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Posts Tagged ‘Martine Hunter’

26 Outstanding LinkedIn Tips and Tactics

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

Indisputably the largest business-oriented social network, LinkedIn has emerged as a crucial site for professional networking, B2B marketing, hiring and job seeking. LinkedIn now boasts more than 200 million members across 200 countries, and adds two new members every second; what’s more, 35% of LinkedIn members use the site daily.

Furthermore, due to its multiple sharing options including buttons, apps, personal updates, company updates, and industry-focused group discussions, LinkedIn is often among the top three or four traffic sources for B2B blogs. As a key driver of both traffic and online visibility, LinkedIn is a key component in any B2B firm’s web presence optimization framework.

How can individuals use LinkedIn most effectively, whether for personal branding, job seeking or networking? How can companies best use LinkedIn as a marketing platform? What are the best practices for advertising on LinkedIn?

Find the answers to these questions and many others here in more than two dozen expert LinkedIn guides, tactics, tips and infographics.

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile and Use

How to Use LinkedIn Powerfully: 10 Tips to Know by Social Media Today

Tracy Gold offers tips for creating a more effective LinkedIn profile, among them writing a rich but concise summary (“use concrete details like results you have generated and tasks you do on a daily basis to show people how awesome you are, not tell them,” and connecting with care (“I favor being a tad picky. I’d like to think I could recommend—or at least answer questions about—anyone I am connected to on LinkedIn”).

6 Changes You Need To Make To Your LinkedIn Profile Now by V3 Integrated Marketing

Shelly Kramer recommends half a dozen key changes to power up your LinkedIn profile, such as adding an application: “LinkedIn offers a number of apps to help you add depth to your profile. Share what you’re reading, embed your SlideShare presentations, showcase your WordPress blog or add a poll. Other applications are available for specific industries, including Legal Updates, Real Estate Pro and Lawyer Ratings.”

How to turn LinkedIn into a relationship filter by SmartBlog on Social Media

Jesse Stanchak interviews “LinkedIn Jedi” Dave Gowel about using LinkedIn as “a relationship filter, that when you put in all the relationships that you already have, it allows you to see the ones that you could have more easily, or get information about potential ones.” The key “is to start with a really high quality first-degree connection pool” so that those potential second- and third-degree connections are really meaningful.

10 words you should never use on LinkedIn by iMedia Connection

Hoping to land that dream job through LinkedIn? Josh Dreller advises avoiding these 10 over-used, meaningless, or just plain dumb phrases to describe yourself, such as “guru” or “visionary”—”terms such as ‘guru’ imply that you’re beyond an expert in something; that folks should be showering you with rose pedals or sacrificing goats in your honor. And, hey, if you’re a guru, why do you need a job? Self-appointed royalty titles only make most people feel like you’re going to be a huge pain-in-the-butt to work with.”

12 LinkedIn secrets to supercharge your social networking by Ragan’s PR Daily

Shelly Kramer (again) lists a dozen techniques for advanced use of LinkedIn, such as how to hide your status updates (“If you’re connecting with new business prospects or making changes to your profile in preparation for job seeking, you may not want to broadcast that activity to your network”), make yourself anonymous (for example, when conducting competitive research) and block your connections and group activities from competitors.

13 Things You Never Knew You Could Do On LinkedIn by Business Insider

While the title may be a bit exaggerated, Steve Kovach nevertheless highlights several of the less-used features, such as LinkedIn’s resume builder tool, which “will build your resumé in a snap. It takes all the information in your profile and coverts it to a simple resumé that you can print out. There are a bunch of templates to choose from too.”

The New Networking: Ultimate LinkedIn Guide for 2012 Grads by Online Colleges

Writing “Whether you’re a LinkedIn newbie or just need to become more effective on the site, these tips offer great ideas for LinkedIn networking,” the authors provide more than two dozen tips and resources for more effectively using LinkedIn. Though targeted at recent grads, many of the recommendations apply more broadly, like being a connector: “If you know two (or more people) that should know each other but don’t, take a moment to introduce them to each other on LinkedIn. They’ll appreciate that you thought of them and recognize that you’re valuable as a person who offers assistance and great connections.”

Looking for a new job? LinkedIn can help by iMedia Connection

Jim Nichols offers eight tips for utilizing LinkedIn in a job search, including helpful instructions on how to search for jobs on the business social network and connecting with recruiters: “A number of recruiters told me that LinkedIn is the source of more than half of their serious candidates. That’s a remarkable statistic and the operative word in that sentence is ‘serious.’…Recruiters are using LinkedIn to proactively find great candidates and check up on applicants that they are reviewing. If you aren’t there in a meaningful way, you may never get serious consideration.”

Social Media Minute: 25 B2B Marketing Uses of LinkedIn by MLT Creative

Writing that “If you’re in B2B marketing or sales, you can do so much more with your LinkedIn account than simply look up your B2B marketing contacts. Use  LinkedIn to help sell product, expand your networks, grow your business and gain free publicity,” Martine Hunter lists more than two dozen tactics to more fully engage on LinkedIn, such as conducting market research with Polls, sharing survey results with contacts, and “Check connections’ locations before traveling so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.”

4 Ways to Stand Out on LinkedIn by LinkedIn Blog

Nicole Williams shares four tips for making an impact on LinkedIn in this concise but helpful post, for example: “Dress it up: People always say dress for the job you want, right? Well, maybe it’s time to dress up your online profile picture. People with photos are seven times more likely to have their profiles viewed. Having a more polished image will not only make you visible, but it also lets employers know that you are serious about representing their company in the most professional way…Plus, you’re twelve times more likely to have your profile viewed if you add more than one position to your profile.”

10 Ways to Promote Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn by iMedia Connection

Jane Turkewitz recommends choosing “key strategic words in that will help define your core strengths and experiences” ot use in your title, using SEO strategies in highlighting your specialties (“Don’t be afraid to use multiple terms to describe the same function as I have done in this sample because everyone ‘searches’ using different criteria”) and securing high-level recommendations (“Director level and above recommendations are ideal”) among other tactics.

Marketing with LinkedIn

6 Lessons from HubSpot’s LinkedIn Company Page by Business Insider

Amanda Maksymiw shares lessons from examining how HubSpot utilizes its LinkedIn company, such as “Build a robust product tab…HubSpot has done a really nice job utilizing the Products tab within the company page.  Instead of simply focusing on its software products, HubSpot also links back to larger content assets such as eBooks, assessments, webinars, and its every (sic) popular Grader tools,” which is to say, not just literally products but also assets of value to prospective customers.

Linkedin Leveraging: How to Tap Groups for Traffic, Leads & Sales by KISSmetrics

Michael Alexis breaks down LinkedIn Groups strategies used by Lewis Howes to allegedly generate $1.5 million in revenue. Sales pitch aside, this post provides a helpful step-by-step guide to starting a LinkedIn Group, broadcasting group messages, setting up webinars and more.

11 LinkedIn Marketing Gems You’re Missing Out On by HubSpot
***** 5 STARS

Stating that “We already know that LinkedIn is more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter. 277% more effective, in fact,” Corey Eridon presents tactics for optimizing LinkedIn marketing efforts, from gathering insights from LinkedIn Group statistics to using targeted product tabs to create “different variations of your product tab for each segment of your target audience.”

9 Ways to Add LinkedIn to Your Company Website by Mashable

Noting that “Adding LinkedIn’s social features to your company website is a great way to tap into both a large-scale recruitment platform and a targeted network of business contacts,” Brian Honigman describes nine ways to do this, including Share, Recommend, Follow Company and Apply buttons, as well as plugins for your company profile and, for recruiting purposes, “Jobs Your May Be Interested In.”

LinkedIn To Launch Targeting and Analytics for Company Pages by The Content Strategist

Kylie Jane Wakefield explains how two LinkedIn features, Targeted Updates and Follower Statistics, “allow companies to further target key demographics and measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.” Targeted Updates enables “marketers to deliver updates to certain audiences based on specific details, such as company size, industry, geography, job function, and seniority,” while “Follower Statistics ‘provides insights about follower demographics, engagement levels, update impressions, total following, recent followers, and number of new followers month-to-month.’”

13 Brands Using LinkedIn Company Page Features the Right Way by HubSpot

Pamela Vaughan details eight ways brands can make the most of their LinkedIn pages (such as incorporating your blog’s RSS feed: “While simply including your blog’s feed won’t broadcast its content to your LinkedIn page followers via the updates feed on their homepage…it’s a really easy way to promote your blog content to the visitors on your page”), supported with examples from companies like Voices.com and Zipcar.

5 Ways to Generate Leads from a LinkedIn B2B Company Page by Social Media B2B

Jeffrey L. Cohen details a handful of techniques for generating B2B leads through LinkedIn, among them testing free banners (“Want to test some new creative ideas? Want to test some landing pages? LinkedIn gives you three free banner ads at the top of the products and services page. Create images that are 640×220 pixels, upload them to your page and add a unique URL, preferably to a landing page, and you have free ads”) and incorporating video with a call to action.

7 Ways to Drive More Blog Traffic Using LinkedIn by Social Media Examiner

Stephanie Sammons shares “seven powerful tips to use LinkedIn to drive more traffic to your blog,” among them six ways to “get active and engage” to drive more profile views and blog traffic, and four ways to “Post blog articles as status updates and link to relevant articles.”

Answers to Your Top 7 Questions About Mastering LinkedIn Marketing by HubSpot

Brittany Leaning answers the seven most common questions posed in a joint HubSpot-LinkedIn webinar, for example, Q: What’s the best way to find potential customers on LinkedIn? A: “Groups are your best bet, especially if you consider your business to be relatively niche. In a group, you can establish yourself as an industry expert very quickly through discussions and announcements. In general, groups are very engaging and allow for great communication between professionals interested in the same topic.”

How to get the most from LinkedIn Company Pages by Smart Insights

Annmarie Hanlon provides a detailed guide to optimizing LinkedIn company pages, from reviewing all of the key elements to create or review when setting up a company page, to sharing company status updates, to utilizing the (admittedly limited) data provided by LinkedIn Insights.

Advertising on LinkedIn

The KISSmetrics Guide To LinkedIn Ads – Part I: The Basics by KISSmetrics

Igor Belogolovsky serves up a step-by-step guide to building a successful ad campaign on LinkedIn, from determining whether or not LinkedIn ads are even right for your business (“If you sell something that benefits business owners or working professionals and you can, in one short sentence, clearly delineate why, the answer is probably yes”) through targeted, ad creation, budgeting and tracking.

LinkedIn…from Downtown! by PPC Hero

Using NCAA March Madness as a metaphor, Kayla Kurtz explains why LinkedIn advertising could be a contender (“the glory of LinkedIn is it’s targeting capabilities. You can target all the way down to the CEO of a particular company and write an ad text written specifically to them, name included. If that isn’t targeting, I don’t know what is”) as well as limitations that could leave it in the losers’ bracket (e.g., historically low click-through rates).

How to set up a Successful Ad Campaign onLinkedIn by eMagine’s B2B Blog

Writing that “LinkedIn ads are very similar to those you create on AdWords or AdCenter, but with the added bonus of specific targeting options not found in the other ad campaign media,” Lee Rush Schwartz steps through the six elements of ad targeting on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Infographics

Do You Use LinkedIn To Its Fullest Potential? [INFOGRAPHIC] by Infographic List

Arjan de Raaf offers tips for making the best use of LinkedIn in this short but sweet infographic, including filling out all areas of your profile, as “First impressions are everything. It’s important to have everything completed on your profile to appear more professional. It’s also an opportunity to keyword optimize your profile.”

Infographic: How people are using LinkedIn by Ragan’s PR Daily

Here’s a fascinating collection of LinkedIn facts and stats, among them: less than 10% of members use the paid, premium version of LinkedIn. More than 80% of members have fewer than 500 connections. And the four most popular features on the business social network are Groups,  people searching, “people you may know,” and checking on who has viewed one’s profile.

Tags: Amanda Maksymiw, Annmarie Hanlon, Arjan de Raaf, b2b marketing, Brian Honigman, Brittany Leaning, Corey Eridon, Dave Gowel, expert LinkedIn guides, Igor Belogolovsky, Jane Turkewitz, Jeffrey L. Cohen, Jesse Stanchak, Jim Nichols, Josh Dreller, Kayla Kurtz, Kylie Jane Wakefield, Lee Rush Schwartz, LinkedIn advertising best practices, LinkedIn marketing tips, Martine Hunter, Michael Alexis, Nicole Williams, Pamela Vaughan, professional networking, Shelly Kramer, Stephanie Sammons, Steve Kovach, Tracy Gold
Posted in LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing | 7 Comments »

The Nifty 50 Top Women of Twitter for 2011

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

Few phenomena have ever spread as far and grown as rapidly as social media; obviously, this has tapped into something essential to our nature. What is it? The answer may come from the email marketing field. According to a recent study by email service provider Aweber, four simple words virtually guaranteed to get an email opened are: “You are not alone.”

That is what has driven social media adoption. From freedom seekers living under oppressive regimes connecting with each other and with people around the world who support them, to individuals with uncommon viewpoints or highly specialized professional interests connected with the like-minded anywhere on the globe, social media is about not being alone. It’s a way to find and form relationships with others who share our particular interests and passions, whether down the street or on other continents; interesting people with whom there has been no practical way to engage before.

Talking recently with Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess)—partner and CMO at Blue Focus Marketing, a B2B social branding consultancy firm in Bridgewater, New Jersey; 2011 & 2010 winner of the Twitter Shorty Awards in Marketing; and author of the Blue Focus Marketing Blog—we were both struck by how many of the same people we know through social media (and we both learned about some interesting new people to follow as well). Many of these were other B2B marketers, but others were social media experts, journalists, PR professionals, or just plain fascinating personalities.

Cheryl and I thought it would be a great idea to collaborate on this special social media project—and so the process began for creating the 2011 #Nifty50 List of Top Twitter Women.  We decided to recognize and share the names of some of these noteworthy individuals with our respective readers and followers, starting today with 50 remarkable women (just in time for Mother’s Day, as we’re pretty certain that every woman on this list either is a mom, has a mom, knows someone who’s a mom, or some combination thereof).

One source of inspiration was Twitter’s Top 75 Badass Women by Diana Adams (@adamsconsulting) and Amy D. Howell (@HowellMarketing), a list on which Cheryl was honored. Though it’s a remarkable list, to keep ours distinct we haven’t duplicated any of Diana and Amy’s picks.

Next month, we are following up with our list of 50 men, just in time for Father’s Day.  This list will be posted on Cheryl Burgess’ Blue Focus Marketing Blog.  Whatever your role in social media, we hope you find this list valuable in expanding your knowledge and your network.

Jennifer Aaker
@aaker

Jennifer is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School or Business, and author of The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change.

 

Diana Adams
@adamsconsulting

Diana is a USC grad now based in Atlanta. She heads up Adams Consulting Group, a technical services firm specializing in Apple Macintosh desktops, servers and laptops. Diana writes for BitRebels.com and InkRebels.com, and as noted above, her post on Twitter’s Top 75 Badass Women was one source of inspiration for this #Nifty50 list. She’s smart, personable, sometimes controversial and never dull.

 

Alicia Arenas
@AliciaSanera

Hailing from San Antonio, Alicia is founder and CEO of Sanera, a professional development and training firm for sales and business leaders. She describes herself as a “small business coach, speaker, corporate trainer, blogger, singer, lover of life, dreams, family and God.” Alicia is a warm and outgoing social media pro and creator of March Marketing Madness.

 

Allison Mooney
@allimooney

Allison lives in the New York City area and works with the Marketing team at Google to explore the changing face of media, mobile and consumer behavior, drive new thinking internally, and communicate Google’s visionary concepts to wider audiences.

 

Ambal Balakrishnan
@Ambal

Ambal is co-founder of ClickDocuments, based in Silicon Valley. She’s an entrepreneur, marketer, blogger, and alum of Wharton and Purdue. Her Connect the Docs blog—frequently featured on the B2B Marketing Zone—is a platform for her own thought leadership content as well as frequently solicited insights from other B2B bloggers.

 

Amber Buhl
@amberbuhl

Director of Sales for @klout. Though fairly new to Twitter, Amber is active and highly engaging, and her following is likely to grow quickly. A USC grad, Amber’s past includes stints at Hulu, Yahoo!, and the E! Entertainment Network.

 

Amy Nelson
@AmyPioneerPress

Amy serves as social media editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press as well as the Features/Travel editor for the newspaper. She’s an informative and prolific Twitterer, and active in Twin Cities social media.

 

Ardath Albee
@ardath421

A B2B marketer, strategist, writer and Author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. Friend, mentor, and source of inspiration. Also an expatriate Minnesotan now living in southern California (we miss her, but can’t blame her).

 

Angie Schottmuller
@aschottmuller

Interactive Minnesotan skilled in web strategy, conversion rate optimization (CRO), e-commerce, SEO, social media, QR codes (she knows a lot about QR codes), design, UX, analytics and inbound marketing. Angie is also a Search Engine Watch columnist and speaks at national events including SMX, SES, and OMS.

 

Becky Denniston
@Becalynd

Expert Community Manager with the Focus Expert Network, a network of thousands of leading business and technology experts who answer questions and post thought leadership content. Becky is also an MBA Candidate at San Francisco State University with a strong appetite for Social Media and Marketing.

 

Jenara Nerenberg
@bopsource

Jenara is an Asia-based filmmaker, organic farmer, and freelance journalist for Fast Company magazine and CNNGo, as well as a Harvard and Berkeley grad. She’s interviewed the famous and not-so-famous from high fashion superstars to up-and-coming designers to UN leaders, literary giants, cashmere producers, and royal mistresses, and her work has also appeared in TIME, BlackBook Magazine, and NextBillion.

 

Maria Popova
@brainpicker

Brooklyn-based Maria calls herself an “interestingness curator and semi-secret geek obsessed with design, storytelling and TED.” She’s also the editor of Brain Pickings and writes regularly for Wired UK magazine, The Atlantic and Design Observer.

 

Connie Bensen
@cbensen

Connie is the Community Strategist for the Alterian (formerly Techrigy) SM2 social media monitoring platform. She’s been named by Forbes.com as one of 20 top Women Social Media & Marketing Bloggers. Connie recently migrated from the frozen tundra of northern Minnesota to much balmier climate of Minneapolis.

 

Deirdre Breakenridge
@dbreakenridge

Diedre is the president of Mango! Marketing, author of PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences and Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR, an adjunct professor in the New York city area, and co-founder of #PRStudChat.

 

Deborah Weinstein
@DebWeinstein

Deb is a journalist-turned-PR pro. She’s president of Strategic Objectives, an award-winning PR agency in Toronto. And she’s energetic and inspirational on Twitter.

 

Eileen O’Brien
@EileenOBrien

Eileen has more than 14 years of digital healthcare marketing experience. She is an opinion leader on social media, and has been invited to speak at industry conferences and quoted in publications. As @eileenobrien she moderates the #SocPharm tweetchat on Wednesdays at 8 pm EST which discusses pharma marketing and social media.

 

Ekaterina Walter
@Ekaterina

Oregon-based Ekaterina is a corporate social media strategist as well as a “speaker, connector (and) passionate marketer.” She’s also a frequent guest-poster who’s written bookmarkable pieces like 9 Ways to Sell Social Media to the Boss.

 

Ellen Hoenig Carlson
@Ellenhoenig

Based in New Jersey, Ellen is focused on simplifying consumer and healthcare marketing for “elegant solutions in a complex world.” Though she writes mainly on pharma-related subjects, her blog topics also include branding, family, fundraising, innovation, leadership, and Twitter.

 

Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt

Ellen writes for Fast Company magazine and helps run the 30 Second MBA site.

 

Elise Segar
@Esegar

Connecticut-based Elise is active in social media, an enterprise technology sales and business development pro who is passionate about inside sales and sales strategy. She’s a fellow member of the #Lebronians team “drafted” by Robert Rose in FollowFriday & Who’s The Lebron In Your Strategy – Maybe It’s You.

 

Gail Nelson
@gail_nelson

CMO with Siegel + Gale, a brand strategy, customer experience and design consulting agency in New York.

 

Gini Dietrich
@ginidietrich

CEO of Chicago PR agency Arment Dietrich, author of spinsucks.com, Vistage member, author, speaker, communicator and writer of amazingly entertaining and insightful rants like Get Rich Quick! Lose Weight Tomorrow!.

 

Gretchen Rubin
@gretchenrubin

Based in New York City, Gretchen is the best-selling author of The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, the account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. On her blog, she shares her insights to help readers create their own happiness projects.

 

Heidi Cohen
@heidicohen

Heidi is a fascinating marketer who shares practical advice about marketing and life from New York, NY.

 

Jill Konrath
@jillkonrath

Minnesota-based keynote speaker, sales trainer, motivator, creator of fresh strategies for selling to crazy-busy people; author of SNAP Selling (#1 Amazon sales book) and Selling to Big Companies.

 

 

Judy Grundstrom
@JudyGrundstrom

Minnesota social media rock star, Business Development Director at Pixel Farm Digital, founder of the annual Twin Cities Top 10 Titans in Social Media awards, talk show regular on myTalk 107.1, and never boring.

 

Karen Emanuelson
@KarenEman

Karen heads Reciprocate LLC, a small business marketing consultancy in Minneapolis. She’s an expert in social media marketing (particularly LinkedIn optimization), a small business advocate, trainer, speaker and coach. She’s active in local community and business organizations as well as social media.

 

Katie Rosman
@katierosman

Katie reports on technology and pop-culture for one of the world’s greatest newspapers—the Wall Street Journal—and is the author of If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, a Daughter, a Reporter’s Notebook.

 

Eve Mayer Orsburn
@LinkedInQueen

Eve is the author of Social Media for the CEO: The Why and ROI of Social Media for the CEO of Today and Tomorrow and CEO of Social Media Delivered, a firm that helps companies leverage LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook & blogs. And yes, she really knows LinkedIn.

 

Lisa Petrilli
@LisaPetrilli

Based in Chicago, Lisa is CEO of C-Level Strategies Inc, CEO Connection Co-Chair, Leadership & Executive Marketing Consultant, and #LeadershipChat co-Founder. Like Elise Segar and Cheryl Burgess, Lisa is a star of the #Lebronians team.

 

Liz Strauss
@LizStrauss

Liz is the founder of SOBCon, a brand strategist and leadership trainer based in Chicago.  She’s also an insightful, prolific and generous social media presence.

 

Lorna Li
@lornali

Officially, an expert in inbound marketing, online visibility and personal branding, via social media, SEO and SEM. Also big on green business marketing. Unofficially – friendly, smart, and writer of many highly bookmarkable blog posts.

 

Lucretia M. Pruitt
@LucretiaPruitt

Living in and tweeting from beautiful Denver, Lucretia refers to herself as a “random muse, speaker, ex-CIS Professor, social media devotee, geek, mom, wife, & insomniac.” Lucretia is a highly engaging and sophisticated observer of technology developments.

 

Lisa Grimm
@lulugrimm

Digital PR Specialist for the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, Lisa describes herself as “a gal constantly awed by the intricacies of human behavior. Love my family, peeps, dogs, film, food and learning.”

 

Mari Smith
@MariSmith

Mari (like Ferrari) describes herself as a “passionate leader of social media, relationship marketing and Facebook mastery,” but most of us know her as the ultimate guru-ess of Facebook marketing and co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day. Formerly Canadian, now living in San Diego (nicer weather, but even worse taxes).

 

Missy Berggren
@MarketingMama

A phenomenally busy yet amazingly prolific blogger, Missy is a marketing pro at healthcare network Allina, co-founder of the Minnesota Blogger Conference, and is also active social media as the MarketingMama.

 

Martine Hunter
@martinehunter

Idea generator, b2b marketing professional, creative director, process engineer and writer at MLT Creative in Atlanta, as well as a mother, friend, sister, daughter, diabetic, crocheter and jazz fan. She’s also really nice.

 

Sally Church
@MaverickNY

Sally is a scientist with Icarus Consultants in New Jersey, a pharmaceutical / biotechnology-focused marketing strategy firm. She blogs about marketing strategy, market research, science, oncology, hematology and immunology.

 

Michelle Tripp
@michelletripp

Working and tweeting from New York, Michelle is a creative director, brand strategist, and author of The BrandForward Blog. She spends her time exploring the future of advertising, social media, and emerging technologies and just being pretty cool.

 

Jennifer Preston
@NYT_JenPreston

A staff writer for the New York Times, Jennifer writes about the use of technology and social media in politics, government, and real life.

 

Susan Kang Nam
@PinkOliveFamily

Splitting her time between New York, Andover (MA) and elsewhere, the dynamic Susan Kang Nam is founder of Cebisu Research Inc., a member of Andover’s Harvard Club, founder of Boston-based career club Salty Legs, “an entrepreneur, former recruiter and non-profit advocate who grew up in Asia (Korea, Japan) and US (Hawaii, California, New Jersey, NYC) and since 1994…using the world wide web exploring different platforms to engage in various of conversations”—and a classical pianist.

 

Laura Fitton
@Pistachio

Prolific Twitterer, Bostonite, CEO and founder of the oneforty social business software hub, as well as co-author of Twitter For Dummies.

 

Rebel Brown
@rebelbrown

Rebel has been a marketing and business consulting for more than 20 years, is a popular speaker and author of Defy Gravity. She’s also a self-described “spiritual seeker, horse crazy, ski freak, and animal lovin’ nature gal.”

 

Rebecca Corliss
@repcor

Based in Boston, Rebecca is a singing Inbound Marketer with all-in-one marketing software platform developer HubSpot. She’s also a founder of a cappella group Common Sound. And yes, she is a rock star.

 

Rosabeth Moss Kanter
@RosabethKanter

Harvard Business School Professor, author of SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good – a look at how a new generation of values-driven businesses do well by doing good, and a living legend in the world of business strategy.

 

Stacey Acevero
@sacevero

A social media communications manager for PR/social media monitoring provider Vocus in Washington DC, Stacey runs the popular monthly #prwebchat on Twitter. She is a former model, auxiliary member in the U.S. Air Force, and a self-proclaimed “SEO nerd” who loves NASCAR, steak and rock n’ roll. Definitely one of the most awesome and unique bios in social media.

 

Anita Campbell
@smallbiztrends

CEO of Small Business Trends, an online small biz community reaching over 250,000 each month. Anita tweets from Cleveland, Ohio, the hometown of rock n’ roll.

 

Liana ‘Li’ Evans
@storyspinner

Liana describes herself as “an online marketing geek girl who loves all things social media.” She’s a top expert in social media and SEO, and the author of Social Media Marketing.

 

Wendy Blackburn
@WendyBlackburn

Wendy is a blogger and digital marketer focused on the pharmaceutical industry. She’s an executive vice president at at Intouch Solutions, a marketing agency serving the pharmaceutical, animal health, medical device, and similarly regulated industries.

 

Wendy Marx
@wendymarx

Based in Trumbull, CT, Wendy is an award-winning PR and marketing communications executive who helps B2B companies become well-known brands, and a truly engaging social media personality.

 

There you have it, the Nifty 50 Women of Twitter for this year. To keep it to 50, we had to leave off some deserving names—it was a tough call. Maybe next year…

Watch next month (close to Father’s Day) for the Nifty 50 Men of Twitter for 2011.

Tags: Alicia Arenas, Allison Mooney, Ambal Balakrishnan, Ambe Buhl, Amy Howell, Amy Nelson, Angie Schottmuller, Anita Campbell, Ardath Albee, Becky Denniston, Blue Focus Marketing, Cheryl Burgess, Connie Bensen, Deborah Weinstein, Deirdre Breakenridge, Diana Adams, Eileen O'Brien, Ekaterina Walter, Elise Segar, Ellen Hoenig Carlson, Ellen McGirt, Eve Mayer Orsburn, Gail Nelson, Gini Dietrich, Gretchen Rubin, Heidi Cohen, Jenera Nerenberg, Jennifer Aaker, Jennifer Preston, Jill Konrath, Judy Grundstrom, Karen Emanuelson, Katie Rosman, Laura Fitton, Liana Evans, Lisa Grimm, Lisa Petrilli, Liz Strauss, Lorna Li, Lucretia Pruitt, Mari Smith, Maria Popova, Martine Hunter, Michelle Tripp, Missy Berggren, Nifty 50, Nifty50, Pistachio, Rebecca Corliss, Rebel Brown, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Sally Church, social media, Stacey Acevero, Susan Kang Nam, Twitter, Wendy Blacjburn, Wendy Marx, you are not alone
Posted in Social Media Marketing, Twitter | 84 Comments »

Best Business Blogging Guides and Tips of 2010

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

How can you improve your blog’s position in search engines? Grow your audience? Effectively generate content contributions from subject matter experts in your organization? Produce more stylish and readable content? Find free, high-quality images to add visual appeal to your posts? Avoid common mistakes that can cost you traffic and goodwill?

Discover the answers to all of these questions and more here in the final selection of the best guides and tips for business blogging from the past year.

Blogging Guides, Tips and Techniques

The Step-by-Step Guide to Guest Blogging by 2 Create a Website

One key way to spread the fame of your own blog is to guest post on others; you reach a new audience, hopefully pick up some new fans, and get valuable backlinks to your blog. Here, Ann Smarty contributes a guest post on best practices in guest posting, from planning your approach and brainstorming topics to following through by responding to comments.

5 Reasons Why You Should Respond to Every Comment by Daily Blog Tips

In another guest post, Pat Flynn details five benefits of actively responding to comments on your blog, such as the fact that doing so encourages more comments: “People don’t leave comments just so they can be left unread. By replying, you’re not only letting people know that you’re actively involved in reading the comments, but you’re encouraging them to come back and comment again later.”

7 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts for Maximum Exposure by Quick Online Tips

In yet another guest post, Jonathan Beebe offers seven common (e.g., promote via Twitter and Facebook) and not-so-obvious (e.g., use automated social bookmarking tools like IMAutomater and Shareaholic tips for increasing traffic to your blog.

How To Optimise Your WordPress Ping List by Pimp My WordPress

A colossal list of more than 120 sites to add to your ping list for automatic notification each time you publish a new post.

Best practices for a killer corporate blog by iMedia Connection

Sarah Hofstetter offers 25 outstanding tips for developing, maintaining and promoting a successful corporate blog, from creating an editorial calendar and incorporating visuals to setting up email distribution and tracking actionable metrics.

Blogs are Becoming the New Front Door for Prospects: Is Yours Open? by MarketingSherpa

Sean Donahue notes that, “If you’re still on the fence about the importance of a company blog, consider this trend: Many B2B marketers report that their team’s blog — not the company homepage — is now the most popular entry point for online visitors,” then provides tips for maximizing company blog success.

Why Host a Blog on Your Corporate Website? by ClickZ

The smart and prolific Mark Jackson supplies five compelling reasons for adding a blog to a company website, both subjective (a blog gives you the opportunity to demonstrate thought leadership) and objective (blogs are much more effective than typical commercial website content at attracting unsolicited links).

What’s Up, Blog? Seven Ways to Revive a Neglected B2B Blog by MLT Creative

Acknowledging that “Blogging is hard work. You must consistently create relevant compelling content,” Martine Hunter presents seven tactics for re-engaging with a neglected blog, including refreshing old blog posts, turning news releases into blog articles, and enlisting guest bloggers to lighten the workload.

How I Achieved Blogging Success In 30 Days by bizchickblogs

In you guessed it–another guest post–Wayne Howard describes his method for quickly building the following for a new blog, using tactics such as Facebook postings, the BloggerLuv community, Twitter, LinkedIn and contests.

Inciting Insight: How to make thought leaders think by The Communicator

Peter Schram offers a “recipe” for designing a thought leadership program within an organization to create a steady stream of fresh and compelling content, such as priming the pump: “Ideas are usually generated incrementally. This means that the more ‘inspiration’ that a thought leader is exposed to, the more valuable and insightful their ‘Big Ideas’ will be.”

35 Ways to Market Your Blog by Junta42

The brilliant Joe Pulizzi shares his list of 35 “common and some uncommon” methods for promoting a blog, from putting your blog URL on your business cards and leveraging Twitter hashtags to showcasing employees and using the blog as your customer FAQ.

Is blog marketing dead or just growing up? The naked (conversation) facts by conversionation

J-P De Clerck reports that less than half of companies have blogs, despite the fact that “blogs are real social media hubs and cornerstones of inbound marketing.” Furthermore, many of the companies that do blog don’t do it well; nearly three-quarters of all corporate blog posts don’t reflect the company’s message. Given that more than half of all Internet users in the U.S. read blogs, and the figure is expected to rise to 60% in the next four years, J-P notes that corporate blogging, far from being “dead,” is an area of growing importance and opportunity.

How to Make an Awesome Corporate Blog by Entrepreneur Magazine

Bianca Male shares tactics for corporate blog success (such as “Your content should go beyond your company…contribute to the discussion of topics that readers are interested in, by talking about trends in the industry and having thought leaders offer their take, for example”) and links to some noteworthy examples, closing with “If you can’t commit to focusing on fresh, interesting content, avoiding all direct marketing ploys, (and) getting creative and moving beyond boring company info…just don’t do it.”

10 Proven Blog Marketing Tactics You Can Use Today by The Future Buzz

Adam Singer provides 10 valuable tips for effective blogs, including investing in a custom design, connecting with the social web “power users” in your segment, and even making enemies (the kind that will debate you blog-to-blog).

What Can You Learn from 7 Awesome Corporate Blogs? by KISSmetrics

Cameron Chapman highlights winning corporate blogs (such as The Facebook Blog), discusses the key features and provides takeaways from each (e.g., “having a huge blogging team that includes employees from throughout your organization makes your blog much more engaging for users. Your CEO should be blogging, but so should your interns”), and concludes with a brief guide to starting a corporate blog.

9 Awesome Ways to Market a Business Blog by HubSpot Blog

Kipp Bodnar details nine techniques for increasing traffic to a company blog, like including your blog URL on business cards and in corporate email signatures, name-dropping media editors and other influencers, and checking out content networks in your niche (content syndication and aggregation sites such as Social Media Informer in the social media space).

Tim Gunn’s Top 5 Tips for More Stylish Content by Copyblogger

Erika Napoletano channels fashion authority Tim Gunn to provide style tips for bloggers, such as “SEO is not the new black” (“you don’t have to optimize every piece of content you create) and “conversation never goes out of style” (embrace comments).

Get High Resolution Photos And Edit For Free by Trailblaze Social Media With Josh

Joshua Lyons reveals his favorite source for free photos and his favorite free online tool for editing them.

Five Key Ingredients for a Successful Corporate Blog by Sysomos

Mark Evans offers five commonsense, but not always adhered to, recommendations for corporate blogging success, starting with the need for quality content: “Content that provides insight, perspective and information. At its core, a corporate blog has to give its readers information they can use to increase their knowledge, learn new things or receive insight.”

Ten Blogging Mistakes I Learned in Year One by Nectar

Josh Wade shares 10 common blogging mistakes to avoid, like misspelling someone’s name when you highlight them in post (oops!), picking fights, trying to be everywhere rather than focusing, and being a conformist.

8 Incredibly Simple Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content by Copyblogger

Pamela Wilson suggests that “writing less and styling your text so it’s easy to read” is key to attracting greater blog readership, and offers corresponding tips for doing so effectively such as breaking up blocks of copy using subheads, bulleted lists and numbers.

Blog SEO

11 Must Do SEO Tips for WordPress by Better Blog Building

An excellent list of SEO tips for WordPress blogs, including using (optimized) images, installing key plugins like All In One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps Generator, and linking within your posts to relevant older posts.

6 Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines by Social Media Examiner

Jim Lodico offers six helpful tips for improving your blog’s position in search engine results. While the tactics themselves are mostly common knowledge, the value of this post is in the tools Jim recommends (such as SEOCentro’s Meta Tag Analyzer for optimizing meta tags).

7 Ways to Create Blog Content That Attracts More Back Links by Digital Labz

Links are critical both for SEO purposes and attracting direct traffic–but they don’t appear magically. This post provides proven strategies for naturally attracting more backlinks to your blog posts, such as capitalizing on current events, making big lists (think “101 Tips” rather than “10 Tips”) and creating an infographic.

Link Building Tips for Personal Blogs by SEOmoz

Links are SEO fuel, and in this post SEO guru Rand Fishkin helpfully advises bloggers on which link-building tactics to avoid (generic directories, link buying) as well as dozen technigues to use such as niche blog listing sites, answering questions in online forums and social sharing in order to improve your blog’s rank in search.

And Finally…

90 Tips To Make Your Blog Rock by Jeff Bullas

And as if all of ideas above aren’t enough to keep you busy for the next year, Jeff Bullas offers 90 more including writing about industry trends, highlighting customer successes, writing a series of “how to” posts and then turning those into short videos, turn the results of surveys or polls into blog posts and more.

Related Posts

Best Business Blogging Tips and Guides of 2010 (So Far), Part 1

Best Business Blogging Tips and Guides of 2010 (So Far), Part 2

Tags: Adam Singer, Ann Smarty, Bianca Male, bizchickblogs, blog SEO, BloggerLuv, blogging for business, Business Blogging, business blogs, Cameron Chapman, ClickZ, corporate blogging, Daily Blog Tips, Erika Napletano, Future Buzz, guest posting, HubSpot, IMAutomater, Jeff Bullas, Jim Lodico, Joe Pulizzi. J-P De Clerck, Jonathan Beebe, Josh Wade, Joshua Lyons, Junta42, Kipp Bodnar, KISSmetrics, Mark Evans, Mark Jackson, MarketingSherpa, Martine Hunter, MLT Creative, Pamela Wilson, Pat Flynn, Peter Schram, Rand Fishkin, Sarah Hofstetter, Sean Donahue, Shareaholic, Sysomos, Timm Gunn, Twitter hashtags, Wayne Howard, writing a business blog
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