LinkedIn USERS TAKE NOTE… There is a report that passwords to the service have been stolen. We recommend changing your password on LinkedIn AND any other site where you may use the same password.
Source: http://mashable.com/2012/06/06/6-5-million-linkedin-passwords/
LinkedIn is an astoundingly revolutionary platform for professionals. This social networking site allows people to stay in touch and strengthen relationships with all of their business contacts, both past and present. Read on to learn how you can harness this amazing tool to start generating real leads and driving revenue for your business today.
One of the ways that LinkedIn can work for your business is to help you seamlessly translate personal contacts into professional ones. When you connect with someone on this site, you will instantly have access to their contacts to see who you know in common and whom you could potentially be introduced to.
The search function on LinkedIn is sophisticated and allows you to find contacts at any business. You can even search more generally for people in a given field. This meshing of professional and personal may seem out of place at first, but it is truly just an extension of one of the most time-tested ways of conducting business.
The key is to be proactive and take advantage of this tool while it is still a true competitive advantage. It is quite likely that this strategy will not remain on the cutting edge for very long, so jumping in and getting what benefits you can from it is the true key to overall success.Perhaps the most exciting part of using LinkedIn as a lead generating tool is the potential it has to really level the playing field between the Davids and Goliaths in the business world. Extensive lists of clients and potential clients were previously the domain of big corporations, but this one digital platform can serve as your client list with little effort on your end.
It goes without saying that one of the biggest benefits to using LinkedIn in this manner is the fact that it is entirely free of charge. Even better, using this method of lead generating is actually less of a strain on your time than traditional lead generating. The site is built out in such a seamless and intuitive way that using it for this function is will end up saving you both time and money.
Stay ahead of the curve by tapping into the power of LinkedIn as a lead generating tool. Your business, along with your new clients, will certainly thank you.
~ Colin
Social media can be a very effective way to find new customers. However, simply adding names or liking or friend requesting is not enough. You must have a strategy before you begin your search.
Who do you want? Putting together a rough demographic for what your contact looks like is important before you begin your LinkedIn adventure, with considerations including what industry they’re in, where the company is located, and what possible tangential industries work with the original one. Once this process has started, begin connecting with friends and acquaintances you already know in LinkedIn. They have friends and acquaintances that may fit the ideal contact you’re looking for.
As the process manifests itself, the next step is to dive deep into the profiles. Very much like finding ‘interests’ on dating sites, finding the associations of the contact is an important step. This starts to round out and detail what this possible contact is like by seeing what groups they are connected to, any conventions or seminars they have attended, even going as deep as any extra skills they may have picked up over their lifetime.
These are the opening steps for building contacts that may turn into customers. You will need to make this something you dedicate time to if you truly want to build a solid network.
Connect with Ritch Brandon, Chief Marketing Technologist for BrandON! here –> http://www.linkedin.com/in/ritchbrandon
~ David
Business blogging without measuring results is a waste of time.
Business blogging without measuring results is a waste of time. That said, there are so many metrics that you COULD track, you could end up overwhelming yourself with data and leaving yourself time to actually blog. So… we recommend focusing on the major metrics that can help save you time and hone your blogging to generate more leads.
Start by measuring the most fundamental (and important) of metrics…visitor count. Google Analytics will quickly supply the information you need for any timeframe.
While tracking your blog visitor count like the stock market is fun, it takes a little digging in to the data to get some actionable insight. Look at your five most successful blog posts. What do they have in common? Is there a common topic? Were your images better? Did a Twitter follower tweet a link to the posts? How many Facebook friends “liked” the post on your wall? Now use this insight to refine and improve your future posts.
We’re sure (most of) you are not investing the time to blog for your health. The success of a business blog should be measured by its results. And the results you want are leads. “Sometimes a post may not get a ton of visits but still generate lots of leads. Without looking at the leads metric, a marketer might easily dismiss the less viewed post as a failure when that shouldn’t necessarily be the case. Look at the leads you generate from blog posts. Also examine at what rate those leads convert into customers compared to other marketing channels.” (Business Blogging, Hubspot)
It takes more than reading one blog article for a person to develop an understanding of your expertise and credibility within your industry. Giving readers the opportunity to subscribe to your blog either via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or via email is a common characteristic of a well-planned blog. Tracking the number of people subscribing to your blog provides a solid indicator of the quality and consistency of your content. Your subscribers act as the base readership of your content and can help spread it to others.
An “inbound link” is a link that originates from another website or blog and links to a page or post on your site. Search engines use inbound links as an indication of authority and content quality which in turn influences how pages appear and rank in search engine results. As blog posts are normally educational rather than product-centric, they are great at generating inbound links and, subsequently, search traffic.
Track how many inbound links each of your blog posts attracts. Different types of blog posts and topics will be more successful than others. That is… some will drive more inbound links than others. Looking at these metrics for each post will guide you as you determine which topics and types of posts should be included in your content strategy for your blog.
Tweet, pin, like. Social media can drive traffic to your site and bring new eyes to your blog. Remember to keep titles within Tweet size limits (less than 140 characters) and be sure to include photos and images that will help attract interest on Facebook and be pinned on Pinterest. Then track the activity around each post to decide which topics and types of posts seem to be most interesting to your followers. Use Facebook Insights and third-party twitter analysis tools to make life easier.
This article is an excerpt from our eBook: An Introduction to Blogging for Businesses. The entire eBook is available as free PDF download.
Social media works, y’all. We’re talking Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube… all of those and the thousand of others. We recommend blogging using the WordPress blog platform (www.WordPress.org or www.WordPress.com). If you do, there are plug-ins that can automatically post a link to all of those social media sites that will direct traffic to your blog post. You can do it manually too… but that can get tedious. Regardless, you need to do it. If social media is totally new to you, you probably should call us for some help. We also have tons of resources on our site that may help: http://turnyourbrandon.com/resources/
Believe it or not, other bloggers are often happy to help spread the word about your blog… assuming you are writing intelligent, value-added posts. Start by following their blog’s RSS feed, commenting on their posts, and linking to their blog in articles and/or a blogroll that has links to your favorite sites. The other blogger may very well return the favor.
Another avenue is to join blog networks like BlogGlue or NetworkedBlogs. BlogGlue also has an excellent SEO tool that will automagically check blog post drafts for SEO best practices and offer suggestions to improve your post in the eyes of search engines.
As soon as you have a blog, everyone in your organization should add a link in their automated email signature to it (and to your Twitter feed and Facebook page).
If, like us, you occasionally give presentations to Chamber events, networking groups, business associations, or what have you, be sure to promote your blog by saying that all of the material you covered today along with the slides you presented are available on your blog at…. Several of the attendees will look up your site right there from their smartphone. Which brings up an entirely separate point…be sure your website and blog are mobile-friendly. Call us if you don’t what that means.
This article is an excerpt from our eBook: An Introduction to Blogging for Businesses. The entire eBook is available as free PDF download.
I don’t have time for blogging. Who would want to read it any way?
Yes. Blogging is a commitment of precious time. We know how hard it is to spare even 15 minutes some times…but blogging pays serious returns on that investment. We also know that authoring a good blog post will take longer than 15 minutes…particularly at first. But practice really does improve the time it takes. Read on!
Blog posts should be about a specific topic that a potential client would find interesting. Topics like:
All of these topics provide a way for your prospects to find you in the vast sea of the Internet.
On top of that, phrases (aka long-tail keywords) help rocket your article to the top of search engine results… and that’s where the action is! PLUS… the additional keywords in your blog will help the search bots understand what your website is all about. Once you have several articles on a particular topic, search engines are much more likely to associate your site with that topic… and voila…more traffic. More traffic equals more leads. More leads equals more new customers. There’s money involved. You get it, right?
Search engines love fresh, relevant content that garners clicks. That’s their entire purpose in life… to serve up the exact content that the user is seeking. It’s a tough task given the vast amount of information that is on the Internet. Plus… search engines live in the same world as the 24-hour news cycle where the information is constantly changing and the information people are seeking changes by the second based on what is happening in the world. So… fresh new content helps to reinforce that your site is a reliable place to refer their customers for the kind of information they are seeking.
Offering advice and opinions on topics related to your business and industry demonstrates to a potential lead that you “know your stuff.” Discussing technical aspects of a problem they may need solved helps establish your firm as a resource. Just providing a tip that helps someone with an issue certainly creates goodwill… and it may result in a lead if the problem turns out to be bigger than they can handle.
Visitors to your blog are self-qualified leads…and that‘ a big deal! They either found you blog post by searching a topic about which you have written, or they are being referred to your blog from another platform…your Twitter feed or Facebook page…and therefore they are willingly deepening their relationship with your company. It may seem like a lot of work at first, but think about how much you would be willing to pay for just one additional “average” client per month. It’s worth the effort for many reasons!
This article is an excerpt from our eBook: An Introduction to Blogging for Businesses. The entire eBook is available as free PDF download.
Twitter announced today that it is launching a major overhaul of its site and adding several new marketing-friendly features such as branded pages and the ability to embed a tweet into blogs and other digital media.
The video below will give you an idea of what to expect.
The following slide deck is from the social media overview presentation given by Ritch Brandon this morning to the Sandy Springs Chamber of Commerce. We appreciate the opportunity to lead this discussion about social media with the leaders of the Sandy Springs business community. If you attended the presentation and need additional information, help, or a PDF or PowerPoint version of the slide deck, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post…or on our Contact Us page.
Atlanta-based restaurant chain Doc Chey’s (@DocCheys and @DocCheysGrantPk) is doing an excellent job encouraging check-ins at its locations by holding a raffle. This would have been an excellent opportunity to incorporate QR Codes to give a quick and easy link to FourSquare and Facebook. Watch the video to find out more!
We at BrandON! mktg.tech think Hubspot has some of the very best content regarding inbound marketing available. This is a roundup of their latest tweets which typically include links to excellent information.
Mobile
Inbound Marketing
Social Media
Social Media
StumbleUpon Drives More Traffic than Facebook or Twitter – Plus INFOGRAPHIC http://t.co/HiuV3Ibj #Website Design
Blogging
Inbound Marketing
Technology
Marketing
Social Media
These are HILARIOUS! Flickr Photostream from a Haunted House. Great use of Flickr as social media tool! http://t.co/0Y485P46 #Apple
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
