Archive for the ‘LinkedIn’ Category
Best LinkedIn Guides, Tips and Tactics of 2011
Wednesday, March 21st, 2012While B2C marketers focus on Facebook, LinkedIn is consistently cited as the top social network for B2B marketing. Part of the reasoning is that while Facebook is good for sharing coupons, promoting events, and showcasing corporate culture to potential employees, LinkedIn is powerful at generating web traffic and leads. LinkedIn now has more than 100 million 150 million members including executives from every one of the Fortune 500 companies; 80% of them influence their companies’ purchasing decisions, and those professionals have a significantly higher level of trust in the business-related information they see on LinkedIn than on other popular social networks.
And while LinkedIn’s features remain focused primarily on activity at the individual professional level, the network has added several features for enterprises over the past year, including most recently the Follow Company button for business websites.
So how can companies most successfully use LinkedIn to generate more leads and sales? What’s the best way to start and grow a LinkedIn group? How can you maximize the visibility and impact of your LinkedIn company page? How can you optimize results from LinkedIn advertising?
Find the answers to these questions and more here in 22 of the best LinkedIn guides of the past year.
LinkedIn Tips, Tactics and Best Practices
5 Tips to Get More Sales from Linkedin by Better Closer
In this concise but useful post, Bill Rice presents five tips for sales (and marketing) pros to take advantage of the capabilities of LinkedIn, from creating a clear profile (“More than boasting about the benefits of any particular company, a LinkedIn profile should make it clear what service it provides to its clients or customers. It should go on to explain what results you can provide for your clients, and how things will improve for them if they work with you”) to asking, politely, for recommendations.
LinkedIn Adds Job Title, Company Names To Text Ad Targeting by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Mark Walsh reports on the expanded options for audience targeting introduced in LinkedIn ads early last year, how LinkedIn ads work, how the enhanced options help marketers, and how they are likely to be received by LinkedIn users.
How LinkedIn Apps Can Promote Your Business by Social Media Examiner
Lewis Howes reveals, in his words, “the top apps you can leverage to get more leads, traffic, product sales, brand awareness, ticket sales, investors, sponsors, consulting engagements and more” including the WordPress app (which enables you to add a blog to LinkedIn), video autoplay, syncing with Twitter, and featuring events on LinkedIn.
How To Maximize LinkedIn For Your Small Business by Sanera People Development Company
Jason Seiden, the guy who trained the LinkedIn sales team on how to use LinkedIn (how’s that for a nice line to have on your resume?) details the process of using LinkedIn for business development by small business owners/managers, from setting clear goals and developing a simple plan to reaching out and never spamming.
10 Tips for LinkedIn Social Networking by Online Social Networking
Larry Brauner shares 10 tips for maximizing LinkedIn social networking success, among them: put significant time and thought into your profile, utilize keywords, “join every relevant LinkedIn group,” comment when you have something valuable to add, and most importantly (for any social network)–keep at it.
How to Grow Your LinkedIn Group Numbers by Flyte Blog
Rich Brooks supplies several tips for growing the membership in a LinkedIn group, from sending out invitations (even to contacts who aren’t yet on LinkedIn) to promoting the group through your newsletter or blog, along with ideas to increase group member engagement.
10 Things You Never Knew You Could Do On LinkedIn by Business Insider
Writing that “LinkedIn has been adding more and more social features that make sharing news and links with professionals in a specific industry easier than ever,” Steve Kovach walks through LinkedIn’s social sharing features, like the “LinkedIn Today” daily news digest, searching for updates on your favorite topics, and search-optimizing your company page and personal profile.
Advanced LinkedIn strategies for marketers by iMedia Connection
Kent Lewis examines “advanced strategies for optimizing your personal and company profiles” such as optimizing all of the elements of your profile, incorporating the Recommend API on your company bio page, using LinkedIn’s resume builder, creating a personalized LinkedIn home page, and using LinkedIn Q&A to conduct polls.
How Are People Really Using LinkedIn? [INFOGRAPHIC] by Mashable
Charlie White shares an infographic loaded with facts and statistics about LinkedIn use, for example: 61% of survey respondents said that LinkedIn was their primary social networking site used for professional networking (versus 22% who said Facebook and 4% Twitter). 81% of LinkedIn members belong to at least one group. And 37% of users say they update their profile picture frequently—while 12% have had the same picture since they joined.
7 Quick Ways to Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Social Media Marketing Workhorse by Copyblogger
Noting that LinkedIn users don’t use the site to browse through photos of friends, share 140-character status updates or watch videos of talking dogs, Lewis Howes (again) explains how to use LinkedIn for business: from optimizing your personal headline (it doesn’t have to be merely your current job title) to utilizing social proof to providing a compelling call to action (what do you want someone to do after viewing your profile?).
Will LinkedIn Replace Your Resume? by Market My Career
Interesting question, particularly considering that as this post reports, “LinkedIn (has) announced a product called Talent Pipeline which will allow hiring managers and recruiters to track all passive and active candidates directly via LinkedIn. So whether a recruiter finds your profile on LinkedIn or someone passes along your resume, it will be stored, managed and share via LinkedIn.”
Tips for LinkedIn Company Pages
8 New LinkedIn Features Worth Exploration by Social Media Examiner
Linda Coles steps through some of the key changes made by LinkedIn early last year, such as support for company pages (and if you jumped on this right away, note that this area has been more recently enhanced, particularly in the product listing area), banner images, video support and blog post feeds.
How to Make the Most from LinkedIn Company Pages by Gloria Rand’s Blog
Gloria Rand offers an overview of LinkedIn company pages and how they differ from Facebook pages, with banner images, integrated YouTube videos, and most importantly, customer recommendations: “the real power of Company Pages is the fact that LinkedIn members who recommend a product or service on a company profile, will have those recommendations surface on their own personal profiles as well.”
11 Sales Attributes of a Company LinkedIn Page by Find and Convert
Contending that “If you are a B2B company, your LinkedIn company page could be as valuable (at least as requisite) as your website,” Bernie Borges serves up tips on optimizing each element of LinkedIn company pages, from the company overview and product/service descriptions through promotions, videos and your company blog RSS feed.
Recommendations: LinkedIn’s Customer Reference Program for B2B Brands by iMedia Connection
Ryan Derousseau believes that LinkedIn can function as a consumer/buyer recommendation platform for B2B enterprises much the way Facebook does for B2C brands, and provides several suggestions for capitalizing on this. One of the more interesting recommendations: “Add the recommendation button to your company’s product page on the company website. This allows people to click on the recommendation button, and share with their network that they suggest purchasing this good or service. This plugin will live on the site for other customers to see.”
How To Use LinkedIn To Improve Organic Visibility by Search Engine Land
George Aspland explains how to set up and search-optimize a company profile page. Great stuff, but be careful with recommendations that rely on employee involvement (e.g., asking employees to optimize their public profiles with your keywords and share company updates). This is an area where training and having a social media policy in place can be valuable.
Benefits of LinkedIn Company Pages by LeahBaade.com
Leah Baade reviews what LinkedIn company pages are, how they work, why they are beneficial, how to set up a company page, how to interpret LinkedIn’s analytics, and most importantly, what to watch out for, such as “The Latest News works a lot like Google Alerts – in that it’s not always accurate. Unless your company has a very unique name, or it’s frequently making top headlines, this may not be the best feature to enable. Try monitoring the company name or keywords for a day or two and see what comes up.”
5 Tips for Using the New LinkedIn Company Pages by Social Media Examiner
Stephanie Sammons reviews updates that LinkedIn made to company pages late last year, then offers five tips for optimizing use of company pages, such as posting “a ‘call to action’ to follow your page within relevant LinkedIn groups” to build up followers for your LinkedIn page and providing “interesting and value-added company page updates”—not just company news and job openings.
LinkedIn “Company” Pages: An (Undervalued) Gem for Organizations of All Types by Social Media in Organizations
***** 5 STARS
Courtney Shelton Hunt explains why “organizations of all types and sizes should establish and manage their Company Pages (organizational profiles) on LinkedIn,” outlines a three-phase approach to creating company pages, lists several examples of well-crafted company profiles, and presents survey results showing that LinkedIn is overwhelmingly the preferred social network people use when they want to engage with a company professionally.
Best Practices for LinkedIn Advertising
5 Steps to Successful LinkedIn Advertising by Social Media Examiner
Pointing out that “LinkedIn lets marketers target ads to users by important B2B demographics such as job title or industry or even focusing on members of particular LinkedIn groups. This is different—and arguably better-suited for B2B—than Facebook ads, which typically target users by lifestyle interests…(and) marketers can create an ad on LinkedIn in just minutes with a minimum spend of $10/day,” Janet Aronica covers the basics of LinkedIn advertising along with five steps to LinkedIn advertising success (such as split-testing different ad variations).
Relevancy Is Key to Reaching Professionals With LinkedIn PPC Ads by ClickZ
**** 5 STARS
Lisa Raehsler compiles a few LinkedIn advertising best practices and tips here, in terms of targeting (“Job function enables you to loosen the targeting criteria a bit and select users within a specific job function such as ‘accounting,’ ‘creative,’ or ‘marketing’”), ads (“It’s common for the CTR of your ad to decline if you continue to display the same ad week after week. A best practice is to refresh your ads at least once per month with new ad text or images”), bidding and budgeting.
A Starter Guide for Advertising on LinkedIn by PPC Hero
Jessica Cates outlines the process of setting up a business account (so you can keep LinkedIn advertising access separate from your personal account) and an advertising campaign on LinkedIn, from rotation and targeting through bidding and tracking conversion data.
10 Ways to Use Social Networks for B2B Marketing
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011Social networks are essential for expanding your web presence—not only for creating social signals now a key component in search engine rankings, which makes your website and blog easier to find in search, but also by giving you more places to be found online.
Creating your profile on each of the major social networks is a first step, but just that. A profile alone won’t get you much. As with most things in life, you’ll get out of social networks what you put into them.
Once you’ve filled out your profile (particularly including your core keywords and links), the basic process for using any of the more than 500 social networks now in existence is pretty much the same:
- Find interesting/relevant/influential people to follow/like/connect with.
- Grow your influence and attract followers/friends/connections by sharing interesting and relevant content—your own, from third parties, and from people you are following / would like to have following you.
- Interact (e.g., ask and answer questions).
- Recommend.
- Repeat.
The “big 5″ social networks have a definite “order of familiarity” to follow for proper social media etiquette:
- • Twitter, YouTube and Google+: you can follow/add virtually anyone you find interesting/relevant/influential. Don’t be offended if they don’t follow/add you back immediately; they may very well do so once they’ve gotten to “know” you better through your social networking activity.
- • LinkedIn: it’s best to have some familiarity (real world or online) before trying to make a connection. This is a level deeper than the majority of more superficial social networks. This also applies to other professional / social networks (e.g. Plaxo).
- • Facebook: liking a brand page (or asking someone to like yours) is fairly superficial. However, friending someone on Facebook is widely viewed as a deeper level of social networking connection. Put another way, the common pattern is to have more Twitter followers than LinkedIn connections, and more LinkedIn connections than Facebook friends. Only the gauche and boorish would try to friend someone on Facebook that they have no prior connections to.
With those basics established, here are 10 ways for small (or really, almost any size) businesses to use social networks for marketing and PR.
1. Create valuable backlinks for SEO. Links from your profiles and social network posts / updates all help to increase the authority of your website and blog with the search engines, leading to higher rankings. What helps most, however, is having your content shared and passed along by others with high influence in your market space. To encourage sharing, in addition to being active on the leading social networks, place social sharing buttons on your site.
2. Expand your online presence. Google, Yahoo and Bing aren’t the only places people go to look for information. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube all include their own powerful and popular internal search capabilities, and there are numerous social search engines that specifically search social networks and other social media sites. The only way to found on social networks is to be active on them.
3. Develop reputation as a thought leader (or something equally positive). By sharing relevant and helpful information, whether your own of from other sources, you increase your value to those following you, and expand your network. Sharing content developed by others makes you social; sharing content written about you by others enhances your brand image; and sharing your own thought-leadership or other helpful content solidifies your reputation as a smart, valuable resource that can influence decisions.
4. Promote your content / increase web traffic. It’s been written that, “If content is king, links are queen.” In other words, as essential as it is to develop great content, the search engines won’t give it much weight and few people will ever see that content if it doesn’t get linked. Social networks are a great place to build quality links, again particularly when key influencers within the various social networks share your content with their followers.
5. Expand your network of connections. In almost any major city, on almost any day, there are various types of business networking events: breakfasts, happy hours, seminars, forums and other types of events where local business people can meet each other and form new connections. Social media makes it easy to expand your network globally—or at least well beyond the confines of those who either live nearby or travel to major industry events. Social networks are invaluable for helping you make connections with prospective customers, additional contacts within client companies, industry journalists, bloggers and other influencers that it would be difficult if not impossible to connect with otherwise.
6. Develop and build relationships. Making connections is just the beginning. Social sharing and interactions enable you to develop relationships that can be very meaningful and rewarding, over time, with people you’ve never physically met, perhaps even never spoken with by phone. These relationships can lead to increased online exposure, expanded knowledge, new insights and ideas, partnerships, referrals, and ultimately—increased business.
7. Perform competitive and market research. Social media isn’t all about you, of course. Knowing what kinds of questions your prospective customers are asking, what problems they are trying to solve, and their opinions and observations about competitive firms can help you develop content that better meet market needs and set you apart from competitors.
8. Spot opportunities for innovation. Knowing more about the issues and concerns of your target prospects can also inspire ideas for product enhancements or new products, services or processes that lead to increased sales, greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, and/or new market opportunities.
9. Improve customer service. Traditional customer service channels are great for capturing information about and resolving specific customer issues (e.g., product malfunctions or “how do I…” questions). Social networks, however, open up possibilities for learning about other types of issues that may never lead to a customer service call: your product disappoints in some manner, your online form is too long and/or complicated, your website content is confusing, a particular piece of information or contact phone number is difficult to find, etc.
10. Generate leads and grow your email list (carefully!). There’s a reason this item is last on the list: while the goal of social media marketing is ultimately to produce an ROI, where the “R” is usually generated by increased sales, it’s crucial not to promote your offerings too blatantly or too early in the social networking process. Engaging in self-promotion too early will get you labeled as a spammer, damage your reputation and hobble your ability to grow a productive network. Promoting too blatantly is never advisable. Rather, once you have a network established, use social media to promote “gated” content like white papers or reports, invite followers to register for webinars, and promote your newsletter on your blog and other content pages in order to build a list for lead nurturing.
Establishing a presence on the leading social networks and utilizing an effective social media strategy will enhance your online presence and “findability” on search engines as well as within the social networks themselves.
Best LinkedIn Guides, Tips and Tactics of 2010
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011LinkedIn is firmly ensconced among the “big 3″ social networks for marketing and business purposes, and though its base of 80 million members is far smaller than the 600 million users of Facebook, its impact in B2B marketing is larger. According to recent research, 32% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to generate leads, versus just 16% who do so on Facebook. Nearly half of B2B marketers using social media view LinkedIn as an effective channel, while only one in three say the same of Facebook. 43% of employees at the largest companies in the US use LinkedIn for professional reasons, compared to 11% on Facebook. And on the buying side, a study from the ITSMA revealed that “LinkedIn is used by 58% of the respondents to find information or to talk to colleagues about solutions in the context of a purchase. Blogs represent 50%, Facebook 47% and…Twitter scores 41%.”
For anyone seeking to expand their professional network online, market to professionals, get advice from peers on business products and services, find a job, or hire the right candidate, LinkedIn has become an indispensable tool. So how can you get the most out of this business-oriented social network? How can you optimize your profile to be “findable” for the right phrases within LinkedIn? What new features should you get familiar with? What the best practices for professional networking, generating sales leads, connecting with potential business partners, sharing content and getting answers to tough business questions? Which common mistakes should you avoid?
Get the answers to all of these questions and more here in 21 of the best guides to LinkedIn tactics, tools and techniques of last year.
How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn: Maximize Your Impact by Reciprocate
Karen Emanuelson shares a few LinkedIn demographics stats (more than 33 million U.S. members; a new member joins every second; 78% of members are college graduates) then highlights seven areas to optimize on your LinkedIn profile (e.g., title, websites, interests) and five ways to maximize your efforts there (e.g. participating in groups and answering questions).
9 Tips For Building, Branding and Maximizing Your Profile And Exposure on LinkedIn by Stephanie Frasco
Stephanie Frasco recommends having an SEO keyword-heavy profile, blogging, using applications and engaging in conversation among other practices for maximizing your impact through LinkedIn.
How to optimize your LinkedIn profile by Socialmedia.biz
Anthony Piwarun presents a detailed, step-by-step guide to optimizing various key areas of your LinkedIn profile (headline, summary, title) as well as other factors, shows what kind of results are achievable, and answers the question: is premium membership worth the cost?
How Can I Look Amazing On LinkedIn? by My Venture Pad
15 tips for how to look “amazing” on LinkedIn for what you do, among them: rearrange the order of items on your LinkedIn profile in order to stand out; always personalize your connection invitations; add slides or video to your profile; and recommend good books (that you’ve read) on your profile.
Guide to Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile by Site Reference
For visual learners, Misti Sandefur provides a detailed, step-by-step, fully illustrated guide to keyword-optimizing your summary, specialties, interests, links and other profile components.
New LinkedIn Features
LinkedIn New Feature – Follow Company by Success CREEations
Chris Cree details how the “follow company” capability works on LinkedIn, while noting that rather than trying to incorporate every new feature under the sun (like a certain other popular social network), LinkedIn has been steadily adding new features, selectively, that fit with its corporate and professional focus.
LinkedIn Adds New Profile Sections by 10 Golden Rules
Tracy Antol explains five new profile sections added to LinkedIn late last year that provide even more ways to enhance your professional presence there. Among these are Publications: per Tracy, “This one is especially useful to my writer friends. Now you can provide links to your published works as part of your profile.”
LinkedIn Launches ‘Company Pages’ by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Mark Walsh reports on company pages, another new feature added by LinkedIn in late 2010. “The revamped profiles allow page administrators to highlight particular products or services and tailor product lists to different types of audiences. The new layout also lets companies feature product videos as well as targeted display advertising. LinkedIn members visiting Company Pages can also post recommendations and reviews of products or services.”
LinkedIn’s new company pages by eConsultancy
Pauline Ores expands on the reporting in the post above with a close look at the new marketing features of LinkeIn company pages, implementation considerations, and musings on what LinkedIn may or should do next to capitalize on the unique strengths of its business-focused social media platform.
Some Linkedin Tips & New Features From Talent Genius Ltd
Steve Smithson explains how the new LinkedIn Share Button, company recommendations and Signal features work, plus he offers a dozen helpful tips on maximizing your use of LinkedIn to promote your company such as utilizing LinkedIn Polls.
LinkedIn Tips and Best Practices
6 Common LinkedIn Mistakes Small Businesses Make, and What You Should Do Instead by OPEN Forum
Anne Field helpfully identifies six common LinkedIn mistakes (and it’s not only small businesses who make these BTW) and the right approach to use instead, for example, overtly promoting your product or service (gauche). A better practice: “In group discussions, don’t ask questions or make comments that are obvious sales pitches. Instead, establish yourself as a key expert or resource by providing thoughtful, pithy observations.”
13 LinkedIn Mistakes You Should Avoid by New Grad Life
Continuing with the theme above, here are a baker’s dozen more common LinkedIn mistakes to avoid, among them: using the default “My Website” and “My Company” link labels instead of more descriptive custom text for those links, failing to join groups, and not providing—or asking for—recommendations.
Improving Your Search Engine Rank Using LinkedIn by CompuKol Connection
Michael Cohn offers seven tips for LinkedIn SEO, such as using keywords throughout your profile, updating your status at least once per week to keep your content fresh, and linking to your LinkedIn profile from your blog, email signature and other places.
Ten Ways for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn by OPEN Forum
Guy Kawasaki follows up on his original Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn post from 2007 with an updated list, including uses like finding vendors for outsourcing services that aren’t your expertise, getting answers to tough business questions and sharing your blog content.
How to stand out on LinkedIn by iMedia Connection
Steve Patrizi, Vice President Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn, offers more than a dozen tips for standing out on LinkedIn, from optimizing your profile for LinkedIn’s internal search to finding experts to connect with to sharing your own great content (blog posts, presentations, etc.).
How To Use Linkedin To Generate Business by Search Engine Land
Writing that “If you provide B2B consulting, services or products, your options for social media are fairly limited, let’s be honest you probably won’t find many fans for your Facebook Legal Incorporation Services page. For these types of businesses, LinkedIn is a much better alternative,” Michael Gray provides tips on using your profile, groups, questions and answer, status updates and other LinkedIn capabilities to generate referrals and sales prospects.
3 Steps to Managing Your Reputation with Linkedin.com by MPower Philosophy
Marilyn Oliva provides a concise yet valuable guide to managing your online reputation with LinkedIn by completing and optimizing your profile, expanding your contact list and sharing information to build credibility.
LinkedIn Group versus Facebook Group by Search Engine Journal
Frequent best-of contributor Ann Smarty supplies a detailed head-to-head comparison between LinkedIn and Facebook across several criteria including privacy controls (bet you can’t guess who wins there!), promotion tools and networking features.
4 LinkedIn Tips to Help You Stand Out by Social Media Examiner
Noting the power of LinkedIn as a business networking tool, Linda Coles outline four ways to “use social etiquette to really make your LinkedIn connections valuable and stand out from the crowd,” including the proper ways to ask for recommendations and send a group mailing.
8 Tips to Get More Out of LinkedIn by Justin Levy
Observing that, “As with many things in life, what you get out of LinkedIn will only be as good as what you put in,” Justin Levy offers eight tips to get more value from LinkedIn, such as posting relevant, helpful information in your status updates (e.g. industry news, important announcements) and providing thoughtful, helpful answers to questions in your area of subject matter expertise.
The 9 Worst Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business by HubSpot Blog
For those who have no interest in succeeding on LinkedIn and want to avoid any chance of landing a new job or client there, Diana Freedman offers tongue-in-cheek recommendations such as leaving your profile blank, ignoring connection invitations and making sure you don’t link to your profile from your website, email signature or blog.
