6 Steps to Social Marketing Success with LinkedIn

1. Social Networking

Few contact databases search and obtain results without social interaction. LinkedIn gives your business the tools to deepen current relationships and learn about new ones, including business opportunities.

LinkedIn is continually keeping you aware of changes in your connections and alerts you to new links being made. These indicators often signal opportunities to congratulate colleagues, help them find new strategic positions, or learn about new connections.

This constant flow of social information is helping you to actively manage and expand your potential social marketing audience. Important components in a LinkedIn marketing strategy.

2.Contact Management

LinkedIn is centered on the theory of social networks. These relationships start with a core database of contacts and can quickly evolve into a powerful LinkedIn marketing strategy. The secret is activating that initial base of relationships.

LinkedIn allows you to quickly import nearly any digital address book and match that with existing LinkedIn members. This immediately starts your engagement campaign. You can use LinkedIn to manage your contacts, routinely communicate, and trigger opportunities.

Share news on events you are holding or attending and share with your connections. Utilise events to engage clients. Invitations can also be sent to your LinkedIn network, which will give you an opportunity to meet face to face if they decide to attend.

3. Opportunity Research and Indexing

Opportunities are really the main aim of LinkedIn. It is designed to facilitate opportunity research. LinkedIn gives you easy tools to search and segment not only your network, groups but also the community at-large.

Peering into specific industries, companies, and niches is as simple as an advanced search.

LinkedIn also allows you to make your own profile information available for search engines to index. LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high PageRank in Google, providing a very effective way to influence what people see when they search for you.

4. Social Marketing

Building connections in LinkedIn is about constructing a premium audience for your business marketing. Your profile and activities with LinkedIn are immediately available for all LinkedIn users to see and have the potential to attract enquiries and buyers to your business.

Some clever strategies to fully leverage your marketing with LinkedIn:

• Responding to LinkedIn Questions, as well as posting your own
• Visiting targeted profiles with privacy settings off, it is like leaving your business card behind
• Request connections and referrals from your existing network
• Always reply to an invitation to connect and offer to help in anyway you can. Or why not offer to meet face to face
• Use Groups to connect with people, professionals really enjoy networking and it’s a good way to share your expertise and learn best practice

5. Lead Management

Every connection in your LinkedIn network is a potential lead. Actively managing them becomes much simpler with a tool like LinkedIn. Connections themselves are opting in, updating their contact information, and guiding you, with their activity, to what really motivates them to action.

Watching your LinkedIn dashboard is like being a fly on the wall as your network of opportunities work to find answers and solutions to their challenges. Think of it more as an opportunity dashboard. This concept allows for you to wait for the perfect opportunity to gain new business and this is your social marketing strategy in action.

6. Lead Nurturing

Not every connection or contact is ready to buy. That is why LinkedIn is so important to your social marketing strategy.
Traditional internet marketing can eat into your budget very quickly through regular activities promoting your latest offers and incentives. LinkedIn allows you to keep in constant contact with everyone in a steady lead nurturing campaign, trickling your social marketing presence, and then alerts you to researching or buying behaviours.

How is LinkedIn working for you and your business? Share your sucess and comments here.

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3 Changes To Expect From Linkedin’s New Look Personal Pages

Have you seen LinkedIn’s new look company pages? Well they’ve also thrown in a new look for personal pages too. Over the next couple of months everyone should have a new look profile. I was particularly eager to make the change so requested to be placed on the waiting list for the roll out and loving my new look!

So, what’s new?

Well, the changes aren’t massive – arguably the profile components are the same, however the new profile is more organised, and put together in a slicker and simpler visual layout putting greater focus and emphasis on content and connections – two elements that are the basis of Linkedin’s overall success.

However, one thing I noticed straight away and missing already is the elimination of a link to your Blog. For me, LinkedIn was a really effective way of driving traffic to my blog. This doesn’t stop you updating your status with blog posts though and driving traffic this way.

Here are 3 changes you will notice to your profile:

#1 Telling Your Professional Story

The new design will helps you make a much more powerful first impression – which in business, on or offline is incredibly important.

The layout allows you to showcase your skills, accomplishments and current projects you are working on, as well as added endorsements from your connections in areas they find you most competent.

Including current projects adds a valuable dimension to your otherwise static page; allowing connections to really see what it is you ‘do’ and how you do it. This is not only vital for potential recruitment opportunities; but for the ultimate in networking and showing off not just your company, but your own skills and creating new business opportunities.

#2 Discovering and Finding New People and Opportunities

The new profile provides members with a stunning visual depiction of the people and companies in their network.  Gone are the days of combing through your connections to see if you have anything in common with the prospects that you are trying to reach. The new profile shows far more rich and visual insights on not only the people, but the companies in your network.

This not only will increase engagement with those in your network; but these insights make it easier and simpler to discover people outside of your network, quickly establishing a common ground to make more meaningful and profitable connections.

Finding this ‘common ground’ is a fantastic first step in building not only personal contacts; but professional ones too – heading in the right direction of making long term connections with mutual interests.

#3 Engaging with Your Network

Finally; the new Linkedin Page has increased opportunity to engage with your community, with recent activity displayed at the top of your profile allowing you to stay current with what everyone (company or contact) has been sharing or doing.

Edit your news feed with exactly what you want to see, and tailor stories and updates to your specific interests.

The newly redesigned profile page gives you much more ways to customize and showcase your professional identity.  The new Linkedin Profile is overall very well designed in providing an improved social networking experience all round.

Related articles

• Xactly Named One of the Best LinkedIn Company Pages of 2012 (prweb.com)
• Meet the New LinkedIn Profile: A Better Way to Connect and Build Relationships (linkedin.com)
• SocialMotus Social CRM tool Announces Integration With LinkedIn Groups and Company Pages (prweb.com)
• How to use LinkedIn (kapilchoudhary.com)
• LinkedIn Makes it Easy to Add Video in New Profile (gloriarand.me)
• New LinkedIn Profile Lets Users Visualize Relationships & Gain Better Insights (marketingland.com)
• New LinkedIn profiles take cues from Facebook (nbcnews.com)
• LinkedIn revamps profiles with personal branding in mind (zdnet.com)

5 reasons why you shouldn’t have a Facebook Personal Page for your Business

On its pages, Facebook clearly states that Facebook personal pages are meant only for the individual user, not for a group or business. Despite those stark clear words, people are still making the mistake of using a personal account instead of a business page. But why is it such a big mistake?

Here are 6 really good reasons why you should disassociate your personal profile and create a dedicated business page for your group or business:

1. You are breaking the rules! 

You may have set up a personal Facebook profile using the name of your business or your business branding. If you also have another Facebook page for your own personal use, you are in violation of Facebook rules and one or both accounts could be suspended. Section 4 of Facebook’s terms clearly states that you shouldn’t have two separate Facebook accounts and you should never use a personal Facebook profile for commercial gain. I have seen businesses have their accounts suspended altogether over this malpractice. You will then completely loose your Facebook presence.

2. Your Business won’t be seen

Facebook business pages can be optimised for search engines like Google, but personal Facebook profiles cannot. Profiles are not indexed by google. Surely you would like as many potential customers as possible to find your company online wouldn’t you? Using a personal page to promote your company is ruining your chances. The intrinsic features of a personal profile are to help individuals make connections at a personal level. People are unable to ‘Like’ your page and instead have to request you as a friend. Many will just look at your page and leave. Should they ‘like’ your page which is instant they will then receive regular updates on your group or business. Read my next point…

3. No-one will ‘Like’ your business

It will be much more difficult to gain ‘friends’ as a business if you’re using a personal Facebook profile because regardless of privacy settings (which confuse most Facebook users anyway), people will be reluctant to share personal information with a company, no matter how good that company is. I know I wouldn’t. A Facebook business page allows people to ‘Like’ your company without any privacy risks because your company cannot access their personal information.

4. You are missing out on some very useful statistics!

Insights are a large benefit that you will receive FREE as part of your Facebook business pages. Without ‘Insights’ how do you know if your Facebook campaign is working?

5. Your business could run out of Friends

Although it’s not easy to verify, many commentators say that Facebook will only allow a personal profile a maximum of 5000 friends. But your Facebook business page can be ‘Liked’ by a limitless number of people. Why limit your opportunities?

6. Your business will be one dimensional
Whilst you can only have ONE personal Facebook profile (if you’re obeying the rules) you can create more than one Facebook business page. So if your company has several sub-brands or specialities, you could consider creating a dedicated Facebook business page for those too.

It’s not rocket science. Facebook personal profiles are for people and Facebook business pages are for businesses. Of course you can still reflect your business in your personal Facebook updates, I do it all the time! But it’s simply not designed to enable a company to maximise the many benefits that social media offers.

UPDATE: Facebook has now developed a tool that will allow businesses that have made the mistake of setting up a personal profile rather than a Business page profile to migrate one to the other.

2Communicate are currently helping many of our clients who have made this mistake (you are not alone, lots have done it!) to successfully make the change and reap the many benefits of a Facebook Company Page.

So get in touch and make the change today email: sarah@2communicate.co.uk Tel: 07958 490263/ 01905 356778 

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Measure You Social Media Efforts

Businesses everywhere are still grappling with how to measure their social media efforts. So, 2Communicate have produced a short publication Measure Your Social Media Efforts to help businesses effectively measure their ROI and effectiveness of their social media efforts.

Overview 

Virtually every business today acknowledges how important social media is for business whether it be generating brand awareness, offering a customer service tool or keeping in touch with customers and particularly brand influencers. It is also all to familiar that many businesses acknowledge how difficult it is to measure its actual ROI and quantifying its effectiveness. According to a CMO survey in March 2012, social media spending by business is reaching new highs. As a matter of fact, in the next five years, marketers said they expect to spend almost 20% of their total budgets on social media. That’s triple the current level.  The business world understands it has to start to understand how to measure social media’s ROI and its effectiveness if it is to really embrace it as part of its Marketing strategy. With over 900 million users on Facebook, 100 million on Twitter, and LinkedIn approaching 120 million and Pinterest, became one of the top ten social media sites in less than a year. So looking at these stats businesses just can not afford to ignore the power of social media.

Hootsuite or Tweetdeck

Both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are regarded as two of the most popular social media management tools. My clients are constantly asking me which is the best one. I do have a favorite, but what works for one, doesn’t always work for another and I think you have to decide what you want your management tool to do for you.

Both offer excellent easy to use features, but in order to find out which might work best for you I thought it would be useful to identify the pro’s and cons of each management tool by going through some of their features.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a web-based application and a Social Media dashboard tool, which allows you to integrate various social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare and WordPress.

Hootsuite has over 300 million users, boasting several awards including “Best Twitter app”.

Hootsuite offers free versions where users can manage up to 5 profiles and it doesn’t limit you to one account per network. Hootsuite also has a free mobile app which is very easy to use.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a Social Media dashboard tool, which allows you to integrate various  social networks. Tweetdeck is a software programme that you can download onto your desktop.

Tweetdeck is currently the most popular Twitter application. Tweetdeck also offers a free mobile app.

Cost

One of the benefits of social media is that’s its free, so bringing cost into the equation can often put many off. Social media management tools offer a helping hand in managing your accounts so if cost is the deciding factor over which one you choose its important to understand what cost is involved.

TweetDeck is completely free to use, whereas HootSuite offers both a free version and a paid pro version for just under £4.00 per month.  Both free versions offer almost identical benefits, whereas with HootSuite Pro the cost per month provides you with significantly more useful features including bulk scheduling, Google analytics and Facebook Insights.

Multiple Accounts  

Both TweetDeck and HootSuite will allow you to add multiple social media accounts so you can manage everything at once. TweetDeck combines all of your accounts into one window whereas HootSuite provides a tabbed interface with a tab for each account you add.

The special feature you will find with HootSuite is that you can also add multiple users because of it’s browser based interface, allowing you to create posts from multiple users and even allowing them to add a signature to each of their specific posts.  This is particularly beneficial if you are using social media as a customer service tool.

Scheduling

Having the ability to schedule update is a real advantage for anyone utilizing social media. It offers you the satisfaction that you are proviign your auidnece with regular updates and information, however you will not be answering any questions or comments.Scheduling is often one of the main reasons for people wanting to choose a social media management tool, and particularly something my clients often identify as something that would help them.

Both TweetDeck and HootSuite (free version) allow you to schedule posts in advance. HootSuite Pro (paidf version) allows you to bulk schedule updates using an imported CSV file (comma separated values). The bulk scheduler allows you to import 50 updates at once but is rather tricky to figure out how to use it.

Tip. Use the Ctrl+F/Replace function in Excel.

User Interface

User interface is one of the most important features for anyone when choosing a social media management tool. If you can’t use it and it’s not nice to look at, then you just won’t use it. Both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are very easy to use platforms and both pleasing on the eye. Both take a bit of getting use too, but once you have familiarized yourself with the features you should be up and running in no time. TweetDeck allows you to see everything all in one window, but could prove a bit overwhelming. I personally think the interface could be better suited for personal use.

Hootsuite has a browser based interface downloadable for Mac, Smartphones and Tablets. Hootsuites Social media profiles are viewed in tabs, rather than all in one window, so you can. The tabbed interface might be more suited to a social media manager who is managing multiple accounts that would need them to be separated for organisational purposes.

Update Multiple Social Networks

Both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck allow you to update your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles regardless of whether or not you are using the free or paid version.  However, HootSuite’s features allow you to update your Facebook Business and Brand Pages , Foursquare and WordPress.com accounts.

The verdict…..  

In my opinion,from a user ability perspective Tweetdeck is easier but the functionality offered by Hootsuite is better.

Having the ability to load Tweetdeck direct from your desktop is very appealing as is having everything all on one screen where you need it. However in my opinion Tweedeck is geared more towards personal use. If you are managing multiple accounts Tweetdeck just doesn’t seem to cut the mustard and offer that extra insight that I look for when managing my clients social media accounts and identifying their ROI.

Both versions of Hootsuite, have almost all the features that TweetDeck has. However Hootsuite offers some basic social analytics, to see the impact of your messages and Tweets and for me, this is a very powerful advantage when managing social media for business use. HootSuite Social Analytics provide you with a better view of your social spaces with  powerful analytics tools, more ways to measure, and customizable reports, all of which are designed to track campaign success and help you understand the return on your social media investment.

I don’t personally think one is better than the other and there are pros and cons for both, but I think depending on your preferences and needs one might be better than the other for you.

Do you use either of these apps and which do one do you use and why?

Sarah Michelle Willis 

Follow me on Twitter: @SarahMWillisPR 

 

 

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Why Social Media Can Improve Your Business

I am often asked by businesses both small, medium and large about the benefits and ROI of social media are. This article aims to identify why ‘every’ business should be either ‘considering’ using or ‘be’ using social media marketing. Taking part may be purely listening, researching or actively taking part with a few relevant identified networks to suit your business aiming at your target audience/ customer.

So how can social media marketing benefit business? 

-      It can build relationship and credibility with your prospects and customers

-      To monitor what people are talking about you and solve it. A great way to reduce customer support

-      It’s a cheap way to network with people and to get to know your customers better

-      To monitor what people are talking about you and solve it, great way to reduce customer support

-      To help you track the effectiveness of your campaign

-      To act as a customer service tool, answering people questions about your product and services in a social space

Feeling curious? Before anyone gets started with social media, I highly recommend that they begin by ‘listening’. This will in turn help you profile your audience/ customers.

Listen and Learn

Every business knows who their target audience/ customers are, and from that you can then determine what sort of social networks your target audience/ customers are ‘hanging out’. From this you can also identify ‘influencers’ of your brand.

Think of each social network as a community and begin by understanding who, what and where that community derive from. Listen in on conversations that take place within each of those communities. Think about how you might benefit that community by your own participation. Think about how you could strike a conversation with some of your customers in those communities. What could offer to that community that it might be missing?

It is also important to remember that many of your customers are more likely to have multiple social networking accounts which can help you to further profile your target audience/ customer. This is especially helpful if you use a CRM (Customer Relationships Management) system such as CRM SOS or Salesforce.

If your target audience are B2C (business-to-consumers) social consumers; these are people that are willing to share their personal information on social networks engaging in activities such as updating their Facebook status, displaying their locations on Foursquare, leaving travel reviews on TripAdvisor and leaving their product reviews on Amazon.

If you apply the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule, you can expect the power users represent 20% of the users that’s generating 80% of the activities.

A study by Chadwick Martin Bailey demonstrates how your target audience are more likely to buy if you are taking part in social media networks. “consumers who are Facebook fans and Twitter followers of a brand are more likely to not only recommend, but they are also more likely to buy from those brands than they were before becoming fans/followers…The study also uncovered perceptions among consumers that those brands not engaging in social media are out of touch.”

Accountability and ROI

Now that you’ve got your audience/ customer profiles and social network/s identified, what’s next? For businesses serious about ROI (return on investment), it’s time to increase accountability of your marketing efforts.

You can do this by using existing data or the customer insights from your research (surveys, CRM, profiling) to create campaign projections and a realistic target or KPI that you can aim for.

Here are some simple questions to ask yourself to get your started on your social media marketing:

• Create a mix of financial and non-financial metrics that you need to measure, not what you can measure. This is to help you understand how your marketing activities impact the bottom line and how you can optimise them by doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
• Make sure you track your marketing cost as well as where the money is coming from to justify true ROI and conduct performance analysis.
• Can you compare the effectiveness of your marketing investments in direct marketing and affiliate marketing?
• Share Your Insights with the whole business. Share this valuable customer data with your customer service representatives, sales teams and anyone else that will benefit from them. If the sales team know what words or questions your target audience used most frequently when talking about your product, they can then tailor their sales pitch and answer customers questions before they even ask them.
• How much does it cost to run a local campaign vs. national campaign? Do you really need both?
• What results are you getting targeting men instead of women?
• Ultimately you want to have a holistic view of your customer data so not only do you know what they have purchased, but also what they think about your industry, how they talk about your brand, and why they react to your campaign a certain way.
• If you are unable to keep up then outsource part of your social media efforts to consultants or agencies.

Now that you have realised the benefit and ROI of social media for your business, the question is about whether or not this should be done by yourself or by using social media marketing services.

Why social media marketing services?

- social media take a lot of time and many businesses don’t have time to focus on that aspects effectively

- it’s less time consuming to leave an expert that know what their are doing to manage your brand

- it will increase in the long term your brand awareness and reputation if done in a well manner

- it’s the most cheaper and the most effective strategy for your marketing budget

Related articles

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LinkedIn for business

Social Media is a powerful tool. LinkedIn is just one of many Social Media tools out there that you can use to build and extend your professional network.

LinkedIn is a dedicated online network for professionals and an extremely resourceful tool for job hunters, recruiters, professionals and business owners. Users create profiles (essentially your own personal website, within the site) and connect with other users. Inviting them to be a contact. A contact who accepts is called a ‘connection’. They can communicate through messages, create groups and company profiles, and ask other members of the community questions.

Quick Facts

• As of August 2, 2012, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network  with more than 175 million members in over 200  countries.
• 62% of LinkedIn members are located outside of the United States
• LinkedIn members did nearly 4.2 billion professionally-oriented searches
• Typically users are aged 30 upwards
• Professionals of any industry and entrepreneurs use LinkedIn as a powerful resource for both information and business.

I have put together a list of Top Tips for you to utilise LinkedIn more effectively, enhance your profile, increase your profile optimisation and increase your business.

How LinkedIn Can Help You as a professional

LinkedIn allows you to:

• Get online recommendations for your professional abilities and your character
• Get introductions to potential clients, employers, partners or colleagues in your field
• Post and search available job postings placed on the LinkedIn website by members.
• Join various groups that align with your interests and participate in discussions. Having a group in common with another LinkedIn user is one way you can invite others into your network.
• Create an online resume that can work for you all the time. LinkedIn will help promote you as a professional in your field and sector.
• Act as a CRM tool where you can tailor your communications according to your audience. Sending specific information to specified connections accroding to how you choose to ‘tag’ them.

Top Tips 

1. Always use a photograph, it puts a face to a name.
2. Use a persuasive headline. Something that captures who you are in a short sentence using key words so you show up in key word searches. Don’t just use your latest job title.
3. Fill out your profile completely to earn trust and offer as much information about yourself as you can
4. Get recommendations. This will also increase your chances of being found as well as give people more reasons to chose you.
5. Use widgets to integrate other tools, such as importing your blog entries or Twitter stream into your profile.
6. Do market research and gain knowledge with Polls.
7. Share survey and poll results with your contacts.
8. Answer questions in Questions and Answers: show expertise
9. Ask questions in Questions and Answers to get a feel for what customers and prospects want or think.
10. Be sure to list ALL of your experience and skills.
11. Publish your LinkedIn URL on all your marketing collateral, including business cards, email signature, email newsletters, web sites and brochures, so prospects learn more about you.
12. Grow your network by joining industry and alumni groups related to your business.
13. Update your status examples of recent work.
14. Link your status updates with your other social media accounts.
15. Combine your social media approach: when someone asks a question in Twitter, respond in detail on LinkedIn and link to it from Twitter.
16. Use the search feature to find people by company, industry and city.
17. Start and manage a group or fan page for your product, brand or business.
18. Research your prospects before meeting or contacting them.
19. Share useful articles and resources that will be of interest to customers and prospects.
20. Always introduce yourself when making new connections, don’t just use the standard template. You wouldn’t just hand someone a buisness card and walk off. Use the same principle as you would if you were meeting them in person.
21. Write honest and valuable recommendations for your contacts..
22. Post your presentations on your profile using a presentation application.
23. Check connections’ locations before traveling so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.
24. Use the notes section on each of your connections profiles. You can’t possibly be expected to remember every detail about all of your connections and this provides you with a way to remember why you are connected and prompt you to follow up with them. These are totally private and only you can see these notes.
25. Ask your first-level contacts for introductions to their first-level contacts.
26. Interact with LinkedIn on a regular basis to reach those who may not see you on other social media sites.
27. Set up to receive LinkedIn messages in your inbox so you can respond right away.
28. Link to articles and content posted elsewhere, with a summary of why it’s valuable to add to your credibility.
29. List your newsletter subscription information and archives.
30. Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
31. Post discounts and package deals.
32. Need a hard copy of all of your connections contact details? Use the import connections tab and produce a CSV file. You will never have anyone’s contact details out of date.
33. Import vCards and contacts from other applications to find more connections.
34. Export your contacts into other applications.
35. Buy a LinkedIn direct ad that only your target market will see.
36. Post job listings to find qualified talent.
37. Look for connections related to a job you want.
38. Generate sales, find vendors, develop partnerships and grown your business through connections.
39. Tag your connections accroding to their sector, skills or industry eg. estate agents, press or accountants.
40. Stay active. Your profile should not sit still.
41. Oh and stay safe… change your password on a regular basis and avoid security breaches!

When joining networking sites such as LinkedIn, you have to take the time to create productive profiles and pages. Put the time and effort into all the above enhancements and your LinkedIn profile will be much more effective.

Staying connected with the outside world isn’t the only benefit LinkedIn has to offer. Learn how to use LinkedIn and you might find yourself more connected than you could have ever imagined.

Let us know how you get on!

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