LinkedIn is the most popular professional social networking site out there, which means if you have a B2B business or cater to other professionals in a specific industry, it could be the ideal platform for growing your business.

By now, you’ve updated your LinkedIn profile using the Ultimate LinkedIn Profile Checklist. Now you want more engagement, you want your LinkedIn posts to attract more viewers and increase shares—but where do you even start?

How to Improve Engagement on LinkedIn for Social Selling

In 2017, LinkedIn hit 500 million members, but data showed users had low activity levels. In 2018, LinkedIn made significant changes to both the user experience on its platform and its algorithm, and those have led to significant spikes in user activity.

As of late 2018, LinkedIn had reached 590 million members: an 18% increase from the year before. LinkedIn also reported that this number is continuing to grow at a rate of more than two new members per second. With that kind of growth, it’s time to increase your engagement rate—and here's how.

1. Post Interesting Images and Videos

Sharing links and articles helps us show authority and thought leadership, but sometimes we need to change the types of content that we’re sharing. Whether it’s a sales humor GIF that your audience will Like and laugh at or a photo from a recent event that you can tag others in. Both types of content are easy to share and will increase your engagement on LinkedIn.

2. Ask Questions

Take a moment and browse the big thought leaders that you follow on LinkedIn. Those that have a lot of engagement have one thing in common—they ask questions! Whether the questions are focused on pain points or something within their industry, they ask simple questions that generate a lot of really great responses. Take the opportunity to ask questions on your profile to get a gauge on your industry, prospect pain points, and more.

3. Posts During “Peak” Times

There are numerous articles that state the “peak” times for posting on LinkedIn and other social media channels. However, the peak time can differ amongst industries and roles. It’s your responsibility to do some testing and research to see what works best for you, and most importantly, your audience.

4. Join Relevant LinkedIn Groups

There are thousands of social media groups on LinkedIn ranging from industry and job title groups to industry groups related to your prospects. Make sure you’re joining these groups but also don't just be dormant—engage on other's posts.

Additionally, you should be engaging with others outside of groups. Go through your feed and see if there’s something you can comment on. If people have a question about something you're a thought leader on, answer and even link to a blog post where you go into detail.

5. Provide Solutions

If you know the pain points of your audience, you can create content for them while they’re on social media. This allows you to be helpful, provide value, build trust, and be that thought leader they need to help them along in the sales process. Don't just sell in each post and in every conversation. Provide value to earn trust of your followers.

6. Let Users Know Who You Are

LinkedIn is a different type of social platform. Users want you to be yourself—don’t just share articles and links all the time. However, we don’t need to know what you ate for dinner last night either! Show your personality and help build trust among followers and prospects. This will really help you establish a relationship on social media to help you in your social selling needs. Once people know more about you as a person, they begin to engage more with you!

The Key to Social Selling on LinkedIn: CONSISTENCY

This is not a one-and-done solution. Consistency is key and trying this for one day, or even a few days will not be effective. It needs to be a consistent effort over time to see improvement in your LinkedIn engagement.