LinkedIn tells us that:

* LinkedIn has over 70 million members in over 200 countries.
* A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.
* Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

To me that states clearly that if you have almost ANY kind of business and are prospecting, LI will be a good resource for you. But just setting up a profile and dabbling once a week or so is not going to do much for your prospecting efforts. Below are a few tips that not many folks know about, but are powerful techniques for increasing your visibility and maximizing that “inbound marketing” that Social Media is known for.

1. Create 3 saved searches. If you are doing a search on a company, person, industry or whatever, save your searches. At the top where you see the number of records in your search you’ll see a “save this search” button – you get 3 if you are at the basic level. LI will send you a weekly email, if you want, to get updates to your search.

2. Recommendations are important, so ask for them. But make it easy. I first call or email my contact and ask if they will recommend me. If so, write the recommendation yourself – so you are sure that you are sending the right message. Be sure to talk about the problems you solved – that’s really the point, isn’t it?

3. Use the Question and Answer area to gain more visibility on the Internet. On the question that you answer you will see a “share this” with a drop down menu. You can email your network, Digg it, Bookmark the question on Delicious, or use the link provided in your answer and link to one of your blog posts, or somewhere else on your site to pull in traffic.

4. Join groups that are in line with your business, your objectives or your hoped for job. Fish where the fish are. The more “on target” the group, the more valuable the content they provide, and the networking opportunities will be.

5. Use groups to expand your network, but be selective. In the groups tabs, you will see “Groups Directory”. Select that and on the next page use Search Groups, selecting “other” from the drop down categories menu. Join the groups that interest you. Once you are a member, you will have access to the members in that group. Offer to connect with the ones that make sense. You might evaluate based on the size of their network, the type of company or industry they are in or how much interaction they have had with the group.

6. Did you know you can export your connections? Go to “Contacts.” Then “Connections. ” At the bottom of your Connections box is “Export Connections. ” Export the connections and import them into your preferred address book. Do this frequently so you are consolidating all of your contacts in one spot (might be Outlook, Act, Salesforce)

7. Refer to both the LinkedIn Learning Center and their blog. The Learning Center is full of great tutorials and the blog has info on updated and new features with full explanations.

8. For better and more valued networking, when you invite someone to join your network, don’t use the canned LinkedIn message. Say something about who you are and why you want to connect with that person.

9. To really maximize your profile, find one or two LinkedIn specialists (Google that phrase, or check Amazon for authors) and look up their profile. Study carefully and learn by example.

10. Be creative about how you use the Answers section. It can be used to ask for solutions to problems, for resources, for vendors, for processes. But it can also be used to find good connections, or find other groups you may want to join, to deliver information on your products or services, IF it provides an answer to the question. Sometimes you’ve got the perfect solution!

11. You can share a group with your connections – more value added to your community. When you are in a specific group, on the Overview tab you will see an option to “share group” and you can send an email to 50 of your connections.

12. Don’t hop over the “People You May Know” suggestions that appears in the upper right corner of your home page. Expand the box and start connecting with people on an ongoing basis. This is a great way to widen your circle.

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for almost any social media objective – branding, lead generation, or job searching. Invest some time in learning the finer points – you will be glad you did.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

© 2010 – 2011, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: LinkedIn, linkedin tips

Just a few short years ago, you had to encourage all your family and friends to join this social networking website (just after others convinced you to join). Nowadays, it’s rare to find someone who hasn’t got a Facebook account.

At last count, there were over 350 million users on Facebook and this number is continuing to grow. It overtook MySpace as the number 1 social networking website on the planet last year and is just behind Google when it comes to online traffic. You are then able to understand how important Facebook marketing has become for all websites.

It’s Not A Pitch Zone

The most important thing to remember about social media is that it is not a place to blatantly and endlessly pitch your product or service. If you do this, then you will not get any favours from social media users and will get largely ignored and even bad reviews.

What social media is used for is for building relationships with potential clients.

There are a number of ways you can do this:

• you can post helpful information (links) where you help them solve a problem
• you can personally chat with them and assist them you can create content addressing the needs of users and posting it

The bottom line is that you want to be seen as genuine and helpful. This way, word can get out that you’re the real deal and before you know it, people will become interested in what you have to offer in terms of products and services.

Of course, the things you share on social networking sites such as Facebook shouldn’t be the nitty gritty stuff that you have to offer. You should share helpful information in the form of teasers that will interest people enough to ask and wonder if there’s more. Offering free stuff is great for getting attention too.

How To Market On Facebook

The great thing about Facebook is that from the outset, it has encouraged all users to use the website as a means of sharing information and marketing whatever they please. As a consequences, it has created various ways for users to do this. You are not obliged to use every single one of them but a combination of them can only improve your Facebook marketing.

Pages

This is probably the marketing tool out there on Facebook. On its website Facebook describes Pages as “a public Profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.” It is specifically designed for promoting a business and everything it has to offer. People can then become a Fan of your page and when they do this, they let their friends know that they’ve become a Fan of your page via their News Feed. The potential for your Page to gain a lot of popularity in a small period of time is great.

Of course, it all depends on the content you put out there for people to use. You need to give them a reason to become a Fan of your Page and a reason for them to keep being one.

Events

This allows to create events to be held at a certain date and time. Depending on what type of business you are, you can create one to be held locally or internationally. It can be any one of the following:

• seminar – it should be introductory and free but you could promote a paid one too
• webinar – an online seminar and where anyone worldwide can join
• product/service launch – you may be about to launch a product or service and this is a way to gain attention

The best part about creating an event on Facebook is that it can go viral and before you know it people will be attending your event in droves.

Advertising

Finally, about a year ago, Facebook introduced an advertising service where people can put ads promoting their website or their Facebook Page and they pay per click (PPC) or impression (CPM). It works in a similar way to Google Adwords.

The best thing is that you can target your ads based on both geographical locations and social actions. For example, if you were a wedding photographer and wanted to promote your services, your ads can be set up to appear only to females between the ages of 24 and 30 and whose relationship statuses indicate they are engaged.

It must be noted, however, that Facebook Advertising is still in beta mode which only means that it will only improve in the near future.

Embrace Facebook

If you wanted to market your website online, you would be absolutely nuts not to use Facebook marketing as one of your key strategies. Just be careful not to get caught up in it too much because it can become a very time consuming activity.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

© 2010, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: advertising, building relationships, CPM, Facebook, Internet, marketing, MySpace, number 1, social networking, social networking sites, traffic

This list of LinkedIn best practices was compiled from my work with clients, colleagues and friends who are trying to maximize their professional opportunities. I hope it is also helpful for you.

Get LinkedIn

If you are working, you need to be LinkedIn. If you are not working, you really need to be LinkedIn (however, it would have been better to be LinkedIn when you had a job). If you are a college student, you need to be LinkedIn. The president of the United States is LinkedIn… just do it.

Add Your Picture

A photograph not only personalizes your profile, it completes it. Even though LinkedIn may no longer use a faceless silhouette like other social sites, as shown here, you must keep in mind that this profile is about you, put a face on it.

Finish Your Profile

If you are currently using LinkedIn, or at a minimum signed up for it, finish your profile. Your profile should display 100% Complete. If not, LinkedIn makes it easy with a profile wizard. Typically, you can click on anything green and the wizard recommends ways to increase your profile completeness. It will suggest things to do like; write a recommendation, request a recommendation, add more people, add another job, add educational info, etc. The wizard helps get you to a point of basic critical mass; displaying your completed profile (education & job information) and about 20 connections.

Personalize Your LinkedIin URL

Which looks better to you?

Linkedin.com/pub/coco-design/

- or -

Linkedin.com/in/CocoDesign

Of course the second one is more marketable, more professional, and easier to remember. More importantly, you need to get your personalized LinkedIn URL before someone else, with a similar name, gets it first.

Now that you have a personalized URL, add it to your business email signature so that everyone who gets an email from you -

1. knows you are using LinkedIn,
2. can request to connect to you, and
3. learns about your capabilities when they review your profile.

Answer Questions

This is a great way to build credibility and expertise points. When you answer a question on LinkedIn, the person who asked the question can mark the best answer. The more “best answers” you

have, the more expertise credit you receive in your profile. This is also a great way to connect with people of similar interests or issues.

Asking questions is a good way to receive help from other industry experts and colleagues. It is also good for informal polling. Just do not make it a sales promotion. You will chase people away.

Ask Others if They Use LinkedIn

When you meet someone that you would like to maintain a professional connection with, ask them if they are using LinkedIn and if the would mind if you sent a connection request. This is generally a good question after trading business cards.

Grow Your Connections

Once you have your account to 100% with 20+ connections, you will have created a little momentum. To help keep that going, review your connections’ connections. Chances are you will know a few of those people. Then each time someone connects with you, take a quick look at their connections… you may find one or two that you have a relationship with as well. Send a link request.

Important – Do NOT send invites to people you do not truly have a relationship with. If you receive too many “I don’t know this person” clicks on your request, you will be required to know everyone’s email address to request a connection in the future. Bad juju.

Give and Get Recommendations

LinkedIn is like a living, online professional resume/vita. What makes LinkedIn better than a resume that says, “References available upon request”, is that references are displayed for all to see. These recommendations are written in the words of the sender, you cannot edit them. If there is a problem with a recommendation, you can easily request a revision or choose not to display it. Note: you can only request a recommendation from someone who is currently using LinkedIn.

Outbound Links

Your profile allows you to have three outbound links with labels like “My Company”, “My Website”, “My Blog”, etc. I recommend you change the label to “Other” for all three since you can add personalized keywords to the label enhancing the SEO for the target sites. For example, I could link to this article with the label text “LinkedIn Best Practices Article” to help with my search engine rankings for that keyword phrase. You can also use the “Other” label for Facebook & Twitter links.

Join Groups

By joining Industry and interest-related groups you are connected with a larger group of professionals within that sector. This makes it easier for you to invite others in the same group to connect without the need for knowing their email address. Again, you need to be careful here. Unsolicited invitations could get you hit with a few “I don’t know this person” clicks.

Jobs Area

The jobs area is not only for people looking for work. It is also an excellent place for businesses to list job opportunities. Our small company does not use Monster, Career Builder, Ladders, etc.; it would simply be too overwhelming. When we are looking for someone, we only use LinkedIn Jobs. Not only can I review the person’s professional profile and associations, we can get an idea of how closely we are connected. Job postings can be sent directly to people in your list of contacts and they usually have good recommendations for potential candidates.

LinkedIn Company

If you are a business owner add your company to the Company’s area. If your company is already listed, make sure the information is accurate and up to date.

Install the Toolbars

LinkedIn has both a browser toolbar and an Outlook toolbar. The former works well with Gmail, with both IE & Firefox and, of course, the latter works with Microsoft Outlook. The toolbars add a LinkedIn icon next to a person’s email addresses in your mailbox. This enables you to see their profile information and makes it easier to send an invitation to connect.

Givers Gain

Bottom line, the more you give the more you get back.

• The more information you share about yourself, the better the search feature will return you or your company as a result.

• The more recommendations you give, the more likely someone is to give you one.

• The more questions you ask or answer the more likely you are to connect with people of similar interests that you may never have had the opportunity to meet.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

© 2010 – 2011, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: build credibility, colleagues, grow your connections, industry experts, join groups, link request, LinkedIn, marketable, networking tool, personalized URL, professional, profile, similar interests

When you make the decision to market your business on Facebook, you need to be aware of one crucial point: people are on Facebook to connect with other people. It’s a social experience. Your audience wants to connect with you — you just have to make sure you’re not driving them away. Unfortunately, many people think that “connecting” with their audience means spamming them with blatant advertisements about their business. This is a great way to ruin your social reputation and sink your Facebook marketing efforts in record time.

So, how do you connect with your audience without alienating them? The answer is this: making effective use of wall posts.

To get the most out of your marketing efforts using wall posts you need to keep in mind that there are two different types of wall posts. First, your own wall posts. These show up on your profile and will also appear in the news feed of all of your friends, keeping them informed of what you’re up to. These are the posts you will be using the vast majority of the time to market your business.

The second type of wall post is posting on your friend’s wall. While it may be tempting to post about your business on your friend’s wall, this is generally a bad idea. Think of your friend’s wall as their personal space. Posting blatant advertisements on their wall is like throwing a brick through their window with your business card.

Don’t do it. This is where most businesses get Facebook marketing wrong. The only exception to this rule is posting a friendly message to their wall after they’ve added you to their friend’s list. This is a great way to show that you are genuine and to start building trust with your audience. Commenting on their wall posts is also an effective way to establish a connection with your list.

Now that the differences are clear, let’s focus on how to maximize your marketing results using your own wall posts. First, the ground work. If you have a personal Facebook account, don’t use that for your marketing efforts. While pictures of your niece’s birthday are cute, you don’t want them mixed in with your business wall posts. Setup a separate account specifically for your business marketing. This allows you to keep your wall posts on topic. Make sure you set your wall’s privacy setting based on your needs. The Facebook business pages are for organizations, businesses, authors, celebrities, movie stars and bands to showcase their talent, products and services in an official, public manner to those who choose to connect with them.

Second, since your wall posts are going to be seen by your target audience, make sure you’re presenting the right image with your profile photo. A great headshot with a personable smile will go a long way towards connecting with your audience. You should also take the time to fill out your entire profile, explaining what you do in a friendly and conversational manner. Don’t turn your profile into a sales pitch. Remember, Facebook is about relationship marketing. You want to establish trust with your audience first. Once you’ve done that, it’s much easier to turn them into buyers.

Now that you have a solid foundation for your marketing efforts using wall posts, it’s time to focus on the content. Always remember to stay on topic and be informative. Not only do you want to connect with you audience but you want to be seen as an authority figure. A great way to do this is to post tips about your business based on your experience. Better yet, reference current events in your posts and pose questions to your audience. For example, “How big an impact do you think the BP oil spill is going to have on real estate in the Gulf?” This is a great way to encourage your audience to interact with you and to pay attention to what you have to say.

Another great way to market your business is through the use of videos in your wall posts. People love to watch videos. Video posts will also be more visible in your audience’s news feeds because they will appear with a thumbnail. Your audience will be able to play the video directly from their profile without even leaving Facebook. Content wise your video can be a simple informative slide show or maybe a property walkthrough with a call to action at the end of the video to join your mailing list or to contact you. This is an extremely effective way of getting your audience into your sales funnel without alienating them by using a hard sell.

Remember, marketing on Facebook is all about relationship building. Use your wall posts to establish yourself as a trusted authority figure by sharing valuable, relevant information and you’ll soon be converting your audience into red hot leads. Feel free to connect with me and Trump Initiative to get the ball rolling.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

© 2010, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: connection, consulting, Facebook, Facebook wall, interact, Internet expert, mailing list, market your business, marketing on Facebook, relationship building, social media marketing, social reputation, training, trusted authority figure, wall post, your list

You know what I’m talking about. The type of tweets you’d never post to Twitter sober but that seem highly amusing after a couple of alcoholic beverages. The ones you rush to delete on Monday morning in a coffee-induced panic when you remember what or who you tweeted. Yeah those.

Well, the next time your fingertip hovers over the send button after you’ve had a few, you might want to think twice about letting it make contact with the keyboard.

It turns out that the Library of Congress has decided to digitally archive EVERY public tweet that has been posted to Twitter since the site launched in 2006. With 50 million tweets processed by Twitter every day, that adds up to billions of messages.

The Announcement

The news came in mid April, first via the ‘Library of Congress’s own Twitter account‘ and then via public announcement during Twitter’s first Chirp conference for developers. This was followed up by blog posts from both the Library and Twitter.

Why Archive Tweets?

So why the interest in digitally archiving tweets and is it really necessary? Staff at the Library of Congress think so:

“Twitter is part of the historical record of communication, news reporting, and social trends – all of which complement the Library’s existing cultural heritage collections. It is a direct record of important events such as the 2008 U.S. presidential election or the *Green Revolution* in Iran. It also serves as a news feed with minute-by-minute headlines from major news sources such as Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. At the same time, it is a platform for citizen journalism with many significant events being first reported by eyewitnesses,” says Matt Raymond, the Library of Congress’s Director of Communications.

“Individually tweets might seem insignificant, but viewed in the aggregate, they can be a resource for future generations to understand life in the 21st century.”

Don’t Panic

Now before you panic about your entire Twitter history being laid bare to a grubby public, you should know that there are some protections in place.

Twitter has insisted there be at least a six-month window between the original date of a tweet and its date of availability for internal library use, non-commercial research, public display and preservation by the Library of Congress. Private account information and deleted tweets will not be part of the archive. Neither will linked information such as pictures and URLs.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington also doesn’t see a problem with it:

• “I think folks understand that whatever they post on Twitter is meant to be searchable”, says their senior counsel John Verdi.
• “I don’t see a big issue here.”

That might change, he says, if the US government tried to identify individuals through their tweets or by cross checking user tweets with their information from other federal databases.

Personally, I can see this happening unless further protections are put in place. It’s probably happening every day.

Gift Wrapped

It’s important to note that the Library did not purchase the archive. It was gifted from Twitter and the original legal document outlining the donation is publicly available via PDF.

“Recently, the Library of Congress signaled to us that the public tweets we have all been creating over the years are important and worthy of preservation. Since Twitter began, billions of tweets have been created”, says Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in their official blog post about the donation.

“Today, fifty-five million tweets a day are sent to Twitter and that number is climbing sharply. A tiny percentage of accounts are protected but most of these tweets are created with the intent that they will be publicly available. Over the years, tweets have become part of significant global events around the world – from historic elections to devastating disasters.”

“It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research.”

About the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States and it is the largest library in the world, regularly researched by government staff, law enforcement agencies, law firms, authors, scholars, scientists, students and academics. The Library receives more than 1.75 million readers and visitors annually and employs a staff of more than 3,600. According to Twitter, it’s a logical home for their archive.

What Does it All Mean?

So with billions of tweets added to the federal archive, how can we expect the data to be used? With Twitter’s entire history archived, it shouldn’t be long before we see tweets being used as evidence in criminal trials and various lawsuits.

Tweets have already been cited in defamation cases such as the one between 25 year-old Chicago resident Amanda Bonnen and her landlord, Horizon Group Management LLC. Following a disagreement with Horizon Group about mold allegedly found in her apartment, Bonnen posted on her public Twitter account:

“Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay”, to which Horizon Group responded with a defamation case to the tune of USD 50,000.

Although a Google-cache of her now deactivated account shows she had just 17 followers, Horizon claimed Bonnen’s tweet severely damaged their good name because it was published “worldwide”. Ironically, the publicity the case received probably did more damage to Horizon’s public image than Bonnen’s limited tweet. The case was thrown out due to lack of specific context in the tweet, but it does set an interesting precedent for other potential cases.

Whatever the legal and privacy implications, knowing your tweets are being preserved for historical significance and stored in the same building as priceless documents like the Declaration of Independence, should be somewhat humbling.

Who knows, future generations may one day point to your “OMG you guys! @justinbieber just walked into @starbucks!” tweet with the same awe reserved for George Washington’s copy of the US Constitution.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

© 2010, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: communication, digital archive, electronic privacy, historical record, Library of Congress, public image, research, search engine optimization, SEO, tweet, Twitter