Measuring Social Selling Success

In our previous blog, we discussed the trust economy, having a digital-first mindset, and what social selling might look like to your recruitment business.

Here, we look at how you can measure the success of your social selling efforts.

Website traffic from LinkedIn

Google Analytics provides you with the various sources of your website traffic. For a simple overview, in GA4 head to ‘Acquisition’ on the left hand side > All Channels > Traffic. This will then display a list of sources that your website traffic has come from. Use this to analyse how much traffic you receive from your LinkedIn efforts.

If you want to go one step further, you can use UTM tracking for specific campaigns or profiles. A UTM code is a simple snippet code that you can add to the end of a URL and you can build one here.

LinkedIn Analytics

In the admin view on your company page, simply head to ‘analytics’ from the menu bar at the top of the page. From here, you can click in to visitors, followers or content; and will be able to see a breakdown of each.

Personal profiles

Personal profiles also show analytics, although without third party apps like SHIELD they are somewhat limited. If you use a scheduling tool, this may also offer a form of analytics; but here’s what you can get directly from LinkedIn itself:

Head to your personal page and just below your intro section you should see 3 boxes containing profile views, post impressions and search appearances. You can click on these to get more detail.

You can also see more detailed analytics per post (if you’ve got the time!). To do this, click on to the post you want the breakdown for and in the bottom right hand corner you’ll see ‘view analytics’.

Social Selling Index

If you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you will have access to your social selling index score. This will tell you where you rank in your industry and in your network, as well as giving you a breakdown of how you’re doing in 4 key areas of social selling: 

1. Establishing your professional brand

2. Finding the right people

3. Engaging with insights

4. Building relationships.

Contributing content 

Social media, especially, is content-driven. Ask yourself these questions to help you formulate your next post:

• What are you working on at the moment, or preparing for?

• What are you looking forward to? For example, an event, webinar or presentation

• What did you learn from a recent event you attended or podcast you listened to?

• What has inspired you that you’d be willing to share? For example, a book, TV series or webinar - or maybe even something you’ve witnessed by a colleague, client or candidate

• Do you have a question about a recent piece of industry news? Pose it to your network!

Content sources 

The more information you consume, the more you’ll have to say. Never run out of content ideas by keeping your mind full of interesting and inspiring content. Consume blogs, social media content, books or podcasts. Watch industry relevant tv shows. Whatever it is you enjoy doing, do more of it, and you’ll have more to talk about.

Top tip: keep a record of all the things you want to share on LinkedIn in the future, either in a note app on your phone, using voice notes or using a scheduling tool.

Another tip for keeping your feed full of valuable, consumable content, is to share pieces that have been written by someone else. Be mindful to credit the original author though, and always add your own thoughts or opinion. 

Implementing social selling in your recruitment company

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again….people buy from people. Having a social selling strategy will boost your recruitment business’s reputation and success; and it starts with employee advocacy and personal brands. 

The collective reach of employee LinkedIn networks is vast - far bigger than the company page alone. Think about it - if you have 10 employees and each employee has 10,000 connections, that’s 100,000 prospective consumers of your brand’s content. Excite your recruitment teams to promote the content your business is producing and build a strong network of thought leaders who share valuable expertise in your field of recruitment. 

And finally, be sure that your efforts aren’t wasted by measuring your personal brand and actively engaging with your LinkedIn network. Commenting on posts and reacting to activity is key to a successful personal brand.

Get in touch

Contact Jo, through our website, or by connecting on LinkedIn to discuss marketing your recruitment company, and how best to position your brand in front of your target audiences.