule about his social selling on LinkedIn, engaging with his audience on every post.
The first hour after his posts are live, he engages with all the comments, no matter who you are (LinkedIn follower, LinkedIn connection or not).
This is valuable for smaller accounts who get replies for a 'big' account and will encourage them to comment even more under his posts in the future.
By rewarding the early comments under his LinkedIn posts, Justin amplifies quickly the reach of his posts but also amplifies the reach of those smaller accounts, it's a win win strategy.
3/ Recycling LinkedIn posts every 6 months
I do the same under my Twitter account. Basically Justin recycle every 6 months the posts that performed well during his account.
Either he just republishes the exact same post (1) or he tweaks the message a little bit (2).
4/ Sell 1%, give free value 99%
Although Justin has clear objectives with his online presence (as stated in his LinkedIn headline), he's definitely not a pushy social seller.
It's total opposite, I would say that he's actively selling his courses 1% of the time and the 99% remaining are to give as much value as possible to his LinkedIn audience.
4/ Repurposing his Twitter Thread into LinkedIn carrousels
LinkedIn carousels perform really well on LinkedIn. However, they take some time to be built. That's why Justin decided to repurpose his top performing Twitter threads into LinkedIn carousels.
Low efforts, big rewards.
He has different audiences between LinkedIn & Twitter, so this social selling strategy does makes sense.
His strategy on Twitter
1/ Writing powerful Threads
Twitter threads are how you grow on Twitter, they are great social selling weapons to generate more leads.
From my research, I noticed that Justin posts about 2 up to 3 threads per week which is massive!
2/ Repurposing top performing LinkedIn posts into Tweets and vice-versa
Justin is all about repurposing content. Writing content takes tons of energy, so why not using to its fullest potential?
In Version A, Justin talked about his imposter syndrome newsletter:
In Version B, Justin repurposed on LinkedIn the same tweet with a few tweaks:
Thanks to all these social selling strategies, Justin Welsh is averaging between $1,000,000 and $2,000,0000 per year!
2°) Social Selling Example with Arnaud Belinga (Breakcold): a sales prospecting approach
This series of social selling examples are ones that I used to spread the word about our B2B SaaS for sales prospecting: Breakcold.
My strategy for Twitter
1/ Secret to go from 0 to 8000 followers in 6 months
I went from 0 Twitter followers to more than 8000 in the span of 6 months. I used one specific social selling technique to reach that.
What I mainly did was to engage with my top & most active twitter followers as well as engaging with big accounts. For that I used the list feature of Twitter to build engagement lists.
My 2 Twitter engagement lists
This is how it looks once you're inside a list
3 tweets a day
I use Threadstart to schedule my tweets, love this tool!
Why 3 tweets a day? Because out of the 3 you schedule, you will have one that will perform well. You basically maximize chances to have some reach every day.
But that's not all, the 3 tweets strategy is also great to put int place BOFU, MOFU and TOFU social selling strategy.
3 tweets per day shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes per day.
3/ Using topic keywords in my tweets
I think that's my favorite 'Twitter hack' that people don't talk about enough to increase reach.
I you use certain keywords in your tweets, known as 'Topic' keywords, you will have a better reach by default. That's why some social sellers keep repeating the world 'marketing' or 'startup' for example in their tweets.
My strategy for LinkedIn
LinkedIn sales prospecting is a special game. You need to be hyper-organize, that's why I use Breakcold Social Selling Feed to handle that.
1/ Put prospects into lists
I've built several different lists in my sales CRM to be able to engage with them throughout their whole sales cycle.
2/ Build a sales pipeline
Then I assign sales tags to my leads, my tags look like this:
cold lead
engaged
called
replied
closed
3/ Building relationships with prospect before reaching out
Before reaching out to prospects, I will scroll my social selling feed to like & comment the LinkedIn posts of the leads.
4/ Building relationships with prospect until a deal is closed
Once I engaged with prospects on LinkedIn, I send them a cold email or a Linkedin direct message.
The good thing about Breakcold is that it aggregates the company news when I'm about to reach out so I can craft a hyper-personalize cold message.
LinkedIn company news populate
I can choose between a cold email or cold DM
5/ Building relationships with prospects after the deal is closed
Once the deal is closed, I will keep engaging with my clients because avoiding churn is super important. Retention is more crucial than acquisition in my opinion.
Building a B2B relationship with prospects will always make the difference.
Social selling feed adapts to the chosen sales tag
3°) Social Selling Example with Will Allred (Lavender.ai)
Will Allred is one of the Kings of Social Selling on LinkedIn if you want my opinion. His company (Lavender) and him are doing it perfectly.
His strategy on LinkedIn
1/ Consistency in in main topic: cold emailing
Some people mention in their LinkedIn profile what they talk about using hashtags #. However, not all of them actually talk about what they mentioned but Will is absolutely killing it with specific cold email posts.
In terms of social selling, it might generates him so many leads as most of his posts are directly linked to his main business: Lavender which is an email copywriting assistant.
2/ Memorable branding with employees
Will Allred personal branding is memorable and on par with Lavender's branding. Once they started having employees, they reproduce what makes them unique on each profile.
It's like a little army of social sellers, I love it!
His strategy on Tik Tok
Tikt Tok is underrated channel for social selling, the gen Z is coming strong in the B2B space, don't forget them.
1/ Repurposing old LinkedIn content
On Tik Tok, Will shares cold email tips that he initially gave on LinkedIn or create new ones.
2/ Using that content as a LinkedIn post
Will authority is not big yet on Tik Tok as a social seller but he's strong on LinkedIn, that's why he made the smart move to repurpose his Tik Tok videos into Linkedin video posts.
Look at these two screenshots, it works like a charm - the engagement is massive:
4°) Social Selling Example with Cold Email Wizard
Cold Email Wizard, aka Daniel Fazio is the number one cold emailing account on Twitter. He has built incredible authority is the agency space in particular.
His strategy on Twitter
Daniel chose an original approach to Twitter that is now a standard for new entrants.
1/ Choosing a strategic Twitter name that ranks
By choosing the name Cold Email Wizard, Daniel made a great move because:
people know straight away what the account is about
it helps him rank in the twitter search bar
It also created some speculations about the identity of the twitter account and led to some interesting videos.
2/ Giving tons of value threads about cold emailing
Cold Email Wizard is all about giving massive value to attract leads and grow his audience, it's a fairly simple but yet effective social selling strategy.
For that, he uses massive threads that can worth a lot of money just by themselves.
In each thread and in top performing tweets, he uses clear call to actions to promote his info-products or paid community.
3/ Engaging like crazy with people
The audience surrounding Daniel is HUGE, so how do you keep all these people engage with you? You engage a lot with them.
Daniel takes the time to reply to many of his supporters under his tweets but also spend tons of hours in his DMs answering some questions.
4/ Not being shy to DM many people
Before selling cold email courses and helping people succeed, Daniel spent countless hours doing sales prospecting by sending direct messages (DMs) on Instagram but also on Twitter when he was starting out.
His strategy on YouTube
1/ Sharing his story in full transparency
Cold Email Wizard is no BS compare to many courses out there, that's why he worked so well.
He recently started sharing all the details of his journey which builds trust a lot and that's key for social selling.
2/ Effective loom videos instead of high-production
In all the videos he records, he doesn't use any fancy tech, only loom videos
5°) Social Selling Example with Trumpet
Social Selling tactic of the CEO: Rory Sadler
1/ Being smart about the brand
Trumpet is sales tool for SDRs & BDRs. With such a name, you have plenty of possibilities when it comes to personal branding for social selling.
You can see that Rory heavily used the trumpet emoji to be memorable when you scroll your LinkedIn feed.
2/ Using his background in sales to share stories & insides
Posting content is one of the aspects of social selling on LinkedIn.
Top performing content for social selling are ones that bring you profile views. Rory here played it smart because he uses his personal background as a sales rep' to share actionable posts.
Readers know it's no BS because of Rory's background.
Social Selling tactic of the team
Do you see something in common with all these Trumpet employees? Another little social sellers army. At scale, this kind of strategy by any types of company is incredibly effective.
6°) Social Selling Example with Lemlist
Social Selling tactic of the CEO: Guillaume Moubeche
Lemlist's social selling strategy started with his CEO: Guillaume Moubeche.
His LinkedIn strategy: sharing tops and stories
In Lemlist early days, it seems from my research that Guillaume used to share tons of tips on cold emailing, similarly to what Will Allred is doing today.
However, he had some unfair advantages compare to him with the use of LinkedIn Pods and his now sold company: Lempod.
Nowadays, Guillaume shares more personal posts that often go viral.
Facebook Groups
Classic performing strategy: giving as much free value as possible in your own facebook community, just look at the engagement in the comment section, huge!
YouTube Strategy
It seems that lately Guillaume implemented a personal branding strategy with his YouTube channel to grow Lempire as a whole.
Depending on the weeks, he posts every single day. Social selling with YouTube is so underrated, only a few salespeople and B2B companies are taking advantage of this platform.
Social Selling tactic of the team
1/ Creating an engagement pod between each other to amplify reach
Having a team allows you to amplify the reach of your team. Lemlist team members often interact with each other post.
2/ Creating authority in the niche related to their jobs
Some Lemlist employees are building their personal brand on LinkedIn, it's good for them but also good for the company.
We can notice that they all are building a social selling strategy within their respective field as employee (eg. customer support, sales rep, copywriter, etc).
It's awesome strategy in my opinion.
7°) Social Selling Example with Salesloft & Chili Piper
I noticed that Salesloft & Chili Piper are taking over in social selling on LinkedIn, mostly thanks to their employees, here's how.
Seems like more and more companies understand how they can make the difference with social selling.
Their employees strategy
Building authority for SDRs & BDRs in every country
Salesloft example in USA
Salesloft appointed a Brand Awareness Manager, his CTA is "Let's Talk Social Selling". Tom Boston is working hard to make Salesloft shines, make sure to check out his account.
Salesloft example in Germany
Salesloft decided to dominate every country. In Germany, Mattia Schaper is the face of Salesloft and represent a large portion of sales development representatives (SDRs) by being the founder of SDRs of Germany.
Chili Piper example France
Elric is from my eyes the face of Chili Piper in France (except its 2 French co-founders obviously), he is super active in the B2B sales space.
Having people like him for Chili Piper is a great asset as their reach go beyond their activities of SDRs with for example his SDR Game substack newsletter.
Conclusion: common pattern noticed with these social selling examples
If you read between the lines, you might have noticed that all these people doing social selling have the following in common:
they are consistent with their social media presence as it's a compounding game
they are focus on not selling but giving as much free value as possible
they take the time to build genuine B2B relationships with both their audience and prospects
Building relationships takes time, you're finding yourself opening like 1000 tabs a day. That's why we built Breakcold, make sure to check it out :)