Do You Want To Be A LinkedIn Rockstar??

LinkedIN is the underdog of all social networks. We all know it, most of us use it and yet only few of us utilize it to its full potential. Why? The main reason being that only few take the time to actually explore the network – we are too busy nurturing our other online profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous etc. I’m no exception. I rarely took the time to take care of my LinkedIN account and only logged on whenever I got an Email notifying me of a new contact request. Now that graduation is near and the job search is looming I started to see how stupid I was being. Therefore I took the time to explore the network and unravelled some tips and tricks which are going to turn every single one of you into a LinkedIN rockstar. And before you even think it, NO, they are not the most obvious ones such as filling out your profile and uploading your picture. ;) Sound good?

1) Increase your connections

Easier said than done you think? Noooo, it’s pretty easy trust me. Just like on any other social network you can connect your LinkedIN profile with your Email account. That way you will see all the people you know who are already on LinkedIN and can get right to it and connect with them. Also, once you have connected with a few people LinkedIN suggests people you may know. That’s an easy trick, you say? Yes it is. And besides me telling you that I won’t mention the most obvious ones, I felt like this one is important. The reason being that the more connections you have on LinkedIN the more visible you will become. In other words, you’ll show up in search results more often.

2) Help others by answering their questions

Now, why on earth would you do that right? Spend time answering questions and at the same time give away your knowledge for FREE? If you think that way. STOP it right now. Helping others is a nice thing to do.

Online and offline. (Life lesson! ;) Anyway, by answering other people’s questions you don’t only gain exposure but you also show others that you are a knowledgable person. A tip on the side: Do not answer questions you don’t know how to answer just for the sake of it.

When someone asks a question there are usually many people trying to answer it – depending on the subject matter. Don’t be intimidated by it. Give it a shot anyway. If you give a great answer and the author of the question selects your answer to be the “best answer” you will show up as an expert in that field. Thus, gaining further exposure. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in or what job you have. There’re questions being asked regarding tons of different subjects. I’ll guarantee you, you’ll find your place.

If you want to get right to it (obviously after you finished reading this post ;), go to your LinkedIN profile and click on “More” tab, followed by choosing “Answers”. Alternatively, you can simply click on this link here: LinkedIN Answers.

3) Increase your presence with network updates

LinedIN network updates is an underused but yet valuable feature. You should consider it as your own professional billboard that does not only allow you to make yourself more visible but also gives you the opportunity to make a pitch or announce something special. Tip on the side: Do not update your LinkedIN the way you would update your Twitter or Facebook. LinkedIN is a professional network and should be treated as such.

4) Reorder your profile sections

By rearranging the sections in your profile you can highlight your skills and expertise that set you apart from others. LinkedIN itself has a pretty awesome “How to” for this so if you are planning on giving your profile a facelift I’d recommend you to check it out.

5) Pimp your profile

To really stand out from the crowd you should consider pimping your profile with apps. Those allow you to show off your expertise and knowledge and also give your profile a little bit of edge. Are you a blogger? Add the WordPress app to your profile that automatically synchs your posts. Would you like to recommend books for others to read? Add the Amazon Reading list app. Or did you do an amazing presentation on something that is just too good to not be shared with others? Then add the Slideshare Presentations app. There’s tons and tons of apps you can add to your LinkedIN profile. Although I’d recommend you to not use more than 3, simply because you don’t want your profile to look cluttered.

To get access to the applications select “More” from the navigation bar followed by “Application Directory”. Get creative :)

These 5 simply tips should help you utilize your LinkedIN profile a lot better than before. If you are one of the clever ones who has done all of this from the start, kudos to you. If you are like me and are still trying to figure out how to best use LinkedIN, I say lets get started.

50 Surprising Facts About Social Media

Facebook

1. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.
2. More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) is shared each month.
3. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application.
4. More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month.
5. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.
6. There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
7. People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page).
8. The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.
9. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
10. There are more than 1 million entrepreneurs and developers from 180 countries on Facebook.

Twitter

11. Twitter’s web platform only accounts for a quarter of its users – 75% use third-party apps.
12. Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.
13. There are currently 110 million users of Twitter’s services.
14. Twitter receives 180 million unique visits each month.
15. There are more than 600 million searches on Twitter every day.
16. Twitter started as a simple SMS-text service.
17. Over 60% of Twitter use is outside the U.S.
18. There are more than 50,000 third-party apps for Twitter.
19. Twitter has donated access to all of its tweets to the Library of Congress for research and preservation.
20. More than a third of users access Twitter via their mobile phone.

LinkedIn

21. LinkedIn is the oldest of the four sites in this post, having been created on May 5 2003.
22. There are more than 70 million users worldwide.
23. Members of LinkedIn come from more than 200 countries from every continent.
24. LinkedIn is available in six native languages – English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
25. Oracle’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Epstein, was headhunted for the position via his LinkedIn profile.
26. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.
27. A new member joins LinkedIn every second.
28. LinkedIn receives almost 12 million unique visitors per day.
29. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn.
30. Recruiters account for 1-in-20 LinkedIn profiles.

YouTube

31. The very first video uploaded was called “Me at the Zoo”, on 23rd April 2005.
32. By June 2006, more than 65,000 videos were being uploaded every day.
33. YouTube receives more than 2 billion viewers per day.
34. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
35. The U.S. accounts for 70% of YouTube users.
36. Over half of YouTube’s users are under 20 years old.
37. You would need to live for around 1,000 years to watch all the videos currently on YouTube.
38. YouTube is available in 19 countries and 12 languages.
39. Music videos account for 20% of uploads.
40. YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the entire Internet used in 2000.
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Blogging

41. 77% of Internet users read blogs.
42. There are currently 133 million blogs listed on leading blog directory Technorati.
43. 60% of bloggers are between the ages 18-44.
44. One in five bloggers update their blogs daily.
45. Two thirds of bloggers are male.
46. Corporate blogging accounts for 14% of blogs.
47. 15% of bloggers spend 10 hours a week blogging.
48. More than half of all bloggers are married and/or parents.
49. More than 50% of bloggers have more than one blog.
50. Bloggers use an average of five different social sites to drive traffic to their blog.

Leverage Your Time by “Linking” Your Social Media Sites Together

I find that one of the biggest sources of stress for my clients and students when we first begin working together is the belief that you need to be omnipresent.

Fortunately, this is not true—in fact, you could really sabotage your efforts if you started focusing on building a presence on every social site and platform!  Talk about exhausting!

Let me let you in on a little secret: the most successful people in social media, the ones that appear to be everywhere—and connecting all of these “everywheres” seamlessly, to boot—are doing so by way of a few specific, focused strategies.  You could call it “social leverage,” and I am going to share with you exactly how you can do this too (and no, it won’t take up all of your time either!)

Here are a few specific methods from my own 6 Simple Steps to Kick Start Your Social Media Success System™ to “cross-link” like a pro:

To send your blog posts to Twitter:
Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress athttp://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools
Import your blog’s RSS feed into Hootsuite at http://hootsuite.com

To display your latest tweets on your blog:
Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress
Twitter’s own widget at http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets

To send your blog posts to Facebook (personal and/or Fan Page):
Facebook’s Notes application
Facebook’s NetworkedBlogs application athttp://www.facebook.com/networkedblogs

To send your blog posts to LinkedIn:
LinkedIn’s own BlogLink application or WordPress application

To send your LinkedIn status updates to Twitter:
LinkedIn’s own Tweets application

To send your tweets to Facebook selectively:
Facebook’s Selective Tweets application athttp://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter

To send your Facebook Fan Page status updates to Twitter:
Facebook’s own Facebook to Twitter application athttp://facebook.com/Twitter

To share YouTube videos to Facebook:
YouTube’s own Share button beneath each video
Options–>Settings on your Facebook personal profile’s wall

To share YouTube videos to Twitter:
YouTube’s own Share button beneath each video

To share YouTube videos on your blog:
YouTube’s URL or embed code shown to the right of each video

To update Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more at the same time:
http://Hootsuite.com, http://ping.fm, or http://hellotxt.com

Finally, to see all of your or others’ activity from around the social web in one place: http://friendfeed.com

Now, you don’t have to set up every one of these tools all at once, but try out a few and see how much your own productivity soars.  As always, be careful not to automate or delegate too much—social media is still primarily about “live” interaction with others.  But by implementing a couple of these strategies you can look forward to making a bigger impact in much less time.

How To Use Linkedin To Generate Business

While Social Media is definitely the hot topic of conversation this year, most of the tools focus on consumer centric business, and improving communication. If you provide B2B consulting, services or products, your options for social media are fairly limited, let’s be honest you probably won’t find many fans for your Facebook Legal Incorporation Services page. For these types of businesses, LinkedIn is a much better alternative. Here is a collection of tips I recommend using.

Update your profile

If you or anyone on your key executives, creative talent, or sales staff doesn’t already have a LinkedIn profile they should create one. Chances are though that most people already have an account, and unless they recently changed jobs, there profile hasn’t been touched in a while and could use some updating. Here’s an example of a before and after LinkedIn profile from Guy Kawasaki that has some excellent examples, but if you’re short on time here are the highlights:

Add your voice. Everyone has a personal style, way they talk or do things, and your profile should reflect your voice, quirks, and personal style, its what makes you memorable. Want your profile come up more often and for the right searches? Here are some tips from LinkedIn on adding the right keywords to your profile.
Go for the Readers Digest level of detail. Give details about what you did at your previous jobs, and what schools you went to. Give some details, but not too much. Try to be like a mini skirt, long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to keep it interesting. Here are tips from LinkedIn on building a stronger profile.
Get connected. LinkedIn has put out a lot of stats that the more connections you have the more business you are likely to get. Unless you want to be a LION, I suggest connecting only with people you know.
Get recommendations. Again, LinkedIn has a lot of stats showing recommendations help you get business. Ask previous and current clients you have done business with, or people you know for recommendations, and give them back. Be honest and don’t make everyone sound like Superman, if you don’t have something nice to say, it’s probably best not to say anything at all. Try to keep getting referrals, someone with 6 referrals spread out over 3 years probably looks better, than someone with 20 referrals all more than 2 years old. Here are some tips on getting and giving LinkedIn recommendations.
Vanity URL. LinkedIn started offering vanity URLs years ago, if you don’t have one get one, it looks much more professional than a random string of numbers, here’s mine: Michael Gray’s LinkedIn Profile.
Link to Your Website. You can add up to three links, and if you choose “other” you can customize the anchor text, use it but don’t abuse it.
Create a company profile

LinkedIn now has the ability to create a company profile for your company, it will list everyone who works there and some information about the company. If you don’t have one you can create it, but only if one of the email addresses connected to your profile is from the same domain as the company website. You don’t need to do this but it makes your company look more complete, and provides a tool for reputation management should you ever need it. Here are some tips on building an effective company profile on LinkedIn.

Groups

Groups are a double-edged sword, joining more groups can make you look more important, but at a certain point it becomes unmanageable. I suggest starting small and building up, and trimming down, based on the conversations and your ability to participate. Here’s are some tips from LinkedIn on getting more out of groups.

Getting involved

It should go without saying, but to get any value out of social media you have be social, and participate, that’s why limiting your contacts and groups is an important part of the process. Search Engine Land has a group on LinkedIn and you can see there are quite a few active discussions. My suggestion is read the group guidelines and watch before getting involved. Don’t try to be a know it all and answer every question, but answer the ones that match your area of expertise. Also if a discussion is a few days old with no comments, earn some good karma by answering if you can. It would be nice if LinkedIn showed your activity in groups on your profile page but, currently it only shows on the homepage when you log in.

Questions and answers

Another way to get involved is to ask/answer questions, working on a research project ask your peers for an opinion or run a poll. If you want people to answer your questions or polls, make sure you answer there’s from time to time. As a general rule I would answer 2-4 times as many questions as you ask.

Update your status

You can send status updates on LinkedIn the same way you send status updates on Facebook and Twitter. If you’re interested in efficiency, you can save time using services like Ping.fm (http://www.ping.fm) to update all of your services at once. That’s generally not a strategy I’d recommend, your Facebook friends might want to know your kids won the baseball championship, your LinkedIn network probably doesn’t care, so choose your updates strategically.

Did you publish a white paper, interesting article, bit of research, or complete a project, that’s something that’s much more appropriate, for a status update, and don’t forget to put a link where appropriate.

Finding the time

While the owners of LinkedIn would love it if you logged in every day, that’s probably not the best use of your time. Logging in once or twice a week is enough for most people. Answer some questions, participate in one or two groups, and post a status update, you should be able to do this in less than an hour a week.

Power user tip

You can be strategic about your participation, use the built-in search functions in the groups and answers sections to create searches to find questions targeted to your expertise or the service your company provides. Use Google’s custom RSS feature to notify you when the topic comes up. Another solution is to use Google Alerts with a [site:linkedin.com "your keywords"] search.

The payoff and getting business

When you create a LinkedIn profile and join groups, you set up contact preferences, every action you do can be included in these update emails other people in your network get. You won’t get included in every email, but you will get included in some, and the more you participate the more you’ll be included. Every time someone sees your name and your activity on the network it reminds them you are there, and what you’re doing. The more they remember you the more likely they are to refer business to you when someone asks them a question about something they’ve seen you participate in.

Use the power search tips to target phrases of people who are asking questions that someone in the sales funnel would ask. Use your network, to help you gain new leads, ask everyone to describe their ideal customer to you, if you know someone who fits the bill make a connection, people are much more likely to give referrals to people who give them referrals.

To wrap up, make sure your profile and the profiles of your other key team members, company is up to date, and sends a professional memorable message. Update your network of connections and make sure people are aware of you, ask about the types of business they are looking for, and pass on referrals. Join and participate in some groups, look for and answer questions. Use power search tips to get notified of questions and discussions that match your expertise. Using these tips you’ll gain exposure, and get referrals from your network, and help out qualified potential new customers.