Tag: LinkedIn

You Don’t Have to Be Everybody’s Friend: How to Balance Public, Private, and Social Media

January 19, 2012 By Azure Collier Leave a Comment

Personal Professional Social MediaA few weeks ago, I got a friend request on Facebook.

I recognized the name and clicked on the person’s profile to check out his information. He was pretty well-connected in his career and we had a few friends in common. I had a problem though: I had spoken with him only once on the phone — for a project I was putting together at a place I haven’t worked at for three years. I’ve never met him in real life and really know nothing about him.

I declined the request. But that’s just me. Someone else might have accepted it. Our interpretations of what’s personal, what’s professional, what we share, and who we let into our worlds have gotten fuzzy because of social media. Millennial Branding found that Generation Y is happy to blur those lines — they use Facebook as an extension of their professional life. For some people, that can cause problems when you’re sharing information about your personal life and forget that the colleague in the next cubicle is watching every social move you make.

I present Constant Contact’s social media webinars and frequently get questions from attendees on how to separate the personal from the professional in this public space. One solution is to create a personal social media policy for each of your profiles. Look at your social networks and decide: What do you use this space for? Who do you want to let in? Think about the things you talk about on each social network — do you really want your potential new friends or followers to know those details? Do you want to know theirs? Here’s my personal social media policy: [Read more...]

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Signs You May Be a Bad Social Media Marketer

January 5, 2012 By Martin Lieberman 3 Comments

There’s a lot of debate these days about what it means to be a “good” social media marketer.

Every expert seems to have his or her own opinion.

Does it mean tweeting or posting to Facebook a certain number of times each day? Does it mean posting a certain type of content? Does it mean you can’t pre-schedule your posts and tweets? Or does it mean having a certain number of fans or followers, or a high Klout score?

The definition of what makes a good social media marketer seems to be different for everyone. And in fact, there’s a lot of “best practice” advice available — you can find it here on this blog, in our Learning Center, and on our Social Media Quickstarter, for example.

What about “worst” practices?

An easier (and more amusing) question to answer may be what not to do on social media. Perhaps that’s why when I asked a few of Constant Contact’s own social media experts to name their biggest social media pet peeve, they jumped at the chance.

Are you looking to be a better social media marketer? Our advice is to stay away from the following “worst” practices: [Read more...]

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Facebook Shares Negative Feedback, and More Hot Stories

December 2, 2011 By Martin Lieberman Leave a Comment

It’s been two weeks since we last checked in on the week’s top stories and trends.

In that time, Facebook Insights has gotten, well, more insightful.

We’ve also had the trio of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday all contributing to the country’s bottom line. That’s making people busier than ever, so many of us are looking at the end of the year and hoping we can take some time off.

A recent poll asked business owners what happens on social media when they take vacation. Those stories and more — is Google+ really showing signs of life? — are what we’re buzzing about this week. [Read more...]

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Easy Ways to Promote Your B2B Business on LinkedIn

November 17, 2011 By Azure Collier Leave a Comment

Social media marketing takes a lot of work. It’s a constant cycle of creating content, engaging your customers, clients, members, and supporters, and finding creative ways to make your business or organization stand out in a sea of channels that all take a different tone.

The one social media site that has a stable atmosphere is LinkedIn. Why is that? Because the conversation there is all about business. When you sign in to LinkedIn, you’re not going to see people linking to stories about celebrity antics or posting vacation photos.

Instead, people are there to share expertise, to network, to find a new job, or to seek business advice. That’s why it’s a great place to promote your business — especially if you’re a B2B.

How do you get noticed on LinkedIn? Start by creating a company page and fill out all of the tabs that come with it: overview, careers, products & services, and analytics. Give visitors the full picture of what you do. Post job listings, provide company updates, and showcase your products and services.

Once you have people connected to you, ask them to submit recommendations on your products tab. Reviews are essential for driving new business — a recent Nielsen study on brand marketing showed that consumers look to social media reviews before they make purchasing decisions. Nielsen found that 63% of social media users rely on ratings; 62% said it was as their preferred information source when researching products and services.

Next, take a look at LinkedIn groups. Join industry-related groups and start your own groups around your business or what you do. Groups provide a great place for discussions and collaborations. Someone in a marketing LinkedIn group I follow started a blog and wasn’t sure what to do with it. Fellow members checked out the blog and gave fantastic feedback on how to create content, provided tips to improve the blog’s SEO (search engine optimization), and explained how to use social sharing tools. You can gain a lot of insight by adding to the conversation and asking for advice from your colleagues.

Then, be a resource. Your knowledge and your unique take on what you do can’t be beat. Contribute to discussions with your expertise. Offer solutions and value to your LinkedIn colleagues and they will start to look at you and your business as the place to turn when they need help.

 Do you use LinkedIn? Share your experience with the site here or on our Facebook Page.

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Facts About LinkedIn That May Surprise You

November 11, 2011 By Heidi Tobias 1 Comment

Facebook gets most of the attention when talking about social media, but LinkedIn, with its network of more than 135 million users, can also be a treasure trove of useful information about your current and future customers and clients.

LinkedIn’s value is the people in the network.

More than 70% of them are between the ages 25 and 54, and over half of these people are male. An “active” 1% on LinkedIn only accounts for 34% of the traffic.

Most of the information sharing and online networking is done by individuals via Groups and Profile status updates. Individuals are looking to exchange ideas and ask questions with other individuals they can learn from right now or expect to be of value in the future.

Why should you care if LinkedIn users engage with you online?

Well, because 45% of visitors from LinkedIn to your other digital content (website, blog, whitepapers, video, etc.) will likely be new to your organization.

That’s a lot of prospective clients, customers, and supporters. These leads are highly motivated about seeking useful content, and are more likely to fill out a form. That means they’re likely to sign up for your mailing list, which will give you permission to continue the conversation.

If giving you information was not enough, these visitors stay an average of more than 10 minutes on your website.

Give them the kind of content they want

Product brochures are three times more likely to be downloaded and printed than case studies or whitepapers, which have seen a 22% decrease. On the other hand, videos and podcasts have increased in usage, and almost 40% of people have consumed information in a mobile format. While it’s not everyone, this is something to keep in mind.

If you use a webinar format to nurture new customers, know that people from LinkedIn are more likely to register and attend these live educational sessions. What you want to understand is there is still is a time and place for traditional content styles, but broaden what and how you offer to capture all of the relevant attention.

Contribute to grow

With LinkedIn, be a regular contributor and watch new customers inspired by your knowledge continue to connect and help you grow your business.

Are you using LinkedIn? Share your experience with us here. Or, to get started building a LinkedIn profile, visit the Social Media Quickstarter.

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How to Create a Successful LinkedIn Group with Smart Content

October 30, 2011 By Azure Collier Leave a Comment

When we talk with our customers about using LinkedIn as part of a social media marketing plan, a question we get a lot is, “How do I create a successful LinkedIn group?” Of the 100 million professionals on LinkedIn, more than 17 million of them have joined a group. As you start to join groups and create groups, one thing becomes clear: the key ingredient to a successful group is content.

Here are 3 tips you can use to create content that will engage your LinkedIn group members:

1. Find a balance with your content. People are joining your LinkedIn group because you provide something they need: your expertise. But they don’t want constant self-promotion. Instead, they’re looking for a conversation and something they can take away from the experience to use in their careers. So share your event announcements, your whitepapers, and the insightful blog post you just wrote. But don’t make all of the conversation about you. Invite your group members to talk too!

2. You can give the megaphone to your members by asking questions. One of the marketing association LinkedIn groups I belong to sparked an active discussion recently with one simple question: What’s the best marketing advice you’ve ever received? That question received 89 different answers. It gave the marketing association great engagement with their members, and also produced plenty of user-generated content that they were able to share and talk about in their newsletter, blog, and Twitter posts.

3. Not all of the content has to come from you and your group members. There are great blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts posted online every day. Post a link to other experts’ useful content to start a conversation and offer your take on it. You’ll get thanked by your group for sharing helpful information, and you’ll also see conversations happening as people start to offer their opinion of what you shared.

Are you using LinkedIn? Let us know how in the comments below.

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5 Simple Ways Your Nonprofit Can Use LinkedIn to Find More Donors

October 24, 2011 By Dave Charest Leave a Comment

With all the social networking sites available today, you may wonder which is best for your nonprofit organization.

More importantly, you may be wondering which site is best for your organization in terms of finding more donors. The answer may surprise you: It’s LinkedIn.

Why LinkedIn? Well, according to the site’s own statistics, LinkedIn boasts more than 120 million affluent, influential professionals from over 200 countries and territories. In 2010, HubSpot and LinkedIn teamed up to create an infographic that showed members are highly educated (more than 70% have a bachelor or graduate degree), affluent (close to 50% of users have an income of more than $100,000 per year), and they hold influential positions — more than 30% are senior level executives and managers, while 50% are decision makers in the companies/organizations.

LinkedIn’s power comes from getting connected with the right people. How do you get your nonprofit connected with these potential donors? Here are 5 simple tips to build these connections fast: [Read more...]

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The iPhone 4S Is Here, and Other Hot Topics

October 14, 2011 By Martin Lieberman Leave a Comment

What were the hot stories this week in the marketing world?

Well, while people waited to pick up their brand-new iPhones, they were learning about new enhancements to LinkedIn and Google that could affect their efforts to reach and communicate with customers, clients, supporters, and prospects.

Check out this roundup of the week’s big news to learn about these developments, new stats that may encourage you to take your marketing on the go, and more. [Read more...]

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Creating Links on LinkedIn

August 25, 2011 By Martin Lieberman Leave a Comment

To most people, LinkedIn is simply “Facebook for Professionals.” That’s not entirely wrong; many professionals do use the site to connect and interact with each other, without the games and distractions of other networks. Businesses and organizations of all types and sizes are on it, and many even use LinkedIn for recruiting and hiring.

With more than 100 million members, LinkedIn is a site that’s particularly useful for those who focus on business-to-business or nonprofit work, who can — and should — leverage relationships with colleagues, customers, members, and influential donors to find new connections. The more people who are in your network, the easier it is to discover people you may know at companies you’re trying to sell to or to donors you’re trying to solicit. Think of LinkedIn as a modern day Rolodex that grows itself organically.

But LinkedIn’s power goes beyond simple connections. No matter what your line of work or type of business or organization, LinkedIn can be beneficial for: [Read more...]

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