Social media is an important medium that every small business should be embracing to help develop new business, understand what others are saying about them and/or their competitors, engage with and increase the loyalty of their customers and fans, and potentially even provide another avenue for customer support over social channels. There are many choices of sites in which companies can invest money and time in building a presence on, with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube being the most popular. At the end of the day, however, one of your primary objectives for your small business in engaging in social …
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Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) across the country support just about any and every cause imaginable. While their missions may differ, the need to raise money is a constant. As more and more entities join the chase for the mighty dollar, many are turning to social media to fundraise. What most NPOs don’t realize is they’re headed down a dead end street. Social media is the latest and greatest buzz word in the non-profit industry. Organizations of all sizes seem to be racing to the Web to create profiles, post blogs, tweet messages and ask the public to like them – all …
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LinkedIn just announced their earnings last week for the first time since going public, and it was good to see that their membership (now at 115 million members) and website traffic (#11 in the U.S., #13 in the world) continue to grow. When I wrote my first LinkedIn book back in early 2009, LI was at 40 million users and had not yet established itself as the default social networking platform for professionals that it has become. Beyond mere networking, however, in 2011 there is now a compelling case to be made for us to rethink how we view LinkedIn …
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I recently had a chance to meet the younger sister of a high school friend who was in transition for the first time since college graduation. “I used to always have jobs lined up for me and never had a challenge finding work.” Heard that one before, right? How about, “I received all of these LinkedIn invites, but I thought they were such a nuisance!” Indeed, the only positive thing to come out of not digging our wells before we are thirsty is to finally realize the power of LinkedIn in helping us build out our personal brand, professional networking, …
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My social media consulting clients always ask me as to who they should be trying to “influence” on social websites, and I always have to remind them that any social media user could potentially be an “influencer.” That being said, some people or businesses use social networking sites more than others, some have more reach than others, and some are considered to have thought leadership in their industries or professions more than others. So, although an exact measurement of social media influence is impossible because it will be different based on 1) the context of what exactly you’re trying to …
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With Seth Godin about to appear on stage in Orange County in just a few weeks time, there is a buzz around here about what new insights he will provide to us in 2011. And the event, in line with what Seth preaches about holding BIG events, is set to be HUGE – he will be speaking at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, part of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, a location that is host to the likes of Natalie Cole and the Vienna Philharmonic. In my eyes, but more importantly the eyes of the event organizer …
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As someone who consults and speaks on social media, I still get the newbie customer who wants me to “do” their social implementation for them. What does “doing” their social media mean? It’s means potentially representing every facet of their company with every potential new and current customer that are out there on the Social Web. Last I checked we were spending 22% of our Internet time in social media, so that’s a huge amount of influence that I could yield. Not to mention the fact that I can yield power controlling the brand image for a company, something they …
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Everyone who knows me knows that I am one of the biggest evangelists for LinkedIn. While others turn to Twitter and Facebook, I keep reminding businesses that LinkedIn should be your hub for B2B social media marketing. And while the world is going crazy about Branchout, the Facebook application for professional networking, I find immense value in new tools such as LinkedIn Signal. But as a trusted networking platform for professionals, I find that LI is falling behind its social media counterparts in one important area: Privacy Settings. Here are 3 specific scenarios in which I believe it is in …
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One of the amazing things about Twitter, when compared to a LinkedIn or a Facebook, is that it’s core functionality is so simple yet complemented with complexity by hundreds if not thousands of useful 3rd party apps because of its open architecture and growing ecosystem. Where you don’t really need any external tools to maximize your presence on LinkedIn or even Facebook for that matter, using external apps on the realtime platform for tweets can not only help save you time, it can also help you unearth critical business intelligence and allow you to truly maximize your presence for whatever …
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One thing that every social media consulting client asks me about is how to find out who the “Influencers” are in their particular industry. My answer, of course, is that every consumer who is active on social media could potentially be an influencer, and thus truly “accurate” measurement is impossible. Think about it: Someone with 10 followers could tweet something out that gets ReTweeted by someone with 100 followers, and 1 of those 100 followers is someone who works for an industry publication, who then breaks the story to the public, and so on. I think you get the picture. …
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