Web Savvy Marketers

Can LinkedIn Build Your Business?

Right up front I will admit that this article will not answer the question the title poses. But you will learn more about this business networking Web site if you keep reading.

I’ve been on LinkedIn for about 15 months but had not been very active. For the next six months I’m conducting an experiment. I want to discover whether feeding LinkedIn lots of attention and good stuff will reward me with what I want (more and better business contacts and visibility.) I believe it’s possible that LinkedIn could help me find vendors, keep up with business education, promote my business and maybe even provide some solid clients.

If you’re interested in this concept, here are eight steps you could take.

  1. Spruce up your LinkedIn profile
    I heard one guy complain that LinkedIn only considered him 40 percent of a person. That’s because his profile wasn’t complete. You won’t be taken seriously if you don’t include a professional photograph and complete the rest of the profile. Your profile should have lots of juicy tidbits about your business talents and successes.
  2. Give and get recommendations
    Ask your clients to recommend your services on LinkedIn. Their recommendations will appear in your profile and serve as great endorsements. How do you get recommendations? You get by giving. Recommend good, solid people you’ve worked with. It’s fun and rewarding to recommend good people.
  3. Obtain at least 100 connections
    I’m told the magic starts happening when you are connected to at least 100 people. So go through your rolodex and invite people to link with you. Visit the profiles of people you’re already linked to and check out their connections to see if they know people you’d like to know. Then ask for a LinkedIn introduction to them.
  4. Ask Questions
    I had a client problem and used the LinkedIn question feature. Within two hours I had four good answers to my client problem.
  5. Don’t Sell
    Perhaps this should be number one on this list. There’s nothing worse at a cocktail party than the guy running around basically saying to anyone who will listen, “Wanna buy from me? Wanna buy from me?” Please don’t use LinkedIn that way. Find ways to make yourself useful to others. It’s true: Givers gain.
  6. Join Groups
    To learn about a topic or get closer (electronically) to a market, search for LinkedIn groups you can join.
  7. Find People
    LinkedIn has a feature that lets you search for people by name. You can also search by company name for LinkedIn members. And you can search by job title within a geographic area. These are good ways to find people in your market or people you know but have misplaced along the business way.
  8. Add Applications
    You can choose from about ten pretty cool applications. One app lets you share slide shows. Another lets you take online polls. I have added to my profile the application that lets you share book recommendations.

Your best bet is to go to LinkedIn and experiment. See whether you think there are tools there to help your business. Give the site a fair chance by putting in your time to create a good profile and build connections. I heard one LinkedIn expert say you need to devote about 30 minutes a day to the site when you first join if you want to maximize the site’s effectiveness. Try to add value for other people you run into on LinkedIn.

May your business prosper as a result. See you out there.

Submitted by:

Chris John Amorosino
Amorosino Writing, LLC
Writing Business Stories That Live Profitably Ever After
860.673.0089

Follow me as I explore Twitter

I don’t claim to be an expert on Twitter,  but for the last few weeks I’ve been exploring how Twitter works and what it is that has created one of the fastest growing social networks around.

At first glance I’ll admit it looked to be a total waste of time.  If you browse through the general posts there is a lot of nonsense.  I don’t care if or when someone is going to dinner or when they’re going to bed…unless I’m involved.  And that is the point, you choose to become involved (“follow“) whoever you find interesting.

How do you find interesting people to follow?  Use twittersearch to find topics of interest.  For example, for business, I following tweets about Google., Joomla, G1 Android and SEO.  I’ve also been following amFIX (CNN) and for fun, the other night while watching American Idol, I followed the American Idol tweets.  What can I say?  I’m easily entertained.

There are numerous Twitter Tools available that help you to customize your twittering and tweeting  to suit your working style.  Tools to incorporate into Outlook, your mobile phone, your desktop. to feed your blog to twitter, to feed your tweets to your blog or website.

One of the most efficient tools I’ve found is Twitterfeed, which feeds your blog posts to Twitter automatically.

There are numerous tutorials online about Twitter. Do a search for “How to Use Twitter for Business” and see what you find.  Here’s a good comprehensive overview that I found on Twitter this morning by Andrea Kalli.

Another one (found on the Linked In Twitter Innovators Discussion Group)  20 ways Twitter helps business…

Sign up for Twitter at twitter.com.

Learn more at http://help.twitter.com/portal

Follow me. I’ll try to point out valuable business networking tips as I find them.

What is Twitter?

For social media junkies, they already know the answer to this question, but for many, they know that they should know the answer, but they don’t know.

 

So here’s my twitter 101 discussion, just to get you started.  The concept of Twitter was originally that participants answer, in 140 characters or less, one question: what are you doing right now?  Your answer (called a “tweet”) is intended to spark short messaging conversations and deeper engagements with those who share your interests.

 

It’s a fledgling media, one that is changing and growing day by day.  However, I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon, so I suggest you get to know it.  Now, that doesn’t mean that you may be somebody who spends their life on Twitter.  As a matter of fact, most people don’t.  The only people that I know that do are those who are engaged in the social media world.  However, I have found it to be useful. 

 

In May, I am giving a talk to the financial services industry on New Media Marketing.  I wanted to research  who was engaged in new media marketing in the insurance world.  I put a tweet out on Twitter and Facebook, asking for ideas and information.  Many people got back to me, giving reference material, lists of those engaged in social media, as well as connecting me to people relevant to the topic.  As a matter of fact, I got hooked up with a director of social media at one of the major insurance companies and was able to get enough information for a case study.  If you need to do some research or find the right person, chances are you’ll find it by crashing around on Twitter.

 

Now most people don’t actually answer the question posed, “What are you doing right now?”  They simply comment on interesting things that they found around the worldwide web.  Twitter becomes, then,  a type of human search engine, pointing out interesting or relevant information to a particular group of people that you have decided to associate with or “follow. “

 

In addition search.twitter.com can help you find the conversations and the people engaged in activities that are of interest to you.  I suggest you spend a little time getting on Twitter and trying it now.  Just listen.  That’s what everyone else is doing too.  If you’re old enough to be puzzled by Twitter, you may be old enough to remember life before e-mail or voice mail, and look how helpful those tools are.  This is just another technological tool to be used to communicate and engage with your clients and your customers, your friends, your family and your neighbors. 

 

Happy tweeting!

 

 

 

What is Website Optimization and Why do I Care?

This is a question that I’ve received on more than one occasion. Anyone who has a website should care about website optimization. If you have a website, odds are you’ve spent time and money to create it. So what is it doing for you? Too many people create a site and do nothing to drive traffic to their site, then, wonder why business hasn’t improved. In traditional terms, you can create the most beautiful advertisement, however, if you never place it where it can be seen, it’s useless. It’s the same for websites. That is where website optimization comes in. It’s the practice of driving traffic to your website. There are several ways to do this.

The first way to drive traffic to your site is to ensure that your site can be found. This is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. By including meta tags and descriptions as well as improving the content of your site, you can improve the organic search-ability of your site so that people can find you. This is a long-term investment that pays off in gradual increments. Over time, search engine optimization will help improve your search engine rank and make it easier for potential customers to find your site.

The second way to improve your website optimization is a traditional pay-per-click program. These are the ads that show up in the right hand column of a Google search. The nice thing about these ads, as the name says, you only pay for those searches that actually click through to your site. This program is intended to drive unknown prospects to your site.

A third method of website optimization is called e-marketing. This includes creating an e-newsletter campaign and/or blog to help educate your customers. It is a good way to ensure that you have a consistent presence with your existing customers and known prospects. It will remind them that you’re out there and in some cases, depending on the article, educate them about capabilities you have that they may not know about or have forgotten.

The final form of website optimization is inclusion of RSS feeds to your website to pull the latest news from a blog into your site. This can help to keep your site updated with little effort. This will also help your search engine optimization and gives users a reason to go back to your site more frequently as they’ll know that you have updated information.

Basically, website optimization is a means to get your site working for you. Years ago, when people created or changed their website, they would let everyone they knew know about it. We’ve gotten away from that practice. Website optimization takes the best of those practices and incorporates them into a program that will make your website work for you.

Let’s talk passion

WebSavvyMarketers is a group of four marketing professionals who have joined together to explore and comment on digital and on-line marketing.  We each have a unique passion that drives our individual careers and as savvy marketers we recognize the power of strategic alliance and collaboration.  Meet the WebSavvyMarketers.  

Rahna Barthelmess, who jumped in with the 1st post on the blog, has a passion for marketing. She’s helped  large corporations and small companies navigate the digital marketing world with up to date, and effective online strategies.   She’s focused and energetic about her passion. Tap into her energy here and through her website beacon-marketing.com.

Nancy Simonds loves to proofread.  Isn’t that an unusual passion?  In a world where the practice of texting has developed a new lexicon and threatens the art of a complete sentence, we need people like Nancy.  Although Nancy has helped develop web content for many business websites, she would probably be the first to admit that blogging, facebook, and twitter are a bit, shall we say, beyond her comfort zone.  But exploring new worlds is part of being a websavvymarketer and I think Nancy’s perspective on this “new world” will bring comfort to those of you who might  find some of the new technologies overwhelming.  More about Nancy at simonds.com

Have you ever met anyone who loves to cold call? Meet Beth Devine.  I swear, her passion for cold calling, could possibly be an addiction.   What’s her perspective?  How does a cold calling addict become a websavvymarketer?  Stay tuned.  By the way, Beth also creates multi-media sales CD’s and tradeshow presentations.  and recently has begun to work with me on SEO projects.   More at devinesolutionsinteractive.com,

And finally, who am I and what’s my passion?  I’m Carolyn Griswold and have a passion for the web and for building websites.  I love the technology that is ever evolving.  I love the immediacy of the web.  I love the interactivity, the functionality, the design, the language and the art.  I love to explore the web and as I explore I plan to use this space to share ways to become a web savvy marketer.   More at cgwebhelp.com

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