For those of you not familiar with it, BranchOut, in essence, is a networking application that uses information from your Facebook friends that are already on the application to help make introductions to others in companies that you might be interested in. Since it’s built on top of Facebook, BranchOut is sitting on top of a potential gold mine of professional connections, utilizing the site’s extensive user base. This is what the developers of BranchOut foresaw and this is why this late bloomer is often considered a threat to LinkedIn. Add to the fact that people spend more time on Facebook than anywhere else, so it makes more sense for some people to use BranchOut rather than LinkedIn.

BranchOut’s sales pitch is “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!” You build your network on your connections and the connections of your connections. If you build your system through your group of friends, then you can expand that to access your friends’ network and their employers as well. Through the system you create, you can endorse people, provide references, post notices, follow companies, and even start your own job board as well. The best thing about BranchOut is that your profile automatically mirrors the information you already have in your Facebook profile such as work history, job positions you held, and even former and current employers, so building your professional profile is a breeze.

Building a network is easy: add your friends, then your friends will add their friends; and you can then add the friends of your friends, and so on. You will see your network grow from a few people to a tens or hundreds of people in no time! Since almost everyone is on Facebook, by establishing a professional presence on BranchOut, you clearly have an edge due to the number of users already on the site. If used intelligently, the potential is there get inside connections to jobs and sales leads that you can never easily find elsewhere.

That being said, does BranchOut really compete with LinkedIn? In social media marketing, I teach my clients that everyone has their own preferred social network, and they use it in their own particular way. For that reason, while these communities don’t really compete with each other (unless you look at ad revenue competition from their owners), I believe BranchOut is a natural complement for those who want to use social media for professional networking:

• Perhaps someone is on LinkedIn but spends more time on Facebook, where you might be able to access them easier through your BranchOut network
• Many of your casual friends might not be on LinkedIn. If they are on Facebook and in BranchOut, you can now get access to a very personal network of invaluable connections that might not appear as 2nd degree connections on LinkedIn.
• Many younger professionals are intimidated by LinkedIn but very active on Facebook. Since the trend is that they are also becoming “friends” with their family, you just never know where their network might lead you

Many others in the blogosphere are more bullish about BranchOut:

Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, stated that BranchOut allowed him to access different companies and find out who among his network of friends works with whom at a particular company. He also added that he would definitely post jobs at BranchOut. Others have said that while LinkedIn has long been the preferred choice for recruiters and job seekers, BranchOut’s social approach might start to usurp LinkedIn’s dominance. The friend-of-a-friend mechanic also makes introductions and personal recommendation between job hunters and job posters easier. In addition, a few commenters in this Quora thread have high hopes for BranchOut. One in particular said that while Facebook has richer content versus LinkedIn since it’s more fun to use. Facebook also reveals a side of a person that’s different from what he or she shows in a professional setting.

LinkedIn research indicates that 85% of employers admit that a positive online reputation influences their decision to hire a potential employee. You can use this to your advantage on Facebook and expand your professional network by using BranchOut. The best part is you can use both of these services together to grow your connections professionally, letting your reach out to more professional opportunities.

There is no competition between BranchOut and LinkedIn: they only complement each other.

Have you used BranchOut? What has your experience been?

Once you’ve decided to connect with professionals that aren’t part of your network, chances are you will initially find them by doing advanced people searches.  If you are already an experienced user, you’ll likely encounter people you might want to connect with everywhere on LinkedIn.  These people often appear on the “people you may know” widget that is featured prominently in the top right-hand corner of your LinkedIn home page and in group discussions.  So, once you find someone with whom you’d like to connect, follow these guidelines to complete the connection:

Read the contact settings:  There are many people on LinkedIn who aren’t engaged on the platform.  They signed up and forgot about their profiles, or they just simply “checked out” for some reason.  Some may indicate in their contact settings that they are not open to receiving connections, but, if they include their contact details here, or anywhere else on their profile, you have implicit permission to contact them.  If you want to be cautious, first contact them and let them know why you want to connect.  Also mention how you can help them.  Then ask if you can connect on LinkedIn for a mutually beneficial  – and connected – relationship.

“Read” the profile:  A LinkedIn profile says a thousand things about someone’s attitude toward online professional networking, and by thoroughly reading the profile, you can determine how active a particular user is on the website.  In general, the more active people are on LinkedIn, the more they will understand the value of business networking and thus the more willing they will be to connect if you send a personalized invite.

Warm leads are always the best:  As in real life, a “warm” lead, someone your target connection actually knows who can make a personal introduction on your behalf, often leads to the greatest success.  Rather than relying on a cold call or email, get in touch with the person who connects the two of you and ask him or her for a formal introduction.  If your targeted user is a third-degree connection, find someone who could facilitate an introduction between you and a person who is actually connected to your targeted user.  Your eventual goal is to be introduced to your second-degree connection who can then facilitate the introduction with your third-degree connection.

Join the same LinkedIn Group:  A simple tactic you can use to contact someone is to join one of his or her LinkedIn Groups.  Of course, this only works if your desired contact has the default settings on, which allows group members to send messages to each other.  At present, the option to send a message to a group member does not appear as an option when you find a common group member on an advanced people search result; instead, you will be prompted to send an InMail. No worries: Simply navigate to the same Group that you a member of, do a member search, and you will have the option to send a message from that user interface.

Send the “Hail Mary” InMail: InMail is a paid LinkedIn service to contact people who are not first-degree connections, which I consider to be the equivalent of a “Hail Mary” toss in a football game.  LinkedIn promotes the use of InMail as being a very effective way to communicate.  Currently, non-paying members have the option to purchase InMails a’ la carte for $10 apiece.  Though some people might shirk at the idea of paying for such a service, consider it a business investment that may have lucrative potential. Everyone’s experience will be different, so you should at least experiment with the InMail and determine your own ROI.

One final note before reaching out: Don’t forget your manners.  Just as you should continue to foster warm leads in the “real” world, you need to do the same online.  Don’t forget that, behind every online persona, there is a real person.  Whenever you communicate with someone online, you should personalize your communication and give him or her a reason to connect to you. Always remember that manners apply online just as they do offline, and LinkedIn (as well as all social media) is simply an example of  new tools, old rules.

What have your experiences been in reaching out to new people on LinkedIn?

The above is a summary of selected content from my critically acclaimed new LinkedIn for business book “Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing,” available at Amazon, Kindle, Nook, or iTunes.

When you establish your profile in a way that highlights your company’s expertise and outlines how you can assist potential customers, you maximize the business opportunities for you and your business.  Although you might customize the way in which you present your company in each business interaction, there is only one universal profile on LinkedIn that everyone will be able to see.  This is the secret to why LinkedIn’s database and people search capabilities are so impressive.  The fields in which everyone enters information are standardized; therefore, it is easier to brand yourself by differentiating what you include in your profile because everyone else has to complete the same data fields as you do.

So how much information should you include in your LinkedIn profile to make it complete?  To develop and strengthen your own LinkedIn brand and increase your chances of being found, you will want to include as much data as possible.  Let’s dig deeper into the 10 main functions of a LinkedIn profile and explain the importance of each component.

Photo – Basically, if you don’t have a LinkedIn profile photo, you are invisible.  Don’t forget that much of Social Media is about people-centric networking, and without a photo, it will be harder to gain credibility with those whom you want to engage.

Name – LinkedIn is strict when asking you to input your name, and only your name, where specified.  There are plenty of fake profiles out there, so there is no reason not to be upfront and honest about who you are.  Also, if you are representing a business and want to use your company name, remember that  LinkedIn is a social network for professionals and people, not companies, and there are plenty of opportunities to brand your company within your profile.

Headline – Your headline is important real estate that appears next to your name in search results, and it’s wording may determine whether a new potential client contacts you after you appear in search results.  Your headline should be customized to align with your objective for being on LinkedIn in the first place, which is to market your company.  Remember to brand your headline, not make it a collection of keywords, which will make your potential customer think you are merely trying to dupe the LinkedIn search results (more on that pet peeve of mine in a future blog post)

Location – A no-brainer? NOT! This is the field that gives potential customers  a way to filter out profiles by location, so it is of the utmost importance that your classify yourself as “living” where your market is.

Industry – A critical aspect to your profile.  If your company crosses industries, or it’s not specific, make sure to choose the one which you most want to be associated with. If you’re confused, check out the sales and marketing folks from your competitors and see what industry they chose for one reference point.

Summary – Much like your headline, which acts as an initial filter, your summary is the basis upon which people will form opinions about you and your brand.  It is what helps them decide how they will view you and potentially your company.  Make sure to include keywords that will appear in searches as well as what your specialties are, and more importantly, how you can help potential clients.

Experience – This is where you have the opportunity to show off your company’s niche and your own unique expertise.  To effectively brand yourself, include details that support the info you included in your headline and summary.

Education – Do not skip this, as it is simply another way to prove you are “real” – and get found.

Websites/URLs – Not only do you have the opportunity to list your company website here, you can also list up to three URL’s to appear on your profile.  Take advantage of this – and make sure to customize the anchor text for potential additional SEO juice.

Contact Settings – Make it easy for potential clients to contact you by inputting your contact information.  If you do not want to show your phone #, a business email is sufficient.  Just don’t leave it blank and let this precious space go to waste.

It’s safe to say that LinkedIn gives you a lot of real estate in which to work, so the more you use, the better you can brand yourself and your company, making it easier to be found in search results.

And lastly, one final word of advice:  After you create a stellar profile that embodies your brand, make sure you revisit it on a regular basis to ensure it is up to date and continues to reflect your professional objectives.  In other words … always keep your LinkedIn brand fresh!

How has your LinkedIn profile attracted new business for you?

The above is a summary of selected content from my critically acclaimed new LinkedIn for business book “Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing,” available at Amazon, Kindle, Nook, or iTunes.

1. LinkedIn Today: Social News Delivered

The steady stream of news we get everyday can become a bit overwhelming. Enter LinkedIn Today. It’s what your newspaper would be if it delivered nothing but the news that matters to you. You get only the most relevant headlines, the articles that your LinkedIn connections and industry peers are sharing and reading. You can even tweak this service further by choosing news in other industries important to you, drilling down to check who’s sharing the articles you are reading, and even getting the same reading experience via LinkedIn’s iPhone app. In just five minutes, you can stay informed and on top of your industry, thanks to LinkedIn Today. If you’re a marketer, you’ll want to make sure that you make it easy for readers of your website content to share it – indirectly promoting it – on LinkedIn so that it has the potential to be featured in Today.

2. Searching Companies Gets Easier

While LinkedIn is primarily about connecting professionals, it’s also about staying in touch with the companies that are in your network. As part of the ongoing push of the company to improve search, you can now look for companies according to their connection to your network, whether it’s a direct connection or part of your extended network. Results of searches have become more relevant as well, taking into account the strength of your connection with the company on top of other factors like the keywords and filters you use. It’s a great way to discover the reach of your professional graph while you utilize LinkedIn Companies for business intelligence research. Try out LinkedIn’s Company Search for yourself.

3. Now Companies have Status Updates, Too

Getting vital information from companies you follow has now been made simpler. Companies themselves can now push updates, breaking news, and other pertinent data to LinkedIn members that follow them. All this information is available in your personal newsfeed. Moreover, any changes made by companies to their profile, status and any other updates they would like to share will be automatically displayed there as well. A great marketing feature for companies to use outside of their Groups and personal profiles as part of their LinkedIn inbound marketing strategy.

4. New Statistics Dashboard for Groups

The new LinkedIn’s Group Statistics gives its members a closer look at what makes certain communities and groups tick. The dashboard shows helpful statistics about the group’s demographics, activities and growth.

With this data, LinkedIn members will be able to check which groups fit them best and will help them grow their portfolio. The dashboard is complete with charts and percentages, helping give insight to not only prospective group members but also the current ones as well. A potential treasure trove of information for marketers and business development professionals awaits you…

5. The First Groups Application: Polls

Polls are a great way to distill information from a large number of people, which is why LinkedIn thought it would be a great application to add to Groups. If you’d like to generate discussion on a certain topic, or just want to get the opinions of like-minded professionals in your field, creating a poll is one of the easiest ways to engage a group and encourage them to participate. Polls are also easy to create: add in a few choices and you’re ready to roll. If you want a quick way to get the pulse of your group (or even the world at large, if you’re an open group), polls are the way to go. It will be interesting to see if other new Groups applications are released in the coming year.

6. Events Overhauled

Taking members’ feedback into consideration, LinkedIn has reworked its events manager to make finding relevant events faster and easier. One major addition was the overhaul of a member’s Events Home. You can now receive events recommended for the industry you’re in right in your locale.

You also now have a Network Update stream, which focuses more on the events that your network is organizing. To cap it off, LinkedIn also now has a more refined search feature for events. Aside from events, there’s also a feature that gives recommendations on attendees you may want to meet. Try ou the new Events today. While not a sexy application, it could just provide you the information you need to meet your next new client.

7.  LinkedIn Gets Serious about Their Mobile Application

Many people nowadays use their smartphones instead of their computers when going online, which is why LinkedIn has doubled down on making their mobile apps the best that they can be. Some of its key improvements are faster overall performance across all features and a simpler and more intuitive menu and interface. They’ve also listened to user feedback, putting the Update stream front and center when launching the app and providing users long-awaited access to Groups. You can check out the changes for yourself by visiting their mobile site at touch.linkedin.com.

8. Profiles Now Have Skills

Everyone’s good at something beyond their job, so why not add some Skills to your profile? It’s yet another great way to increase your chances of being found by those looking for your talents. You can even check out and add new skills to your profile when browsing another Skill’s page and compare the relative growth of similar skills through a handy chart at the corner. To know more about this feature, visit the LinkedIn Skills & Expertise page here. Since Skills are not included in the standard filters for advanced people search, it’s hard to gauge what potential SEO value they have for marketers and business development professionals; that being said, any jobseeker should definitely make sure that appropriate tags are included as part of their LinkedIn profile optimization.

9. Profiles Get a Facelift

Knowing that a member’s profile is key to exploring the professional world, LinkedIn has come up with a tool that analyzes a member’s interests and current profile. It then develops a new one, tailor-made for the user.

The profile tool is very handy and can be used in just simple steps – you actually only need to click a button on your profile to get started. Recommendations are also offered whenever you update your profile to ensure that you always put your best foot forward by having the most relevant data in your profile. The profiles page itself received a bit of a revamp, and now has a cleaner, more modern design that makes profiles easier to print and share.

10. Your Account Settings at Your Fingertips

Most of us don’t get into the nitty gritty of our Account Settings, primarily because we’re afraid we might break something along the way. To make things easier and less daunting, LinkedIn now has a simpler and easier to manage Account and Settings page. The new design focuses on better usability by reducing the number of clicks required to change settings, utilizing screen overlays instead of loading new pages for faster navigation, and easier access to data by using tabs for settings and revealing pertinent information you might need at the top of the page. A long-awaited revision that simplifies things much greater than your Facebook privacy settings do…

While Today could be considered the only “new” application LI released in 2011, the enhancements to Companies, Groups, and their mobile application are significant upgrades that you should be spending some time to learn more about in 2012 if you hadn’t done so in 2011.

What were your favorite new features of 2011? Which new features do you see yourself using most in 2012?

This is exactly why social media, including LinkedIn, requires a strategic approach.  Regardless of how much “branding” you try to include on your professional profile or company’s page, your actions and words online speak much louder about you and your company than anything else.  When you create and display your profile, you must make public-facing decisions that communicate who you are as a person.  Embedding a video in your LinkedIn profile and using a link that automatically plays when someone visits it may be a savvy Internet marketing tactic, but it may be perceived as a punch in the face to someone who just wants to check out your profile in order to potentially engage you in new business.

When you see the value of communicating on brand or in a way that is aligned with your professional objectives for being on LinkedIn, you’ll likely sense the need to create a ‘public persona’ of yourself.

The fascinating thing about social media, of LinkedIn is definitely a part, is the social component.  It is what draws some people into having conversations and posting things on various social media channels that they might later regret.  Consider the fact that LinkedIn allows you to input information about your hobbies and interests in your public profile.  Including this information may help make a connection with a potential customer, but it may also turn off potential customers who perceive you in an unintended manner.

It’s easy to say that in creating your public persona you should avoid putting certain things in your profile, but because social media is, well, social, we’re frequently tempted to say things that catch us off our public brand.  So, before you post something in any social media channel that may be controversial and therefore affect your future business prospects, here are four questions to ask yourself:

• Would my family approve of this?
• Would my boss approve of this?
• Would all my customers approve of this?
• Would a court of law approve of this?

Unless you can answer “yes” to all four of these questions, keep your public persona intact by simply not posting your opinions on the Internet.  If you post useful and engaging comments that are aligned with your sales and marketing objectives, people will perceive you and your business and being skilled and experienced.  So remember, if you treat LinkedIn with the same amount of respect you would treat a professional association meeting or industry convention, you will be well on your way to building and enhancing your LI brand, which will be optimized for business success!

Have you ever been taken aback from conversations and/or a public profile you have seen on LinkedIn?

The above is a summary of selected content from my critically acclaimed new LinkedIn for business book “Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing,” available at Amazon, Kindle, Nook, or iTunes.

Admittedly, there are many similarities between the two sites.  For example, both offer platforms so that people can become part of a business community.  For Facebook, these are called Fan Pages.  For LinkedIn, they are called Companies Pages.  Facebook Fan Pages allow people to interact via wall postings and optional applications, while LinkedIn Companies Pages allow professionals to recommend company products and services as well as add comments to their recommendations.  LinkedIn followers can see who in their network made what company recommendation just as Facebook users can see which of their friends like certain pages.

With that being said, let’s take closer look at how LinkedIn provides better B2B business opportunities than Facebook:

More targeted professional community-building:  LinkedIn’s feature to follow a company allows you to “like” it simply by following it. When compared to a Facebook “like,” those following your LI page are much more relevant to the business aspect of your company simply due to their professional demographic. Above and beyond that, you can ask professionals to “recommend” products and services on your Companies Page, which has more inherent value to a company than a mere “like.”

Better page management tools: Many Facebook Fan Page administrators have problems managing their pages efficiently because settings don’t allow for specific content control.  LinkedIn, however, has several moderation tools built into the groups that allow for granular detail regarding who can post what.  For instance, the process for Group admins to easily search through members, add them as managers, delete them, etc. is simple.  Facebook does not offer such extensive features.  In that respect, LI Groups are at the cutting edge of community management on any major social media site.

Public access allows for greater engagement with interested people and increased visibility:  Up until recently, Facebook Fan Pages had been the open arena in which people could engage.  Previously, the problem with LI Groups was that they were private worlds; unless you were a member of the group, you couldn’t see inside it.  However, LI began to allow existing groups to become public, and new public-only groups to be created.  And, now that Fan Pages and public Groups offer virtually the same benefits regarding SEO and visibility, there is little reason for companies not to be active on LinkedIn.

Group members are allowed more room for in-depth conversation:  The engagement on Groups is significant because there is a lot of room for discussion; users are not confined to the small and limited status update boxes such as those used on Facebook.  Furthermore, Groups offer daily and weekly digests so that followers can stay on top of discussions through email, a feature that is lacking with Pages.

I hope this has helped you understand the sales and marketing potential of the LinkedIn platform and demographic.  In 2011, we are already seeing signs that many marketers, especially those in B2B industries, are starting to realize this.  A recent report indicated that B2B marketers use LinkedIn more than Facebook for marketing.  So with that, there is no question that for an increasing number of companies, LinkedIn is the preferred social media channel for business.

Has LinkedIn become the preferred social media channel for your company?

The above is a summary of selected content from my critically acclaimed new LinkedIn for business book “Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing,” available at Amazon, Kindle, Nook, or iTunes.

Undoubtedly, the history of how Mark Zuckerberg started the biggest social network in the world is already familiar to you. Zuckerberg was commissioned to create a social network called Harvard Connections but delayed the project while pursuing the creation of another site, thefacebook.com. Whether or not he copied the idea is up to the courts, but what we do know is that the growth of the site was phenomenal, getting between 1,200 to 1,500 new users in the first 24 hours.

Starting at Harvard, Facebook quickly branched out to other universities like Columbia and Stanford. It then soon was expanded to cover many of the most prominent colleges in the US, Canada and even in the UK. After a final rollout to employees of big name companies like Apple and Microsoft, other universities in Australia and New Zealand and to high school students, Facebook was finally introduced to the world.

Fast forward to today: Facebook has over 750 million users and as of June 2011, is the second most visited .com site after Google. It’s way beyond a social network as well, becoming a gaming platform, marketplace, messaging hub, photo hosting site and more. And now every business is trying to figure out how to increase Facebook fans.

Twitter

Crazy as it sounds, Twitter started out as a hack on top of AOL Instant Messenger that let Jack Dorsey view status updates on his RIM pager. It was too early for the idea though since mobile devices were still quite scarce and expensive at the time.

From humble dispatch software beginnings, Dorsey was starting to piece together a way to expand the service and add instant messaging and text messaging to the mix. In 2006, he collaborated with Evan Williams and Biz Stone to create a prototype for internal use within William’s company, Odeo. After a few short months, Twitter was eventually formally spun off into its own company.

It’s first growth spurt came during the 2007 SXSW festival, where live tweets were broadcast on two distinctly located plasma screens. From 400,000 tweets per quarter in 2007, Twitter now sends 230 million tweets per day and has 100 million active users around the globe. It has also spawned an ecosystem of hundreds of Twitter apps and tools.

LinkedIn

To start a professional networking site, you have to begin with a few professionals. After working for Apple and PayPal and getting a generous payout from the latter’s sale to eBay, Reid Hoffman was now ready to start his own company. After a brainstorming session with a few friends on his couch, he soon gathered a team of 13 people to start building and promoting his site, LinkedIn.

It was tough going at first but the viral growth soon kicked in and eventually Hoffman was able to monetize the site through advertising, job listings and subscriptions. After a few successful years, LinkedIn finally went for an IPO in January 2011. As of September 2011, the company is now valued at $8.8 million, one of the most successful public offerings in the post bubble era. LinkedIn has also now established itself as the hub for B2B social media marketing.

WordPress

Blogging has become almost synonymous with WordPress. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little forked WordPress from b2, one of the more popular blog publishing platforms at the time. It grew out of concerns that b2, also known as Cafelog, suddenly stopped getting updates and its main developer fell off the grid somehow. WordPress was built from the GPL code of b2 and released to the world in 2003.

Since then, it’s grown quite a lot winning several Open Source awards across the years and becoming the blogging platform of choice for many companies and brands. Mullenweg himself has gone on to create other successful projects through his company Automattic, such as After the Deadline which aims to bring spell checking to every site on the web and Gravatar, a centralized avatar repository used by many of the top blogs in the world. WordPress is what runs this website and has also spawned an ecosystem that has fostered thousands of WordPress plugins.

Tumblr

David Karp started Tumblr in 2007. When Karp was 19, he found out about a new form of blogging called tumblelogging, a shorter form of posting thoughts to the internet. He soon launched his own site on November 1st, filling the niche between actual blogging and tweeting.

The site has grown quite well to 3 million users strong, boasting an 85 percent retention rate due to its pristine yet customizable interface. Tumblr is now home to over 28 million blogs and more than 10 billion posts. Who would have thought?

Foursquare

Your favorite mayor-ousting service began as a thesis project by Dennis Crowley at NYU. After gaining some buzz as a unique SMS-based location service, the precursor to Foursquare and its technology was bought by Google in 2005. He started collaborated with Naveen Selvadurai in 2008 and soon launched a new location-based app in the popular South by Southwest (SXSW) festival the next year. Dubbed Foursquare, it combined a location pinging services with a badge scoring system that made it a huge hit in the event.

It kept on growing, churning out an API so that other developers could build upon its location discovery service. Foursquare now has 10 million users scattered all over the world with 750 million check-ins under its belt. There’s even a holiday named after it; April 16 is dubbed Foursquare Day. Although the personal ROI of using Foursquare is debatable, the future for location-based services from a marketing perspective is promising.

StumbleUpon

Click a button, find a cool site. That was the basic premise for this service built by friends Geoff Smith, Garrett Camp and Justin LaFrance in 2001. It started as an add-on for Firefox, one of the first actually, and as people adopted the new browser, StumbleUpon grew with it. It also spread via word-of-mouth and its popularity eventually led it to being bought by eBay in 2007.

Feeling that the site was growing beyond what eBay could offer, one of the founders set out to buy the company back in 2009. It was a long and arduous time but in April 2009, StumbleUpon became independent once more. The site has done quite well ever since, boasting 1 billion stumbles (or page recommendations for your non-Stumblers) per month. If you haven’t tried it yet, there are many reasons why you should become a StumbleUpon user.

Empire Avenue

What’s this? Using your social media activity to increase your stock price? This could only happen on the magical website that is Empire Avenue. This social stock market was created by Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana, Dr. Michael Mannion and Niall Brown as a sort of virtual currency, tracking your social value on the web.

It was the culmination of a round of drinks in 2008 in Montreal. Gathering some of the best experts in gaming, business and math, they created a site that takes an algorithmic analysis of networks you are part of and translating that into economic terms like your share price. Once an invite-only site, it’s now open to the public and free to play.

If you’ve been hanging around social networks the past few months, you’ll notice people playing Empire Avenue and building up their “social capital” through it. While the site doesn’t reveal statistics about itself, it did raise a cool $1.2 million in financing recently, which means we will be seeing a whole lot more of Empire Avenue soon. And, yes, Empire Avenue is important to social media marketers.

Did you learn anything new here by looking at the history of these popular social media websites? Any other tidbits you’d like to add? Please share!

As my job involves staying abreast of the latest discussions and news concerning social media, I am a member of a number of LinkedIn Groups that relate to the topic.  I learn a lot from these groups, develop relationships with new people, and engage in discussions where appropriate as well.  In order to keep up with all of the updates, I sign up for daily or weekly digests from my favorite groups to keep better track of the discussions.

One day I noticed that there was one discussion on one group that was gathering a lot of comments.  When I navigated from the Weekly Digest email to the group’s website page, I noticed the last comment was from someone who asked, “Prove to me the ROI of social media.”  I was intrigued by the comment and went to visit this person’s profile.I was surprised to find 1) this professional lived in the same Orange County that I did and 2) he was already connected to my brother, who is in the wine industry, as apparently he is also involved in event marketing where he hosts wine-tasting events.

I decided to reply privately saying that, since we live close by, I would love to meet him and I would be more than happy to explain to him the ROI of social media over a cup of coffee.  I also mentioned the relationship with my brother to improve my chances at establishing rapport.  I shortly thereafter received a reply that he was actually a marketing consultant and one of his clients was looking for someone with social media expertise.  He introduced me to his client and one week later the deal was closed.  Shortly thereafter he introduced me to another opportunity which also resulted in new business.

LinkedIn Groups are one of the most powerful ways to learn, discuss and network – and even potentially develop business.  If you are a member of groups where professionals are discussing business problems that you have answers to, I am confident that you too can develop business.  I include more than 15 similar case studies in my new book to prove to you that business is being developed every day on LinkedIn.

Now it’s time for you to share your LinkedIn success story and allow it to become a case study for the world to learn from.  Whether it’s been developing new business, a lead, a networking opportunity, or even a job, what success story do you have to share with us?  The 5 best success stories shared by commenting on this blog post before Tuesday, September 6 will be chosen to win a free copy of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing as well as potential inclusion into my future books!

What are you waiting for?

To be honest with you, some of you might remember my top social media books blog post several months ago where I said, “…be forewarned that my Twitter book is next in line.”  It was in late March of this year, with the manuscripts of both that Twitter book as well as this new book more than half done, that I made the decision to finish this new book first.  The IPO, the continued belief that there were too many common LinkedIn fallacies that needed to be addressed, and the need for more literature on B2B social media marketing made me feel that it would provide more value to my readers to release this one first.The  new book goes into practical details, enhanced with more than 15 case studies of others who have accomplished what I say is possible, on the plethora of ways that exist in which both businesses as well as professionals can maximize LinkedIn to generate new leads, foster brand loyalty, increase targeted website traffic, and close deals.  As a sneak preview, I wanted to summarize some points of my book in a 10-step approach to give you some ideas to help you maximize the professional social networking platform for the sales and marketing efforts of your own business.  Each point represents a preview of one of the chapters to give you a feel for the content and scope of what I cover in the book.

1. LI requires a certain mindset in order to be successful on it.  Just as there are some who go to business networking events who come back thinking it was a waste of time, there are others who come back with leads or relationships that when cultivated will lead to business.  As one of those who I interviewed for the book suggested, “LinkedIn is only valuable if you decide to be an active member.”
2. Still don’t think your business needs to be on LinkedIn?  Many companies are missing out on potential business by paying too much attention to other social media platforms and not taking advantage of the tools that LinkedIn allows companies, and professionals, to utilize to promote themselves and their businesses.  If you’re a B2B company, make no doubt about the fact that most decision makers you want to target are already on LinkedIn, and they can potentially be far more approachable than on a personal networking platform such as Facebook.  Even B2C companies, like the Irish Dog Bloody Mary Mix case study in the book, show that B2C companies have B2B relationships (distributors, marketing partners, et. al.) that can be cultivated on LinkedIn to develop new business.  In the case of the bloody mary mix company, they are now generating 25% of their business from LinkedIn!
3. Just as you need a website to promote your company on the Internet, your employees need an optimized LI profile to best represent their company and products and services.  LinkedIn is a database of professionals that is often used to find other professionals and businesses. If Facebook were the White Pages, LinkedIn is the Yellow Pages. Because of this, professionals and companies need to be found just like they need to be sure they are classified correctly and displayed prominently in the phone book.  Creating a sales-oriented profile starts by understanding where your customer is and what they might be looking for and adjusting your profile appropriately.  In other words, your profile is not about you – it is a sales tool to help your potential customers find you.
4. Because it’s 2011 and LinkedIn has grown by 60% in the last year alone, it’s time to re-establish your online network.  Every connection added gives you that much additional reach to find and be found.  It’s also time to rethink your connections policy and begin to strategically target new connections who might be able to help you and your sales and marketing objectives.
5. Every business needs to understand the importance of establishing and optimizing their presence on LinkedIn Companies.  Having a presence on Companies is not just about putting your company in the LI database just as professionals do with their profiles.  It is about recognizing that recommendations from your products and services within your Companies page can play a vital role in generating business similar to how personal recommendations give instant credibility to professional profiles.
6. Why do so many companies have Facebook Pages but never think about creating their own LinkedIn Group?  Not only do Groups have far more moderating features than Facebook Pages have, but they allow you to create a community of potential customers or present users in the most lucrative demographic of any social media website.
7. Many professionals create their profiles and then wait for something to happen.  Similar to the business networking event analogy, just showing up will get you nowhere.  It’s about engaging on LinkedIn, and there are many public forums and applications which, with a little out-of-the-box thinking, give you the opportunity to engage with other professionals in a business atmosphere for business objectives.
8. With new applications such as LinkedIn Signal and LinkedIn Today, the professional networking website is quickly becoming a source of business intelligence for the sales and marketing professional.  Since social media monitoring tools do not cover LI yet, you will have to manually look through various public forums and applications for information, but there is a great deal of intelligence to be gleaned that can lead to new business for the effort.
9. Social media optimization is about using social media activity to bring more visitors to your website.  For many websites like TechCrunch or even this Windmill Networking site, LinkedIn provides the 2nd largest source of website traffic from social media websites.  From my experience, traffic from LI also provides the lowest bounce rate as well as highest number of page views per visit.  There are many ways to use LI to drive traffic back to your website, but if you’re not getting enough traffic from LinkedIn to your website, you’re missing out on potentially high quality and lucrative visitors.
10. Which is the only social advertising platform which lets you target by company and title?  LinkedIn Ads aren’t cheap, but LI is a quality over quantity platform that is appropriate for targeting decision makers for your B2B or expensive B2C product.

As you can see, there are a variety of ways in which LinkedIn can be used to help your company or yourself from a sales and marketing perspective.  I hope you enjoyed the above tips and I further hope that this new book helps revolutionize the way that businesses look at LI similarly to how my 1st has helped thousands of professionals to gain insight on how to navigate and benefit from a robust and social presence on the professional networking platform.

Members of the Windmill Networking mailing list will have a chance to receive a sneak preview version of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing free-of-charge in the near future.  If you’re still not convinced you need this book, sign up here to ensure you receive notification when this happens!

The title of this blog post probably surprised, if not shocked, most of my loyal readers because they know I have always evangelized the LinkedIn Open Networker, better known as the LinkedIn LION. I wrote about them in great detail in my LinkedIn book. The problem, though, is just as you can buy connections and Group members, Internet marketers have exploited the LION movement by seeding LinkedIn with enough fake profiles to allow you to actually purchase them. These marketers have taken advantage of the fact that LIONs will traditionally and sometimes religiously accept all invites and thus guarantee that these fake profiles can amass a great number of connections in a short time by sending out mass invitations to the LION community. Often the purpose of these fake accounts is simply to acquire the email address that a 1st degree connections gains access to.

I have long ago deleted the term “LION” from my profile and have already left groups that are purely associated with the movement. Why? To me, they were attracting the wrong type of users and I ended up getting invites from many apparently fake profiles. I wrote some time ago about how to spot a fake LinkedIn profile, but I was surprised the other day when I received an invite request from a face that I actually recognized that had a completely different name!  Here is the link to an interview with this person that many of you active in social media may recognize and then her “fake” LinkedIn profile. Crazy, right?

Let me clearly state that my own concept of Windmill Networking is based on the belief that the value of networking is in reaching out to people outside of your network, and thus I continue to do so on LinkedIn and throughout social media in a variety of ways. I consider the entire growth and popularity of Twitter to be based on this concept of open networking. I still believe in accepting LinkedIn invites from real people in the hopes that through the virtual connection we can somehow help each other out in the future. But I have long ago stopped accepting all invites, and in some cases will aggressively report spam back to LinkedIn, from the following types of profiles:

• Profiles with no photos (why would you not show me who you are?)
• Profiles with company logos or photos that don’t clearly depict the person
• Profiles with company names
• Profiles that don’t display their entire name (I want to know who you are)
• Profiles that have a name that is too SEO optimized or include a phone number, email address, or URL (I don’t want to be sold to)
• Current Titles that make no sense
• Profiles from companies that simultaneously send out invites from a number of different profiles
• Profiles that have either very few connections, no summaries or very little experience indicated, and/or no recommendations

In summary, I am still very much an open networker as embodied by my own Windmill Networking concept, but I am no longer a LinkedIn LION. I don’t need to be affiliated with a label or a particular group to be an open networker. Open networking is depicted by your words and actions, not a label or membership which is unfortunately attracting the wrong crowd. The existence of the LinkedIn LION is just attracting too much spam now, and I only want to be associated with real people and profiles.

What is your LinkedIn connection policy? Do still consider yourself an open networker or LION? Please share your thoughts to better understand the different opinions regarding LinkedIn connections and LIONs that exist. Thank you!