If you are scaling up your social media activity, sooner or later you will realise that it is almost impossible to keep up with all the aspects of social media management; posting, managing contacts, interactions, engagements, and KPIs.
Not forgetting that Consistency is a must and this means that somehow you need to post with a defined frequency.
What if you had the opportunity to handle all these tasks automatically? Social Media Automation implies using different applications to automate the exercises on social media platforms.
This is Easier said than done!
When it comes to LinkedIn, we can automate or schedule the posting, but we cannot fully automate contacts and messaging interactions.
There are lots of players that can help you to automate posting each one with pros and cons. We have tested many of them and here are the basics:
- They all work on a subscription
- Hootsuite is the most famous and definitely complete but has recently raised the price significantly
- The charge may vary from nothing to more than $100 per month depending on the tool. If your workload is low, you can still find valuable tools FOC or below $30 per month – search on Google for your choice, but we have chosen Plannable (www.planable.io)
- Contacts and messaging can instead be made more efficient through Sales Navigator.
Sales Navigator
Sales navigator cannot be called an automation tool, but more a sort of CRM (customer relationship manager). It is a sales insights tool that allows you to find the right people and companies in your target market. Using the LinkedIn network, businesses can source recommended prospects and uncover real-time sales updates on all accounts and leads.
Ultimately what Sales Navigator does is:
- Helps you to find target companies (by geography, type of business, number of employees) and give you a well-designed org chart – identifying the right people you should get in contact with
- Creates lead lists (exactly like a CRM) – this can simplify sending messages or requesting for a contact
- Allows you to monitor conversations, posts, activities of the targeted leads to evaluate their interests and needs and be more effective in your communication
While this does a lot of good, the CRM doesn’t come cheap.
You can find LinkedIn Sales Navigator at 3 levels:
- The first level for $ 64.99 per month ($780 per year)
- The second level for 103.00 per month ($1,250 per year)
- The third one is a customisable project whose price is agreed upon with the LinkedIn sales force.
The difference between the level depends on the number of interactions you need or want to create and the integration with a customisable CRM.
Based on my experience the 2nd and third levels are designed for large corporations. If you are a mid-size medical device company – the first level is more than enough.
It is interesting to note that there are companies that have created what looks like copies of Sales Navigator. One called Lusha seems to have the same functionality as the Linkedin navigator but costs significantly less.