Become a social media leader - 5 top tips!

Thinking of becoming a social media 'leader'? Need ideas and help as to help launch your business or your blog into the public domain? So how do you keep a happy and successful online presence? Whatever you are using it for, there have been 5 top tips created to help you out.

Image: http://us.123rf.com

Twitter is one of the biggest and most influential sites social media has to offer. But shockingly, a third of users that are registered do not even use it. This is very likely down to the fact that they don't know how. This is not uncommon.

Now, once you are set up and have the basic idea of how the site works it really is about getting out what you put in. The 5 top tips for successful social media are below:

Filter what you say online. We’ve all heard the stories about how a few keystrokes can end a career. To avoid foot-in-mouth on Twitter, I filter all my tweets through this rule: Would I be comfortable if The New York Times attributed what I’m tweeting to me? I never approached Twitter with the idea that it would be an ultra-confessional stream of consciousness. Treating my Twitter stream as if I’m on the record with a journalist gives me a good guide about what is and is not appropriate to share. It’s not to say I don’t have fun and share personal stories, but putting each tweet through that filter helps me assess before hitting the tweet button.

Set aside some time. Let’s be honest: we all are incredibly busy. So how do I find the time? Every day, several times a day, I set aside a few minutes to check on Twitter. Some days it’s three minutes and some days, when big events happen, it can be a lot more, but if Warren Buffett and Bill Gates can find the time that certainly says a lot. With the app on my phone, I can do a quick scan between meetings or respond to a message while waiting in line. When you invest time in Twitter, you quickly start to see the rewards, mostly in real-time conversations happening all over the world. No one expects you to be Nick Kristof or Lady Gaga overnight.

To what end? Know why you are getting on Twitter first. Do you want to be seen as a subject-matter expert? Have a strong voice in your industry? Gain a million followers? Keep up on the latest news and trends? With your goal in mind, cultivate a stream full of people and content you find interesting. Mix and match your passions. Make sure you participate in other conversations to help better understand your audience and the medium. One of my favorite organizations is TED; it has started so many incredible conversations. Link to other people, add value to their conversations with your thoughts and opinions. Read what they talk about, click through to the articles, track the conversations and share with your followers. Having a goal or a reason for being there will help you organize your time.

Ask for help. When I was ramping up, I realized some of the best and the brightest social media minds (many of whom are in universities or are interns) were around me, so I asked them for advice. They gave me great context, questions and dialogue. Even on Twitter, tell your followers that you are still learning; you will get more than a few expert opinions.

Use it as an internal communications tool. Twitter allows me to hear from colleagues all over the world every day. I hear about everything from their challenges and triumphs to their commutes. I get a chance to learn directly from them what they think with no filter. And they know that I’m listening. It’s one of the best internal communication tools that I have.

Image: https://www.google.co.uk

These top tips are indeed useful and will get you on your way if you want to make some headway in the social media world. But please remember they are not short cuts and only work if you tailor them to your own cause.

Do you find these top 5 helpful? Any more you could suggest?

How to Run a Successful Social Media Sweepstakes

Are you planning to run a social media sweepstakes to make your business stand out this holiday season?

Do you need a guide to ensure that you don’t miss the crucial elements of a successful sweepstakes promotion?

Sweepstakes, contests and giveaways are increasingly popular among marketers who are vying for the attention of their social media audiences. Choosing a prize is the easy part.

Whether you run your promotion on Facebook or Pinterest, it’s easy to overlook something. Making sure you’ve got all your planning, technical and legal “i’s” dotted and “t’s” crossed is critical to your success.

In this article, you’ll learn the five steps of running a successful social media sweepstakes.

#1: Assess Sweepstakes Objectives

This is where most companies shortchange themselves. How? By focusing on superficial objectives that may not benefit their business.

For example, does it make sense to run a sweepstakes to increase your already-large fan base or do you want to jumpstart your social engagement process?

Here’s a list of potential sweepstakes objectives to choose from:

• Increase awareness of a new product
• Increase the number of free trials
• Collect leads with detailed information
• Generate customer referrals
• Increase average daily visitors
• Increase newsletter subscribers
• Increase social media followers (Facebook fans, Twitter followers, etc.)
• Increase social media exposure (more repins, more retweets of your message, etc.)
• Increase sales
• Generate brand loyalty by delighting existing customers with a chance to win a big prize
• Increase social media engagement

Her Campus is a good example of a company that’s using sweepstakes to increase their social media engagement.

Her Campus is an excellent example of using a sweepstakes to increase social media engagement by requiring followers to tweet a picture of their dorm room along with a description of their dorm room style.

Often-Overlooked Objectives

Increase customer micro-insights: For example, tweet to win: “If I win a $500 Visa gift card, I’ll spend it on __________ #ABCgiveaway @yourcompany”. Not only does this increase social media engagement, it also gives you a much deeper understanding of your target market.

Increase customer survey participation: Brick-and-mortar businesses regularly use sweepstakes to increase customer survey participation, but this practice is rare for online businesses.

Hipmunk is a good example of an online business that is successfully utilizing sweepstakes to increase the level of customer survey participation.

Hipmunk, a travel booking company, frequently uses small sweepstakes to increase customer survey participation.

#2: Plan the Logistics

This phase can be a lifesaver. If you get this phase right, you’ll be breathing a lot easier during the promotion.

Here are the major steps in the planning phase:

Select a Sweepstakes Tool: This is the most important step in the planning phase because the right tool streamlines and automates your sweepstakes tasks. There are some key features to look for when selecting a vendor for your social media sweepstakes.

• Automated template generation for sweepstakes’ terms and conditions
• Multiple sweepstakes entry actions: For example, do they allow you to only collect email addresses or do they also help you conduct surveys?
• Automation of winner-selection process
• Ability to host sweepstakes on multiple online platforms
• Automatic synchronization of email subscribers with email marketing tools such as MailChimp, AWeber, Constant Contact, etc.
• Branding of sweepstakes widget with your colors and themes
• Pricing strategy: For example, do they charge per action or per feature?
• Are they compatible with mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android?
• What support channels do they offer and what are their hours of support? This is very helpful if the sweepstakes tool becomes dysfunctional during your promotion.

Comply with sweepstakes laws: It’s imperative to understand the regional and social media platform rules pertaining to sweepstakes. Sarah Hawkins has a series of articles that serve as excellent guides on these topics.

Determine sweepstakes duration: 21-28 days is the ideal duration for a sweepstakes promotion. Two weeks is often too short and more than a month is too long.

Select a prize: It could be your own product or a product that really fulfills your target audience’s needs.

Here’s a good example of this from Dove. Instead of offering a cliché prize such as an iPad, they focused on providing a home upgrade to attract a targeted male audience.

Dove attracts a targeted male audience by using a home upgrade as their sweepstakes prize.

Determine sweepstakes location: Where will you host your sweepstakes? Depending on your objectives, does it make sense to host the promotion on your website, Facebook page or some other popular blog? These are not mutually exclusive choices. You can host your sweepstakes on multiple online destinations, but having it in one place often leads to an easier and more efficient execution of the promotion.

Set promotion budget: How much money do you want to spend to promote your sweepstakes? How does that divide across different marketing channels? For example, do you want to advertise on specific blogs to drive traffic to your sweepstakes or does a Facebook ad campaign make more sense?

Often-Overlooked Planning Steps

Associate sweepstakes with an event: Is the sweepstakes being held to celebrate your business’s third anniversary or the joyous spirit of Christmas? Associating your sweepstakes with an event provides context to your audience and makes a deeper emotional connection with them, which increases the chances of your sweepstakes creating a positive buzz in social media.

Here’s a great example of Family.com associating their sweepstakes with Christmas.

Family.com associates their sweepstakes with Christmas to connect with their audience on a deeper level and ensure positive social media exposure.

Create a short and enticing viral loop: A big prize attracts attention, but it’s the viral loop that continues the momentum—which is why it needs to be thought out in considerable detail. A viral loop is the workflow that maximizes the probability of one contestant attracting another contestant from their social network.

Here are the key elements in each stage of a viral loop:

Stage 1: Activate visitors into contestants

• Clearly state the action that the visitors should take to enter the sweepstakes
• Display an attractive picture of the prize
• Inform the visitors that it is quick and easy to enter
• State all the relevant information to reassure the visitors that the sweepstakes is legitimate (e.g., end date, winner announcement process, terms, etc.)

Stage 2: Remove entry barriers

• Focus on one call to action
• Make the Submit button easy to find
• Reassure the visitors that their information is safe

Stage 3: Entice the contestant to share

• Associate sweepstakes with an event (e.g., Christmas)
• Award more entries for sharing the sweepstakes via social networks
• Award a guaranteed gift such as a discount or an ebook for sharing the sweepstakes on social networks

Stage 4: Attract new visitors through shared messages

• Write compelling copy for the message shared by the contestants when they press the Facebook Share or Retweet button. For example, instead of “Enter to win a $500 Visa Card” being shared, modify the copy of your shared message to “Wouldn’t it be nice to go on a Christmas shopping spree for free? Enter to win!”

Make sure every shared message has a link to the sweepstakes.

#3: Launch the Sweepstakes

You’ve done all the heavy planning work. Now, it’s time to execute. Here are the most important steps for a flawless launch:

Conduct a test run: Once you’ve set up the sweepstakes, ask a few of your friends and colleagues to enter and perform every primary and secondary call to action. Confirm that you see their entry in the sweepstakes tool’s analytics; that the messages being shared are not cut off due to character limits and that the sweepstakes links within the shared messages are working.

Contact influencers: Reach out to social media influencers and ask them if they will promote your sweepstakes. The more you convince them that the prize and the associated event of the sweepstakes appeal to their readers, the higher the chance of them promoting your sweepstakes. There is a great list of tools for this purpose in this article written by Jason Falls.

Request listing on sweepstakes directories (with caution): Submit your contest to a sweepstakes directory. This may make sense for some audiences, but not for others. You really need to think through what kind of audience you’re trying to attract, because sweepstakes directories often bring in “professional sweepers” who use fake accounts to submit multiple entries or immediately reverse their entry action; for instance, unlike, unsubscribe, etc.

Determine launch day: Your promotion gets an early boost if you launch your sweepstakes at the right time and the right day of the week. While you’ll have to rely on your own data to determine the best time and day for your audience, these research articles from Marketing Profs and Beth Kanter’s blog will help you get started.

According to a study published by Marketing Profs, Sunday evening is the best time to launch a sweepstakes.

Often-Overlooked Launch Steps

Create a support plan: Despite your excellent planning and execution, things can still go wrong, and usually they’ll have to do with technical glitches. If you’re using a third-party sweepstakes tool, make sure you have their phone number and email address handy so you can quickly resolve the technical problems.

Contact Facebook influencers: There’s a lot of focus on finding Twitter or Pinterest influencers, mainly because of the ease of finding influencers on these platforms. Finding Facebook influencers is more challenging, but it’s worth the effort, especially because many of these influencers don’t have their own dedicated websites or blogs.Raven Tools has an informative blog post on how to navigate Facebook’s search feature to find relevant Facebook pages.

Facebook's search feature is a powerful tool to help you determine the right Facebook influencers for your sweepstakes promotion.

#4: Follow-up With Contestants

So you’ve launched the sweepstakes and the entries are rolling in. In this stage, your focus needs to shift to following up to meet your primary and secondary objectives.Here’s a list of the major steps that are needed for a successful follow-up process:

Follow up with autoresponders: Sending a follow-up email adds more credibility to your sweepstakes and dramatically increases the chances of contestants taking the secondary action that you’d like them to take. Schedule automatic follow-ups via the autoresponder features of email marketing tools such as MailChimp and AWeber.

Determine reminder frequency: Your fans and subscribers are really busy and they’ll either forget to enter your sweepstakes or miss your announcements. That’s why reminders are vital to maximizing the number of contestants. To ensure that you don’t annoy your audience, a good rule of thumb is:

• One reminder email per week
• One reminder Facebook status per day
• Two reminder tweets per day
  

  Remind people about your sweepstakes with conservative frequency. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Conduct daily test runs: Technical glitches are often unreported, which translates into fewer contestants. That’s why it’s important for you to enter your own sweepstakes on a daily basis (with a test account) to verify that all of the sweepstakes procedures are working as planned.

Perform weekly modifications: As the sweepstakes progresses, you’re sure to learn a lot and generate ideas on how to make your sweepstakes better. It’s important to set aside some time each week to make adjustments based on those lessons. It could be something as simple as changing the tweet message to make it more enticing, or something as effective as reducing the number of actions required to enter the sweepstakes.

Often-Overlooked Follow-Up Steps

Reach out to contestants on Twitter: At the end of each day, look at who entered the sweepstakes on Twitter, check out their Twitter bio and see if they are the right target to engage with. Breaking the ice is much easier since their sweepstakes entry serves as a starting point for conversation. It’s simple to do and you’ll never know who you’ll find, so why not give it a try?

Follow-up for soft-selling: Sweepstakes draw a lot of traffic and attention. Why not encourage them to buy from you? Here’s a list of things for you to do on your Thank-you page or your follow-up emails to increase your sales:

• Show contestants your business video and ask them to start a free trial
• If the prize is your own product, give them a link to where they can buy that product
• Give entrants a discount code to entice them to buy from you. Here’s a good example from a sweepstakes promotion.
  

  Use your follow-up emails as a means to soft-sell your product to increase your sales.

#5: Ending the Sweepstakes

You’re almost done. A few more steps and you’ll have the pleasure of communicating with the winner and watching him or her respond to you with joy and disbelief. But before that point, there are still a few things you need to get right:

Send final reminders: Send out final reminders via email and social media about when the sweepstakes ends. Reiterate what the sweepstakes was for and how easy it is to enter.

Select a winner: If you’re using a sweepstakes tool, it should make the winner selection process very simple. Otherwise, export the contestant data into an Excel spreadsheet and upload it to Random.org to help you select a winner.

Remove the tool: Now that the sweepstakes is done, remove the widget from your website and/or your social media pages.

Send winner announcement: Announce the winner to all contestants via email, blog and social networks.

Contact the winner: Send a separate email to the winner asking him or her to respond within a specific time period. Also ask about the person’s age and location. This step needs to be done within 7-10 business days of the sweepstakes’ end.

Mail the prize: Once you’ve confirmed all of the details with the winner, mail the prize to the winner’s address and let him or her know the estimated date of arrival.

Often-Overlooked Ending Steps

Create an internal assessment report: This is the moment of truth. Did you meet your objectives? What was the return on investment for the amount of money you spent? Would that money have been better spent on direct ads or other PR activities? What worked very well and what would you do differently? Sweepstakes are not a one-hit wonder. They’re supposed to be done with some regularity and these kinds of post-sweepstakes assessments ensure that your next sweepstakes generates even better results.

Share your results: Everyone loves to see stats, a final report card or a set of lessons learned during a promotion. Now that you have completed your sweepstakes promotion, you’re sitting on valuable data. Why not share that data on your own blog or with a different audience through a guest blog post to gain additional coverage of your business?

The contest widget that had the fuzzy image collected 22% more email subscribers than the widget that had big text and no image.

Unbounce has a good article on post-sweepstakes statistics on 8 factors that lead to the best results.

Add Your Tips

These are important steps to follow when running a successful sweepstakes. However, these steps aren’t the only ones. Running sweepstakes is a social activity and there’s a lot of room for creativity.

What do you think? Do you have some tips of your own? What successes have you had with running a sweepstakes? Please share some of your own tips in the comments below.

Google+ Overhauls Photo, Video Features in Major Update

Google+ announced 18 new features on Tuesday, including multiple updates to Hangouts and additional tools for users who utilize the site for photographs. The updates will roll out in the "coming days," according to a spokesperson.

Google+ also shared new user metrics, confirming that the site has 540 million active users if you count log-ins through Gmail and 300 million monthly active users in the stream (users who visit the website or app directly). Users also upload 1.5 billion photos per week, said Google VP Vic Gundotra.

Among the Hangouts updates, Google+ has added SMS to the messaging service, meaning users can message with others using text. The update comes on the heels of Facebook's similar update to its Messenger app on Tuesday.

Other Hangouts changes include a new geo-location feature that adds a user's location to a message with a single click using Google Maps. The updated Hangouts also supports animated GIFs.

Video Hangouts are now in full-screen HD for all devices, and Hangouts has new creative tools that let users focus or change the video view. Users can chat in black and white, or blur out the background using the new "Spotlight" feature so that the speaker is the sole focus of the conversation, said Gundotra.

On the photo side, Google+ continues to market itself as the best social platform for users who care about their photographs. One new tool, Auto Awesome Erase, removes other people or objects from your photos. If you pose on the street with friends and have strangers in the background or foreground, Auto Awesome Erase can automatically remove them from the image.

Google also made it easier for users hoping to search through their photo library. The site added more than 1,000 search terms that Google's image algorithm identifies automatically, meaning users can search for terms like "apple pie" or "sunset" and Google will return relevant photos even if the pictures aren't tagged.

Users will also be able to search in a similar fashion for photos shared by connections in their circles.

Google+ will support photo uploads in all sizes and resolutions so users don't need to compromise the quality of their photos to upload, Gundotra said. For users with iOS devices, photos were only backed up if you had Google+ app open. A soon-to-be-released version of the iOS app will allow users to have full size backups and sync on at all times.

Google+ also unveiled a new Auto Awesome Video feature that automatically converts a user's photos and video clips into a short movie, complete with an audio overlay. Once Google+ determines that a group of videos and photos were taken in the same time period, the site will automatically filter them to choose the most interesting, highest quality images and video to include.

Users can then manually edit the video if they want, changing the theme and filters, duration of the clips, or sound.

The updates will be available soon, once an Android update becomes available in the Google Play store, according to a spokesperson.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Why It's Important to Stay Active on Social Media

Facebook and Twitter are always there. You can pop in and check your accounts, disappear for a couple of weeks, and when you come back, everything is just how you left it, people carrying on the global conversation without you. What you're not seeing, however, is what your silence is costing you in followers and potential customers. Here are some reasons why it's important to stay consistently active on your social media accounts.

1. It makes you look reliable. Like it or not, if you only post on your social media accounts every once in a while, and are lax about replying to tweets and Facebook messages, people will make assumptions about your customer service ethic. If you can't even be bother to respond to tweets in a timely fashion, why should they believe you'll respond when they have a real need to speak to you?

2. It keeps your followers from getting bored. There's a balance to be achieved with posting frequency on social networks. On one hand, you don't want to spam people, but on the other hand, you do want to look like you're there and participating in conversations. If there are huge gaps in your timeline, people will start to wonder why they bother following you at all, and many will unfollow.

3. It reminds people that you exist. Not everyone thinks about your company all the time, but being active on social media keeps you on their radar, and gives them a gentle reminder that you're still around, and still eager to help them with whatever they need. This means that when it comes time for them to make a purchase, your company name will be fresh in their mind.

If you're going to participate in social media (and you definitely should!) it's better to stick with a couple of networks that you know you can keep up with, rather than signing up for every network and spreading yourself too thin.There's only a finite amount of time you can commit to social media, so use it wisely, and make the effort to participate enthusiastically and regularly. You'll definitely notice a difference in how people respond to you, and that in turn will translate into more shares and retweets, better interaction, and of course more followers, which is what everyone wants. How much time per week do you devote to social media marketing?

Do you notice a difference when you don't keep up with it regularly?

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8061346

Is YouTube Launching a Music Service?

Is YouTube about to take on Spotify with a subscription music service of its own? That's what a report from Billboard magazine claimed Wednesday, citing "several sources familiar with the plans."

Like Spotify, the report said, the music service will have a free tier (with ads) and a premium tier (without ads). This would push the Google-owned video service in a new audio direction, with music available for streaming or caching on all platforms; however, YouTube would still hold on to its roots by offering music videos as part of the service.

YouTube sent out this canned response to multiple news services, whether they'd asked about the report or not: "We’re always working on new and better ways for people to enjoy YouTube content across all screens, and on giving partners more opportunities to reach their fans. However, we have nothing to announce at this time."

Fortune reported a similar story in March, and said that the service would be launching "later this year."
Would you sign up for a Spotify-like YouTube music service? Let us know in the comments.

Image: YouTube

Pinterest For Business - A Valuable Marketing Tool

Pinterest has often been underrated in its power to be used as a tool for companies hoping to expand their digital marketing. With an audience of over 70 million users, and as the fastest growing social media platform in the world, there is huge potential for businesses to capitalise on the opportunity to visually advertise their products.

Who does it benefit?

Businesses who focus on highly visual advertising, such as interior designers, clothing companies, restaurants and many others can benefit in particular from the ability to create a Pinterest site. With 72% of Pinterest’s audience being women, it can be an exceedingly valuable tool for targeting a specific demographic and allows you to interact with your customers in ways that other social media platforms can’t – it can act as an impressive visual showcase of your products driving traffic to your own website and increasing sales. If your business is highly visual, then there is a lot of potential to advertise through this form of social media, with 60% of major brands having their own Pinterest accounts. Smaller businesses should also be encouraged to take up this approach in their marketing strategy as it provides a ready-made audience and Pinterest itself provides educational materials specifically for businesses to learn how to market themselves through the business site.

Marketing your brand through visual images can be an overwhelmingly positive method of advertising products, and is often very effective. In January 2012, Pinterest drove greater traffic to websites than LinkedIn, Google Plus, Reddit, and Youtube combined, showing the potential power it can have as part of a marketing campaign.

There are a number of new Pinterest apps and tools which businesses can use to make the most out of their accounts:

1)      WiseStamp:

A beneficial tool for businesses that enables them to show their most recent pins in their emails. Very useful for Pinterest for businesses as it can be added to existing newsletters, encouraging existing customers to become a follower of the company’s Pinterest pinboards.

2)      Pinterest’s open board:

A great way to interact with your customers and make them feel involved in your brand. If your company offers an open board allowing customers to pin photos of themselves, family members and friends enjoying and using your products, it will create a positive image and entice others into trying your products.

3)      Pinterest Contests:

A good way to advertise your brand on Pinterest is to run competitions offering prizes to those who repin your images or post to your open boards. This will help to increase the audience of your brand creating new followers and driving and increasing amount of traffic to your site. It also helps to connect with your existing follower base.

4)      Rich pins:

Rich pins makes it much easier for people to act when they find something that they like on Pinterest – which can only benefit your brand as it makes it easy for Pinterest users to buy your products. Rich pins include automatically updated details like prices, availability, movie reviews and ingredients.

5)      Pinpuff:

Download the Pinterest app Pinpuff to find out exactly how much of an impression you are making on the Pinterest community. This app will measure a user’s reach and influence and assigns a monetary value to each user, giving you a clearer idea of how profitable your boards might be.

6)      Pinstamatic:

Pinstamatic is an interesting Pinterest app that helps you to create more creative and original boards to draw in customers, and helps you to stand out from other customers marketing on Pinterest. For instance, it allows you to add quotations and sticky notes to your board and allows you to share music, location maps and more. This allows you to add to the visual content on your Pinterest page with text, audio, locations and websites, enhancing the utility of your Pinterest page and attracting users for greater periods of time.

What do you think?

Do you think Pinterest is a valuable marketing tool for businesses?

How to Build a LinkedIn Marketing Plan that Delivers Ongoing Results

Are you happy with how you are using LinkedIn?

LinkedIn offers companies multiple marketing opportunities, but which ones are right for your business?

In this article I’ll show you five different ways to use LinkedIn to market your business.
How do you do start?

You’ll want to develop a comprehensive and consistent LinkedIn marketing plan for your business to achieve long-term, sustainable success.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a large corporate brand or a small business, you can build a comprehensive LinkedIn marketing strategy on a scale that suits your needs and objectives.


Social Media Examiner strategy on LinkedIn includes updating the business page regularly.

In order to have success with LinkedIn, you’ll need to make a long-term commitment to your plan. A strategy that delivers results requires ongoing management, monitoring, analysis, and adjustments.

Remember to assess your resources first and determine what you’re willing to commit with regard to people, time and dollars. An ongoing commitment to your strategy ensures you stay on track toward achieving your company goals.

Here are 5 LinkedIn marketing ideas your business can integrate into your comprehensive marketing program.
#1: Build a Robust Company Page on LinkedIn

To create a business presence on LinkedIn and gain access to additional features that enhance your visibility, you must build a LinkedIn company page.

Think of your LinkedIn company page as an extension of your business website within LinkedIn and use it to display compelling graphics, add products and services, even include job opportunities.

Invite existing employees, clients or customers, vendors and partners to follow your page, and showcase it to relevant LinkedIn members and encourage them to follow by using LinkedIn’s paid targeted advertising.

If it’s appropriate and/or allowable, ask key clients or customers to recommend your products and services on your LinkedIn company page. These recommendations show up on your page for everyone to see, and serve as powerful testimonials for your business.

Filling your LinkedIn company page with compelling and interesting status updates about your industry or business requires ongoing management, but it’s the most effective way to grow followers for your page and increase your company’s visibility. As you grow your following, remember to segment your members and target them with more relevant updates.

HubSpot, a marketing software company for medium-sized businesses, has amassed a company page following of over 40,000 people on LinkedIn as well as 272 product recommendations from members. Those are some powerful stats.

Each time HubSpot shares an update on its LinkedIn company page, it has the potential to engage over 40,000 people who further amplify the company’s visibility on LinkedIn!


HubSpot has built a powerful and active LinkedIn company page.

For further reading on LinkedIn company pages, check out these articles:
A step-by-step guide on how to optimize your LinkedIn company page
Learn about 5 creative ways companies are using LinkedIn pages

As you launch and grow your visibility, LinkedIn company page stats provide you with valuable insights about your followers, engagement, clicks and more!


An example of LinkedIn company page engagement insights.

It doesn’t matter if you have a small business or you represent a large corporate brand, a LinkedIn company page is a critical digital asset for your business and serves as the anchor of your LinkedIn foundation.
#2: Launch a LinkedIn Group Based on Your Company or Industry

LinkedIn groups are still going strong and are another component of a comprehensive strategy that helps position your company as an industry thought leader.

The most successful groups focus on gaining relevant members with common goals, and they are managed very well. To implement a successful LinkedIn group strategy, assign the role of primary group manager/moderator to someone who pre-approves discussion posts, asks great questions and determines which members get accepted into the group.


Social Media Examiner created a dynamic community on LinkedIn with the Social Media Marketing Networking Club.

When you launch your LinkedIn group, be sure to get the word out organically to employees, clients and customers, vendors, partners and influencers in your industry. Identify top influencers and have them serve as group ambassadors to help recruit members and to lead interesting discussions to keep your group active.

Self-service ads are also available from LinkedIn as a paid strategy for increasing visibility of your group and growing your membership numbers.

With a LinkedIn group, you have the ability to message your members once a week. These messages go directly to their email inboxes and are a great way todeliver special promotions or campaigns to them.

To position yourself as an industry thought leader to your members, foster a healthy community within your LinkedIn group through engaging discussions and add value by offering up compelling content your company creates.

A company that has done a fantastic job with their LinkedIn group (launched in partnership with LinkedIn) is Citi. They’ve successfully launched a Professional Women’s Network Group on LinkedIn. Although they do have a marketing partnership with LinkedIn, it doesn’t mean you’ll need to play at this level, but you can certainly model your group after Citi’s or any of the other LinkedIn corporate-sponsored groups.

Watch this video to learn more about Citi’s experience with LinkedIn groups and how the community is thriving.



Examples of other corporate LinkedIn groups include: Intuit (small business group),Staples (small business network) and Capital One (business traveler network).

To help you keep track of member demographics, growth and activity, stats are available for all public LinkedIn groups.


An example of the LinkedIn group stats overview.
#3: Create an “All Hands on Deck” Ongoing Thought Leadership Program

Although you’ll need to designate specific company employees or partners to help implement and maintain your comprehensive LinkedIn marketing strategy, getting all employees involved and on the same page is critical to success.

Your company’s position on LinkedIn starts at the top and when the business owner(s) or executives buy into the strategy, it sets the example for the entire company.


The success of your LinkedIn page also depends on how well your employees use LinkedIn's features. Image source: iStockPhoto.

When everyone from your company is involved on LinkedIn, it creates an extended network that amplifies your company’s presence and industry thought leadership.

Get your employees and stakeholders excited about LinkedIn and make the experience meaningful for them by attaching it to their professional goals.

Provide them with training on how to build a robust LinkedIn profile, how to represent your firm on the network and how to utilize LinkedIn to achieve their business goals. Teach them the benefits of expanding their own professional networks.

Then help your employees and stakeholders become active on LinkedIn. Provide them with an ongoing supply of interesting, compelling thought leadership content from your company. Consider allowing your team members to edit the content to suit their personal style when they share it with their respective networks.

Imagine…100 or even 1000 of your employees sharing content produced by your company 2-3 times per week! Talk about massive impact on growing the reach of your business!
#4: Leverage Paid LinkedIn Content Ads and Sponsored Updates

While LinkedIn social ads grow company page followers and group membership, there are additional ads run on LinkedIn that drive clicks to your website, or preferably to a specified landing page.


Be sure to check out the options LinkedIn has to offer you.

LinkedIn does partner with larger brands on sponsored programs, but for most businesses, these programs are beyond the typical marketing budget. If you’d like torun social ad campaigns to increase your company page followers, group members or even drive offsite traffic and lead conversions, you’re most likely better off using the self-service tools LinkedIn makes available to companies on the network.

As you develop and run ad campaigns or sponsored updates on LinkedIn, make sure you test to see which ads are most efficient and effective for your business.

Link to a LinkedIn Ads Post?

You’ve probably noticed numerous banner ads on LinkedIn that are designed to have members click through to company websites. Unfortunately, many times there’s no specific call to action on the landing page the ad leads to, which is a waste of ad dollars!

Make sure the landing page attached to your banner or text ad includes a relevant offer with clear instructions on what people should do to access your offer.

Janus Investments did a great job with this in one of their recent LinkedIn ads. The ad was clear on the benefit they were offering, and upon clicking through and landing on the page, the offer was simple to access.


Janus Investments LinkedIn banner ad.


Janus Investments LinkedIn ad landing page.

Paid Company-Sponsored Updates

Company-sponsored updates are only run by company pages, and are designed to boost visibility with your company page followers and others on the network.

Sponsored updates appear in LinkedIn member homepage news feeds and look like any other native update, except they’re marked as “Sponsored.” Although they’re fairly new, they’re showing some promising results.


Example of a company-sponsored update in the LinkedIn homepage news feed.

Learn more about how to take advantage of LinkedIn sponsored updates for your own company page.
#5: Monitor, Track, Adjust

Before you begin to build out your comprehensive LinkedIn marketing strategy,decide what your business goals are. The success of your comprehensive LinkedIn marketing strategy is measured by whether you achieve your goals.

By implementing the above strategies together, you’ll be able to:
Increase your company’s position as a strategic thought leader in your industry
Grow company awareness, engagement and reach
Generate qualified leads for your business

Beyond these benefits, it’s important to define specific metrics for measurement of your strategy that are consistent with your company goals.

Are you looking to achieve greater brand visibility (impressions) with your target markets, engage with existing and potential customers (likes, comments, shares), increase external website traffic (clicks), convert new leads (opt-ins) or all of the above? Once you get clear on your goals, define and measure the metrics that are consistent with those goals.

While LinkedIn provides insights and statistics for company pages, groups and paid advertising, tracking your efforts through your own website analytics program is essential. The traffic referred to your site from LinkedIn, new leads generated and new clients or customers are the ultimate measure of the impact to your bottom line.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is a very powerful platform for growing the reach of your business and attracting new clients or customers. It also presents a terrific opportunity to stay top of mind with employees, customers, vendors, partners and industry influencers.

The time to launch your LinkedIn company marketing strategy is now, and a comprehensive approach helps you maximize the business benefits. If you’re unable tolaunch the fully comprehensive approach outlined above, make a plan toimplement each strategy in phases.

What do you think? Do you have a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy?Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Rules Of Social Media Optimization

Before you can put any of these rules to use, you may want to understand a little more about the differences between social media marketing and social media optimization.

SMM = Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is strategically using the big social sites to spread your brand name or drive traffic back to your web presence.

SMO = Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization is adding key elements to your websites or content that make them easy to spread across the big social sites.

Rohit Bhargava Developed Social Media Optimization Rules 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

1. Increase your linkability

Linkability is the willingness of other websites or articles to link back to your site. One way to increase your natural Google listing is to increase how many authority sites link to you, so to increase your linkability with social media optimization is to make your site more informative and useful to others. You can do this in many ways; blog, white papers, press releases, keyword targeted articles, RSS feeds, etc. This is the most important step in Social Media Optimization and should be your first priority.

2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy

The act of tagging is to bookmark the website to social bookmarking websites. For example, if you like the content or services provided at a website you tag it. This will show others that you approve of this site and they will check it out, making viral traffic. To include social media optimization tagging on your site, you can add tagging links such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati, etc. Also, add the tagging links to other pages in your site (not just the homepage) and when visitors click the tag button make sure that there is a suggestion box to help your visitor list a relevant tag and notes.

3. Reward inbound links

As I mentioned before one way to increase your natural listing with Google using social media optimization is to get more back links. You can do this by rewarding people/websites that link to you (inbound links). Inbound links are links that send people to your site from somewhere else. One way to reward people for linking to your site is to have a "Recently Linked" that lists all of the websites that have linked to you.

4. Help your content travel

Social media optimization focuses on providing useful content to your market. When you publish content such as an article, video, or audio file you must help it reach as many people on the web as possible. You can do this by submitting to relevant high traffic websites. When the word gets out about your great content (no matter what format) you'll receive backlinks to your site.

5. Encourage the mashup

To mash up is to use two websites content and mash them together. For example, YouTube makes it easy to mash their content (videos) onto your site. In addition, because it is so easy you have added a video to your site that has a YouTube logo on the video as well as a link back to you tube. So to encourage a mashup with social media optimization is to make it easy for other websites to use your content and reference it to drive traffic back to your site.

Jeremiah Owyang Developed Social Media Optimization Rules 6 and 7

6. Be a User Resource, even if it doesn't help you.

One thing all visitors appreciate is honesty. With social media optimization you should include links to other websites that will help your visitor reach their goal or find the information they want. Do this, even when it doesn't benefit you. By linking to competitors or information not created by you, you reap the benefits of having the all inclusive information on a particular topic. In the end, more people will link to you because you have lumped all information (or links) on a topic on one location.

7. Reward helpful and valuable users

Valuable users are your best friends. A valuable user can be determined in many ways; they may send traffic to your site, add valuable content to your site, or assist visitors at your site. No matter what their doing, if it benefits you, your site, or your service you need to reward them. This could be by sending a personal message thanking them for their dedication. Other ways to reward your valuable users is to create reward systems, advertise for them or promote their efforts on your homepage.

Cameron Olthuis Developed Social Media Optimization Rules 8, 9, 10, and 11

8. Participate

With Social Media Optimization you can participate by joining on the conversation about your topic (or targeted keyword). Simply posting articles and sharing content isn't going to keep the buzz going. You should continue to share information on other websites. This participation will share your knowledge with more people. One way to do this is to find people that are blogging on your topic and to give input on the conversation. Also, participate in forums or other social groups that are discussing your topic. Read comments on your articles, videos, and audios and respond to them.

9. Know how to target your audience

Social media marketing is about sharing content/information. Not everyone is interested in your topic, so be sure to do your marketing research and post your information and knowledge where it will be understood and appreciated.

10. Create content

Content is considered to be any form on information that benefits a visitor. Content can be a white paper, article, video, audio, widget, the list goes on. Your job is to find a piece of content that will spark interest in visitors. No matter what market you enter there is always a form of content that they will share with others. Find out what it is and give it to them. This will in turn have them coming back for more useful content. If this happens, then you know that your social media optimization is successful.

11. Be real

Internet users are searching the web for specific content. If you are providing content that links back to a website, be sure that the website is relevant. You will not be rewarded for coaxing a visitor to a site that has nothing to do with the content they just read (or watched depending on the type of content you provided).

Loren Baker developed Social Media Optimization Rules 12 and 13

12. Don't forget your roots, be humble

It's easy to let popularity get to your head. When you become the shining star in your market be sure to recognize those that helped you get to the front of the pack. (this ties into #7 a little)

13. Don't be afraid to try new things, stay fresh.

Any one on the internet knows how quickly things change. Keep up with new media content, new types of websites, and new interests in your market. By staying on top of new information you can maintain top rankings.

Lee Odden developed Social Media Optimization Rules 14, 15 and 16

14. Develop a Social Media Optimization strategy

Social Media serves multiple purposes. You need to identify what your purpose is and then publish content that will promote that purpose. Some purposes for Social Media Optimization include: branding, reputation, charity, increase traffic, build reputation, increase sales, credibility, etc. Make sure that as you develop content that you are publishing and creating with that purpose in mind.

15. Choose your SMO tactics wisely.

Of all the content available on the web only about 10% of people on the web are content creators. The other 90% are consumers and are willing to share your content. Make your content easy to consume and spread. Also be sure to create content that will have the most impact on your original purpose (which could be any of the following: branding, reputation, charity, increase traffic, build reputation, increase sales, credibility, etc).

16. Make Social Media Optimization - SMO part of your process and best practices.

We all know that there are specific Search engine optimization tactics that every website should include. Just as you include keywords in your title tags and keywords in your H1 tag, you should find ways to include social media optimization aspects into the building of your website. This can be small details like including social bookmark tags on your site or encouraging incoming links with the "recently Linked" list I covered in #3.

17. Don't be afraid to let go of a message or idea and let others own it.

Finally, when you create a movement, spark and idea, or develop a new topic don't be afraid to let others run with it. Collaboration is key. Others can improve upon your original idea and give you credit for the start. Be sure to give credit where it's due.

Justin Brooke started with just a $2/day marketing budget and grew his business past 6 figures in just 1 year. At just 25 years old he has been Vice President of a multi-million dollar company and nominated "Best Marketer of 2007" by the American Business Awards. Justin's award winning social media optimization company wants to handle your social media marketing needs.