Archive for the Social Networking

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A couple of months back, Chris flew in to speak to a crowd of business execs down in the Deep South. A larger than expected sized group turned out to hear Chris, and he started off that speech with a simple question – “What is Social Media?”

To some it’s simply the new tech tool on the internet, to others, it’s something their kids use, while others are completely befuddled by it. Unfortunately, with all the hype, the core of social media generally gets overlooked mainly because it is so subtle.

Social Media at its core is literally a “conversation on steroids”. These conversations can promote a business, impact business productivity and negatively shock a business too. Who’s already conversing online? Literally all the key parties to one’s business success – prospects, customers, employees, business partners, and most importantly competitors.

At the end of the presentation, a few CEO’s came up to Chris and with perfect southern hospitality thanked him for his time but mentioned it wasn’t working for them. They were offering discounts, upcoming sales dates and other insight about their products or services but getting zero results. Chris asked them if when they “conversed” in person, would this be all they talked about too. They laughed and said they would almost never bring this up… and herein lay the problem, while they were extremely hospitable in person, their business social media was the exact opposite and had the social media effect of bragging.

The takeaway – social media is a conversation. The goal is to convert that conversation into a relationship and build trust with your audience. Think about what trust generates… whether you are looking for a job or looking to do business with someone, don’t you select those you trust?

LinkedIn is a fantastic service where you can connect with your old friends, colleagues, former officemates, and meet new professionals as well with the various tools available free and paid users.  Because of its professional vision and rapidly expanding network, LinkedIn has become a major source for advertising too and people are finding success in getting quality leads from the network because most people registered usually want to either offer jobs or look for opportunities or simply assist others.

There are millions currently registered with LinkedIn and the number continues to grow. Therefore, it is important to start now and try to get these people to your website. Even getting a small fraction of the millions registered is considered a lot of fresh leads to your website. Here are some very easy ways to get you started.

Complete Your Profile

Some people are very skeptical in viewing your website if they don’t get a full picture about you as a professional and promoter. Many people that advertise around the internet are scammers in disguise so people want to make sure that you are for real. Completing your profile to the fullest takes some time to do, but once you are all done, it is worth it and should give plenty of information for visitors to digest. The best thing that can happen is people wanting to connect to you already in addition to visiting your site. Double-check your website address as well to see if it is correct.

Expand Your Network

Nobody will go near you unless they really know you if your network is small. Try to add everybody that you know personally as a start and grow from there by adding 2nd degree and 3rd degree contacts slowly. You can further expand your network by joining groups and participating in discussions that you can relate to.

Stay Updated

The ones that are most active are the ones that people will be comfortable in working with. A blog helps greatly and fortunately, LinkedIn has the necessary applications to link your blog to LinkedIn. This way you can start blogging and post all kinds of updates that are synchronized to your LinkedIn profile. All visitors will see this information and be further convinced that your website link is active and worth a closer look.

Be Supportive

LinkedIn has a messaging system and people use that to ask basic questions about yourself or the website that you are promoting. Make sure that you reply right away and be direct in answering. Any delays can lose you some quality leads so keep checking your e-mail and LinkedIn account for updates. Try to make your replies as intelligent as possible too since LinkedIn is a professional networking site so people will expect nothing less than professional responses.

Get into the Direct Ads

There is a Direct Ads feature in LinkedIn that allows you to post direct advertisements to a certain target or group. Use it to your advantage to reach people that are outside your network.

Like other methods in getting leads, this can take time to develop, but if you actively work on your profile, you should be getting more leads from LinkedIn. LinkedIn continues to be a great place for getting fresh leads.

Social networking has been around before the new millennium with several sites trying to bring people together. But since the advancements of web development started surfacing, new online social networking sites were made and has since became the center of attention by a large majority of internet users. Right now, hundreds of services are competing for the best social networking site in hopes of getting more people on board or getting acquired by a top corporation. Improves of one social networking site usually affect other online services to improve and show similar improvements.

LinkedIn is one of those services with an entirely different approach. LinkedIn doesn’t head in the battlefield of social networks because there are enough social networking sites in the circle. LinkedIn plays it differently by targeting the professionals only so they can establish a social network with its own identity giving people a reason to join no matter what social network they are currently in. LinkedIn started roughly the same time as the other social networking big boys back in 2003 and since their exploding growth, other online services started to get affected in a good way. Here are some of the online services that have made changes to connect with LinkedIn better.

E-mail Services

LinkedIn users will never give up their business e-mail addresses just to use LinkedIn so now LinkedIn has provided a good way in finding new LinkedIn contacts by allowing LinkedIn to search through contacts of the top webmail providers, which are Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL. This integration makes it very easy in adding people without too much work in exporting contacts and performing multiple copy/pastes.

Online Contact Managers

Several laptop users encounter the frustration of suffering from data corruption and loss and some of that data can include important contacts for business purposes. This is why more people started to lean on online contact managers instead because they know their data is safe and they profile more functionality and features compared to standard webmail services.

Since these online contact managers have similar visions, LinkedIn decided to partner with the ones that are willing, like Plaxo, a popular online contact manager that has over 20 million users registered. Now the two communities are joined because of the ability to sync LinkedIn contacts with Plaxo in a similar fashion to the way it syncs to E-mail accounts. The people that benefit here are mainly the users because they no longer need to login both networks unless extremely necessary.

Job Search Engines

These services are fairly obvious because LinkedIn is all about job creation and so are the job search engines leaving them both having a good chemistry. Of course, some of them may show up to be strongly competitive, but some job search engines like Simply Hired. Simply Hired is just one of the companies that believe that using LinkedIn’s newly released API would benefit on their behalf. Now jobseekers that are registered at Simply Hired can easily find job postings that are made by LinkedIn connections.

LinkedIn is continuing to make an impact in online services including other social networking sites. Integration is a good thing and it will help both sides grow their respective networks.

One of the beautiful things about Linkedin is the ability to note “what you are working on”.  If you take a look at various profiles, most people just ignore this function.  Through my limited research (of simply asking people why they do), it would appear the avoid it because a) they don’t understand the value of it, b) don’t know how to properly use it c) don’t really feel they have anything important to add and d) they really don’t spend anytime adjusting their profile at all. Thus a potentially major benefit is lost.

 

Let’s spend 30 seconds and get a better understanding of how this function could benefit us.  Whenever you update “what are you working on”, that update is passively broadcast to everyone in your network.  Thus it shows up on everyone’s Linkedin homepage without you having to send them an email, make a phone call or otherwise disturb them.  Since you want this function to remain a credible one for you, don’t abuse it.  If you note every time you go to the store to get a gallon of milk, your brand will suffer.  Therefore, update it for only for events of significance that add to your brand.  For instance, let people know about a new blog you set up or a new business deal you’ve landed or one you are pursuing.  Who knows, perhaps someone in your network can help you in pursuit of that deal.

Social Networking is about connecting others.  One of the biggest questions that comes up is “how can I increase my number of connections”?

Here are 4 relatively simple ways you can do this on Linkedin.  Watch this video and learn how.

4 Ways to Increase Your LinkedIn Connections

LinkedIn isn’t just your ordinary online social networking site. It can help you establish more, and better too, online contacts for your business and increase goodwill for your possible customers. If you use LinkedIn as part of your business model, you will be able to enjoy a number of benefits.

More professionals will be aware of your identity and the business that you have. LinkedIn is more than just another social networking site. It has 8.5 members worldwide and they are all professionals! When you add connections with people with the same business niche that you do, then they will know you and the kinds of services and products that you offer.

LinkedIn can help improve your connectability. You should fill out your profile, your education, the training you’ve had before, the companies that you are affiliated with and the activities that you engage in. This way, people will get a bird’s eye view of who you are and what you can do.

LinkedIn helps you get in touch with professionals who might need your services. We don’t promote spam. But when people starts knowing you and your services and they start talking about you and your products, then you will see the power of word-of-mouth marketing in the Internet. As long as you remain professional in your conduct and relationship with people, they can start promoting your services.

These are but a few of the benefits of using LinkedIn. Remember, it’s not just another social networking site. It can help you grow your business and enhance your online reputation.

Add your Branding strategies here.

Add your tips here! We look forward to hearing from you and helping you network.