Since November of 2009, LinkedIn has been integrated with Microsoft Outlook, which allows you to keep a careful watch on your LinkedIn contacts, including the last time that you sent them Email, scheduled a meeting and all other activities.

As a part of the integration, your LinkedIn connections show up in your Outlook contacts as a LinkedIn folder, which includes the photograph and contact information of your contacts. After you send Email to your LinkedIn contacts, the activity appears on the bottom of your Email stream so that you can easily access the recent activity of your contacts as well as their latest status updates and what they are reading.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc0On7Wl-0I

It is simple to integrate LinkedIn with Outlook:

Adding LinkedIn to Microsoft Outlook

• Download and install the most current version of the Outlook Social Connector from Microsoft (you will need either Microsoft 2003, 2007 or 2010).
   
• After that is installed, you need to download and install the LinkedIn Outlook Connector.
   
• Finally, restart your Outlook and follow the instructions on how to connect your LinkedIn account to your Outlook account. Outlook will prompt you about which network you would like to connect with. You would then click on the LinkedIn icon and login to your LinkedIn account.
   
• If the LinkedIn information doesn’t appear automatically, you need to click on “View social network providers available online” for manual support.
   
• The LinkedIn contacts will then appear in your contacts folder as a separate folder.
   
• You will see a green + and the LinkedIn icon beneath your contacts photos. The green + will allow you to add your contacts to your other social media networks and will take you directly to those networks.

Advantages

One of the wonderful advantages to connecting LinkedIn to Outlook is that it will help you to keep all of your business connections in touch and up to date with what’s going on with you and your business. Of course, that will definitely serve to strengthen your existing business relationships as well as help you to cultivate new relationships.

Another great feature is that a history will be retained of the Emails in your inbox from related contacts and you will be able to see the attachments that you have received from them as well as calendar events related to that particular contact.

As simple and convenient as it was to grow your network of connections on LinkedIn before, it will be much easier if you have tied LinkedIn to Outlook. As I am sure you are aware, LinkedIn is one of the best and most used professional social media networks all over the world. Most people use Microsoft Outlook for their Email needs. Linking the two together is a brilliant move and it will make the communication aspect of your business that much easier and efficient, which will, in turn, lead to greater business success.

Conclusion

If you follow the steps that have been given here, you will find the connection between LinkedIn and Outlook to be very useful. It is great that you can now go between LinkedIn and Outlook and the increased ease and speed will really make your time much more efficient and productive.

You save a great deal of effort and many steps by doing it this way. Another great thing is that if someone else wishes to connect with you, that person’s profile information will appear in your inbox and all you have to do is either add them or click on their profile before you connect. By doing this, you have completely eliminated having to go to your LinkedIn inbox to accomplish the same thing. Start connecting as soon as possible and keep growing your business and your connections with other people.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

All of your social media sites work a little differently. You may wonder how often you should update your status on the various social media channels of which you are a part.

Some of the more popular social media sites will be discussed here and if you follow the recommendations, you will start to see some positive results when it comes to your business connections on social media.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a status update function that a large number of people were not sure how to use or what purpose it actually served. Currently, LinkedIn is integrated with Twitter. A large number of LinkedIn members are also on Facebook and those people have a large number of ideas about how they want to update their LinkedIn status. Because of the fact that LinkedIn does not work in the same manner as Twitter as far as timing is concerned or like Facebook’s News Feed, it is not really advantageous to post information on LinkedIn more than once a day. Also, if you really don’t have any significant status change (or an update that ties into your objective) to post on LinkedIn on any given day, don’t worry about it. You should also be mindful of the fact that people are not going to want you to send frequent status updates too much. If you do, they may consider what you are sharing with them as spam. One very important fact to remember is that LinkedIn is a site for professionals and you need to make absolutely certain that what you are posting on LinkedIn is appropriate for everyone.

Facebook

There are numerous people on Facebook who want to take up space on your New Feed and if you don’t post often enough, you won’t get noticed. Posting once a day on Facebook is totally appropriate and the nature of the content that people post is more personal on Facebook than it is on LinkedIn. When it comes to frequency, Facebook is not Twitter, of course. Once a day is fine but every half hour or every hour would definitely be too much. With that said, you may have times when you want to update your status on Facebook more often than once a day, depending on how much you need to communicate and how much is going on in your business. Always be sure that you post content that is relevant to your readers and that they will find interesting and useful. The more useful the information, the more often they will return to your website.

Twitter

It is completely appropriate for you to tweet as many times a day as you wish. However, you need to be selective about what you convey in your tweets. If you are followed on Twitter by some business colleagues, you may not want them to know that you just ate the most delicious candy bar ever or that you just came back from getting a pedicure.

Blogging

You should blog as often as is humanly possible. You should shoot for your minimum blogging frequency of once a week, although more often is better. It is very important to be consistent with your postings when it comes to blogging. The best thing to do is to have the same frequency, same day of the week and same time of the day each week. Remember that you can never blog enough. It would be amazing if you could blog daily, although it might be difficult to find the time to do that. Each time you post a new blog, the search engines will visit your blog. The more content you post, the more the search engines will pay attention to you. Also, if you don’t continue to post fresh content, people will lose interest in your content and stop coming to read what you have on your website.

Conclusion

Fresh content generation and syndication are the keys to using social media to its fullest potential for your business. Content that is static does not have a very positive effect on your readers or on your business. However, content that is updated frequently and always appears fresh and new has a very positive effect on your readers. The more frequently you share valuable content that is interesting and helpful to other people, the more they will want to read what you are saying and the more they will trust you and find you credible.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

You are connected with a large number of people online. Of that large number, there are several whom you have never met face to face. Is that enough for you and for them?

Why a photograph online is so important

Having a business relationship with someone whom you have never seen in person is very different than having business relationships with people with whom you have telephone relationships. You don’t need to see them because you interact with another human quality—voice. In the social media world, connecting a face with a name (as well as whatever else you learn about the person) is essential for the success of your business.

With the ever-increasing popularity of social networking and social media sites, there are more and more people who don’t complete their profiles and who don’t understand how important it is in business for them to share more of themselves than just a name, where they went to school and where they are currently working. A little education goes a long way in this situation.

Not only are the details of your various profiles important to other people with whom you share a business relationship but your photo is also of utmost importance. You don’t display your photo as part of your social media profiles because of how good looking you are, you display your photo so that others are able to relate to you on a more human level. That is an essential part of developing and deepening your relationships with them.

Giving the entire picture

Your photo gives others a comprehensive and complete profile of you. When people have relationships with others online, they want to be able to see who is engaging them. This builds a deeper trust in the relationship, it builds more credibility and, perhaps most importantly, it makes you more human to them. The foundation of social media is engagement, valuable conversations and exchange of information and trust.

You should use the same photo in all of your online profiles because this will create stronger branding for you and your business and people will start to remember your photo and connect it with what you are offering.

With that in mind, it is very easy to see why a photo of you is so critical when it comes to interacting with other people online. Another very important thing to remember is to use your own photo and name in your online profiles. It is not a good idea to use your company name, company logo, or other impersonal images. You are trying to bring in the human factor, not remove it.

Your company brand is extremely important but in your business relationships with other business people online, people want to interact with you, the person, not your company, even though you represent your company and brand. If you make your profile personal, it will help to build the credibility of your business as well.

How to choose a photograph

You might ask how you should choose your photo. When it comes to actually choosing your photo, you should use a close-up shot or head shot. That way, you will also be recognizable in a thumbnail version of the photograph. Your photo should be professional looking (no silly faces, etc). Remember to choose a professional photo for a professional profile.

If you have a photo that you would like to display but it might need some updating, Photoshop is an excellent tool. It will enable you to make your photo as perfect as possible in your eyes. The end result will be that you will have a photo that you have been able to update and one that you will be proud to display to everyone online.

Conclusion

Your online presence is made up of many components. Some of them are connected to your “voice” and some of them are connected to your “image.” Since the main goal and the heart of your online relationships in social media has an extremely human basis, having a photograph that allows others to see you as well as to hear you rounds out the relationship. People are not interested in doing business with corporations. They want to do business with people. The relationships will always be on a one-to-one basis.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

“Blessed is the influence of one true, loving soul over another.”—George Eliot. When it comes to accepting friends and connections for your business through social media, discrimination is critical.

What do you do when people invite you to connect with them on LinkedIn or invite you to become a fan on Facebook? Do you accept any and all invitations that you receive just to gather large numbers of people in your online communities or do you only accept invitations from people with whom you have a genuine and solid connection?

This is a highly controversial issue and one that deserves a great deal of discussion and examination. The viewpoint that is discussed in this article is that of CompuKol Communications. The viewpoints of others will be presented here as well in order to show fair balance.

Many social media channels, including LinkedIn, for example, advise that you only accept invitations when you know the inviter and want them to be a part of your network. You should accept invitations when you

• Want to stay connected to the person inviting you.
• Find the inviter credible and trustworthy.
• Have had some direct connection with the inviter.
• Are very well acquainted with the inviter’s work and feel that there is a potential to work together in some capacity.

If you don’t really know the inviter, you should either ask him or her for more information about why he or she wants to connect with you or ignore the invitation altogether.

Quantity without quality, especially when it comes to your business, does not have a great deal of value. There is no point in gathering people if you will never have any sort of relationship with them on an ongoing basis after the initial connection. You should be connected with people only if those connections bring value to both sides.

Relationships are the foundation of the success of your business. Before anyone will do business with you, they must get to know you as a business person, learn that they can trust you and find your credibility to be rock solid. On your side, if you want a meaningful relationship with others, you must consistently strive to fulfill their needs and provide them with valuable information that will help them to solve their problems.

Your online network is very important to you and your business. You need to make sure that you never do or say anything that will jeopardize the strength of your network and how you treat those people who are a part of that network. You have worked long and hard to build and maintain relationships. The last thing that you want to do is cause them to disappear.

On the other side, there are many people who are willing to accept everyone who requests that they become an online connection. There are many people who feel that merely by the fact that you are connected to social media channels, you have the capability of creating a global network on a scale that wasn’t possible 5 years ago.

Sometimes those people will try to get to know others with whom they have not had any face-to-face interaction through forums, Email and social media channels that they share. The opinion there is that if you don’t connect because you don’t know those people personally, you are defeating the purpose of social media sites in general.

There is a third school of thought that says that people who invite others to connect do so with some caution. One of the driving criteria is that there must be something between the two parties of mutual benefit and value. If accepting invitations from people just to acquire a higher volume of connections, it may not help your credibility and your business.

What Is a Relationship?

A relationship is normally perceived as a connection between two individuals. Individuals can also have relationships with groups of people, such as the relationship between a rabbi and his congregation, and uncle and a family or a mayor and a town. Online relationships coexist simultaneously within many online communities or groups.

Fans vs Friends vs Business Connections

When using social media channels such as Facebook for business, it is important to understand what it means to be a fan as well as understanding the difference between a fan, a friend and a business connection.

Fans

According to Wikipedia, a fan is someone with an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking and enthusiasm for something. Fans of a particular thing or person constitute its fan base. Fans often show enthusiasm by starting a fan club, holding fan conventions, creating fanzines, writing fan mail, or promoting the object of their interest and attention. Fans are accepted automatically, without any screening process.

A good analogy here is a celebrity who has no control over who becomes his or her fans. Typical social networks where this model is used are Facebook fans and Twitter followers.

Friends

The definition of a friend is more complicated and falls under the category of interpersonal relationships. A friendship or interpersonal relationship is a relationship between two or more people. It may last a very long time or may be brief. Interpersonal relationships take place in many contexts, such as family, friends, marriage, associates, work, clubs, neighborhoods, and churches. They may be regulated by law, custom, or mutual agreement and are the basis of social groups and society as a whole.

A typical social network where this model is used is Facebook friends. In this case, the connection with your friends is personal and you should not accept anyone to be your friend unless you have that personal connection. If someone whom you don’t know invites you to be his or her friend, in order to create the personal connection, which may result in a friendship, both parties need to learn more about each other first.

Business Connections/Relationships

Business connections are a broad spectrum of inter-business relationships associated with providing and consuming knowledge and services. Online business connections emphasize the emergence of social networks as a primary medium through which business relationships are conducted.

Typical social networks where this model is used are LinkedIn, Biznik, Ryze, etc. You need to have established a mutual knowledge of the person with whom you are creating this business relationship. If someone whom you don’t know invites you to connect with them professionally, you need to establish that both parties are able to fulfill the other’s needs first. Although the needs of both parties may not always be apparent initially, both parties will always have some need that must be fulfilled.

How you value business relationships and how you develop them, whether in-person or online, also extends to referring other vendors to your trusted customers. If your customers need something that you are not able to provide them with, you should feel comfortable referring them to vendors whom you have come to know and trust through business. This will serve to strengthen your credibility further and your customers will want to continue to do business with you.

It will never be enough of a reason to refer a new vendor to one of your customers simply because the vendor has expressed to you a feeling of wanting to increase his or her business. You will have to really get to know that vendor well enough first to be able to trust his or her credibility and integrity. Before you connect the vendor with your valued customers, you need to be absolutely certain that your customers will be satisfied with the products and services that the vendor offers. In other words, the other vendor is an extension of you and your business.

If you treat your online relationships (and in-person relationships) delicately, you will be rewarded for your efforts. The more integrity you display, the stronger your relationships will be. Networking and continuing to build relationships is one of the most effective ways to increase business as long as you do it the proper way.

You have to put a great deal of effort into your relationships, which will usually have a tremendous amount of rewards that go with the hard work. Even though your ultimate goal is to increase business, it is important to concentrate on what is essential along the way. That is building strong, meaningful relationships. The rest will follow. It is, of course, very important to remember that relationships take some time to develop. Nothing meaningful happens overnight.

Conclusion

When approached to connect with people you don’t know on social media channels, it is a good idea to have a scripted Email with which to respond. You should thank them for inviting you to connect with them but, at the same time, you should ask them why they want to connect with you and ask them to tell you a little more about themselves and how you might be able to help each other.

You will see that some will never be heard from again but others will respond to you with more information and that will be the beginning of new and meaningful relationships. This approach really combines all schools of thought on whether to accept new business connections.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

There are several ways to improve your search engine ranking using LinkedIn. The first thing that you should do to improve your search engine ranking is to complete your profile on LinkedIn.

The following are tips that are easy to follow and if you use them, you will start to see positive results pretty quickly.

·         Set your LinkedIn profile as “public”: If your profile is set to “private,” it might negatively affect your search engine ranking because people may not be able to find you.

·         Make sure that you have a professional headline: Your headlines should express the value that you are bringing to others. It should also communicate the reason that other people want to engage you. Your headlines will help you to establish credibility for you and your company. The keywords that you use in your headlines will increase how you rank in the search engines, if done correctly.

·         Make sure that you add your websites to your profile: You need to list your most significant websites in your profile. Your most important websites can be the website of your business, your blog, Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, etc. You are allowed to list a maximum of 3 websites.

·         Use keywords throughout your profile: There are many places that you can use keywords. Make sure that your content is rich with keywords (without going overboard). You need to ensure that your profile is very friendly for the search engines. It is not a difficult thing to achieve and it should start to pay off quickly.

·         Update your LinkedIn status a minimum of once a week: If you update your LinkedIn status at least once a week, your content will always be relevant and fresh, and up to date. This will also help you with your search engine rankings. Additionally, it will keep you in the forefront of the minds of those people who are already a part of your LinkedIn community.

You should update your status from your LinkedIn homepage. You should simply type whatever you wish to share in the text box underneath “Network Updates” and click “Share.” If you want, you can also put hyperlinks that you wish to share in your status.

·         Spread the word: If you consistently recommend other people (at least once a month), your search engine rankings in the search engines will increase. You can recommend people with whom you have worked in the past, former partners, clients, etc.

Once you have offered to recommend someone, you can request that they recommend you also. You should never be shy about asking former colleagues, business partners, or clients for recommendations. The recommendations that you received from other people will help to increase your search engine rankings and thus your profile will become more and more impressive.

·         Get your LinkedIn profile placed on other websites, blog sites, Email signature and any other Internet marketing materials that you have on the Web: This is an excellent way to increase your rankings. The more exposure you and your business get, the more people will recognize your name and the name of your business.

When you have an Internet presence, you are stating “here I am.” That is the first step. The second step is making sure that the search engines, blogs, and other people’s websites point their visitors to your website because they feel that your content is valuable and worth taking a look at.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

LinkedIn is much more than a list of names and contact information of your business associates. The potential of LinkedIn and how it can benefit your business is astronomical.

Numerous businesses use LinkedIn when they want to gather information on an individual with whom they intend to forge a business relationship of any kind. LinkedIn commonly appears as one of the top results when searching for an individual on Google.

With that in mind, it is essential that you have your LinkedIn profile up to date and complete. There are several ways in which to get noticed through LinkedIn.

• Customize your URL: If you customize your URL, people who are trying to find you will be able to go directly to your LinkedIn profile instead of landing on the general LinkedIn site.
• What’s in it for you (WIIFM): Instead of merely putting your job title below your name, you can put a descriptive statement about what you can do for someone who is clicking on your profile.
• Use the links function: You have three different spots where you can add links to your profile. You should use the first slot for your website URL, the second slot for your Twitter account and the third slot for your Facebook account.

If you don’t have Twitter and Facebook accounts, you can use the other two slots for two different pages on your website. It is, of course, recommended that you create Twitter and Facebook accounts and start to use them right away.

·         Encourage people to click through: In the same spot that you put your links, click on “other.” You can then type in a phrase like “Let’s connect on Facebook” or “Read more about me,” which will encourage people to click on your links more often.

·         Syndicating your content: On your LinkedIn page, you have an option to syndicate your content. If you have a blog, you definitely should make use of it. This is a wonderful way to continually supply your audience with fresh content with minimal effort on your part beyond the initial set up.

·         Linking to Twitter: If you have a Twitter account, you should add your tweets to your LinkedIn account. You can automate this or you can arrange it to include only your tweets with the #in hashtag.

·         Request recommendations: If you have several recommendations (testimonials) on LinkedIn, you will impress your business associates in a very positive way. You should never feel uncomfortable about asking for recommendations. You can offer to return the favor by writing a recommendation for those of whom you have made the request.

·         Make sure that your LinkedIn profile looks professional: You should model your profile after your resume when it comes to the appearance of professionalism. Numerous people will be searching for you online and you want your profile to appear professional at all times. You never know who might be searching for you. Remember to review everything on your profile several times for spelling errors and grammar and punctuation errors and inconsistencies.

·         Join as many groups as you can: You can join up to 50 groups on LinkedIn. You should search for groups in your niche and industry. There are plenty from which to choose. Once you have joined the various groups in which you have an interest, you should start to have discussions and ask questions of the other members in your group. If you are in a niche or have an interest in a group that doesn’t exist yet, you can start a group yourself and invite others to join.

·         Personalize your messages: Personalizing your messages is not necessary but it is highly recommended. Personalized messages make you appear very interesting and people will want to connect with you more readily.

·         Have patience: Building your professional relationships on LinkedIn takes time, a great deal of effort, and a lot of patience. Nothing worthwhile is easy. Try to devote 20 minutes to half an hour to LinkedIn, if possible. Use that time to expand your contact list.

Ultimately, we, as business people, are all after the same thing: more business. In order to get referrals, we need to build relationships with potential clients and referral sources. The tips that have been discussed here essentially make up your LinkedIn strategy. You will use this strategy to build a stronger online presence and reputation with others so that they want to connect with you.

If leveraged properly, LinkedIn provides wonderful opportunities for business people with very little time to become educated enough about others to be able to make the decision to form a business relationship with them.

If you use the tips that have been discussed here, you will see that LinkedIn is one of your most effective social media channels. It is an amazing tool that will help you to connect with your business associates and keep you connected, with a minimum amount of effort on your part. Strengthening your business is all about building trust, credibility and relationships that last for a very long time and LinkedIn is one of the best ways to accomplish that.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

The basic idea behind link building is that it is necessary in order to establish credibility. Without credibility, your website won’t move up in the search engine rankings.

Of course, causing your website to appear at the top of the search engines is a lot easier said than done.

Quality, not quantity

If you simply acquire as many links as you can, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will help your site. Quality links are what will cause you to have high rankings. It is not an easy feat to be able to identify what makes one link more valuable than another. One way that will help is listening to the advice of online marketing experts.

The value of targeted anchor text

When you go after links on sites, targeted anchor text is essential. However, you shouldn’t use the same text everywhere. You should use a few different phrases and the correct name of your website.

Be mindful of inbound and outbound links

Search engines look at the site where your link appears and how much benefit your site will achieve. A website with a large number of inbound links conveys more credibility about your site. On the other side, if your site is connected to a site that has a lot of low-quality outbound links, your site will not be considered very valuable.

Focus on site relevance

It is important to concentrate on pursuing links in relevant places and to take note of how those places have been optimized. Links that are connected to relevant and optimized pages hold much more value.

Online marketing experts notice what is not obvious

Try to check sites in non-obvious ways. For example, in any given search engine, you can type in “cache:” followed by a website URL and it will tell you if the site has been indexed and when the search engine last scanned it (or crawled it). What does that mean?

If a website has not been crawled in a month to a month and a half, you shouldn’t put a link there. Additionally, some domains are more valuable than others. Links from “.edu” domains are more credible than links from “.com.” Links from “.info” are even less credible. You should consider all of these factors when trying to evaluate the worth of a site as you are building your links.

How important is social networking for link building?

Social networking for link building is very important. You need to try to get links into places where social networking occurs. As they stand alone, the links may not hold much value; however, search engines today are looking more and more at the “active web” in determining site credibility.

Even though it can take up a lot of time, getting involved in social media sites and forums and getting people who own blogs to post your articles with your linked anchor text included can have a lot of value. Remember, however, that you should only post relevant information.

Are the links that you are receiving clean?

When you get a link on a site, do you check the source code of the page? Is there any additional information in the “href” tag on the link? Is a redirect code being used by the site? If any of these things are present, don’t use the link. It is of no value to you.

It is not an easy thing to work with online experts when you have a very tight budget and are trying to increase your search engine rankings. Unlike what it was, the web is no longer a “do-it-yourself” place.

It is definitely not easy to judge good-quality link building with the web applications and social media networks that exist today. It is possible for you to succeed at this but it is highly recommended that you listen to what online experts are recommending as effective strategies. Quality link building takes a great deal of effort and time. Make sure that you use them wisely.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

When you first start your business, it can be stressful and lonely. You have taken a huge risk, have given up a steady income and benefits, and are now all by yourself.

Actually, you are not really alone. There are many others around the world who are in exactly the same position as you. Many of those people have not only ventured down the entrepreneurial road but have become successful. Many of them are delighted to share their stories, insight and advice with you. You just need to know how and where to find them.

This is where social media comes into play. Establishing new relationships nowadays is easier than it has ever been because of the steadily increasing access to information, ideas and people.

Web communities that revolve around entrepreneurship, business and programming are flourishing all over the place. Using Facebook, Twitter and various other social media networks makes it very easy for you to learn new information and to stay connected to other entrepreneurs.

Here are some helpful suggestions on how you can easily share your experiences with other entrepreneurs in order to enrich your professional life.

Follow entrepreneurs on Twitter

Twitter currently has a feature called “Lists,” which allows users to create lists of their favorite users. Many Twitter users take advantage of this feature to create lists of top entrepreneurs and startup business founders. That is an excellent first step toward building connections that are of value. Once you have built your lists, you should reach out to those on your list either by Email or by phone.

Connect with communities of entrepreneurs

There are several places on the Internet where entrepreneurs congregate. Discovering these treasured communities will definitely prove to be extremely valuable for you and your business. You can look at PartnerUp, a site that will assist you in finding co-founders and business partners; TheFunded, which concentrates on raising money for your startup company; and Hacker News, which is an online community site that shares useful articles on startups, human nature and development.

Find local events through social media

Although it can be very productive to connect with people online, it isn’t the same as meeting face to face and shaking hands. Social media can really help you by keeping you abreast of events that you would be likely to attend. A good way to start with this is by using a tool like Meetup. There are numerous meetups that may be appropriate for you and your business. Remember that it isn’t enough to attend a meetup once or twice. Attending meetups on a regular basis helps you to build rapport with people who share a common interest. You can also search for Facebook or LinkedIn events to attend.

Simply reach out to people

Remember, social media is a tool that is designed to make it easier for you to connect with other people. You still need to do the relationship building with other entrepreneurs once the connections have been made. You should use social media to find the people and reach out to them. After that, you will need to go to the next step and start more personal contact, which you will build over time.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

There are many people who engage in social media without actually achieving anything. If used frivolously, social media can waste time. However, if used strategically, it can increase your business tremendously.

The following information is presented to help you to use social media more productively and successfully for your business.

Blogs

• Manage your blog comments and replies all at once.
• Put yourself on a blog time schedule and stick to it. The more you keep on schedule, the more efficient you will be.
• Write your blog topics down in advance. This will help you to stay organized.
• Try to easily identify important and meaningful points in the blog articles that you read.
• Make use of social bookmarking sites so that you can save blog posts that are important to you and that you want to go back to in the future.

LinkedIn

• Ask your connections for introductions to people in their networks. This is a great way to connect with potential customers in an efficient and quick manner.
• Make sure that you update your LinkedIn page often. If you don’t, people may think that you are either no longer at your company or no longer in your industry. You won’t need to devote a lot of time to accomplishing this.
• Don’t accept invitations to connect with people with whom you have no relationship. As is mentioned in the Twitter section below, go for quality, not quantity. The more connections you have, the more you need to manage, which eats away at your time. It is not valuable enough just to say that you have hundreds of connections if only a small percentage of those are people you know and trust.

Twitter

• Go for quality, not quantity. It is one thing to have a huge number of followers on Twitter. It is quite another thing to have followers who you can help and who can help you.
• Learn to quickly go through tweets and easily identify the messages and links that are important to you.
• Try to stay away from direct messages because you can be hit with large amounts of spam if you are following a large number of people.
• Customize your Twitter lists to help you to become organized with the people you follow.
• Use tools to help you shorten the URL of the articles that you are reading without having to exit the page.

Facebook

• Try not to set up too many Facebook groups or pages because they become difficult to manage.
• Link Facebook with your Twitter account so that you can post directly on Facebook when you tweet.
• Stay away from Facebook games because they can become addictive and your productivity will take a nose dive.
• Make sure that all of your Facebook settings are private to avoid becoming a target of spammers and marketers.

Other social media sites

• If you are not an experienced blogger, you can use www.Posterous.com to assist you in composing and posting blog articles on multiple social media sites by Email.
• Become comfortable with different Twitter apps, which will greatly improve your productivity.
• Find out which social media sites work for you and stick with them.
• Create a daily list of to-do items, which will keep you organized with a variety of activities that you feel are important on the various social networks.
• Always try to come up with new ways to be productive in using social media.

Hopefully, you have found the tips on how to be more productive on social media useful. If you employ some or all of the tips, you will find that your business is more productive and that you are getting a lot more work accomplished than before.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Using LinkedIn appropriately will lead to greater success for you as a business owner. However, it is important to understand which practices to avoid in LinkedIn also.

Poor Choice of Photo

One of the very first things that people do when they go to a profile is look at the photo. They want to connect what the person looks like with their profile and the profile of their business. Not including a photo is a big mistake. If you don’t understand the importance of the profile photo, it creates a negative perception of you as a business professional. It is also a mistake to include a group photo as your profile photo.

LinkedIn is a professional social media site, not a personal one. Your photo should be clear and you should be recognizable. You should never include your business’ logo or a product shot of any kind. It is not a bad idea to pay a local photographer and get a headshot of professional quality. If you insist on taking your own photo, make sure that the lighting is correct.

Lack of Detail in Your Profile

Your profile certainly should not have the level of detail that your resume has; however, it should have enough detail for others to get to know you a little bit. There are some key areas that will give you the opportunity to add keywords easily into your profile. The first area is your summary. It is a good idea to begin your summary with your 30-second elevator pitch (your name, what you do, what you are looking for). You need to make sure that the beginning of your summary really grabs your readers. You can, of course, use that same pitch when you are at face-to-face networking events.

Another area that is worth including is your employment history. People not only want to know what you are doing now but they also are interested in what you did in the past, which got you to where you are now. If you don’t include this information, your readers may wonder what you are trying to hide. You should take the opportunity to include keywords in your job descriptions. When discussing your past job descriptions, you should include as many keywords as possible. Remember to demonstrate how your previous work experience has made you that much better at what you are doing today.

Ignoring Applications

Filling out applications is a great way to bring your profile from 2 dimensions to 3 dimensions. It makes you much more real to those who are connecting with you. Applications allow you to post a PowerPoint presentation, attach a video, or send out other relevant and appropriate materials for your business. It is a wonderful opportunity to blast your message in a much deeper and more comprehensive manner. Any way that you choose to communicate your message will most likely be available to you. You are giving your LinkedIn connections many options by which to learn about your business offerings and how you can help them. If possible, link your video to your profile. You can go to http://www.jingproject.com and download free software, which will allow you to record a 5-minute screen capture as a video.

Failing to Join Enough Relevant Groups

LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. Make sure that you join only groups that are, in some important way, relevant to what you are doing. It is essential to use this feature to your full advantage. When you are considering which groups to join, make sure that you choose groups that your prospects would be a part of. After you have joined the groups, you just need to start discussions with those people.

Not Securing Recommendations

An extremely important part of your credibility on LinkedIn is recommendations. People want to know what other people say about you. They don’t want to hear you talk about yourself. Having 10 recommendations is a nice amount. It shouldn’t be too difficult to obtain that many from people with whom you have professional relationships. You shouldn’t feel shy about asking for recommendations. Most people will be happy to recommend you even though they probably won’t take the initiative to offer the recommendation without your asking first.

An easy way to get recommendations is to help your business connections in some way and then request a recommendation from them. It is all about helping each other. You serve them and then they give you a recommendation afterwards. Client recommendations will really go a long way for you.

Overlooking Answers

You need to be involved with discussions through LinkedIn. The generation of discussions in which you are involved will build trust, credibility, and position you as a subject matter expert. Get involved as much as you can with discussions on subjects that you know quite a bit about. Your responses in a discussion can be linked to your profile, which will give you extra mileage and make you look really good. You will help others by responding to their questions with valuable information. You will feel good about helping others.

Another advantage of being a part of discussions is that you can indirectly communicate your own message. You should post helpful blog articles to your profile whenever possible. People really value articles with helpful information. It makes them feel that you are trying to help them and that you are not trying to sell them anything.

Selling Directly

Don’t try to sell directly on LinkedIn. First of all, your chances of success are slim. Second, you will do more harm than good to your brand over time. People are not on LinkedIn to buy products and services. However, with that said, there are selling opportunities on LinkedIn. You just need to remember to be discreet when going in that direction.

By providing valuable information on LinkedIn, people will trust your motive (you are there to help others) and will begin to trust you. People won’t buy anything from you if they don’t trust you. Would you?

Conclusion

The LinkedIn mistakes that we have discussed here are simple to fix. They are errors of omission. If you take a little extra time to build your content, you will improve what you have and make it more effective. Your #1 objective is to get people to visit your profile. Once you have accomplished that, you want your visitors to have a clear understanding of what you do and how you can help them. You definitely don’t want them to visit your profile, have unanswered questions, and move onto the next person’s profile and forget about you.

We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.