How often does this happen to you? I experience it several times daily.
You check your email and see something like this:
I’ve blanked the name to protect the guilty.
Do I recognize her name? No. Did she give me a clue? No.
Avoiding the work I should be doing, I click through and see this:
So, this Teresa person lives in Canada and has three connections. Why on earth would I connect with her on LinkedIn? Ain’t gonna happen.
If you’re new to LinkedIn, here are some tips for connecting with people:
- Start by requesting connections with people you actually know in real life: colleagues, employers, clients, friends, classmates, fellow members of associations, and so on.
- When you do send LinkedIn invitations, always always always personalize them. I suggest something like this:
Hello, Joe. I see that we’re not yet connected on LinkedIn, and I’d like to add you to my network. (This is short and sweet and ideal for someone who will recognize your name instantly.)
OR
Hi Varinder. Since we’re both members of the Society of Technical Widget Makers, I thought it would be great to connect on LinkedIn. Thanks. (You’ve jump-started the person’s memory, which is helpful.)
OR
Hi Diana. We both worked on the SAP project back in 2008 at XYZ Corporation. Hope all is well with you. I’d like to stay in touch on LinkedIn. (In this case, the person may not remember you, but you’ve provided a tangible clue.)
By personalizing each invitation, you’re adding a human touch, and also jogging the memory of the recipient.
If you send the standard LinkedIn invitation, you’re likely to be ignored. And if your profile is almost blank, you’re wasting your time in general. Beef up that profile before inviting people to join your network.
For more content like this, follow me on Twitter or GooglePlus.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 4th, 2011. 
Twitter was never meant to be a social network. In fact it was created as a message service at a private podcast company just over 5 years ago. 
Today with over 200 million users and serving up over 1.6 billion enquiries a day, Twitter has evolved into a real time social network that spreads news, messages, links and multimedia with energy saving 140 character bursts.
It is also maybe the most efficient social network in the top five and that is part of its unique charm. It is simple and doesn’t overcomplicate things….. that is why texting and SMS is still popular even with teenagers in a world of tempting rich multimedia.
Twitter is still working out its business model with its only apparent revenue being “sponsored tweets” which are expensive and maybe only make sense to for a major brand to use as part of its marketing. Google, Facebook and LinkedIn provide cost effective self service advertising that provides an easy to use marketing platform that can be capped and is readily available for all companies to use.
Twitter is also maybe the most misunderstood social media platform with people often asking “why would you want to use it?” or “what’s it all about?”
3 Key Reasons I use Twitter
For me Twitter is worth joining and learning how to use for 3 key reasons.
- Promote my blog and brand to a targeted global audience
- Obtain feedback in real time that helps me adjust content and headlines
- Network and communicate on-line so I can connect face to face off-line
It has surprised me with its marketing reach and even today it is the largest referrer of traffic to my blog.
Lab42 has surveyed 500 people over the age of 18 and asked a series of questions including, why did you join Twitter, how may brands do you follow on Twitter and where do you access Twitter from most often?
So what is the major reason you use Twitter?
Image by Irish Typepad
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 5th, 2011.
Yahoo and Gannett recently announced that they were expanding their partnership to include all 19 of Gannett’s broadcast markets. The companies had previously partnered on all of the 81 Gannett local publishing organizations and just some of its broadcast markets.
The extended partnership will not only further Yahoo’s reach, but it will also give local advertisers access to Yahoo’s targeted ad solution. Lem Lloyd, Yahoo’s VP of North America Channel Sales, told us that the companies hope the extended alliance will have the same success that their previous partnership has had.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 6th, 2011.
LinkedIn is the poor second cousin of the social networking fraternity with its glamorous siblings Facebook and Twitter hogging the limelight.
Facebook wins the popularity contest with nearly 8 times more friends than LinkedIn and Twitter just keeps getting mentions in the newspaper’s society pages.
If LinkedIn had a personality, you would maybe say that it was quiet, professional and quite private.
How you use social media is dependent on what you are trying to achieve (goals) and who you want to meet (target audience) and if you want to make serious professional contacts for B2B then LinkedIn is the place to hang out.
LinkedIn is the Cocktail Party
LinkedIn with more than 100 million members and an average income of more than $ 100,000, is the social networkings equivalent of the cocktail party while Facebook is the backyard barbecue.
If you want to network with serious decision makers then LinkedIn provides the appropriate channel. So how do you Use LinkedIn to network and how do you generate business opportunities
4 Key Steps to Creating Leads and Opportunities with LinkedIn
Social media sites provide a platform to network with peers and people of similar interests globally and LinkedIn does this for professionals and executives with leverage and efficiency that provides networking opportunities on steroids.
So what are four key ways to take advantage of the LinkedIn for business.
1. Commit once a week to use LinkedIn to connect with several current or former business associates this will put you top of mind for opportunities that may emerge out of these strengthened connections.
2. Over the next month make the effort to join ten groups on LinkedIn. This will raise your visibility and personal brand.
3. Once you have joined these groups start a discussion in each of these ten groups you have joined. As you are an expert in your field people will notice your thought leadership and will want to engage your services for their companies.
4. Go to LinkedIn’s Answers section and answer 5 questions a week. This is a long term strategy but will pay off over time.
The goals of these 4 steps is to create new connections, strengthen existing relationships and position you as a thought leader and an expert that will provide you with leads and business opportunities.
So How do other Executives use LinkedIn?
Infographic by Lab42
Image by nan palmero
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 6th, 2011.
As more and more users “flock” to Twitter, small businesses must find a way to use these channels to reach their target markets. Twitter is absolutely exploding with users. As a savvy business, you can focus your efforts and concentrate on creating interactions that will help turn the social media noise into traffic which converts. It can often seem daunting to cut through the clutter; however with these 10 tips, you’ll be well on your way to social media marketing success.
1. Geo-Target. You want to connect with people who are in your area, especially if you are a brick and mortar operation. Targeting your tweets to a specific location ensures that you are only interacting with viable leads.
2. Keyword Target. If location is not important, you’ll minimally want to narrow down the “Twittersphere” by niche. There are hundreds of thousands of tweets going out every minute, so cutting through the clutter has to be a top priority. Perform searches based on keywords, and reply to relevant tweets. If you can phrase your interaction as a question, all the better. You’ll have a much higher response rate when you are asking someone to respond. An example is an antiques website finding someone tweeting about an auction they recently attended. “I saw you tweeted about an auction, what did you purchase?”
This sort of pro-active interaction is a perfect way to start a conversation with a potential customer. The person who attended an auction will likely reply, and it can be taken to the next level. “Phil’s Auction house is great, if you like oil paintings I just put a few on my website you might find interesting.”
3. Be Real. When you’re having conversation with potential customers, you want to be real. Spam is one surefire way to turn people off to you. As in the example in #2, you want to start a conversation with qualified leads, and grow the conversation organically. You don’t need 500 people a day to respond to you, having 5 or 10 qualified leads will add much more to your bottom line.
4. Always be there. As a SME owner you are expected to wear a lot of hats, so when your social media hat comes off for a little while, you don’t want to leave your followers with nothing, so schedule up some helpful tweets for your followers to read while you’re busy doing other things.
5. Give others credit. One big mistake often seen on Twitter is tweeting out loads of unattributed feeds. If you know of a blog you think your followers will be interested in, mark it as RT @the blog owner’s Twitter account. This will help your followers know what is your personal content, and also shows up on the blog feed owner’s account as an “@ mention” which increases their chance of returning the favor to you, increasing your own traffic.
6. Track your Progress. Tools like Klout or PeerIndex are great ways to track your influence and make sure that you are moving in the right direction.
7. CRM is key. Twitter is a great way to handle many customer requests, especially if you can do it as close to real time as possible. Set up searches for keywords related to your brand, and put in the time daily to handle requests and escalate them through appropriate channels when necessary. A happy customer is a repeat customer.
8. Use lists. You can create Twitter lists for different groups of people. For SMEs this is a great way to curate the massive amounts of information that will come through your home timeline on a regular basis.
9. Don’t be afraid to unfollow. You don’t have time to read about 10% off on Viagra. Generally, if someone isn’t following you back, there’s not a whole lot of point of following them (the exceptions are larger companies or celebrities you may follow). Remember, if they aren’t following you they aren’t seeing anything you say, so the relationship is very one-sided.
10. Monitor your competitors. Set up searches for your competitors. If you don’t mind publicly following them you can add them to a Twitter list, but you may prefer to just set up searches privately. You need to know what your closest competitors are doing at all times, and Twitter is so real-time that you can be in the know almost as quickly as they launch something!
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 7th, 2011.
