10 Tips To Generate Business Leads With LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the business professionals platform is not always the first choice when we think about growing a business. Growing a business in social media we immediately think of Twitter and Facebook as they have the power of engagement. People interact more on Twitter and Facebook as we can send a @tweet or post on a wall whereas with LinkedIn the direct contact is still via email. The immediacy and also the deeper relationships that exist with Twitter and Facebook do not always lead to business opportunities.

LinkedIn is structured to be a comprehensive professional background platform where users leave behind the husband, kids and pets and concentrate on themselves and their career. This career focus is why creating a profile that is a true representative of your work history and present accomplishments is so crucial. Recently I covered how to give your LinkedIn profile a facelift and also how to pack a powerful punch with your summary. Now that you have updated your profile and summary, what do you do with it? You generate business!
10 Tips to Generate Business with LinkedIn

1. Build your Network. As a permission based platform, we are still able to accept or reject connections. As you start to build your network, there are the obvious places to start.

a. People you know. Your friends, colleagues, people you have worked with, people you have done business with. The key here is to connect with people you trust and will treat LinkedIn as a professional platform and not a personal let’s have a play date with the kids.

b. Outlook Contacts. Do your contacts in Outlook have profiles on LinkedIn? Do you even remember who is in your Outlook contact list? To cross check to see who in your contacts could be a connection on LinkedIn, you can either install the LinkedIn Outlook toolbar or integrate LinkedIn with Outlook via the social connector.

c. People you want to get to know. Are your friends connected to someone that you want to get to know? Is there a 2nd or 3rd connection to you that is connected to someone at a company you want to start connecting with? Ask them for a introduction or see if the person you want to connect with is part of a group that makes sense for you to join and be a part of.

Once you are connected, you remain connected if the person changes jobs. This shows the importance of having more than one connection in a company that you have been eye-balling for a while and also opens the door to connect with some new people when your connection is at the new job. Recently LinkedIn has added a new feature via email where they alert you to how many of your connections have changed jobs. In 2010, 290 of my connections changed jobs. That is a whole lot of new connections that I can take advantage of and grow my network.

2. Join Groups. Groups on LinkedIn are one of the easiest way to to build your network, be active and also learn. Searching for groups via industry or specific keywords is quite advanced. Unfortunately you cannot preview the group on LinkedIn to see if it is the right fit for you by gauging the interaction however the new feature of LinkedIn open groups does give an opportunity to search the group on Google to gain some insight into the members and how they interact. Closed groups does make you have to join the blindly. The larger groups are inviting as once you are a member, you can connect easily with people within the group as a member by asking for a connection through the drop down “how do you know”.

3. Sharing. Sharing an article that you learned from, enjoyed, commented upon, etc through your status updates and within the groups you are a member of is an indicator of your commitment to your industry and also how you network. Sharing articles that you read with others not only showing them who you read and why you read, it also gets you in front of them again.

4. Recommendations. Recommendations are great and show connections that you are trusted and well respected. How do we get them? I am not a fan of asking for them as it can make someone uncomfortable. However ,if you know the person well enough or when it is client, they may just need a bit of push.

5. Blog Linking. Linking your blog to your profile is another way to interact with your connections. While this is somewhat self promotional it gives them a reason to interact through commenting and sharing your post while at the same time learning more about you. Do not stop at blog linking; link your presentations, ebooks and webinars,

6. Status Updates. Updating your status on LinkedIn seems one way as you post and there is not a way for connections to respond as they do on other platforms but this should not deter you from updating your status. A profile that has not been updated sends a message to would be connections that you are not really there.

7. Direct Ads. Ads on LinkedIn are very targeted if you want them to be. They are the traditional pay per click or impression where you set a bid for the keyword and also the maximum for the day. LinkedIn advertising is effective through the targeting and the ability to have multiple ads to see what performs best.

8. Referrals. Referrals are golden. How many businesses on LinkedIn are you using? Is there area within your business that you outsource or will be outsourcing that you could look to your community on LinkedIn? Part of building your network is to create a team behind you that you can easily refer to and receive referrals from. If you are not looking at LinkedIn to build your network for referrals, how could you expect others to do so?

9. Answer Questions. Answering questions on LinkedIn we hear a lot about. Answering questions helps the person asking by showcasing your area of expertise which for them is very useful. Your name is now in front of them again and also everyone else who is reading and answering the question. By subscribing to the RSS of a few categories allows you to take a quick look at the questions posted and jump in to answer them.

10. Ask Questions/Create Polls. Asking questions once again gets your name in front of people and helps you get the answers that you need. The new enhancements to the polls has made this tool more purposeful and useful however be sure that you are promoting the poll or the sample size can be very low.

The common theme here is to build your network on LinkedIn and get in front of them as much as possible – and not spamming or self promoting. If you are answering questions in your industry, promoting articles that helped you, participating in group discussions you are getting a lot of exposure for being helpful. The more we see someone or even with products, the more we see it or hear about it, we are going to go and check it out. Your network will start to grow as people will want to connect with you and build a relationship to either hire you or refer you. The key is to be active to increase your visibility. You cannot expect to answer a question once a month and people will be lining up to hire you. You have to be committed to being there and really useful to the platform and your connections.

Have you had success with generating business on LinkedIn? Is there any additional ways you would like to add?

Building Web Content vs. Traditional Advertising - How to Explain to Your Boss or Prospective Client(s)

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One of the biggest challenges you will probably face is trying to explain the virtues of building content over traditional advertising to a boss or prospective client. Let's face it, most businesses are experts in their respective industries, not search engine marketing.

Many people still think advertising first- be it online through pay-per-click ads or more traditional means like direct mail, radio/TV and more.

How can online marketers effectively communicate the value of content marketing over traditional advertising?

Considering many still cling (...perhaps stubbornly) to the notion that advertising is the only way, it can be difficult to convince them otherwise.

Here are a couple of lines you can throw:

1. Discussing the value, content you create for your website has a much longer shelf life at a much lower cost. It can be re-purposed and used over and over again. More content leads to more traffic and engagement online.

2. Speaking of tone - traditional advertising shouts at prospective clients while web content pulls up a chair and chats. Web content offers a more personable tone and leads to meaningful conversations and relationships.

Other reasons/benefits you can provide include:

•· Instead of one-size fits all materials, draw customers in through relevant content
•· Easier to update, change and more dynamic
•· Easier to gauge success, see feedback
•· Costs less
•· Fewer risks
•· Reach a wider audience
•· Reach target audience easier
To further bolster your case, provide examples of websites who've implemented a good content building plan and show your boss/prospect data about traffic, conversions, bounce rate and more. Show them how over time, websites can get a steady stream of increased visitors that stay on the site longer and end up clicking buy, filling out an e-form or making a call.

Providing these reasons along with strong data to back it up will certainly go a long way toward convincing skeptics of the value of building content on their websites.

Google Pagerank Update Confirmed

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21st January 2011 - By Jim Shepherd
This morning I noticed that the usual icon that provides me with quick SEO information about certain aspects about the web page I am currently viewing was looking a bit odd. It did take me a while to realise what had happened, but the numbers had increased by one. The number I am talking about is of course the elusive Google Pagerank that people in our business keep name dropping like a celebrity.

This is quite newsworthy mainly because it has been quite some time since the last confirmed Google Pagerank update happened, if memory serves me it was April 2nd 2010 when we had the last update.

Why is Pagerank so important then?PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is referred to as the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).

The name “PageRank” is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; the shares were sold in 2005 for $336 million.

In other news today!Continuing a veritable changing of the guard across Silicon Valley this week, Google announced Thursday that co-founder Larry Page will become chief executive of the online search giant, replacing Eric Schmidt in a surprise management shakeup.

The news closely follows Apple’s revelation on Monday that CEO Steve Jobs would go on an indefinite medical leave, with Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook assuming day-to-day control. Also on Thursday, Hewlett-Packard appointed five new directors, including former eBay CEO and gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, as four stepped down.

Page, 37, will move into his new role at the Mountain View technology colossus on April 4, assuming control of the business that he began developing with Sergey Brin when they were Stanford University computer science doctoral students in 1996.

He’s taking the helm at a critical juncture for the company. It continues to deliver blockbuster financial results, as underlined by its fourth-quarter numbers also released Thursday. Meanwhile, it is beefing up staff, gobbling up innovative startups and staying on top of the defining trends in technology, including the fast transition to mobile devices.

For Google this day may probably be one of their most active since they started making headlines over a decade ago. The article above continues by trying to make out that Twitter and Facebook are direct competitors to Google, when they in fact are completely separate services all together. If anything, Twitter and Facebook are competing more about the same internet services than Google ever has with both of them combined.

It looks to be an interesting day with a lot of news to monitor and new SEO strategies to develop.

This is why your business should focus on Facebook in 2011

Visit NJ Computer Doctors Facebook Business Page at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Jersey-Computer-Doctors/140644225962491

Facebook began about seven years ago in a Harvard dorm room. Mark Zuckerberg, and the co-founders of the social network, started with a unique idea and successfully created something that just about everyone in the world will use at some point during their lifetime.

The following statistics were copied directly from the Facebook Press Room - Statistics page. I've underlined a few figures that stand out to me, but please review the entire list.

Use these statistics to help you visualize just how big the marketing opportunity is for your business to be active on Facebook in 2011. Also, begin to create a strategy of how you'll reach and interact with your customers to help you grow your business.

People on Facebook
More than 500 million active users
50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
Average user has 130 friends
People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
Activity on Facebook

There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
Global Reach

More than 70 translations available on the site
About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application
Platform

More than 2.5 million developers and partners from more than 190 countries build with Facebook Platform
People on Facebook install 20 million applications every day
Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites
Since social plugins launched in April 2010, an average of 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day
More than two million websites have integrated with Facebook, including over 80 of comScore's U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of comScore's Global Top 100 websites
Mobile

There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products.

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Why Search Engine Marketing is NECESSARY

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Search Engine Optimization is the process of taking a page built by humans and making it easily consumable for both other humans and for search engine robots. This section details some of the compromises you will need to make in order to satisfy these two very important kinds of user.

One of the most common issues we hear from folks on both the business and technology sides of a company goes something like this:
“No smart engineer would ever build a search engine that requires websites to follow certain rules or principles in order to be ranked or indexed. Anyone with half a brain would want a system that can crawl through any architecture, parse any amount of complex or imperfect code and still find a way to return the best and most relevant results, not the ones that have been “optimized” by unlicensed search marketing experts.”

Sounds Brutal…
Initially, this argument can seem like a tough obstacle to overcome, but the more you’re able to explain details and examine the inner-workings of the engines, the less powerful this argument becomes.
Limitations of Search Engine Technology
The major search engines all operate on the same principles. Automated search bots crawl the web, following links and indexing content in massive databases. But, modern search technology is not all-powerful. There are technical limitations of all kinds that can cause immense problems in both inclusion and rankings. We’ve enumerated some of the most common of these below:

Search engines cannot fill out online forms, and thus any content contained behind them will remain hidden.
Poor link structures can lead to search engines failing to reach all of the content contained on a website, or allow them to spider it, but leave it so minimally exposed that it’s deemed “unimportant” by the engines’ index.

Web pages that use Flash, frames, Java applets, plug-in content, audio files & video have content that search engines cannot access.
Interpreting Non-Text Content Text that is not in HTML format in the parse-able code of a web page is inherently invisible to search engines.
This can include text in Flash files, images, photos, video, audio & plug-in content.

Text that is not written in terms that users use to search in the major search engines. For example, writing about refrigerators when people actually search for “fridges”. We had a client once who used the phrase “Climate Connections” to refer to Global Warming.
Language and internationalization subtleties. For example, color vs colour. When in doubt, check what people are searching for and use exact matches in your content.

Language. For example, writing content in Polish when the majority of the people who would visit your website are from Japan.
This is perhaps the most important concept to grasp about the functionality of search engines & the importance of search marketers. Even when the technical details of search-engine friendly web development are correct, content can remain virtually invisible to search engines. This is due to the inherent nature of modern search technology, which rely on the aforementioned metrics of relevance and importance to display results.

The “tree falls in a forest” adage postulates that if no one is around to hear the sound, it may not exist at all – and this translates perfectly to search engines and web content. The major engines have no inherent gauge of quality or notability and no potential way to discover and make visible fantastic pieces of writing, art or multimedia on the web. Only humans have this power – to discover, react, comment and (most important for search engines) link. Thus, it is only natural that great content cannot simply be created – it must be marketed. Search engines already do a great job of promoting high quality content on popular websites or on individual web pages that have become popular, but they cannot generate this popularity – this is a task that demands talented Internet marketers.

8 Top Tips For Social Media Marketing

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There is no doubt about it. Social media marketing is becoming more and more an integral part of the business environment. Procter & Gamble is ditching its TV Soap Operas for YouTube marketing instead. Coca Cola, Johnson & Johnson, and other large companies have also jumped on board.

The “fad” is growing into a mainstay. These media are no longer curiosities; they are becoming valid ways to grow your base of customers.

With that in mind, I want to share a few things I’ve learned about these media since I first started using them to reach out to customers and potential customers.

I’ve made a number of mistakes, so my point here is to share some ideas to keep you from making the same mistakes I made or mistakes that I’ve seen others make.

So here are few things to keep in mind:

1. When you are asked to complete your online profile, make sure you answer it completely with information about you and your business. Use your real name and your photo. I’ve seen so many photos of people’s dogs, cats, and everything that didn’t have to do with their business. I have found that a picture of you is always the best. Again, complete the entire information on your portfolio so that others can communicate with you if they so desire.

2. In your profile, detail who you are seeking to befriend and ask everyone to abide by that information. You don’t need nor want to be friends with everyone.

3. Don’t approach strangers and ask them to be friends with you just so that you can then try to sell them your products or services.

4. Use two different accounts. One for your business and one personal account. Don’t mix them together.

5. Don’t put anything on the internet that you don’t want your future wife, boss, clients, or potential clients to read or see.

6. Pick a screen name that says something about you.

7. Offer information of value. Don’t just talk about yourself or your company. For instance, a lot of my connections include one of my marketing tips each month to their connections. This is one way they provide value instead of always just talking about their company, products, or services. They can also offer health tips, or other information valuable to their audience. There are lots of things that can be offered.

8. Never post anything to a group when you are tired; you are apt to make serious mistakes. It also goes without saying…don’t post after you’ve had a few glasses of wine with dinner. And never, ever post when you are angry or upset. You will regret it later.

There is little difference in connecting with individuals either online or offline. Create trust and be authentic. Don’t try to be someone you aren’t.