How to Make the Most of LinkedIn Messages for Business
Unlike those junky DMs that pile up from guys you went to high school with who now sell questionable nutritional supplements, LinkedIn company DMs are a super helpful professional communication tool.
When you enable company messages on LinkedIn, users can directly chat with you via your LinkedIn Page.
Want to provide personalized customer service right on the LinkedIn platform? Empower your team to interact with your audience on your brand’s behalf? Do a little social selling and create some good ol’ fashioned leads? LinkedIn company DMs are here to make it happen.
Plus—huge news alert!—you can receive and respond to company DMs using Hootsuite, making it even easier to keep on top of all your biz correspondence in one place.
OK, let’s get into it. Here’s how to make the most of your LinkedIn company DMs.
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Best practices for LinkedIn messages
You’re a successful business owner, genius entrepreneur or savvy social media marketer—you don’t need us to explain the basics of customer service.
But beyond “be kind,” “be patient,” and “treat others the way you want to be treated,” there are a few LinkedIn-specific practices for managing your new inbox that are probably good to keep in mind.
Give the right people access
Do you want to manage the deluge of messages all by yourself, or are you hoping that your LinkedIn inbox becomes a team project?
If it’s the latter, make sure that the right people in your organization have been assigned a super or content admin role (go to your page, click Settings, and then click Manage Admins).
This will allow others to reply to messages and ensure your customers get the response they need as quickly as possible.
This could just be your social media team members, or it might involve a rep from HR to deal with career questions, too. Which brings us to Hot Tip #2…
Reply to messages ASAP
If you’re going to turn on LinkedIn messaging functionality, be prepared to be attentive to the DMs that come in.
Whether it’s fair or not, people expect immediacy from brands on social media—McKinsey reports that 79% of customers expect a response within 24 hours on social media. Basically, everyone needs your attention right now.
Of course, if your brand receives a high volume of DMs, it isn’t necessarily realistic to send a perfectly crafted response the minute you get each one.
At the very least, let the sender know you received their message so they aren’t being met with silence. That could be as simple as thanking them for getting in touch and letting them know how long it’ll take to get back to them. Easy breezy!
If you don’t think you can even do that in a timely manner, maybe LinkedIn messaging just isn’t for you (and that’s OK! We still like you!).
Of course, if you just need a little help to keep on top of all your different social media inboxes….
Use a social media inbox to manage your LinkedIn messages alongside your other social messages
A social media inbox is a lifesaver if you have multiple social media accounts. Hootsuite Inbox unifies your DMs across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and more, so you can bridge the gap between engagement and customer service.
The all-in-one agent workspace makes it easy to
* Track the history of any individual’s interactions with your brand on social media (across your accounts and platforms), giving your team the context needed to personalize replies
* Add notes to customers’ profiles (Inbox integrates with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics)
* Handle messages as a team with intuitive message queues, task assignments, statuses, and filters
* Track response times and CSAT metrics
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You can even save replies so the answers to FAQs are right at your fingertips.
Maybe you’ll save enough time that you can finally write that inspiring LinkedIn post you’ve been talking about for six months on Why You Shouldn’t Procrastinate?
Pick appropriate conversation topics
When setting up LinkedIn messages for your business page, you’ll be prompted to select some “conversation topics.” When someone messages you, they’ll be offered the option to categorize their message under one of those topics.
Picking topics that are appropriate for your business or that you feel qualified to talk about will help filter out the spam or redirect queries to the appropriate channel.
For instance, if you just want to open your message inbox to chat with potential job candidates, choosing “Careers” is a better idea than “Service Request.”
If someone has mislabeled their conversation with the wrong topic, it’s easy to change. Hover over the timestamp on a message until it turns into a three-dot icon. Click on that icon for some options that include “Edit conversation topic.”
By properly identifying what topic each message covers, you can more easily divide and conquer with your team—the customer success team can help with service requests, the sales team can deal with demo requests… you get the picture.
Of course, this is a pretty bare-bones way to sort your messages. For a more robust organizational tool, you might want to check out Hootsuite Inbox, where you can tag messages, track the status of a message, assign to team members, and generally feel like the Type A genius you’ve always wanted to be.
Turn on notifications
Toggle on your notifications so you never miss a message to your LinkedIn Page—as we just mentioned, customers hate being ignored.
To do this, go to your LinkedIn business inbox and tap the three dots at the top of the conversations column.
Select Manage my notifications and set up your preferred delivery system for alerts.
Write in your brand voice
You’ve established your brand voice in all of your outward-facing marketing content—so don’t let it drop behind closed doors. Everything you post on the platform, from public posts to private DMS, should be aligned with your brand’s tone.
If you’re usually friendly and warm in all your public-facing copy, and then all of your DMs are blunt, you’ll create a jarring, uncomfortable experience for your customer. Whatever your vibe, just keep it consistent.
Communicate with clarity
While being authentic and personable is always a good idea when you’re repping your brand online, it’s more important to be clear in your communication. If you’ve got to cut a joke to make sure your message is being received fully, do it.
Skip jargon, and avoid irony or sarcasm. Your LinkedIn messages are probably also not a great place for jokes—a misinterpretation or offensive remark just isn’t worth the risk. (Sorry, jokesters.)
And remember to keep things short and sweet. No one slid into your DMs for a novel. Short sentences and short paragraphs make answers easy to parse.
If you need more guidance on how to respond to DMs in a prompt yet helpful way, use one of our DM templates to get started. (They were originally designed for Instagram, but they’ll be super helpful for LinkedIn business DMs, too, we promise.)
Finish strong
It’s a rule anyone creating any written document should follow: read it over before you hit send.
Even when you’re responding in a whirlwind to all your super-fans, it’s vital to take a beat to give your message a second look—is everything spelled right? Are there any grammatical errors? Does it flow well? If you’ve put in an attachment or image, is it the correct file? (Imagine you sent vacation photos instead of your pricing sheet, and then… don’t do that.)
Once you’re sure your message is perfect, remember to sign off politely, whether asking if you can help with anything else or wishing them a great day. It’s a personal touch that leaves the customer feeling certain about their next steps or that the conversation has wrapped up.
Follow these words of wisdom for your new LinkedIn company messages, and you’ll have happy leads, fans and customers chit-chatting away with you in no time. Want more advice for making the most of your LinkedIn business page? We’ve got you covered.
Easily manage your LinkedIn Page and all your other social channels using Hootsuite. Schedule and share content (including video), reply to comments and engage your network—all from one intuitive dashboard. Try it free today.
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The post How to Make the Most of LinkedIn Messages for Business appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.
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