LinkedIn, like any other social media channel, is a social networking platform.  This means that people are networking with each other while revealing who they are and what they do.  LinkedIn reminds you to do this when you log in by making sure your profile is 100% complete.  Part of getting to 100% completion is uploading your picture, and here’s all that you need to know about why you should upload your photograph, sizing tips for a successful upload, and what could happen to your photograph if you’re not careful.

That’s right: Your profile photograph could be forcibly removed.  Read on for more details.

LinkedIn Photo Advice #1 – Why Upload a Photo?

There you used to be some debate as to whether or not you should include your photo in your LinkedIn profile.  The advice by some then was that including your photograph could mean that a company might not want to hire you because the fact that they saw what you actually looked like could be used against them in a discriminatory lawsuit.  Everyone who commented on that blog post I link to above said there was absolutely no truth behind that argument, and I have even heard from some employment lawyers that many of their clients pass the task of sourcing talent to an impartial 3rd party, within or outside of their organization, so that there are no potential issues here.

Regardless of the above argument, there are many fundamental reasons why you want to upload a photo to your profile if you haven’t done so already:

–> There are fake profiles on LinkedIn.  A photograph shows that you are for real, and it helps establish your social media credibility.

–> Why would you be on a social networking site and not display who you are?  What are you afraid of?  Not having a photograph means people may have a suspicious view of your profile.  In fact, I list this as the 1st thing in my 10 LinkedIn Profile Mistakes You Want to Avoid post.

–> A photo will help bring your LinkedIn profile to 100% completeness.

–> For your personal branding, a photograph is essential.  And as they say, first impressions mean everything, and often our first impression is a visual one.

LinkedIn Photo Advice #2 – What are LinkedIn’s Photograph Requirements?

This information actually comes straight from the source at Customer Support in Mountain View when I had problems uploading a photograph myself.  Here are the requirements to pay particular attention to:

1. The file type is a JPG, PNG or GIF.

2. The file size is no larger than 4MB.

3. The pixel size is at least 80×80 and no larger than 4000×4000.

If you still have trouble uploading a picture, additional advice indicated trying to use a different browser than what you normally use.

LinkedIn Photo Advice #3 – Why Was My Photograph Removed?

My recent blog post on why your LinkedIn account may be suspended has been getting a lot of view as well as comments from those who suddenly found that they were locked out of their accounts for no reason.  Imagine one day you noticed that your LinkedIn profile was naked, i.e. your profile picture was missing!  I’ve never heard of this happening in Twitter or Facebook, but it does happen on LinkedIn.

First things first: I already mentioned why you don’t want to have a company logo or an irrelevant picture for your profile, so if you are still not using a personal photo, you may want to reconsider your strategy in light of the fact that your photo could be removed and your profile potentially “flagged” by LinkedIn.  Otherwise, you may be asking for trouble.

The next thing that is worth mentioning is that anyone can go to a profile and, regardless of your connection status, and report to the “LI Authorities” that a photograph is either an advertisement (i.e. company logo), copyrighted material, inappropriate content, a misrepresentation, or “other.”  This is probably the mechanism that alerts LinkedIn to “suspicious” photos.

It is worth noting that LinkedIn has a clear Photo Policy in its User Agreement:

LinkedIn provides the opportunity for users to upload a photograph to assist other members in recognizing that person. As a professional networking site, there are guidelines to determine which types of photos are appropriate. We consider a photo appropriate as long as it does not contain content that is copyrighted or unauthorized for public distribution and does not contain offensive content. Additionally, if your photo is not an image of yourself or does not contain an actual photograph, it is considered inappropriate. Your photo has been flagged for inappropriate elements and has been removed from your profile.

Normal users should not have any fear about the photographs that you use, but there are some people who like to use effects, like those you find on the Photo Booth application on a Mac or any picture-editing software, to make a statement about their personal brand.  You see many of these types of profile pictures on other social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  LinkedIn, however, is holding rigid to its policy of “professional photos.”  Even a gentleman who had an “Obamacon” of himself, the same profile picture that is on his Twitter page, recently had his photograph removed.  I believe that the photograph definitely helps “to assist other members in recognizing that person” as pointed out in LinkedIn’s Photo Policy.  Is it that disturbing that the picture had to be removed?

What do you think?

If you’ve been following my blog, you already know that I won a free ticket to fly to Toronto thanks to Virgin America’s #VXToronto Twitter campaign.  I’ll write about the “Virgin” experience later.  Right now I want to share with you all what I learned on this trip.

I’ve had many people ask me, “Was the trip worth it?”  My answer, of course, is “Of course!”  Because what I was doing in Toronto is what I do in social media everyday: meet new people, have interesting conversations, share information, and learn a lot of new things, things that help advance my business as well as my career.  What is there not to like about that?

I wanted to share with you all what I learned or confirmed on this trip for your future reference.  It is just one example of what is possible if, when you go on a business trip, you schedule your own tweetup or meetup and go out there and Windmill Network!  All this happened primarily over a 2-hour tweetup, so if you have never gone to a tweetup before, this is a preview of the types of people you could be meeting and conversations you could be having!

1) Partner Up for Successful Windmill Networking

Earlier this year I hosted good Windmill Networking events on business trips to Jacksonville, New York City, and Portland.  But each time I was a lone soldier, doing almost all of the inviting and legwork in finding a venue by myself.  This time I had the help of a local in Toronto, Judy Gombita, someone I had never met before but gotten to know through Twitter.  Judy took on the event as if it were her own, spreading the word through her network and Twitter and helping me secure a venue for the event.  In fact, it was someone who listened in to our Twitter conversation, Candice Best, who ended up partnering with the two of us and executing on the final venue selection and logistics.  From Judy’s and Candice’s efforts we were able to get 40+ people to attend a tweetup at a coffee bar on a Thursday night.  By far my most successful Windmill Networking event…thanks to the help of my partners Judy and Candice!

Advice: When going to another city and trying to organize a networking event, try to find at least one local contact in your network who can help you on the venue selection as well as spreading the word.  Your networking event will be the more successful for it!

2) Twitter Relationships are REAL

As the above illustrates, these two people who partnered with me I met through Twitter.  I had never met them before in real life, and yet they treated me like family going out of there way to make sure that I had a pleasant stay in the “T-dot.”  And it wasn’t just them.  There was @Animal, the famous recruiter who has a raucous, entertaining yet educational Recruiting Animal Internet radio show about recruiters and jobseekers, who I had a chance to meet in real life and get to know over coffee at Tim Horton’s.  There were people seeing my tweets from the Virgin flight who lived in Toronto and came out to meet me the next night.  There were countless other tweeps that I met that were drawn into conversations from Judy on Twitter.  In fact, most of the people that I met in Toronto I had met, not through the 300+ LinkedIn connections I had living in Toronto, but in one way or another through Twitter.  Twitter has helped enrich my life in countless ways, and I realize this even more as I write my 2nd book, which will be on Twitter of course!  Some people give Twitter a bad rap, talking about the automated bots that exist and the Direct Message spam.  If you can look beyond that there is a golden group of real people out there to meet and develop relationships with.

Advice: Part of the problem of starting out on Twitter is not finding relevant people to follow.  Do yourself a favor: go to the Twitter Yellow Pages Twellow as well as the Twitter List Directory Site Listorious, enter some keywords of things you have an interest in or the name of your local city, and look for people that might be interesting to follow.  You’re bound to find someone…and then take it from there!

3) Social Media Events are Not Just about Freebies

Through Candice’s help, we were able to secure not only free coffee tastings from our sponsor Crafted, but also some free beer (Mill Street Brewery), pizza (Pizzeria Libretto), and chocolate (Nestle…in the picture).  But we weren’t able to advertise these things until the last minute.  It had no affect on the turnout.  Those coming to a networking event were coming for the networking and meeting people, not the freebies.  Sure, it was nice to know that local businesses were supporting the event and, don’t get me wrong, the food and drink was awesome and greatly appreciated!  But if you think freebies are enough to draw a large crowd for networking, think again: it’s all about the networking!

Advice: Businesses often think they need to give something away to provide “value” to their social media audience.  While providing free products does get your product talked about in social media and are appreciated by attendees, try going beyond that by thinking outside of the box in terms of other ways of providing value and becoming participants in social media events, which could draw more potential future customers to the event!

4) Businesses are Starting to Realize the Value of Content Curation

Whenever I speak with clients about social media strategy, the subject of content curation always comes up.  Still understood by relatively few, the art of sharing content about your line of business, if done right over time and combined with your own compelling content, can help elevate you to a subject matter expert or even a thought leader status.  Imagine how surprised I was when members of a start-up company from Toronto, ConnectedN, were excitedly talking about their software platform which helps businesses automatically curate and publish content.  Here’s a video of an interview I had at my #VXToronto tweetup with the co-founder, Brad Milne:

Advice: If you want to know how content curation can be utilized as part of a comprehensive social media strategy for your business, please contact me.  If you’re ready to invest in a platform to help automate the content curation process, contact ConnectedN!

5) Think Social Media?  Think Canada!

Whenever I think of areas of the world that foster the growth of social media companies, I always think of the Bay Area.  Think about it: Within a small area of California one can visit the headquarters of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!  The existence of these companies in close proximity has spurred countless social media startups in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and surrounding areas.  But this trip made me realize how many of the leading social media companies are located in Canada, not the Bay Area:

The leading social media monitoring software company?  Many would say Radian6, and they are located in the beautiful Canadian province of New Brunswick, northeast of Maine.

Up-and-coming social media monitoring software company?  We were blessed by the presence of Sheldon Levine, the community manager for Toronto-based Sysomos, who are apparently working with a lot of big brands and are gaining major traction in the market.

The leading integrated social media client platform?  Look no further than HootSuite, hailing from Vancouver.

Although there are many excellent social media agencies that exist worldwide, one that has gotten recognition as one of the top 15 social media agencies worldwide and is also famous for its relationship with Ford, is the Social Media Group which hails from Toronto.

Advice: Be on the lookout for exciting social media startups to spring up in Canada in the next 6 to 12 months.

6) The Zen of SlideShare

I’ve been talking a lot about SlideShare recently, primarily from a B2B social media marketing perspective.  But there’s another side of SlideShare, something concerning the “Sharing” of content through social media and developing your personal brand.  I always talk about blogging being a great way to share your expertise with the world.  Why not take it one step further and repurpose your content into a Powerpoint presentation and upload it to SlideShare?  If you’ve ever spoken on a subject, why not upload your presentation to SlideShare to share with those that might not have had a chance to hear you speak?  A presentation is a powerful way to package and share something in a format that is easy-to-read and professional looking.  Furthermore the demographic that is active on SlideShare is overwhelmingly professional.

It was a conversation with Sacha Chua, an Enterprise 2.0 consultant working for IBM, tech evangelist, and Toronto rockstar that helped me see the light.  She has uploaded 25+ presentations to her SlideShare account, and she has shared information on topics ranging from “The Shy Connector” to “A Teacher’s Guide to Web 2.0 at School.”  In fact, her most popular presentation, “The Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 @Work,” has more than 50,000 views!  That is more views than a lot of blogs get in one year!

Here is one of Sacha’s presentation where she has off-the-cuff calculations of the ROI of sharing your content throughout social media:

Pretty powerful, huh?

Advice: Knowledge is not power.  Knowledge is there for you to share with the world, and in doing so display your expertise.  Get on the bandwagon…share…and you shall reap the benefits!

7) Social Networking: No Person Left Behind

My concept about social networking vis a vis hosting events was that the event had to be larger than I was.  In other words, even if I didn’t get a chance to speak to everyone who came, if the people I didn’t speak to were able to meet others and had a good time, I would consider it a successful networking event.  I learned of a totally different perspective on social networking from the Networking Queen of Toronto, Dennie Theodore.  Dennie runs a popular networking group in Toronto called Similar Circles that periodically meets and often has a waiting list in order to attend one of their popular events.  The secret of her networking success?  She personally makes sure that every person that comes to a networking event is meeting new people.  Instead of herself networking at her event, she is looking for people that are not networking or speaking with others.  If she finds them, she will make sure they are not “left behind” and get them socializing with others.  Isn’t that a great idea and refreshing approach, that someone is providing a personal touch in leading the event and ensuring that no person gets left behind?

Advice: If you host networking events and are looking for ways to get people to talk to each other, here’s some advice that Dennie gave me.  Go to a 99 cent store and buy small ornamental objects that you can give out for free at your next event.  When you meet someone, you exchange your unique objects.  In such a way, your “object” should be traveling the room as you and others meet new people.  The catch?  You can’t leave home until you get your “object” back by meeting other people!

Is 6 Degrees of Separation Still Valid?

As we network and meet more people, the world around us becomes smaller.  Sometimes really small.  After chatting with Judy, I don’t remember where, but the fact that I had a Jewish and a Japanese connection came up and Judy had asked me if I had heard of a book called Hana’s Suitcase, which is actually the true story of one Japanese woman’s search for details on the whereabouts of a girl (Hana) who owned a suitcase that was installed at a Holocaust Museum in Tokyo.  Thanks to the efforts of this woman from Japan, the story of Hana, another innocent victim who was all-but-forgotten, was brought to life and now helps children around the world learn about that dark period of history.  Judy had mentioned that the book was written by a Canadian, but both Judy and I were surprised that @40deuce, the Community Manager over at the previously mentioned social media monitoring company Sysomos, was the book author’s 1st cousin!  Coincidence?  Maybe.  But the more I network around the world, both offline and virtually, I am realizing that we are all a lot closer than we think…

Advice: I learned of this magical story just from having a conversation with someone I met on Twitter.  Social media is full of real people that can enrich your life.  They are waiting to engage with you.  It’s not about the tools: it’s about the engagement.  Go for it, and see for yourself how our world is becoming smaller…and how meeting new people can truly enrich your life.

Today’s guest blog post about social media strategy for local marketing utilizing Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare comes from someone I met Windmill Networking on My Blog Guest, AJ Wilcox.  I asked AJ to write about the intersection of local Internet marketing and social media strategy, and he surpassed my expectations with this excellent blog post. AJ is the SEO Team Lead over at OrangeSoda, a local Internet marketing firm. He has been in love with Internet marketing for over 3 years, and has overseen over 2,000 SEO accounts. He is married with a 1 year old son and enjoys cars and running.

Your business may be using Twitter, Facebook, or Foursquare to be connected to its customers, but have you considered integrating all three? Each platform has individual strengths that can make your business’s social media strategy more effective, and they have platform integration functions that make it simple.

My expertise is in local, brick-and-mortar businesses, so I’d like to direct my thoughts towards this type of business. As I see it, there are 5 ways to use social media:

• Branding/PR
• Sales channel
• Customer interaction
• Promotions
• Reputation management

Let’s cover each channel in detail and how they can be integrated for the most cohesive strategy.

Branding/PR

You company has a personality that goes along with the brand. You’ve probably contributed to it for as long as you’ve been involved. Social media can be a great way to establish that brand personality.

If your business is the stuffy, “professional” type, then your Facebook profile page should reflect that. Your tweets and status updates should be professional in nature. Everything coming from you is informational and inspires trust and authority. Yes, even tweets can encourage followers to utilize you as a resource. If your company is the fun, personable type, your Facebook page and tweets should follow suit. It’s all about the personality.

Discuss your company goals and strategy with employees interacting with the public through your social media to keep everything on brand. And I’m not really suggesting it. It’s a necessity.

Use social media to establish brand authority by mentioning industry news and showing you are on top of your game. A company that is involved and active in the industry will be a better place to do business than a company that won’t ever evolve.

Sales Channel

Why did you originally start doing social media for your company? My guess is that it was because you thought that somehow you could use it to bolster sales and build your customer base. This is a fantastic use of social media, and it should definitely be used – but be careful not to overuse this channel. Remember that your fans/followers aren’t following you for the pure joy of being advertised to all day long.

Twitter and Facebook are really the keys to this channel. Did you just start selling a new product? Let people in your networks know. I personally wouldn’t let an advertisement tweet or update go out more than once in 5 or so messages. Foursquare will let you put a sticker in your store window to alert customers to the fact that you’re active, so they can get on and connect.

Remember, the wider your social network, the wider your advertising reach. The more of a reason you give potential customers to follow you, the more effective sales channel messages will be when customers arrive.

Customer Interaction

No matter what industry you are in, your customers are becoming more social-media savvy. Your customers will talk about you or to you on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and just about any other platform there is. Being available to respond to your customers’ questions, inquiries, tips, etc. is a great way to build loyalty. Your audience is putting more emphasis on being transparent, available, and savvy. Now is your chance to be there for them. Be real and don’t do automated responses. No one likes dealing with robots.

Think about it. If one of your customers tweets, “This sux, I went to pick up my order and it hadn’t arrived yet,” how about responding to them—immediately—with, “Sorry about your order! Our driver had a truck issue. It should be here at 3:30. We’re sending along a $5 gift card for the inconvenience.”

The customer would be stunned that you were listening and were willing to explain the issue clearly. They may have had a small inconvenience by dropping into the store simply to be turned away empty handed, but now they know it was because the truck was late. Instead of talking about your business as incompetent and uncaring, they leave a comment about your excellent customer service.

Imagine fielding customer service questions like, “How long is that sale going on this week?”, and “how late are you guys open tonight?” Your customers will feel like they are getting personal attention and will be more likely to frequent your establishment.

Promotions

Twitter and Foursquare are fantastic for promotions. Consider doing a coupon, special, or contest with your social network.

Twitter is fantastic for contests and promotions. You can set rules directly related to your tweets, e.g., retweeting your announcement (and thereby invite their network to the promotion) counts as an entry to the contest. That means that every entry to the contest makes their whole network also aware of the promotion. As retweets fly around the twittersphere, thousands of people will end up seeing your promotion, and it’s a great way to build a larger following.

Foursquare is great for in-store promotions. As customers are checking foursquare in your area, a message will pop up saying that someone in their area is offering a special. Upon clicking, they will see whatever special you have set for your establishment. The best part about Foursquare is that the customer is already within walking distance, and any traffic you can build into your store would most likely be traffic that was not planning on visiting your store.

As a business on Foursquare, you also have access to a dashboard to see how often people are checking into your establishment. You also get to see who the Mayor is (the person who checks in to your store most often in the last 60 days), and have an opportunity to reward the mayor with a special offer. The best part of this is that it encourages check-ins by others who want to be the mayor and therefore have to come by more often. Your business profits from the additional traffic clamoring for the mayoral honor.

Reputation Management

It has been said that a disappointed customers will tell 10 people about their awful experience. It is also true that it’s a lot easier to tell more than 10 people over a social media network incredibly effortlessly. Wherever a customer is talking, they will talk about you.

Enter social networks. When your company is being discussed publicly, you have the opportunity to participate in the conversation publicly. Stand up for your business decisions and diffuse angry customers. Remember that the longer a client’s concern goes unaddressed, the more they are going to scream and shout, so address it fast.

There are a wide variety of keyword monitoring tools for Twitter, both free and paid, to help you watch for mentions of your company on Twitter. Be part of the conversation.

Foursquare also allows customers to leave tips to other customers. Watch for negative tips and warnings, and immediately correct the issues that cause negative tips. If you ignore them, they just build up and damage your rep.

Any other social media advice that you can provide for local brick-and-mortar businesses?  Please do share your experiences with us.  And if you’d like to submit a guest blog post on Windmill Networking like AJ did, please contact me!  Thanks!

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While everyone knows that Facebook is the default choice for any business-to-consumer (B2C) social media marketing, what social media channels are important for businesses hoping to engage with other businesses (B2B)?  How can these types of businesses use social media to engage with their potential clients, gain mindshare and be perceived as a thought leader in their industry, and increase potential clients visiting their website?  Here are the six that I would recommend to most businesses.  Note that, in order to create a sound social media strategy, you should not limit yourself to these 6 B2B social media channels and should also make sure that each site is appropriate for your particular industry.  Creating a social media strategy is about strategic relevance and focus, not comprehensiveness.

1) Your Website & Blog

What most people forget is that social media does not exist in a corporate vacuum and it is only an extension of your marketing, not a replacement.  You will still be doing email marketing as well as other types of traditional marketing, although I do know some start-ups who are putting their marketing budgets solely into social media.  Regardless, you need to lead people somewhere from the conversations in social media to acquaint them with your business and start engaging in a conversation that will hopefully lead to a conversion in the future.  This is why your website is even more important with the advent of social media, and you need to make sure that your website is “social media optimized” to lead others to your social media profiles as well as to help others share your information throughout their social media channels.  Finally, another important part of social media is sharing content, and creating a blog is the best way to achieve this.  Make sure your blog is active and website optimized before engaging in social media.  So before you get active on the other sites listed below, get your own house in order.

2) LinkedIn – Your Hub for B2B Social Media Marketing

If there is one site where decision makers at your potential customers are it is LinkedIn.  Need I say more?  And if you signed up for LinkedIn and nothing happened, make sure you check out the book I wrote to help all professionals maximize your LinkedIn presence.  You can also read my previous blog post on how to get more leads from your LinkedIn presence by avoiding the mistakes that a lot of small businesses make.  Don’t wait for LinkedIn to happen…make it happen!

3) Twitter – The Potential Viral Spread of Tweets Cannot Be Ignored

There are enough business leaders and decision makers from virtually any industry on Twitter to warrant its attention.  Twitter membership is now 50% greater than LinkedIn.  Add in the facts that a Twitter Profile is now almost becoming a default part of a LinkedIn Profile as well as understanding the viral way in which tweets on Twitter get spread and you soon start to see the potential of utilizing Twitter as part of a B2B social media marketing strategy.  I am currently working on my 2nd book which will help you and your business maximize your Twitter presence, but until that’s published, check out my Twitter case study of how NOT to use Twitter.  Stay tuned for more good Twitter blog posts for business in the near future!  And remember, Twitter is not just about tweeting…it’s about engaging, striking up and joining conversations, and respecting others.  But if you engage wisely, Twitter may lead your next customer your way.

4) StumbleUpon – Traffic Generating Community

Part of utilizing social media is to help your company and website to get found.  If you are a consumer brand this is easier to do, but niche B2B businesses can be challenged just to drive any traffic to their website.  StumbleUpon is actually a lesser known social bookmarking site, but because of its algorithm and 10+ million users who like to “stumble” or navigate through several sites at at time, some studies have shown that StumbleUpon actually attracts more traffic to your website than any other social media site outside of Facebook.  My personal experience with StumbleUpon has been the same, even surpassing Facebook.  It is important to note, however, that StumbleUpon should not be used just for SEO and it is a social networking platform in its own.  In addition, because you will need to be sharing content as part of your social media strategy, think of StumbleUpon as your company’s content recommendation engine.  You may not find your Fortune 500 customers on StumbleUpon yet, but I do see an increase in small businesses joining the platform…and there are other compelling reasons listed above that should convince you of SU’s value.  Once you get set up on StumbleUpon, make sure to subscribe to my stumbles for recommend reads on social media strategy.

5) SlideShare – Present Your Business to the World

My newest fave is SlideShare, which in essence is a site of professionals and businesses uploading their PowerPoint presentations.  SlideShare in itself is one of the top 1,000 most visited sites on the Internet according to Compete.com, and it’s traffic is equivalent to more famous sites such as the social bookmarking site Delicious.com.  SlideShare is significant for businesses because this is where other businesses are putting up their presentations, so just as you Google the Internet for information, many businesses and decision makers are coming straight to SlideShare to look for relevant information to help them solve their business problems.  Business usage of SlideShare is increasing to the point where SlideShare rolled out advertising services to allow businesses to get more views of their presentations as well as generate actual lead data from views.  Start with your corporate presentation and then upload your marketing presentations and see what happens.  You may be in for a pleasant surprise!

6) Business Exchange – Network with Industry Leaders and Become the Thought Leader

Business Exchange is literally the Business Week of Social Networking.  What I like about it is that it is similar to LinkedIn in terms of demographic but it gives you the ability to network with and share/learn information with/from other professionals in pre-defined categories and industries.  For instance, for the topic of social media alone there are actually categories covering analytics, branding, business failures and successes, design, social media in the workplace, social media innovation, job hunting, marketing, operations, privacy, training, and social media vs. old media.  Find your industry’s category(s), start sharing information that would interest decision makers in your industry, and build out relationships as you would on LinkedIn.  And, once again, after you sign up please follow me on Business Exchange for the latest in social media strategy.

B2B social media marketing is like anything else social media-related: new tools, old rules.  Business has always been social.  You just need to find where your audience is and get used to a new paradigm where you professionally network with others and try to gain mindshare in a virtual, online world.  That is, in a nutshell, B2B social media marketing.

Any other sites that you would recommend to add to this list?  Please chime in!

And if you’re confused with all of the choices out there and unsure as to how to go about strategizing for your company’s specific B2B social media marketing needs, contact Windmills Marketing for a free initial consultation.

There is no doubt that the current recession continues to have an impact on the growth of social media.  Job seekers are now looking for networking opportunities by embracing social media and joining and then becoming active on sites like LinkedIn as part of their job search strategy.  This make sense because social media is also where recruiters may find you and where companies may perform background checks on you and your personality.  Don’t you want to put your best food forward in your job search and show off your talents to the best of your ability since everybody’s watching?

Unfortunately, I don’t see enough of this happening.  Just like many Internet marketers, who only see social media as another “channel” to start broadcasting their advertisements and self-promoting messages, I see some job seekers doing the same thing by blasting the message that they are unemployed in their LinkedIn profile name and status update or mass sending of their resumes to everyone in their network.  The most important concept behind social media is about sharing, and job seekers can also share their experiences with others and actually start contributing and providing value to the community. In doing so, not only will your expertise be publicly displayed for all of those recruiters to see and help establish a stronger personal brand, effective networking with other professionals can now be done on a scale that reaches far beyond your own network.

Here’s another way to look at it: You can’t force recruiters and companies to look at your LinkedIn profile, but you can use social media in becoming more active in a pool of talent so that you can stand out.  You have to be “productively active”—share your knowledge, expertise and experience to the world and don’t boil the ocean with your resumes.

Here’s how to use social media as part of your job search strategy:

Start Blogging

Blogging is the best way to share your expertise the world, and your blog posts now become things that you can share through social media.  You need to build out the business of company YOU, and a completely customizable blog can now become your “company” website instead of your static LinkedIn profile.  Because you’re sharing knowledge and experience for all to learn by, you are not broadcasting nor blatantly self-promoting.  More people will start visiting your social media profiles because they are interested in you for your ideas.  They will start to seek you out!

Still not convinced?  Here are 7 more reasons why you should start blogging, and here’s advice on what you should blog about if you are looking for a job.

Get Active on LinkedIn Answers

Providing one answer a day in your category of expertise is all it takes to share your knowledge with those who need it most.  Find your category, “own” it, and make it  a part of your daily routine.  You never know what may come out of it!  Here’s some etiquette advice on utilizing LinkedIn Answers.

Contribute to LinkedIn Groups

Join LinkedIn Groups for your industry and profession, engage in discussion, and share your expertise for all to see.  Just by spending a few minutes a day looking for relevant discussions to participate on and engaging in them, you are displaying your expertise for a lot of people to see and truly Windmill Networking.  Here’s some additional advice on what LinkedIn Groups are and their value, which LinkedIn Groups to join and the etiquette of LinkedIn Group participation.

Upload Your Work to SlideShare

SlideShare is quickly becoming the preferred destination for professionals to seek out information that is in a PowerPoint or presentation format.  If you’ve done professional presentations, all you need to do is upload them for everyone to see.  If you have expertise to share, all you need to do is create a PowerPoint and now it’s there for the world to see.  There are many stories of small businesses who have found business from SlideShare…it wouldn’t surprise me to hear of a job seeker who landed because they utilized SlideShare as part of their job search strategy.

I will be honest that I am still a relatively newbie at SlideShare, but I plan to start uploading presentations in the near future.  Please follow me on SlideShare to get my updates!

Create a You Tube Channel

Social media provides a lot of opportunities to learn because many companies and professionals are sharing lots of information.  Many people prefer the video format over a written one, so why not take out that Flip Camera or your iPhone 4 and take a video of yourself speaking about your experiences and sharing your expertise?  If you have a chance to speak at an association or meeting, bring your video camera to capture yourself and upload highlights of it to YouTube.  By creating a YouTube channel and simply favoriting the videos that you recommend to others in your industry or profession, you are curating content and displaying your expertise.  Become the “channel,” literally, on YouTube!  Here are 5 more reasons why every professional should have a YouTube channel.

By doing any or all of the above, not only will you have reached many more people as part of your job search than through your traditional broadcasting of your message, people will also see you as a person with expertise, not someone who is merely using social media as part of their job search.  This social media strategy for your job search is bound to lead to greater opportunities and attract more people who respect your knowledge and will be there to help you on your journey.

Any additional advice or experience in using social media as part of your job search strategy?  Please share!

Today’s blog post was contributed by my guest, Ann Smarty, who I have gotten to know through her managing the LinkedIn Subgroup “The Guest Blogger.”   Her post is about my preferred Twitter tool which I am also passionate about and use in my own social media consulting and implementation, Hootsuite, which just today released new Social CRM features allowing you to filter tweets by Klout score or keyword.  Ann is also currently Director of Media for BlueGlass.

Business power Tweeters can rejoice – the tool you need is finally here. Any business who has a social media policy and uses Twitter or Facebook extensively to reach out to customers now can fully manage their social activities through this site.

Hootsuite is an evolution of Twitter management that started out as “Brightkit” in 2008. While Brightkit began with potential, the creators found that the name was not in line with their services.  Subsequently, the company updated their service features, changed the name to Hootsuite, and developed a winning product that is more than suitable for business and personal social media activities.

Hootsuite offers numerous features that result in maximum benefits to business mini-bloggers. Here is a look at a few of the best ones:

Manage Multiple Social Networks

Hootsuite allows a user to integrate multiple social networking sites into one manageable location. The first and main network is Twitter, giving you the ability to manage multiple Twitter accounts. And alongside Twitter, Hootsuite helps you manage accounts with Facebook, LinkedIn, and the ability to update a host of other social networks through Ping.fm.

Create and Manage Team Workflow

Hootsuite allows accounts to add as many users as they want. New users can be added from around the country and be given editorial permissions to update certain feeds and share tweeting responsibilities.

Create Twitter Lists

If you follow any number of Twitter accounts, managing and reading all the feeds can be nearly impossible. Hootsuite allows you to create lists of Twitter followers so you can more easily read their updates.

Customize URLs and Upload Files

Your tweets or other updates with links or files are a breeze with Hootsuite tools. It uses its own URL shortening function that allows you to customize URL parameters. If you want to share a file with your tweets or other updates like a photo, Hootsuite instantly converts the file into a shortened ow.ly link embedded into your update.

Schedule Tweets

Scheduling tweets is a feature that many businesses have demanded, but few have provided. Hootsuite allows a business to pre-write a number of tweet updates and schedule them for later posting onto Twitter. This allows you to provide new and fresh Twitter content any time of day.

New iPhone and Droid App

Hootsuite works with the iPhone and Droid mobile devices. Now your Hootsuite team can perform their social media duties anywhere.

Tracking Statistics

Hootsuite tracking provides you with comprehensive data about how many clicks your tweets are getting, where they are located geographically,

So what does all this mean for your business? The Hootsuite social management tool gives you many benefits:

·       Manage your brand – Through Hootsuite, you can find out what people are saying about your company. Track backlinks and retweets, and follow how your tweets are circulating.

·       Increased Productivity – Hootsuite gives your business added productivity with easy team workflow, tweet scheduling, stat tracking, all in one place.

·       Better Social Policy Communication – Your business can more easily manage how it executes its social media policy through unified interaction with all social media team members.

Indeed, HootSuite makes tweeting for businesses more productive, intuitive, and effective.

Why has my LinkedIn account been restricted?

No, that is not a question that I personally asked recently, but one asked by someone in my network.  This is someone who is not a spammer, not even involved in marketing, and generally keeps a low profile on the social networking site.  This person is also not a LinkedIn LION and only has a few hundred connections.  Why was their account restricted?  For being too active!  And if you are not careful, your account may be suspended as well!  Here’s how:

The official response given by LinkedIn on why my friend’s account was suddenly suspended was:

“We have recently noticed a large number of page searches and profile views through your LinkedIn account. We are aware that you may be using an automated or manual process to systematically view LinkedIn web pages.

The information within LinkedIn is provided by our users for usage on the site only. In order to protect user privacy, our User Agreement prohibits using:

1. Automated or manual means to view an excessively high number of profiles or mini-profiles.

2. Automated means to run searches to collect or store data obtained from our site.”

The funny thing is that my friend was not doing any of the above: They were merely taking advantage of the new LinkedIn feature to tag your connections by looking at the different options that existed and making sure that all connections had the proper tags on them.  Sure, it generated a lot of clicks, but it obviously was not even closely related to the activity that this person was accused to have been doing.

Why do I bring this up?

• Anybody who is too “active” and generated a lot of clicks may have their account suspended with no warning.  If you want to do some research on the social networking site, do it over a few day period to spread out the clicks.  As you can see from the case study above, the number of clicks you generate are being monitored and not what specific activity you are doing, so anyone could be considered guilty of this.

• You also want to avoid a suspension of your account for another important reason: it took customer service nearly two weeks to get back to my friend with their initial response.  That’s right, for two weeks my friend was in limbo and couldn’t access their account.  Can you live without access to your account for two weeks?  I’d go crazy!  And the potential opportunity loss for business is an issue that your company may have to face if you are getting business leads from LinkedIn.

• This is a case where LinkedIn was being paranoid and automatically slapping the wrist of an innocent user.  Who knows what could happen to you?  Make sure you get into the habit of backing up your LinkedIn connections for these types of worst case scenarios.

This blog post is an example of an amazing Catch 22: LinkedIn wants us to be active on their site by introducing a lot of new features to us, but when we are too active we get penalized and have to deal with slow response times.  I hope you’ll agree in hoping that LinkedIn can:

1. Create a better way of monitoring usage on their site so as not to penalize innocent people
2. Give a warning before suspending someone’s account
3. Be a little nicer in their communication instead of accusing someone that they are guilty and forcing you to prove your innocence (LinkedIn is an American company, right?)
4. Be a little bit quicker in their response when an account has been suspended.  Two weeks is absurd.  Understanding that it requires money to hire customer support professionals and that priority is placed on paid accounts, at least trying to respond to suspended accounts within 72 hours would be ideal.

And there are apparently other reasons why your account may be suspended.  As I was writing this blog post, one of my blog readers sent me this message:

Neal, I am not sure how you were able to reach customer service at Linkedin. I have sent no less than 3 emails to customer service from my primary email address in the last 72 hours because they have restricted my account based on the number of people who have viewed my profile in the last week. This all occurred because I created a new group that has generated alot of interest and is adding members everyday at a high rate. The one phone number found…for customer service just leads to voice mail. So to my group members it appears that I have just abandoned the group and to others who have sent me email it looks as though I am not responding.

What is going on here?

Is LinkedIn becoming the New Big Brother?  Let’s hope not!

Do you have other personal experiences of being suspended on LinkedIn or know of others who have had their accounts restricted?  Please share your information for all of us to learn by.  Thank you.

There are many reasons why people use hashtags (#) on Twitter: categorizing a tweet, joining a trending topic conversation, or tweeting about a live event while virtually networking with attendees.  Without your knowing it, some of those using hashtags may even be engaging in Twitter Chats: You can safely assume that anyone using a hashtag that ends in “chat” is doing so.  Last week I announced that Perri Gorman and myself would be starting a new #JobChat every Tuesday from 5 to 6 PST, so for those of you who are still new to the concept, I have created a video to show you how you can easily join and engage in this new type of real-time group conversation.

But before I even show you the video, what exactly is a Twitter Chat?

Twitter has been compared to many things, but I always refer to it as a huge global and open chat room.  Remember the old AOL chat rooms?  [Oops...did I just give away my age?]  Sort of like that, but there are no categories, just people with usernames.  What happens if a number of people want to have a conversation on Twitter and use it just like one of the old chat rooms?  They merely use the same hashtag, which allows them to both easily follow each other as well as allow others to easily join in the conversation.  This is, in essence, what a Twitter Chat is.

Why join a Twitter Chat?  There are many reasons to join one that could help you in meeting your social media objectives, including:

• To learn something new
• To share something you know
• To make new friends
• To be found by others
• To establish your personal branding
• To display your subject matter expertise

Now that you know what a Twitter Chat is and what the advantages are of participating, how do you exactly join one?

The software client that I personally use is TweetGrid, which anyone can use just as I will show you in the video below.  It should be noted that you can join a Twitter Chat from the comfort of your own client, such as HootSuite or TweetDeck, just by adding a new Search column using “#JobChat” or whatever “#chat” you might be joining.  Even though I personally use HootSuite, I still enjoy using TweetGrid because the updates are in real-time and it allows me to concentrate on the chat.  So without further adieu here’s the how-to video!

By the way, if you are interested in learning about what other scheduled conversations are out there to join, please take a look at this excellent list of Twitter Chats.

It has been a few weeks now since LinkedIn released their new “Follow Company” feature.  Rather than be brash and predict what would happen with the appearance of this new feature, I always like to look at things with a little historical perspective and try to understand how professionals can truly leverage these new LinkedIn features.

As you are most likely aware of by now, just as you follow someone on Twitter to subscribe to their tweets in your news feed, LinkedIn now allows you to not only get “Company Updates” on your LinkedIn home page but also receive notifications of Company Activity in the convenience of your cozy email inbox.  While getting an update on New Hires, Recent Departures, and New Job Opportunities might seem strange for a professional networking site like LinkedIn, it does allow LinkedIn to offer more “value” to its core customers: companies who utilize LinkedIn to recruit employees as well as job seekers in transition.

That being said, the new Follow Company feature, while simple in functionality, offers a lot of value in different ways to the following 6 types of professionals:

1. Job Seekers

• It doesn’t take much imagination to see why job seekers should be all over LinkedIn’s new Follow Company feature: by following companies you can automatically get notified when there are new job openings.  This happens through receiving an email notification of your Company Updates as well as the updates appearing on your Home Page.
• Even if there isn’t an opening appropriate for you, if you spot someone leaving the company it may be a good excuse to try to contact the hiring manager to see if a replacement has been found.
• See a target company start to hire for a previously unknown division?  There may be hidden jobs for you there.
• See a lot of people leaving the same firm at the same time?  That may not be a good sign.
• While some say by just the mere act of following a company that they might notice you, companies do not get notified when they have a new follower.  Furthermore, with thousands of people following big companies, you may not stick out.  On the other hand, if there was a lesser-known local company with zero or few followers, you may just get noticed…
• While it doesn’t appear on your Profile, if someone in your network starts following a company and you catch sight of it in your Company Updates or in your connection’s “Activity” part of their profile, you may find out about new companies to follow or add to your target list.
• Since you can see the other Followers of the business that you are interested, you can also size up your competition.

As you can see, you can interpret a lot about a company just by looking at these details, which LinkedIn has always made available on the Companies page.  With the new Follow Company feature, you can see all of this information in chronological order in the convenient location of the “Activity” tab of each company.  It has never been easier to glean this much detailed information about a company’s HR moves in the history of the Internet.  Job seekers should be taking full advantage of this opportunity.

2. Hiring Managers

Hiring managers should always be interested in building a pipeline of talent that they can reach into when they need to expand or replace.  They may have found a new source for their talent: those that are following their company.  Unfortunately, unless it is available in a paid version, there is no way to search through Followers to find certain people from a certain discipline or who live in a certain city.  But if someone is following your company, you have all of the excuse in the world to reach out to that person to strike up a conversation.  What if your firm is not well known but your competitor has a lot of followers?  Why not search through their followers for ideas of potential people to contact?  These people may be interested in your industry and have just not had a chance to hear your story!

3. Recruiters

Recruiters should love the convenience that following Companies provides you.  You want to know which talent are leaving companies as well as what types of positions companies are hiring for?  Where companies are looking for their employees?  By following LinkedIn Companies that are on your target list, or by following your competitors, you get a very good snapshot as to the hiring trends in a certain company.  Ever try to get into a company and had no luck?  Perhaps that new hire is someone that you know and all you need is to get back in touch with them.  This information has always been available by digging through LinkedIn: LinkedIn has now made it extremely convenient for recruiters to keep tabs on now.

4. Sales & Business Development Professionals

A lot of information can be gleaned for sales and business development professionals by following companies in their target territories.  Did the decision maker that never wanted to give you time leave your prime customer and be replaced by someone you have a good relationship with?  Did your Champion get promoted to an Executive position?  Is that your Ally who jumped ship and went to a competitor in your territory, giving you a chance to penetrate a new account?  Is your target customer starting to hire for a new division with a product name that is appropriate for you to sell into?  Sales and business development is relationship-centric, and now following companies gives you up-to-date information to make it easier for you to discover valuable business intelligence about the people within a company.

5. Marketing Professionals

While people on LinkedIn who follow companies may not be the brand advocates of those who “fan” Facebook Pages, they could be a new source of brand advocates to cultivate, a new group to reach into for ideas or support.  Time will tell if the followers are just job seekers or if they truly “like” the business, but there is no reason why you can’t go out and contact these followers.

6. Professional Networking

The relationship between LinkedIn’s new Follow Company feature and professional networking?  Simple: just as you want to connect with people who have similar interests, perhaps you might be able to find a connection with someone who follows the same company you do.  This could be especially relevant if it is a lesser-known firm with fewer followers.  Give it a try and windmill network!

There is one catch to all of this that you should be aware of: With the exception of the new Job posting announcements and the people following companies, all of the information about recent hirings or departures is based on user-generated content.  In other words, the timing of all of this is dependent on that person actually updating their profile with their new information.  If you leave an old company or join a new one, you may not update your LinkedIn Profile for several weeks…

What other types of LinkedIn users can benefit from LinkedIn’s new feature?

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• LinkedIn Adds the Ability to Follow Companies (hubspot.com)
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What is #JobChat?  JobChat was created by Perri Gorman (@BeTheButterfly) and Neal Schaffer (@NealSchaffer) to serve the need of professionals and job seekers looking for advice on professional networking as well as how professionals can better utilize social media as part of their career management, personal branding and job search. Perri and Neal bring a unique combination of contrasting yet similar skills to the table to host the live chat sessions on Twitter: Perri is a former financial services recruiter and Neal a former technology sales and business development executive who also played the role of a hiring manager. Both are currently social media consultants helping both professionals and businesses on their strategies and implementation of marketing activities through social media channels. Perri is organizer of the Hong Kong Twestival and is known in Hong Kong for her Twitter workshops. Neal is the author of the award-winning and best-selling book on LinkedIn, “Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn.” The two bring a wealth of diverse and rich experiences to the table to help facilitate real-time conversations through Twitter to help answer questions and generate discussions between professionals, including job seeker participants and thought leaders in the world of recruitment, personal branding, job seeking, and social media.

Part of what I preach about Windmill Networking is Paying It Forward to others in the belief that something, some piece of very trivial information or experience to you could be a godsend to others.  It is also about connecting with others and helping them because you never know when you may be able to help each other out in the future.  Even though my business takes me down the road of working more with businesses and helping them utilize social media, I always try to find time to help others in transition through blogging and speaking to local churches, groups and associations.  How can I help more people in transition that want to use social media as part of their job search strategy?

Meet Perri Gorman, also known as Be The Butterfly on Twitter.  I met her over Twitter, the way I have met many incredible people that have enriched my life, and although she was living in Hong Kong at the time we had a chance to meet recently in Orange County, California.  We realized that we both had similar views on the importance of social media in our lives and set out to collaborate to do something that would provide value to people on a global basis.  Our answer: #JobChat!

Perri is not only extremely active on the social media scene on Twitter and blogging, she is also the organizer of the Hong Kong Twestival as well as the creator of many Twitter workshops for professionals.  She is also a former recruiter, so she can see things from the recruiting side.  I bring a lot of experience of using sites like LinkedIn and blogging and speaking about social media as a strategic tool for your job search.  Why don’t we come together and offer a weekly chat on Twitter to help as many people as we can with their job search?  And so #JobChat was born!

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter and #s (called “hashtags”), by placing “#JobChat” somewhere in a tweet, it will be trackable by those searching for #JobChat.  So long as we are all on Twitter at the same time and include “#JobChat” in all of our tweets, an open and global chat room has been formed!  If you haven’t started using Twitter, please read my post on getting started on Twitter.  If you’re already on Twitter and have never joined a #Chat, do not fear!  It is really easy to do, and I plan to create a video to show you soon.  In the meantime, check out TweetGrid, a service that allows you to create a grid of tweets to follow and also provides a way for you to tweet directly from the site.  If you create a 1×2 grid, placing “@yourname” as a search term on one column and “#JobChat” as the search term on the second column, you will be able to keep track of all public and private conversations.  It’s that simple!

JobChat, hosted by Perri Gorman and Neal Schaffer, will be held every Tuesday from 5 to 6 P.M. PST or 8 to 9 P.M. EST.  The first JobChat will be held on Tuesday, June 22 in coordination with the Gravity Summit Social Media for Executives summit at UCLA.  If you’d like to be a special guest on a future #JobChat, please contact Neal or Perri on Twitter.  If you have any questions that you’d like us to cover on future #JobChats, please list them in the comments below!  If you are a career expert, recruiter, or have other advice for job seekers, I hope that you will also join us and help in the conversation.  We want to make JobChat as inclusive as possible for everyone to share their expertise and help as many as possible!

Looking forward to seeing you on #JobChat!