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How to use LinkedIn Effectively

Monday, February 14th, 2011

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social sites for business. Learning how to use LinkedIn effectively can be a little overwhelming at first. Don’t worry, we’ll break down some of the best places to start.

Complete your personal profile

This may sound obvious, but you would be surprised at how many people have outdated and/or incomplete profiles. Make sure all your information is up-to-date and correct. Include important details about your current position and company. One important thing to make sure you remember is adding links to your website and blog in your profile.

Create a group

When businesses ask me how they can use LinkedIn effectively, one of the first questions I ask is if they have a LinkedIn group. LinkedIn groups are a great way to open up communication between you, your brand and other industry professionals. Groups enable you to share recent blog posts, create discussions, add job postings, network and more.

One great strategy is adding your blog posts to the discussion area. This gives your members an opportunity to read and discuss your content. It gives you an opportunity for additional traffic to your blog.

Join groups

You weren’t thinking of stopping with only your group were you? Joining other industry relevant groups multiplies the benefits of creating your own group. Joining other groups will enable you to enter discussions, link to your recent blog posts and network with other professionals in your industry. Submitting your blog posts in the discussion area to other groups will dramatically broaden your reach, exposure and new site visitors.

Answer questions

LinkedIn Answers is another powerful tool. You can post and answer questions. Where is all the power you ask? Answering questions related to your industry gives you credibility, shows you as a knowledgeable resource and can be a great lead generating tool. Just be sure to not “over sell” yourself or your company in the answers section. People are there for help, not for sales pitches. Providing help, answers and direction can be enough for people to reach out to you if they want to hire you professionally.

Make new connections

Believe it or not, LinkedIn was created around making professional connections (I’m being sarcastic of course . LinkedIn makes it easy to network with those in your industry. Reach out to co-workers, clients and even people you have talked to in one of your groups. You never know what your next connection could do for you professionally.

Research

There are a wealth of useful tools in LinkedIn. You can research companies, competitors, potential job candidates and more. Recruiters and sales teams rely heavily on the data they get from LinkedIn.

There are many other ways to use LinkedIn effectively, the best advice I can give you today (outside of what I mentioned above) is to login and spend some time on the site. Keep your account active and current. I know this sounds cliche’, but get involved. The more time you spend the more you will learn. The more you learn could present you more website traffic, leads and other potential life changing events.

Reach out, get involved and be active.

Tags: LinkedIn
Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »

The Power of Social Media and Going Viral

Friday, January 7th, 2011

If you have cable TV or internet, you probably now know who Ted Williams is. If you happen to have been in a cave for the past few days, Ted Williams was the homeless man with “the golden voice” that is now a global internet sensation. Just last week, he was just a homeless man begging for money. Now, in a few short days, he has multiple job offers and one even comes with a home. All this from a video uploaded to YouTube and shared on Facebook. One share led to another, and another and, well, you know the story from here.

The point of all this is the power of social media and the viral effect it can have. Sometimes news goes viral on it’s own. Sometimes there is a “secret” campaign behind it all.

Making your news go viral is no easy feat. There are steps you should take to help your cause and give your news the push it needs to have a chance to spread virally.

Get involved in social media

Like the old saying goes, “you can’t win the lottery if you don’t play.” Don’t expect your news to spread if you are not involved in any social networks. The “golden voice” was able to spread due to the simple fact that there was a video shot, uploaded to YouTube and shared on Facebook. If the video was never uploaded to YouTube and shared, there is a solid possibility the world would still not know who Ted Williams is.

So, what does this mean exactly? This means you should get more involved in social media. Don’t limit yourself to just one network either. There are hundreds if not thousands of potential networks to get involved with. Some of the general bases you will likely want to cover are Facebook, Twitter and it is a good idea to throw in a few social news sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit. Creating profiles on these networks is not enough. You have to get involved and build networks on each site. You will need people to share your news with in hopes your message catches on.

Reciprocate often

There is no place for selfishness in social media. Even though you are getting involved for self promotion, don’t have a self promotion attitude. Pay attention to what others share. If you find stories that interest you, SHARE THEM. It’s a safe bet that if you don’t show others any love, they will not show you any. Treat social media like karma, do good to others and others will be more apt to help you.

Content

Put some thought into the messages you hope to spread, or don’t. What? As I mentioned earlier, there are two types of stories that go viral. Those that are well planned, and those that just kind of happen. With this being said, it is obviously a good idea to put your thinking cap on to create content that is noteworthy that people will feel compelled to share. On the other hand, don’t limit yourself. To be on the safe side, give all your content a chance. You never know what story can catch on.

Preparation

Ok, so now your pumped and ready to share your story with the world. Great! One little note though. Are you in a position to handle an insane amount of traffic if your news catches on? When stories go viral, it can send literally millions of visitors to your site within a 24 hour period. I’ll tell you from experience, if you are not set-up for that kind of traffic, it will crash your site in a heartbeat. Check with your hosting provider to ensure you can handle traffic surges. What good is your story going viral if you can’t keep your site up for people to view your content?

Keep trying

Don’t rack your brain for a good story, push it and then have nothing happen. Keep trying. Back in the day, I submitted all kinds of content to Digg, with no luck. Then one day, a story of mine caught on out of nowhere and hit front page. It sent millions of visitors to my site which in turn crashed the site. I wasn’t prepared. The point is, you never know what will catch on, so don’t be discouraged when your favorite content goes nowhere. Just like the odds of playing the lottery one time and winning, you have to keep playing to increase your chances of winning.

So we are in a new year and you have new goals. Research, read, watch and learn how and why stories go viral. Try yourself, rinse and repeat. If you do this, your time will come.

Tags: Going Viral
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

How Social Media can Help Drive Sales

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Social media, blah, blah, blah. Everyone wants to be involved in social media now. Lots of businesses have either dipped their toes in social media or have thought about it. Besides social media being such a buzz word, why would a business get involved?

Help Drive Sales

Ahhh, probably just got your boss’s attention with that subheading huh? Yes, if done correctly, social media can have an impact on sales. This may be directly or indirectly, but solid social media involvement without question can have an impact on your bottom line. Bet you’re wondering how!

Links

Social media is a great place to build new inbound links to your website or blog. Each time you submit your content out you get a backlink. Often times, when someone votes for your content, you get additional backlinks. Some sites have nofollow links and some are actually dofollow. Either way, it is a link back and Google loves social media links right now. If your content gains some traction on a popular social site, you could get thousands of inbound links as well as thousands of unique visitors to your site.

How does this equate to sales? Inbound links help with organic rankings. Inbound links send visitors. The more visitors you get, the more chances you have for conversions.

Engagement

One of the best ways to get people to engage with your brand is to put your business out there. Get out and be social. Try to shy away from heavy self promotion. Share and publish things that you know people would be interested in. Put your ideas out there and get folks talking. Listen and respond.

Brand Awareness

Social media is great for brand awareness. It is one of the best “bang for your buck” venues out there. There are so many sites to get involved in and each site has its own community. Great way to build a community around your business.

Content Syndication

There are tons of sites that you can submit your content to. That alone is a form of content syndication. If anyone shares your content on any social networks, then your content will spread way past your connections. Social media enables you to put your content out to be broadcasted across the globe and gives you international syndication. Plus, if your content catches on it can go “viral” which really gets you out there.

Make new connections

Social networking gives you the opportunity to connect with folks all over the world. You can greatly enhance your existing contact base. You’ll have many many people recognizing your brand just from your social media presence alone. You never know which one of those contacts might need what you have, or know of someone who would.

This is just scraping the surface of the new possibilities social media can provide your business. Please remember though you will get out what you put in. The more time you spend in social media, the more luck you will have converting traffic to sales. If you just “dabble.” don’t expect much to happen.

Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

First 4 Things to do for a new Twitter Account

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Many businesses have already tried Twitter. Some have yet to test the waters. For those who plan to create a new Twitter account for their business, there are 4 things you will want to do first when you get started.

Completely fill out your profile

This sound simple, but some folks fly through this step. This is your opportunity to quickly summarize yourself (and business if applicable) and highlight your website.

Put some thought into your bio. Pick your most important details and highlight them here. Think about how you want to project yourself and with what audience you will most likely be in front of.

Include your location and url. Adding your location will help localize your profile. The url is nofollow, but still from a well known site and you’ll get a little SEO credit for the link.

Upload a recognizable avatar

Your avatar will be associated with every tweet. This is your opportunity to create branding for your profile. Your followers will visually remember you by your avatar. Keep the size in mind when choosing your image. You will want it to be legible and recognizable even when the image is shrunk.

Add a custom background

Nothing spells “noob” like a basic Twitter background. You’ll want to add a custom background before you begin networking on Twitter. This is a solid opportunity for branding and sneaking in a little more information about you and your business.

If you do not have the resources to create one yourself, there are many services out there that will build you a decent looking template for free (you’ll have their logo plug in your background) or you can have one designed for you (the fees are reasonable and worth it). Just keep in mind the size of the background image you use. You will want it to look right on all types and sizes of monitors.

Include information such as picture of yourself or company logo, additional summary and url’s to other social profiles and websites. Depending on how you set it up, links in your background will most likely not be clickable; so use marketing friendly urls. For example, try to use clean urls like yourbusiness.com or facebook.com/yourbusiness.

Listen, update and get involved

After branding your profile you’ll be ready to get involved. Think about who you want to target and communicate with. Begin following those who you want to connect with. Read their tweets for a while to learn what they are interested in.

Share links and information that you think your target audience and followers would be interested in. Pay attention to what they tweet, listen, respond and get involved in the conversation.

Posted in Social Media | 3 Comments »

9 Tips for Facebook Page Success

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Having a Facebook Page for your business or website is quickly becoming a staple in any online marketing strategy. Just having a Facebook Page is not enough. There are 8 things you can do to ensure your Facebook Page is a success.

1. Add a link back to your website – Sounds simple right? It is! Add your website url to your page. Be sure you also feature it in the left sidebar for maximum visibility. This will help send additional traffic to your website as well as help with your SEO. Google loves links and a link from Facebook is a good one to have.

2. Company profile – Still standard stuff here, but you would be surprised how many people seem to skip over this. Fill out the Info section of your page to include “about us” type information. This will help visitors who are not so familiar with you know exactly what you do.

3. Static FBML – Add the Static FBML app. This app will allow you to essentially have a custom landing page on your Facebook page. You can include custom html, content, images and graphics. Once you have everything in place, you can make this tab the default landing page. There is an option for “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else.”

4. Blog feed – Install the Social RSS app. This app will enable you to publish your latest blog posts to your wall. There are useful settings that let you “like” your own posts, add the posts to your wall or in a dedicated tab/box.

5. YouTube – There are several good YouTube apps out there. I happen to like YouTube Video Box. This app will give you a dedicated tab where you can feature all your videos from your YouTube channel. Videos are a good way to breathe a little extra life into your pages.

6. Promotions – Let’s face it, your brand probably isn’t the most interesting thing on Facebook. Many of the people become “fans” because they are looking for discounts. So, give them what they want! Facebook is a good outlet for one off promotions, contests etc. Promotions is a great app that makes running Facebook promotions a breeze.

7. Poll – Don’t let your Facebook page become static. Interactivity is interesting. Give your fans something to do on your page. Polls are a great way to get others involved in your brand as well as give you an opportunity for some easy market research. Add a Poll to your page today!

8. Usernames – If you haven’t noticed, page urls are not attractive out of the box. They are long and hard to share. Once you have 25+ fans you can get a custom username for your page. This lets you further brand your Facebook page. Now your Facebook url can be Facebook.com/YourCompany.

9. Promote your page – One of the best ways to promote your Facebook page is on your blog. Give your blog readers an opportunity to connect with you. Facebook is a great way to better stay in front of your audience.

Tags: Facebook, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 6 Comments »

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