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Add LinkedIn to Your Social Media Strategy

March 15, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

LinkedIn logo formed by a crowd of peopleOver the last few months, LinkedIn added the ability to post status updates on company pages. The average LinkedIn company page is no longer a stagnant, unchanging list of standard company facts. Now companies can post status updates which can be commented upon by followers or page visitors. This change has added a level of interactivity to LinkedIn that can be used to communicate more effectively with employees, customers and prospects.

Those of you who are early adopters of social media marketing with active utilization of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts should consider adding LinkedIn status updates to your social media marketing mix. Many forward thinking companies have already jumped on the LinkedIn bandwagon. For example:

  • In the telecommunications field, AT&T’s status updates are always about their latest blog posts. They post blogs an average of four times a week.
  • Other companies with similar posting strategies are Whole Foods, Google, the Mayo Clinic, and SAS. Companies that post blogs along with other status updates: Citi, Deloitte, General Mills, and Oracle.
  • Dell posts product and business-oriented posts two to three times a day.
  • Citi posts daily. Status update topics are their blogs, product information and earnings.
  • Deloitte posts their blog every other day.
  • General Mills – aside from blogs, their dairy posts pertain to human resources and charitable giving.
  • Google posts their daily blog.
  • IBM creates daily posts about business, philanthropy and human interest stories.
  • Marriott posts product or business information daily.
  • Oracle posts twice a day and adds their blogs to the feed.
  • Microsoft posts daily, but uses LinkedIn for HR-only information.
  • Companies posting status updates twice a week: Eastman Kodak, Intel, Intuit, Publix, PwC (Price Waterhouse), and Starbucks.
  • Companies testing the waters with some limited status update activity over the last few weeks: American Express, Chesapeake Energy, Cree, Edward Jones, Genentech, National Instruments, Qualcomm, SAS, Scripps Health and Stryker.

Recommendations:
Although companies are not embracing LinkedIn updates as quickly as Facebook and Twitter, I recommend that you increase our LinkedIn activity by posting twice a week with status updates that are more sophisticated than your Facebook tweets and customized for the audience of professionals who “follow” you on LinkedIn. Share information or announcements about your products and services, sales and promotions, and, of course, your blog. Keep is simple, interesting and poignant, inviting comments and sharing.

While you’re strategizing your LinkedIn posts, consider updating your LinkedIn profile with a great content on your Overview page, expanding your company description and including important key words. Don’t forget to link your Twitter account to your LinkedIn account to display your recent tweets. Add your blog to LinkedIn, which will be automatically included in your feed with each update. For your Careers page, write a company description that “sells” your company to prospective, high level employees, including information about your mission, health benefits, and dedicated, creative employees. Don’t forget to post all your job openings on LinkedIn. Fill out your LinkedIn Products & Services page with everything your company offers, including videos. It takes a little effort to look great on LinkedIn, but it’s worth the extra effort.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: ,

Social Media Vendor Rip-off

July 20, 2011 By admin 2 Comments

Photo by Buster Benson, Flickr.com

An acquaintance asked me to take a look at her recently designed website. While there, I followed the links to her Twitter and Facebook feeds to see how her business was set up. I poked around for a few minutes and was so shocked by what I saw that my jaw literally dropped. The company (or the geek in his grandma’s basement) she hired to manager her Facebook and Twitter accounts was posting periodically, each post a few days apart. For retail businesses, this is not frequent enough, but at least there was some activity. The jaw dropping moment occurred when I noticed that they never bothered to develop an audience. In other words, they’re posting but nobody is reading the posts because they haven’t “friended” or followed anyone.

One post alerted people of a one-of-a-kind sale on a famous high-end merchandise website. But no one was there to read the post and follow through. But the strangest thing I noticed was on their Twitter feed. Although the URL to the company website and to the high-end merchandise website was listed, the hyperlink was missing. The purpose of a hyperlink is to make it easy for people reading your feed to click on your link. For heaven’s sake, to eliminate the link is foolish!

Facebook and Twitter are great social media sites. However, as anyone using either site can tell you, it necessary to take the time to “friend” or “follow” people. This is quite a time consuming chore, particularly if you’re working two or more social media sites and trying to run a business at the same time. If you don’t have the time to develop your own social media followers, by all means outsource it. But, please do your research and make sure that you give the business to someone who understands how to build a following and can create interesting, clickable posts for your business.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: ,

Silver Lining of Unemployment

June 26, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment
An open window with a beautiful view

When a door closes, a window opens. Photo credit: nociveglia at flickr.com

With unemployment hovering at around 10 percent, many of the unemployed have found new and productive ways to spend their time in an effort to make themselves more attractive to employers and/or add money into their own pockets.

  • Many people have started their own businesses while job hunting. If the job market continues to stagnate, they will eventually have something lucrative to fall back on as persistence often pays off. Even after obtaining a new job, your new business will continue to bring in extra income, which will help you rebuild savings accounts that dwindled during long months of unemployment.
  • Some have gone back to school (often with the help of the Department of Unemployment) to improve job skills or to gain skills in a totally different field from the one they left. Learning new skills makes you a stronger candidate for positions in your field or in a new field.
  • After years of drudgery, some newly unemployed folks are joyful at the thought of severance pay. They use the sudden influx of cash for education, a new business venture or even travel. There are quite a few blogs out there from folks who are using unemployment as an opportunity for new growth, whether it’s following a new career direction or following your dreams.
  • A few creative types are using their time to write “the great American novel.” Self-publishing has enabled authors to sell their books on sites like Amazon.com even if professional publishers were uninterested in their work. Or sell your intellectual property as an eBook for people to download at the fraction of the cost of a paper book. Those with published works in their field are considered to be experts and are more attractive candidates in their field.
  • Lots of people are using their time to get fit and develop a healthy lifestyle. Many of these people have developed blogs and websites to document their transition. These sites are quite popular and attract advertisers, which eventually leads to some cash in the bank.

Follow your path. Unemployment is a challenge but also gives you an opportunity to pursue interests that you love, build a new business, increase job skills, volunteer your time and knowledge, get fit and develop new skills. Use your time wisely as soon you’ll have a successful business or new job that eats up your time!

Filed Under: Blogging, New Business

To Blog or Not To Blog

January 20, 2011 By admin 2 Comments

Illustration by cambodia4kidsorg:Flickr.com

I was looking through a client’s non-profit website recently because she asked me to help her with her company site as well. I created the non-profit website in WordPress and set it up so that the homepage is their blog. I was dismayed to notice that their last blog post was nearly three months ago.

When I set up a client’s site I discuss the power of blogging with them. If they are not interested, I design the site without a blog, just static information that they can change whenever necessary. But when a client is highly communicative and passionate about their business, I recommend a blog.

Why Blog?

  1. Search engines are hungry little bots. They are tired of “eating” the same old information sitting on the web day after day and are always on the lookout for fresh material to chew on. When they find it, they determine your site to be a living, breathing entity and rank you a bit higher on search engine listings. When you have lots of new content, like blog posts that people have been clicking and reading, search bots rank your site even higher on the listings.
  2. Aside from search engine rankings, your blog is your most visible salesperson. It is a round-the-clock point of contact with your site visitors. A blog that entertains and is chock-filled with information draws readers. People tend to share posts that excite them; they pay it forward, so to speak. A popular blog post can make the rounds, giving your company and products visibility and branding your name. When your blog fans subscribe to your blog, they receive your new blog posts as rapidly as you can post them, further selling your brand and eventually bringing you their business.
  3. Your blog gives you a platform for having a conversation with your readers. They comment on your post and you reply back. You are no longer a faceless company; you are someone who listens and responds. Powerful!

How Much Blog is Too Much?

Although there is no set formula, there are some valid points worth following:

  • Most visitors scan web pages rather than slowly reading them. Rather than large blocks of text, break up your content with white spaces. Uses frequent paragraphs, even after each sentence. Break down thoughts into bullet points or numbered sentences. Less is more.
  • Three solid paragraphs is all you really need to write. However, if a topic is juicy and you want to relay information, keep writing. If your post gets too long, break it up into two or three separate posts that are linked together.
  • Conversational English is best for blogging. Business writing is best saved for white papers.

Most of all, bring your passion into your writing and your readers will feel it and respond accordingly. You will soon agree that blogging is your most formidable tool in your marketing toolkit.

As for my non-blogging client – after our conversation, she promised to schedule a time to write her blog at least once a month. She realized that blogging allows her to communicate to her clients and prospects and build her name as an expert in her field. Quite a return for a few hours work a month!


Filed Under: Blogging

Change is Good

December 13, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Until today, I had a standard website with static pages, which is what most companies use for web presence. In the last few years, I noticed more and more companies incorporating  social media in their marketing mix. They are blogging, creating company Facebook or Linked In pages, and tweeting on Twitter. Having used these sites for fun (literally to socialize with my friends), I started researching the phenomenon of Social Media and began to admire the novel way of spreading the word.

Megapodium's old design: time for a new look!

After much thought, I began setting up clients with their own Linked In, Facebook and Twitter accounts. I taught them how to

blog and then share the blog with their friends and customers. I gave them a formula to follow to achieve visibility and watched it work time and time again. Yet I was not taking my own advice and still lived with a regular, informational website.

It wasn’t until I finished creating a blog for my favorite theater company that I began to envision a new way of marketing small businesses. Rather than just building websites, it was also time to give customers the ability to add social media to the marketing mix.

Hence (don’t you just love old terms!), I transformed my website into the type of site I now build for my customers. It’s informational, optimized for search engines, and blog-worthy. Don’t you just love innovation?

Filed Under: Social Media, Web Design Tagged With: ,