Top 5% on LinkedIn

I just received an email from LinkedIn congratulating me on having “one of the top 5% most viewed LinkedIn profiles for 2012.”

I realize this is a total ego play on the part of LinkedIn as they encouraged me (and the other 10 million people in the top 5%) to share this distinction with our friends, but it’s still pretty cool.

Here is a link to my public LinkedIn profile.

Twitter Tips for Small Business Owners

Twitter is a free site for social networking and micro-blogging. While most of us are familiar with traditional blogging, Twitter offers you a micro blogging platform. This allows you to make short, to-the-point post as compare with longer, more detailed blog posts.

Twitter restricts you to posting 140 characters at a time. So you have to get creative and use your mind to get your message across in as few words as possible. This restriction on characters has a huge advantage. The message size limit allows people to post more frequently. Some users post every 5-10 minutes for example!

If you make longer posts, it is difficult to find the time or energy to keep posting every few minutes. Twitter enables you to send updates to other users in the form of these short posts on what you are currently doing. These short posts are called ‘tweets’.

Other people can subscribe to your tweets and you can subscribe to theirs if you choose. Whenever you make a post it will be delivered to those who subscribed to it. This allows people to keep in touch with each other and know what activities each is currently involved in.

The popularity of twitter is increasing almost every day. Professionals and even big businesses such as Apple, Disney, and Starbucks are using twitter as a communication and customer service tool. You too can leverage this popular website to promote your business and gain mass followers in your niche.

Twitter can be a very powerful tool to gain subscribers, clients and business partners if used properly. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of it:

1. Make interesting posts – No one likes to read boring stuff about you. Make sure your posts are funny or interesting in some way
2. Don’t just talk about business – You have a human side too and occasionally post about interesting personal stories to keep people interested.
3. Have a detailed profile – Your profile describes who you are and what business you have. Make sure it is professional and detailed and has a link to your website.
4. Post often – Posting here is very simple and fast. Do it often but not too often. Avoid posting every 10 or 15 minutes otherwise people may get bored.
5. Follow others too – Don’t just try to get as many followers for yourself as you can. Follow other users too who are in your niche.
6. Have conversations – Engage in pleasant conversations with people and try to make a lot of friends here.
7. Promote Twitter – Put your twitter link in your blog posts, email signatures, forum signatures etc to promote twitter on other sites and make more people become your followers
8. Learn how to tweet – Learn from the experts who have thousands of followers and see what they are doing differently.
9. Answer questions – When people ask something related to your niche then try to answer them. This way you can build your credibility.
10. Tag your posts to enhance their visibility – Tag your twitter posts in order to categorize them properly. This way it can be easier for others who are searching for some specific thing to find your post.

 

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a social networking website for professionals from all over the world incorporating 170 industries in 200 countries and with over 55 million members. Registered LinkedIn users keep contact details of people they know and can vouch for in business. The contacts are called connections. As a member, your social network would consist of your primary connections, their connections called 2^nd degree connections and your 2^nd degree’s connections called 3^rd degree connections, linking you to a huge group of professionals. From this network you can access, business opportunities, business partnerships, information, good employees etc.

How Can LinkedIn Work for You?

LinkedIn is a valuable source of important information for both job seekers and employers to review each others profiles. LinkedIn employs strict privacy rules so that every connection is made mutually and confirmed. Connections appear in the LinkedIn network only with their express permission. LinkedIn has a paid feature that offers more tools to find people and also “LinkedIn Answers”, a free feature allowing users to post business related queries which can be answered by any expert. This is free consulting for your business.

LinkedIn also has a searchable feature called “LinkedIn Groups” that allows users to create new business networks by joining professional, industry, alumni and other related groups. These groups give professional networking a more personal touch.

Professionals are more drawn to you online if you have some kind of connection, for example sports teams, societies and alumni etc.

In addition, users can research companies they are interested in. Just type the company’s name in the search box and voila! The company profile and statistics are displayed.

How do you make money in LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a platform to advertise your business opportunities and expertise. It does not pay you for this but it is a launch pad to the programs that actually pay. Though LinkedIn has less members than other social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, the difference is that LinkedIn is composed of professionals with big incomes. Drawing this social network to your business can help you boost your own income

If you are into blogging, employ good Google Adsense, link your blog to LinkedIn and take your connections to your blog. You can also use LinkedIn as a channel to take your connections to your online business. Make use of LinkedIn’s profile options that allow connection to anything that is related to online-business. The key in these ventures is patience. Get rich quick schemes in social networking are a no-no.

Final Thoughts

A social networking website that is business oriented like LinkedIn offers a platform for great business minds to collaborate, share ideas, create partnerships and is an invaluable asset to any business. It further gives the added benefits of quick and free consultancy services that can be crucial for decision making. It is a network that ultimately translates into more money.

Facebook Offering Businesses $500 to Monitor Their Phone Calls

I just received an email from Facebook offering one of my social media clients a $500 advertising coupon if he agrees to participate in Facebook’s Call Tracking Study.

The goal of the month-long study is “to understand how many phone calls local businesses receive as a result of their Facebook Page.”

What facebook wants my client to do is replace the phone number on their Facebook fanpage with the special Facebook issued tracking number. Calls to the number will still be routed to my client’s business. Facebook claims they are just “monitoring usage”. According to their website, “Facebook will primarily log the number of phone calls made from the special number on your page. We will not record or listen to your calls.”

Unfortunately the study is only open to a small group of businesses who have been invited to participate. No information was given as to what the criteria were for selecting my client’s business.

You can learn more about Facebook’s Call Tracking Study on their website.

Would you route your business phone calls through facebook and let them monitor them? I guess it depends on how many calls you receive from your facebook page. Maybe you should conduct a research study to find out.

Social Media vs Your Website

I found an interesting article tonight about the rising popularity of social media as compared with traditional websites. According to the Wall Street Journal, some large companies such as Starbucks and Coca-Cola receive up to 20 times as much traffic to their facebook pages as to their corporate websites.

I knew companies were increasingly utilizing social media websites such as facebook and twitter to connect with customers. I had no idea that in some cases these social media sites were outperforming these companies corporate websites… and to such an extent. I suppose it depends on the product, brand or service. In Starbucks case for example, what would be a compelling reason to visit the Starbucks corporate website? Compare this with the company’s facebook page. 600 million users, many of them presumably Starbucks customers, are already on facebook’s site. If Starbucks wants to connect with those users, they need to be there too.

The article goes on to point out the benefits to businesses of each method of online marketing, social media and your own website.

Benefits of Social Media

1. Inherently interactive.
2. Where people are spending time.
3. Easy to acquire users / fans.
4. Virality.

Benefits of Your Own Website

1. Control the design.
2. Own the data.
3. Targeting and personalization.
4. Reach all your audience.

Does your company have a facebook fan page? If you would like one, check out my web design company, Power Play Marketing and our social media marketing packages.

Here is a link to the complete article on bnet.com, Is It Time to Shut Down Your Website?

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