I’ve been a long time fan of Gary Bertwistle as a marketing speaker (originally at a TEC event) and as an author. So it was a real thrill when we sat down to discuss social media’s impact on marketing and promotion.
Here’s the video we recorded in Sydney and below that is the transcript:
How does social media impact marketing and promotion? Hi I’m Gary Bertwistle and today we’re talking about how does social media affect marketing and brand. And having worked with a myriad of different companies of all shapes and sizes, the biggest issue today is that people are confusing promotion with marketing and people are using social media is a tool to promote themselves but unless the message you are putting out in social media differentiates you from everybody else using social media to promote themselves, then it’s not a piece of marketing, it’s actually a piece of promotion,
What is the difference between promotion and marketing?
The difference is promotion is how you tell me stuff. Marketing is the message that goes in that that separates you from everybody else, because chances are you with whatever product or service that you’ve got are doing pretty much the same or very close similarity to your competitors. Marketing is what tells me crystal clear what makes you famous and you add value to my world, Then you use social media as the tool to promote it.
So that’s the difference between the two. But right now people are just on Facebook or Twitter or the other tool you can use but they’re not differentiating themselves.
Where can people find more information about you Gary? Well you can find out more information about me from GaryBertwistle.com and on there there’s a bunch of videos like this, podcasts, books, I do a newspaper every Wednesday afternoon called the Espresso which is a free story sharing all the latest thinking from around the world, social media, retail, FMCG and everything else and its all free and on the website.
After getting engaged in Japan several days ago I already feel like I am behind, with picking out locations, decorations and the all-important dress. Every bride-to-be is looking for a way to put their own personal stamp on their wedding and as a social media specialist I was thinking about a web 2.0 wedding. Ditch the $15 wedding magazines ladies and welcome to the world of Etsy, lover.ly and Pinterest.
Instead of buying magazines, cutting them into pieces and lugging a binder around to all of the vendors you meet, why not just find the image on a wedding blog and pin it to your board on Pinterest and just take your smartphone to your consultations? SIMPLE! Here are some blogs and websites that I have been using to form the inspiration for my big day:
Hi it’s Adam Frankin and welcome to the third episode of Social Media TV coming to you from Los Angeles.
We’ll be looking at the standout events in social media this week. We’ll be looking at the huge rise in Pinterest. We’ll be looking at the social media usage stats in Australia and we’ll be looking at an awesome case study of a German celebrity chef!
Pinterest
Now firstly Pinterest in huge right now. They’re getting 4 million hits per day and the reports are showing that people are much more likely to buy a product if they’ve found it on Pinterest first. They’re actually 10 per cent more likely to buy it and likely to spend 10 per cent more if they found the product on Pinterest. So if you’ve got a product to sell, certainly take a look at this social media platform!
Australian Usage stats
Secondly, the social media usage stats are out for this month.
And the Top 5.
1. Facebook with ~11 million active users
2. You Tube with ~11 million active users
3. Blogpost with ~4 million users
4. LinkedIn with ~2.1 million users
5. Twitter with ~1.8 million active users
The big movers up the list this month, are Pinterest which is up to 10th position with 470,000 active users and Instagram was up to position 12 with ~250,000 users.
Now thirdly, when I was in Korea last week to speak at the Worlds Chef Congress I met a lovely gentleman called Johann Lafer who is a celebrity chef in Germany who is using social media really effectively.
And it was really interesting hearing him about YouTube, Facebook, his blog and his website because he said having that whole machine working together is so much more effective than just having one tool operating on its own.
And he’s got 13,000 Twitter followers [correction: 13,00 Facebook fans] and everything’s tying together and it’s working really successfully for him because he does over 250 TV shows a year, along with Jamie Oliver he’s got one of the most downloaded chef apps in the country [correction: in Europe]. And he’s got a whole series of cook books that he is promoting through the social media channels. So really interesting to hear him explain the whole social media and web strategy working together is so effective for him.
That’s a wrap for social media TV this week. I’m Adam Franklin and on Twitter I’m @Franklin_Adam. If you’ve got a boss or a marketing manager you’d like to share this with, please feel free to do so and I’ll see you next week.
Hi it’s Adam Franklin and welcome to the second episode of Social Media TV coming to you from Bondi where the sun is finally shining. Now we’re going to take a look at the stand out events in social media this week.
Now pay particular attention if you’re going to the Olympics, if you’re getting married or own a Facebook Business Page.
Facebook Offers
Now this week, Facebook has just released it’s Deals option (or more accurately its Offers feature). It’s designed for Facebook Business Page owners who want to offer specials or promotions to their fans. Now you might remember from last week that you’re not allowed to include specials, your contact details or calls to action on your Facebook Cover Image, now that’s what this new Offers section is for.
London Olympics
With less than 100 days to go until the London Olympics, it’s being hyped as the social Olympic Games yet the social media guidelines are anything but. It seems to me as though athletes won’t be allowed to be in photographs with products unless they are endorsed by the Olympic Committee. And even more staggeringly athletes won’t be allowed to share photographs or share videos from inside the Olympic Village. I’d love to know what you think about this because to me it seems like sponsorship going way too far.
Lover.ly
Now if you love weddings and you love Pinterest, you’re in for a real treat with the new social media platform Lover.ly. It’s designed for wedding planners and it allows to you to discover and save all your wedding ideas in one easy place. You can search by colour, category or what’s popular and save it all in your Lover.ly account.
Now that’s a wrap for social media TV for this week. I’m Adam Franklin, on twitter I’m @Franklin_Adam and if you’ve got a marketing manager or a boss who you’d like to share this with, please feel free to do so and I’ll see you next week.
If you’re not in the business of making websites, it might surprise you to learn how many people decide they need a website, seemingly for the sake of having a website. As a freelancer, I get lots of enquiries for small-budget websites, most of which can’t clearly articulate WHY they need a website, other than to check it off the list. Even at Bluewire Media, a high-end web strategy company, the “Website Goals” section of our getting started questionnaire is all too often left blank.
But this just won’t do. Even for small projects, it’s important that we begin with some goals.
Why?
So that we have something to base future decisions on.
So that the website becomes an asset to your business, rather than a liability (yes, an out-of-date website is a liability).
So that we can gauge the value of the website to your business.
So that the website actually has a purpose, other than to “simply exist”.
The number one way to ensure your website doesn’t work for you is to not define any goals.
Note: when I say we, I don’t mean Bluewire Media specifically, I mean the business and the web company (whoever they may be) collectively.
So, what might your website goals be? And how should you go about setting them?
Start with your business goals
A good place to start is with your overall business goals. These might be something like:
1. Become the biggest seller of XYZ widgets in the Asia-Pacific region by 2014
2. Grow to 100 staff in the next 3 years
Now these might not sound like website goals, but they’re certainly things that a website can help you achieve. We can now say that our overarching website goals are:
1. Increase sales.
2. Attract high-quality staff.
What we’ve just done has probably already been the difference between having a ‘Careers’ page (if not a whole careers section with job listings) and not having one. We also now know that we need to figure out what we can do on the website to increase sales.
Of course, not every business goal can be assisted by a website, and not every website goal will be related to one of your specific business goals, but business goals are a good starting point. Some other examples of goals could be to:
Improve your reputation as a trustworthy, industry-leading organisation
Coerce people into using your services
Build your database of contacts to whom you can market your products/services
Generate leads for a sales team to follow up
Any number of other things
Again, the simple fact that you’ve come up with goals at all will result in a better end product. But lets dive in a bit further.
Now that we have our goals, what do we do with them?
It’s pretty simple really. For each goal, lets see what we might be able to implement on the website to help achieve it.
Increase Sales
If you have the time, money and available staff, you might decide you actually want to sell your products online. If not, that’s ok, your website can still help by providing detailed information about your products (or services), and why anyone would choose them over your competition. You can also point people towards where they can buy the products, and make it easy for people to contact you with questions.
If you’re looking to increase sales, it’s important that you provide as much information as possible about your products or services – whether you’re going to be selling them online or not. Remember, you need to cater to customers at all stages of the buying process, and the more information you provide, the more likely they’ll be to keep your product or service in consideration at later stages of their decision process.
Attract Staff
If you’re looking to attract staff, it would be a good idea to have a “Careers” (or similarly named) page on your website that explains the perks of working for your awesome organisation. This page could also link to current job openings (whether they’re on your website or SEEK, MyCareer etc), and encourage anyone to apply even if no positions are currently being advertised. Some companies even put up a more noticeable menu item “We’re Hiring” when they have a job opening.
Improve Your Reputation
The internet makes it easy for a potential customer to research your company before ever contacting you. Fortunately, it also makes it easy for you to make sure they like what they find. If you’re looking to improve your reputation, start a blog.
Blogging is a great way to demonstrate your knowledge, culture, leadership etc; and the chances are, if someone is researching your company online, they’ll probably come across your blog.
Build Your Marketing Database
If you’re looking to get more newsletter sign-ups, you might want to include a little feature box somewhere on your website (E.g. the sidebar, or under each blog post) with an incentive to sign-up. For example, Bluewire Media offers a free Ebook to anyone who subscribes to our newsletter. The more enticing your incentive is, the more sign-ups you’ll get!
Generate Leads
A whole blog could be devoted to covering ways of generating leads online, in fact there is already at least one very popular one; the hubspot blog is devoted to “inbound marketing” (a term they coined). Inbound marketing is an online lead-generation method that focuses on attracting potential customers (leads) by creating content that they will find useful.
The hubspot blog is itself an excellent example of inbound marketing. Hubspot have a software suite (called hubspot) that helps marketers generate and nurture leads online. By constantly publishing content and resources on their blog that marketers find useful, they are attracting potential customers to their website. If you haven’t been to the hubspot blog before, I highly recommend that you do. This is a good post to get started with.
The second step in online lead generation after creating fantastic, useful content, is to capture those leads. A good way of doing this is to publish a downloadable resource (for example an ebook, template, checklist etc), then require at least a name and email address before allowing the resource to be downloaded. You now have the names and email addresses (at least), of a whole lot of potential customers. Remember though, the more closely related your resource is to your actual product or service, the higher quality the leads will be.
So how have our goals changed the final outcome?
If we’d decided to go ahead and design our website without thinking about our goals, it might have looked something like this:
Without any pre-defined goals, your website may end up looking like this.
If, however, you’d gone ahead and defined some goals like the ones we discussed above, your website could end up looking more like this:
With some pre-defined goals, your website starts to look a lot more useful.
It’s pretty obvious at first glance that the “with-goals” outcome looks like a much better website, but there’s more to it than that. The second design specifically attempts to address our goals, and is therefore much more likely to become an asset to your business – increasing sales, attracting staff, improving your reputation, building your database and generating leads.
To sum up, setting goals is an absolute necessity before beginning a website project of ANY size; whether you’re a one-man plumbing business or a multi-national widget corporation. Just setting some simple end-goals could make a huge difference not only to the look and functionality of your website, but also to the return you get on your investment.
And the most important lesson is that you must publish remarkable content on the web if you want to ignite your business and engage customers.
Yes, it’s hard work but the rewards are huge – more customers and more business!
And fortunately, Ann and CC share their expertise on how to create blogs, podcasts, videos, ebooks and webinars.
How to find remarkable content
Despite probably feeling like “you have nothing interesting to write about”, Ann and CC remind us that everyone knows stuff that is useful and valuable to other people. It’s just a matter of identifying the knowledge you possess in your head.
If you feel some apprehension that no-one will find you interesting. Ignore the fear and carry on. This is just our lizard brain talking (a term Seth Godin uses to describe the part of the brain that ‘holds us back with fear’).
So, what do you already know that other people will find useful?
How to create remarkable content
The next biggest hurdle you’ll face is fear that you’ll seem full-of-yourself if you start sprouting off about what you know. The key I’m told is to talk about topics that are interesting to your readers rather than talk about yourself. So humbly offer your opinion, your experience or your tips on a certain topic and overcome that fear of coming across as a know-it-all.
How do you do that? Well, picture yourself sitting down with a friend who was eager to learn from you. Then write as if you were speaking with that friend. It will allow you write very precisely for that person and it will also allow your personality to shine through. And it’s a lot more exciting for your reader than an uni-style essay!
How to share remarkable content
Just keep on going sharing your content! Post content to your blog, upload it to You Tube channel, convert it to a 140 character version and tweet it on twitter, add it to your Facebook Timeline and email it to your subscribers.
Don’t worry, you’ll get better and better at it. The best way to gain traction with your community is to set a publishing schedule and stick to it!
Social Media Planning Template
At Bluewire we’ve been working on a tool that helps you develop your social media strategy and more importantly to map out your Content Publishing Schedule. Today is the launch of the Social Media Planning Template(it’s a free download, no registration required).
I’ve often been the recipient of emails from friends where there’s an attached image that I ‘must check out’.
Often they’ve been inappropriate JPGs and I’ve hit delete. And given how disruptive most personal emails are, I now make it a habit to delete all personal emails with strange attachments.
But it got me thinking about how and why CEOs should take email image monitoring seriously. What are the repercussions of inappropriate images on your email?
I asked David Siddal from MailGuard if he could write a guest blog post that adresses this issue.
Welcome David:
With email now comprising around 75% of business communications, and staff personal use of the internet generally accepted, the sending, receiving and forwarding of emails and attachments is very easy. The proliferation of digital cameras, smart phones, wireless access points, 3G, broadband, online storage and social media has made the creation and distribution of images just as easy.
Combine these factors and there’s a serious threat posed to business. It’s one that should be an important concern for CEOs.
All images stored on business networks or that pass through corporate email systems are the legal responsibility of that company. As a result CEOs must ensure that their networks do not contain illicit or inappropriate images.
Staff may not have requested these images be sent to them, and may well be completely innocent recipients. But others may send, forward and store such images on a business network, exposing the business to serious consequences.
Most businesses have an Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP) in place to educate staff on what is deemed appropriate usage of company email. However, having the management tools in place capable of monitoring compliance with the AUP, is less common. Such a tool not only allows compliance monitoring, but the management information delivered can be used to help educate and reinforce staff on what is and is not acceptable.
Why are CEOs adopting email image monitoring?
Here are five key reasons why CEOs are adopting image monitoring and analysis of their organisation’s email traffic:
Mitigating Legal Risk Exposure
It’s not only productivity and reputations that suffer when pornography is downloaded, distributed and viewed in the workplace. Staff members affected are entitled to take legal action if the issue isn’t dealt with properly. And, once lawyers are involved, regardless of the outcome, you will definitely have lost time, lost productivity and incurred unnecessary costs.
Monitoring AUP Compliance
Having a written policy on pornography in the workplace, whilst important, is not enough in the view of the Australian Human Rights Commission. To avoid vicarious liability in sexual harassment claims, a business must be able to demonstrate it has the systems in place that assist in monitoring compliance with such a policy.
Reducing Burden on Network Infrastructure
Once staff are aware of their responsibilities, and more importantly, realise there are systems in place to monitor activity, any traffic in pornographic or other illicit images drops away sharply. As a result, internet bandwidth is used for its intended purpose – helping your business run smoothly.
Equally important, reduced traffic with porn removed means less archiving headaches. Not only is the cost of storage reduced with lower volume to worry about, but those little legal time bombs will no longer be sitting somewhere in the archives.
Protecting your Brand
For business today, being linked to pornography can be a serious blow to its reputation that can take years to rectify. It will not only affect the public’s perception of your organisation, but will make it more difficult to recruit quality staff and retain your clients’ trust.
Your brand is a vital asset, and it’s vital to ensure it is protected.
Educating your staff
Image monitoring reports can provide a valuable management tool to identify members of staff that are not adhering to company policy. This in turn means staff can be counselled at an early stage about what is appropriate, allowing managers to deal with any issues before they become a major problem. Your staff will also develop awareness that their actions have consequences.
Having management tools in place capable of reducing the risk of legal liability, protecting the reputation of your brand, and educating and enforcing a company AUP, are proving to be valuable for a growing number of CEOs.
——-
Thank you. David Siddal is the marketing copywriter for MailGuard.
MailGuard is the innovator in cloud security providing iron-clad protection and productivity solutions to businesses all over Australia. You can follow @mailguard on twitter.
It’s no secret that the web is disrupting all sorts of industries. Recruitment is no exception so I wanted to follow up on the previous blog post (89 web tools for everyday business) with a post really focussed on recruiting and retaining the best team.
There’s none better to talk about recruiting on the web than Mike Overell, CEO and Founder of RecruitLoop. We met surfing and when he told me about what he was doing with his start up, I was keen to hear more. He lives and breathes online recruitment and agreed to share 15 web tools that can help any business recruit.
Enter Mike…
Every business needs new staff at some point. But recruiting them can be expensive or painful. Both if you’re unlucky.
There’s good news for employers: The internet is ‘democratising’ the recruitment process.
Tools that were once a trade secret of expensive recruitment agencies are now available to anyone online – at a low cost, and often free! The trick for most businesses is knowing what’s available, and where to start. This list should help.
First, consider the traditional options. Employers typically take one of 2 approaches when recruiting new staff:
1. Throw an ad on Seek (“post then pray”).
2. Use a traditional recruitment agency (“pay then pray”)
If you’ve tried either, you’ll know the drill. You always pay: whether in cash money or time. And there’s generally an element of prayer. Both can be deeply unsatisfactory.
Now, let’s consider the full recruitment cycle, simplified into 3 key phases: sourcing, selection, and finally retention. Here are 15 online tools that can make recruitment cheaper, easier and faster for any business.
SOURCING
The job board isn’t quite dead. For many roles it’s still the primary source of hire. But smart employers no longer just post and pray. They actively source candidates through a range of other channels.
1. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the obvious alternative to job boards, but many employers are still confused about where to start (here are 5 tips for beginners). You can search candidates, post job ads, join groups, and promote your organisation. Long the domain of professional recruiters (who provide half of LinkedIn’s revenue), companies are now wising up to the potential themselves.
An example? Deloitte have cut $6M from their annual recruitment bill through more active sourcing on LinkedIn.
2. Facebook
Facebook is approached with a mix of enthusiasm and cynicism when it comes to recruitment. Whatever you think, you can’t ignore it. Creative employers can now target job ads to specific types of users like a laser. Looking for a marketing manager, with an interest in indie music, based in Sydney’s eastern suburbs? Facebook can help.
Also checkout professional networking plugins like Branchout and BeKnown.
3. Video
Video is a great way to attract candidates by building a profile, and sharing your personality. Get creative. Two of our favourite recruitment examples:
Don’t forget a call to action! You can easily insert a LinkedIn ‘Apply Now‘ button on your blog. Potential candidates can register interest with a single click.
4. Meetups (www.meetup.com)
What’s your ideal candidate passionate about? What’s their area of specialty? Meetups are taking off globally, allowing people with similar interests to get together in person. Yep! TRW (the real world).
Here’s a secret no recruiter would share with you. You’re looking for a Ruby on Rails specialist? There’s a meetup for that. Why not go along, introduce yourself, and meet potential candidates in person? A few hours at a meetup could save you $20,000, which is what a specialist recruiter would charge when they find you a candidate this way.
5. Forums
This is an online version of a meetup. There’s a forum for almost any industry or niche. You’ll see people displaying their knowledge, expertise, and even complaints or frustrations about their current employer.
Examples:
- Whirlpool – internet and technology
- Mumbrella – marketing and digital
SELECTION
Now you’ve got a shortlist of candidates. How do you select the best one?! Don’t ignore the traditional interview. But these other online tools can make your interviews more efficient and targeted.
6. Video interviews
Anyone who has interviewed more than a handful of candidates in person will have experienced ‘the dud’. Within 5 minutes you know they’re clearly not right for the role, but you continue the interview to avoid appearing rude. Video interviews can solve this problem, whether:
- Live interview – eg through Skype
- Recorded interviews – Automated video interviews, with candidates recording their blind responses to questions via webcam. (This is a tool we offer at RecruitLoop).
7. Psychometric testing
Learn about behavioural, leadership or decision-making traits before hiring anyone. Psychometric testing used to be expensive, but affordable online options include:
Note: a psychometric test should only be one data point to your hiring decision and certainly not the decision-making tool. Make sure your provider gives you a solid and pragmatic interpretation in a report from a qualified psychologist.
8. Skills testing
Got a role with technical requirements? You’d want to be sure your candidate is up to the task. You might even want to test a candidate before deciding whether to interview.
9. Reference / background checking
We recommend 2 reference checks before making any hire. But it’s a thankless task, sometimes suited to outsourcing.
Examples:
- Verify
- The PRM Group – candidates can apply for their police check on line
10. Social media checking
This is a controversial, but growing area (see: Should employers check Facebook before making a hire). At one extreme, some web-savvy employers ask candidates to only submit their online social profiles when applying for a job. Used with caution, a candidate’s online presence can tell you a lot about their personality and cultural fit.
RETENTION
Awesome! You’ve made the hire. Now the most important part is keeping them satisfied, engaged and productive. Employee retention is one of the biggest ‘white space’ opportunities for companies to save time and effort.
11. Employee Attachment
Did you know that during the first 120 days of your new recruit’s employment, they will actively assess whether they have made the right decision to join your organisation? The cost of poor attachment is beyond the cost of recruitment. The direct and indirect costs can add up to over $100,000 over the first three months for a new employee.
Our friend Anthony Sork has patented a survey measure to test exactly this. Used properly, it gives employers an opportunity to intervene before losing a new team member.
12. Ongoing engagement
Measuring ongoing employee engagement used to require expensive consultants and surveys. We’ve been watching an Australian startup with interest – CultureAmp – which makes engagement surveys more accessible, affordable and actionable.
13. Performance tracking
Performance management is a critical process but one that unfortunately most companies ignore. It’s also a process often run poorly, giving staff the impression that the organisation doesn’t care about or invest in their performance and professional development.
Two fantastic local startups are making performance management easy and (dare I say) fun!
- Sonar6
- Small Improvements
14. Recognition
Often a hard area to get right, both individual and team recognition can have a huge impact on productivity and morale. Check out Sydney-based startup:
- Wooboard
15. Internal collaboration
Get your team talking! Break down the silos and bring social into the enterprise. A great tool in this space includes:
- Yammer
THE REALITY CHECK
I should report an unfortunate truth: none of these tools is a magic wand. Recruitment is a mission critical process, requiring real effort, resources and focus. Then throw in some human touch and old-fashioned gut feel for good measure. But the good news is that every company can now access tools that agencies once used to justify fees in the tens of thousands of dollars.
The internet now makes it possible for any company to recruit like a Google (or any recruitment agency) as long as you’re willing to dedicate the effort into doing it properly.
[If you're interested in finding out more about Michael or RecruitLoop, you can find them on Twitter @mboverell or @recuitloop]
Welcome to the first episode of Social Media TV - a weekly video series where I’ll look at the Top 3 things happening in social media.
Here are this week’s Top 3:
1. Instagram, the photo sharing service has been acquired by Facebook for a whopping $1 billion.
2. Facebook’s Timeline upgrade has been mandatory for about a week and business owners are still grappling with what they can and can’t include in the Cover Image on the front of their Timeline. What you can’t include is your website URL, your contact details, any special offers or anything that encourages users to like or share that page. These are all in breach of Facebook’s terms and conditions and if you do include any of those things technically Facebook can permanently delete your page. So just be aware of those traps.
3. The Kony 2012 sequel film has been released and despite what you may think of the first film, this one addresses the criticisms the first one attracted and it aims to take that global awareness that the first one was so good at achieving and turning that into action to help limit the power of the LRA and more specifically its leader Joseph Kony.
Thanks for watching the first episode of Social Media TV. If you’d like to get these updates each week, you can follow @Franklin_Adam on twitter.
The other week you may have been graced with a brief email thanking you for making up the three million Australians subscribed to LinkedIn.
The archetypal message was complete with a photo of happy LinkedIn users and a personal signature from the Australian managing director. You probably would have also skimmed it for 20 seconds before hitting delete. Beyond the simplistic efforts to keep in touch with LinkedIn members, the self-proclaimed milestone may be worth noting.
Unique viewers vs. active users Social Media News does bring up an important fact. They estimate LinkedIn’s active users to be only two million. However, their February Social Media Statistics indicate LinkedIn’s unique Australian viewers were up 400,000 from the previous month.
Facebook still dominates web 2.0 with around 11 million users, but LinkedIn’s numbers represent the largest growth for that period out of all the popular social media platforms. The professional networking site also attracts more viewers than the highly topical Twitter. Although slightly down from February, March statistics show LinkedIn’s views are still steady and above Twitter.
Spend time detailing your profile
Surely then, LinkedIn is a necessity for building a business or paving out a career. A friend of mine seeking work in advertising was not so convinced. Her complaint was that LinkedIn did not offer the amount of job opportunities she expected. A crucial factor is the amount of information you provide.
Caution is always preached when providing personal information on social media. When it comes to LinkedIn though, adding as many details as possible can get the most out of it. Jobs, groups and contacts will be suggested to you based on the experience, education and skills listed on your profile.
Consider the premium account and reap the rewards
Premium versions of the account are also worth looking into. I was offered a free trial for a month and was impressed with the amount of extras. You can monitor your own profile views, search people out of your network and have a nifty logo pop up when your name is searched.
In the early stages of having a LinkedIn profile, these little extras can be the difference when establishing important contacts. I went back to the free standard version after the trial, but fast-forward a few months and I’ve now been offered a 25% discount to come back to the premium version for three months.
Clever marketing will be rewarded. I imagine LinkedIn will reach four million users by July.
Keep active and don’t neglect traditional networking
A thing to remember while juggling your own social network-mix is to keep your profile current and stay active. Many business opportunities can come from online, but conventional methods of networking also still apply. Connections made on LinkedIn are much more valuable when you’ve had face-to-face contact initially.
Who was the last person you connected with on LinkedIn?
If you’re not in the business of making websites, it might surprise you to learn how many people decide they need a website, seemingly for the sake of having a website. As a freelancer, I get lots of enquiries for small-budget websites, most of which can’t clearly articulate WHY they need a website, other than to check it off the list. Even at Bluewire Media, a high-end web strategy company, the “Website Goals” section of our getting started questionnaire is all too often left blank.
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