6 Tips for Being More Effective on LinkedIn

Everyone has their own style of networking. Some of us go to chamber luncheons and distribute business cards left and right. Others are more reserved and find online networking or less formal meet-ups more effective. 

 

When it comes to online networking, LinkedIn can be a powerful tool in your arsenal. It’s the professional network of choice yet many people come across as rude or spammy due to laziness or a lack of understanding. I’m going to present some helpful tips that I’ve learned over the years and some links to other helpful LinkedIn resources. 

1. Make your introductions personal Few things are more irritating on LinkedIn than the generic greeting or connection request. It’s easy to send a connection request simply by touching the button next to the person’s name on the LinkedIn phone app or clicking “Connect” in the web app, but that’s impersonal. The person will probably accept if you know them well but that’s not the point; even if they’re a coworker, take the time to express something personal. “Jim, I’ve really enjoyed working with you on the mortgage project,” sounds a lot better than the generic “I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn.” Also, think about how generic requests reflect on your personal brand and that of your company. Every networking interaction says something about you as a person. If you come across as rude, people can see where you work and that’s going to sour their impression of your business. So take the time to be professional in your LinkedIn messages just like you would in person. 

2. Don’t ask for recommendations on a whim It’s been my experience that people are generally very obliging in writing a recommendation if you ask for one. However, never ask someone just for the heck of it. Writing a recommendation takes time, especially if it’s heartfelt; you don’t want to make that ask unless you have a legitimate reason. Maybe you’ve just lost your job or you’re looking to shore up your profile so you can move into a different job or industry. Those are legitimate reasons. Satisfying your vanity is not. (Leave a comment if you disagree with me on that one.) In any case, you’ll find that the best recommendations are unsolicited. 

3. Be generous with your praise This is related to the previous point. If someone around you does an awesome job, find a way to express it – whether that’s a verbal comment at work or an unsolicited recommendation on LinkedIn. Even a LinkedIn endorsement can serve as a lesser form of affirmation. Just make sure you’re endorsing a skill they actually have. 

4. Choose your skills wisely Speaking of endorsements, people are generally going to endorse you for the skills you already have listed on your profile rather than adding new skills. So make sure you do a good job of listing those initial skills or you'll end up with too many endorsements for the wrong skills.

5. Think about the big picture Every part of your LinkedIn profile says something about you – from the Summary to the companies you follow to your Additional Organizations and Interests. Make sure that everything is in line with the personal brand you want to project. 

6. Schedule a LinkedIn lunch and learn Wherever you might live, there’s undoubtedly someone who has a reputation as a LinkedIn expert. This might even be someone in your company. If you’re serious about your LinkedIn networking, social media marketing or coordinating the promotion of your content, it’s not a bad idea to schedule a “Lunch and Learn” event with a LinkedIn expert. (This can also be helpful for other social networks like Twitter or Google+ if you have a group of people who are interested in taking an hour to learn more.) Even if you’re a busy executive, you can gain a handful of helpful tips without having to dedicate more time than it would take to grab a sandwich. The LinkedIn speaker should be able to share the latest developments like the new inbox or a new way to search Influencer content. One of the things you'll undoubtedly hear is that LinkedIn works best when it's used in tandem with in-person networking. So how do you use LinkedIn? What features do you like the best and what features irritate you? And what are the best insights you have for increasing your effectiveness on the network?

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26 Tips to Create Social Media Magic for Your Business

26 tips to create social media magic for your business

Have you found your brand’s social media is hitting a wall? Social media marketing takes time, talent, and a lot of creative brain power and it’s possible to get burned out. I’m going to share some easy, actionable items that you can do to put the social media magic back into your brand.

My colleague Rebekah Radice and I teamed up on this together to create a total of 52 tips and here is part one from her blog: How to Create Social Media Magic. Add in my 26 here and voila! You’re in business, baby!

I’m going to break down the tips by social media platform but many tips will work on any platform. Each platform has its own nuances for posting but many of the “common sense” guidelines for social media apply everywhere.


Google+

1. Create a weekly Google+ Hangout series to highlight your brand’s services, talk about industry updates, or to connect with customers. These will live on YouTube and be sharable on your blog and throughout all your social media platforms.

2. Use your super size cover photo to make an impact. At 2120 x 1192, you have no excuse for lacking visual impact. If you are design challenged, hire someone to create something memorable for you.

3. Use Friends + Meto connect your Google+ to other social channels. Use this for thoughtful sharing from Google+ to other social platforms.

4. Highlight your business’s accomplishments on your About page. There’s a lot of rich territory on Google+ so utilize it to boost your social SMO throughout the web.

5. Get your Google+ authorship set up. As Mark Traphagen says, “Google wants to pump you up in search.” Connect your Google+ account and receive a boost in Google search.
Pinterest

6. Tell your brand story with Pinterest boards.

7. Use secret boards to work with a team and build marketing campaigns.

8. Add a board with links to your other social networks and blog so people can find you everywhere.

9. Brand your images for Pinterest with your company watermark.

10. Use the #PinofTheDay hashtag to connect your content with other pinners and work across social media platforms.

More tips on my All Things Pinterest Board
Facebook Page

11. Host a Facebook Q & A on your Facebook page.

12. Make sure your Facebook page is attractive and optimized. You should change your cover photo occasionally for the seasons or for different marketing campaigns to keep your page fresh.

13. Customize your Facebook tabs.

14. Use square images for regular posts with a 1:1 ratio aspect or size them at 500 x 500 pixels. This is easy to do in PicMonkey or Photoshop.

15. Analyze your Facebook page on LikeAlyzer and keep making tweaks in your content to improve your page.

More resources on my Facebook Tips and Tricks board
Twitter

16. Set your profile up properly using all your visual assets and adding industry keywords with a link to your website.

Twitter Size Cheat Sheet

17. Participant or host Twitter chats to meet people in your industry or potential clients.

18. Use Social Bro or another third-party app to help grow your Twitter follow base the right way.

7 ways your business can gain more followers

19. Twitter is about interesting conversations. Make sure you say hello and talk with people. No broadcasting allowed.

20. Etiquette counts on Twitter. Tweet others the way that you want to be tweeted.

More resources on my Social Media Savoir Faire board
LinkedIn

21. Connect with influencers through the LinkedIn Influencer program. They are creating original content on LinkedIn and this is a rich resource of relevant LinkedIn content share for your updates.

22. Need to scope out the competition? Go stealth by becoming anonymous to do your research, then switch back to public for networking.

23. Customize the links to your websites for a more professional look.

24. Create great updates for more engagement. Link dropping isn’t effective.

25. Make sure that you add a custom message to each invitation to connect on LinkedIn. Remember that you can’t do this from the apps.

More resources on my A Little Love for LinkedIn board.
Biggest tip for last!

26. Be consistent in all your social media efforts. Pick one platform and learn to use it well before branching out to other platforms. Being really great on one platform is preferable to sucking on many platforms. Make sure that you are having fun and enjoying the social interaction. There is a trend in hiring agencies to handle social media for brands but I urge you to have people who are connected with your brand doing your social media. Farmed out social media can end up looking like farmed out social media. Bleck. If you feel like you don’t have time or the skills, please do hire someone to help you with your social media but make sure they know what they are doing and have active, solid social media platforms of their own. If they don’t have an active and vibrant social media platform themselves, how will they create one for you?

I hope that these tips will spark some new ideas and get your brain fired up for creating some social media magic of your own!

Disclosure: Social Bro provides me with a free pro version but I only use social media tools that I love and are helpful. It things don’t work, I don’t recommend them.

Photo credit: Big Stock Photos

Use Social Media To Drive Massive Traffic To Your Website

Social Media is now taking control of the internet world. Nearly anybody that has some type of computer or smartphone has some kind of social media profile. No matter if it is Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Skype or Instagram or any of the other innumerable social media sites, billions of individuals use most of them and they are mostly all 100 % free.

How Do You Take Advantage Of These Social Media Websites For Your Business venture?
Just sit back and think of just how much you are putting in on marketing and advertising for new buyers or investors. Now all that investing for advertising and marketing was the best successful way of getting your business name on the market and producing leads to exchange sales. Now, it's a complete new picture. The web is a part of hundreds of millions of daily lifestyles and now you can get through to them all around the world without leaving your own home. Social Media, if used correctly is much more affordable and could be free in most circumstances for establishing relationships with potential partners or consumers. The perk to this is that it is equally as powerful as paid advertising if used the right way. With social media you can create a worldwide following like you have never seen before!
After Today, You Should Understand Ways to Utilize This Social Media To Your Benefit.

Listed here Are 5 Of The Best Social Media sites To Make use of For Your Business venture:

1. Facebook.
Having 1.06 BILLION regular monthly members on Facebook, this must be among your major social network tools to employ for your business promotion. Members can easily generate groups, pages, personal profiles, and may actually browse for individuals according to their profession. Presently are infinite options using Facebook which could require a complete book in order to describe completely. To get ideal payoffs when it comes to your business, you are going to most likely must develop a following to begin with on a relatively personalised degree along with your business venture, as opposed to just simply positioning an advertisement on there instructing individuals to explore your business as well as pay for regardless of what it is you are actually marketing. You should moderately reveal exactly how awesome your service or product is and also have a webpage committed to your work which many people can easily like and also track day-to-day to generate a ton of involvement, to convert in to future clients. Never simply just make use of Facebook in order to get consumers either regarding your business. Try to keep an open mind with all types of opportunities and you could also discover your future worker of the year or even dependable company companion on there. Be sure and make use of images, video clips, along with almost anything else that could possibly grab interest much more than only words.

2. YouTube.
Including about 1 BILLION people and also 4 billion views a day, YouTube must be high on your checklist of social media internet sites to benefit from with respect to your business. YouTube is actually particularly pertaining to video clips. The entire idea regarding YouTube is simply to possess one of the most highly utilized resource on the planet when it comes to online videos of every style for the general public to see. Regardless if it is "how to" clips, corporation persuasion web videos, or perhaps maybe even merely recreation web videos, they are certainly entirely on there. Virtually just about anything you could wonder about will certainly be on YouTube due to various individuals make use of it daily. A bit of helpful strategies can be to create a few fair quality online videos concerning your market that might intrigue your target niche and place all of them on there. Before long should you possess an ideal, your domain WILL CERTAINLY become discovered and become sought-after with using web videos with YouTube. Create a channel within there for your business venture video clips and curious users that view your business venture will likely subscribe with you and also check out each of your video clips. Thus produce excellent online videos which individuals will likely desire to view throughout and make every one of them count simply because that might be the big difference when it comes to a load of possible sales.

3. Twitter.
Offering 500 million overall members, Twitter is really simply one more type of social network which must be checked out with regard to your business venture. Supposing that you actually desire to generate a fan base, this is definitely the internet-site to utilize. Twitter is simply about whom you follow as well as whom is following you. The more supporters you acquire, the more prominent you are with Twitter. The more famous you are regarding Twitter, the extra visibility you can obtain when it comes to your business venture on the web with everyone. You may more or less employ it like a kind of progress report with regards to precisely how famous your business organization is becoming plus whenever you publish anything on Twitter, all your fans will likely see it. How awesome is that? When it is really a very impressive post, your fans could also retweet it in order for their supporters to check out, gaining you a lot more visibility to web traffic! Most prominent individuals and establishments may possess upwards of millions of fans. Perhaps even a fragment of that may be all you require to boost sales regarding your business because of admirers becoming future purchasers.

4. Google+.
Having 343 million involved members, Google+ should be explored for your business venture publicity efforts with social media. Google+, to a great deal of individuals, isn't really the favored social media website for individual factors, but much more for business. Google+ possesses a bit of many things on it. A awesome aspect of it is you possess several circles that you could form. You may create an acquaintance circle, a fan base circle, and a loved ones circle. You may considerably sort the circles of individuals in your daily life through Google+ and also have hangouts along with competitions alongside several additional features. You could utilize your following circle similar to twitter and attempt to create a fan base for your market so you could get a lot of them become buyers of the things your company features. It is equally beneficial to own a Google+ profile due to the fact that it will link to YouTube as well as be extremely beneficial to your Search Engine Optimization within the Google online search engine. As a matter of fact, it is ticket to getting your unique or company photograph alongside your posts in the Google search engine results, and that strengthens the chance of a person clicking on it by 100-150 %! Google+ is simply just a really effective well-rounded social media resource to get web publicity.

5. LinkedIn.
Having around 200 million members, LinkedIn is definitely a social media site which must be taken very seriously, notably with its tie-ins to business. LinkedIn is a far more professional social media website that is primarily for businessmen as well as business women. You could seek individuals within a specific occupation and also connect to all of them in order to possibly establish a working collaboration that might be good for the two of you. You are going to even discover several possible prospects on LinkedIn by limiting results to who could be a bit more probable to take advantage of what the company provides. You can also conduct paid promotions and job promotions that appear considerably professional and also are modified to your preference. You can personalize them to a particular level to get additional interest too. How ever sizable your budget plan is concerning the paid LinkedIn advertisements, will decide just how you design it and the level of publicity the advertisement will get based upon just how much as well as when you prefer the advertisement to be presented. The promotions even go to a specific kind of individuals depending on the narrowing of the niche with provided variables such as age or line of work. Thanks to tons of market possibilities and possible leads you could receive from LinkedIn, it is the fitting location to promote your business organization and ought to be a must-have social media source.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7648204

LinkedIn Adds Facebook-Style Mentions to Boost Conversations

LinkedIn just made it much easier to have a conversation with other users on the social network.

LinkedIn announced Thursday that it has started rolling out a new mentions feature that is similar to what's available on Facebook and Twitter. The feature, which was spotted earlier in the day byTheNextWeb, is intended to make it easier for LinkedIn's community to engage with users and companies.

"We’re excited to introduce a new way for you to engage with your network through the ability to mention your connections and companies in conversations on LinkedIn," the company said in a blog post.

The mentions feature, which is being rolled out to English-speaking users starting today, is more limited than similar options on other social networks. You can only mention other LinkedIn users that you are connected to, or other members who are part of a discussion thread on the LinkedIn homepage.

This isn't the first time LinkedIn has taken a page from Facebook and Twitter to boost engagement on the site. LinkedIn added a follow button for brands, similar to Twitter, andoverhauled its homepage and profile pages to be more like Facebook. Flipboard recently integrated mentions into its apps as well

LinkedIn Now Allows Profile Edit On Mobile Phones

LinkedIn have now released an update to their mobile app which will allow users to edit their profile on the move.
The update to the iOS and Android app was one of the most requested features for users of LinkedIn and has now become available.

LinkedIn said in a blog post that: “Now you can update your profile with a new headline, add recent skills, or add a new position so your professional identity is always up to date.”
Enrichments to inMail and “Who’s viewed your profile” for premium members have been introduced due to the update to the iOS and Android app which also adds support for the iPhone 5.




LinkedIn recently updated the interface to debut an all new profile which highlights activity and displays information in a more visual style.

Have you been waiting for this update? How important do you think this is?

6.5 Million LinkedIn Passwords Leaked - Dont Let it Happen To You

Do you have a LinkedIn account? If you answered yes, I sure hope you have changed your password.

You have probably heard that roughly 6.5 million LinkedIn account passwords were leaked the other day. Recent news has also revealed that some eHarmony and Last.fm passwords were leaked as well. The complete details regarding what information was compromised have not been released, but it is known that some accounts were hacked to in order to find sensitive information, send spam messages, etc. Regardless of what information these hackers have found, it is clear that a serious issue in online security has been exposed.

LinkedIn currently has more than 150 million users, which means the chances of your password being leaked are small (roughly 4%). Even though 4% is a small amount, the passwords we use online protect very important information, and anytime that safety is threatened, it is important the we take action. Even if you haven’t noticed any suspicious activity on your account, it is better to be safe and change your password just in case (especially if your password isn't a very secure one).

What To Do? First, it is important to use secure random passwords. A secure random password should combine capitalized and uncapitalized letters that do not spell out any words and should also include a combination of numbers and characters. Secondly, it is important that you use a different password for every site you use.

GREAT! How do I think of these random passwords and how do I remember them? A variety of sites offer password protection services where you can store passwords or content. One that combines features is MySocialCloud.com which offers safe storage of your username and password as well as a Random Password Generator that creates very secure passwords.

With the recent LinkedIn password leak, I knew I needed to change my LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter password because I had been using the same password for all three sites. Now that I use MySocialCloud, I was able to log-in and create secure random passwords for each site with the click of a button.

Since MySocialCloud can store these passwords and allow me to auto-login to the sites in the future, I don’t have to worry about having to remember the complex passwords. Now, if/when a password leak happens in the future for whatever site it may be, I don’t have to worry about my information being exposed.

We hope that you enjoy your safer and more secure online life!

5 Ways to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is a great way to market yourself as a professional. It's not much use for a business as a whole, but if you're a freelancer, contractor or independent consultant it's one of the most important digital business cards you can have, and you neglect it at your peril. Despite being around for a while, I'm amazed at how some people just fail at using their LinkedIn profiles to sell themselves.

Before I make a list, there's just one thing I want to say about LinkedIn - it is not Facebook. That means that Facebook rules and customs do not apply. You want to be connected to everyone you've ever met, and everyone they've ever met - because you never know when one of those connections will turn into a business opportunity.

1. Your profile picture

As I just said, this is not Facebook. Don't have a picture of you in your bikini, or chugging beer with your bros. Get a professional picture taken, or use a good one of you in a suit. The more professional you look, the more seriously people will take you. And don't forget to smile - it's not a passport photo.

2. Think hard about your professional headline

Your LinkedIn profile allows you to add a "professional headline". This isn't a Facebook status to be changed every day, or a place for you to be funny. It needs to be 10 or fewer words describing what you do, and it needs to be as specific as possible. A good example is "Online Marketing and SEO Consultant for the medical equipment sector." A bad example is "I'm an online marketer, casual baseball player and a follower of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour amen". You get the idea.

3. Spend time organising your portfolio

Whether or not you work online, you can usually find something to add to your portfolio on LinkedIn. It takes a little bit of fiddling to get the hang of it, but it is well worth devoting time to. Get rid of the default descriptions like "my website" and put something interesting in there that tells recruiters and businesses what the website/project is, and what your involvement in it was.

4. Create a vanity URL

Vanity URLs are something that Facebook introduced a few years ago, and LinkedIn followed suit. It changes the URL of your profile from "LinkedIn.com/23u409832ur0u" (for example) to LinkedIn.com/JoeBloggsConsulting. If you can't get your name, then get something close to it. Don't use a nickname like "Jojo99" - it's not MSN messenger.

5. Write a good summary, and don't forget SEO

You have the opportunity to write a 2,000 word summary. You don't have to use up the word count (and nobody will read the whole thing if you do) but spend a good hour or so drafting a good page of writing here. Focus on keywords that are good for how you're trying to market yourself (use the Google AdWords Keyword Selector Tool for ideas). Divide it into sections with sub-headings if it helps, but for the love of Batman use paragraphs!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6832109