Should I do a post or an article on LinkedIn?, Tim Hughes

This is a question we are often asked during our social selling and influence course and coaching.

Should you create LinkedIn posts or should you create LinkedIn articles?

The benefits of posts

Posts will always get you more engagement, the algorithm prefers them. But they have a shelf life on your post.

(The algorithm prefers short snackable content, but let's not forget there is also a long game here. more in the next section.)

Posts, will drive you short term influence, this will drive your influence outside of your network and get your front of mind in your networks, network and your network, networks, network.

In our social selling and influence course we teach salespeople how to turn this engagement into sales.

But don't forget a post has a shelf life.

The benefit of articles

The key benefit of articles is that articles live forever and are indexed by Google.

You will always get less engagement with an article, but it enables you to build up a library of evergreen content.

If you write articles in a way that is attractive to Google then you have the ability to have more and more keyword optimised content.

You will therefore, become more and more likely to be the answer to a problem that somebody is searching for on Google.

In our social selling and influence course, we can coach candidates so you don't need to buy SEO capability as you should have built that in from day one.

What do you do Tim?

Personally, I'm looking to build a library of keyword optimised, Google indexed content as it drives business towards me.

What is your advice?

Horses for courses. My advice is you do a mixture.

What do you do on your social selling and influence course?

We have a playbook, which we discuss in module 5 where we agree a personalised content plan. The idea is to take away the “thinking what should I do” to allow you to concentrate on the doing.

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling? Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind”

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.

I don't believe you Tim!

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course.

Here at DLA Ignite we don't do "hints and tips sessions" we don't want you to waste your money. Our social selling and influence methodology will provide your sales team with the stable platform for growth. It is also the only social selling program based on 70:20:10 change management principles which gives your business the mindset change and habit change they need in this digital world.

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