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Thursday, May 5, 2011
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3)
The last 2 posts I've written have focused on featuring real businesses that have created highly successful social marketing strategies using LinkedIn as a key element.
I started the series with an overview of LinkedIn concepts, then moved into a guide for creating your LinkedIn profile, followed by a list of the 11 most powerful LinkedIn tools for small businesses. Finally, I outlined 6 core strategies that small businesses use to leverage LinkedIn for building a tribe and covered the first three:
Building a live community (LinkedIn tribe part 1) Business development (LinkedIn tribe part 2) Promoting a blog/branding/building traffic (LinkedIn tribe part 2)I also hosted an in-person Social Media Marketing workshop in New York City in which I provided the hands-on help many small business owners need to translate these strategies into action. If you missed it, click here to be notified of my upcoming Social Media Marketing events.
Today we cover the final 3 strategies.
Getting work as a freelancer or consultant Promoting a product Strategies for everyoneThe Freelancer or Consultant
As a consultant, outside of being good at what you do and generally being able to successfully run a business and manage clients, success is heavily dependant upon two things:
making sure people remember who you are and what you domaking sure enough people are in group number 1 to keep your pipeline full.
Finding ways to stay on the radar of people who will either hire you or refer you to new business is a critical challenge for freelancers and consultants.
You will find many examples of business owners who are using LinkedIn's "Q&A" feature as a significant element of their visibility and lead generation marketing.
Heidi Cool, owner of Heidi Cool Consulting is one great example. Heidi shared with me how by providing excellent answers to the questions of other LinkedIn members, she has built visibility and credibility for her business, more and higher quality traffic to her Web site and more leads.
Here's what Heidi did...
Using LinkedIn Q&A
The key for Heidi is not generic visibility, but high quality visibility - where her answers set her apart. She focuses on answering questions that are directly relevant to her areas of expertise and will possibly get selected by the questioner as "best" answers. When this happens, both the question and the answer show up in her profile further building her credibility as an expert in her field.
To give you a sense of scale, Heidi has spent 1-2 hours per week over the last 6 months answering questions related to Web site design. Questions her take about 5-30 minutes each to answer properly.
As a great example of the inherently holistic nature of social marketing, Heidi relies heavily on her existing blog content to make sure that questions get a thorough response in a way that would not be possible by just answering the question on LinkedIn alone (as of this writing there's a limit of 4,000 characters for responses). Heidi's Results
Related Articles by Maisha:Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2)
Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedIn
LinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small Business
How to Use your LinkedIn Profile — a ChecklistHeidi received more than 3 times the number of visitors to her site in July when she focused heavily on this technique. She adds:"I can generate traffic from other sites for much less effort, but the quality of visitors isn't as high"Heidi defines quality as both how many pages visitors view on her site ("stickiness") and how many real inquiries/leads she receives from site visitors. For example, the visitors from an article aggregator site she posts content to are not "high quality". 86% of those visitors leave after viewing only one page, "and so far none have made an inquiry through my contact form".
But during July when she ramped up her Q&A strategy, LinkedIn visitors sent her 29 email requests for more information or project proposals.
Other Freelancer/Consultant techniques:
Create an Email Signature and consider including your LinkedIn Custom URL on your business cards and on more of your marketing materials to enable potential customers to learn more about you and your companyCreate a group
Send connection invitations immediately after conferences and events
Recommendations as strategy. Michael Zittel Owner, Serr.biz LLC offers this advice (in response to a LinkedIn Q&A of course):We use, and recommend to our clients, to at least utilize Linked In as a validation service of testimonials and "recommendations." It's easy for anyone to write a bogus testimonial about their services and post it on their site. It is not possible to do so on Linked in. So, having recommendations here, and posting on your site, then linking to LINKED IN so people can validate the reference is, in our approach, one of the simplest methods of utilizing LinkedIn.
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The Product Promoter
LinkedIn is a very interesting tool for those who have a product to sell or promote. The same way communities must be built for the purpose of congregation, businesses also need to build communities around services and products.
Author Gary Unger shared a great example of how he uses LinkedIn to regularly sell out of his book which is available for sale at Amazon.com. In July 2008 he published the book "How to Be a Creative Genius (in Five Minutes or Less)". Gary spends about 4 hours per day on LinkedIn, reading messages, looking for questions to answer, writing answers and interacting with people he meets. His results? He explains that for every good answer he posts, about 15 people will email him asking to connect. For his Web site he gets up to 500 unique visitors per week if he is as he says "in the zone" - active in answering questions. He also regularly checks his book sales during these periods and says that he will easily sell 20 books per week and see his Amazon ranking jump when he is actively posting.
Supporting this experience, freelance copywriter and marketing consultant Leon Altman cautions "You shouldn't try to sell directly from LinkedIn. But you can start building the bridge to marketing your products and services". Leon's also underscores the importance of landing pages "on your website you must get people to opt-in."
To Connect or Not to Connect?
One of the questions that often plagues early LinkedIn users is deciding who to connect to.
LinkedIn offers these suggestions:
Thoughtfully select those people you know and trust because these are the people you will seek advice from and request a recommendation about your/other's quality of work. Because of this, the quality of your contacts is always more important than the quantity of contacts. It is important you know your connections because you may be asked to recommend one of your connections to another. If you know little about the connection you weaken the integrity of the recommendation and your network...Choose your connections wisely as there are certain questions you might only ask a connection because you know and trust that member with this information. Be sure you trust your connections with the information you make available to them."However on the opposite end of the spectrum, many members of LinkedIn support what's called "open networking" meaning they will connect with pretty much anyone who sends them an invitation.
Also keep in mind these LinkedIn facts:
all connections are visible to your direct connections by default (although you can change this)maximum number of connections is 30,000
maximum number of invitations you can send is 3,000
My take on this is that I think once you know your goals, resources and the tools you have to work with, the question of who to connect with no longer takes on the same importance. If you need to build out a community of 500 people with very specific goals like Daniel Tunkelang from LinkedIn strategies part 1, perhaps open networking is not necessary for you. If however you're trying to build a community of 5,000 people with broad interests it's probably more important. Keep in mind that the more people you have in your network, the more people you can contact directly. This is probably the biggest advantage to accepting most of the invitations you receive.
Strategies for Everyone
Here are tips for other things you should do regardless of what category you fit into:
Update your job description — your profile and the details in it are the center of ALL activity on LinkedIn and are at the core of your credibility for whatever you do on LinkedIn. Keep it current with new accomplishments by updating it a few times per year.Check in — often a tactic used by successful business owners as a core of their business success. Use your profile as a Rolodex and check in with a few contacts each week or month just to say hello
Check References & Interests — it is always good to do a little research in preparation for a new relationship. In fact these days it's not at all creepy, it's respectful. The same way you'd research a company before an interview or a big sales presentation, these days each person is his or her own walking brand. Research their interests and know a little before you interact with them to help make the interaction more successful
Find people you should meet — if you know who your target audience is, you should also know some search criteria for finding them on LinkedIn. Perhaps it's not cost-effective for you to try to reach out to every one of your potential customers individually, but perhaps it's super smart to reach out to that guy or gal who runs the local chapter of the retailers association who could make a great strategic partner for your business.
Consider a LinkedIn ad — and tailor the reach to your target audience
What are you working on now? — this feature is often not noticed by your connections in my experience, but it can be used to share good news, newly completed projects, new hires with your connections
Maximize Travel - check the locations of your connections before you travel so you can schedule time to see people in the city your going to. (Thanks to @merylkevans for the reminder on this one!)
Maximize New Connections — Barbara Rozgonyi offers these words of advice "After you accept an invitation, consider replying with a quick personal message that includes a few bullet points about what you do, an opportunity to ask questions about your industry and additional ways to connect with you online such as your blog, ezine or forum." A great tip and something I try to do as well. Thank you, Barbara!
Connect Your Connections - helping others find the people they need from within your own network can go a long way. (Thanks to
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Read Related Articles by Maisha:
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2) Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedInLinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small BusinessHow to Use your LinkedIn Profile — a ChecklistTweetDeck Being Sold To Twitter For $40 to $50 Million (Blog Herald)
TweetDeck will soon be under the control of Twitter. Sources close to the deal
explained to TechCrunch on Monday that the social network has agreed to pay
somewhere in the vicinity of $40 million to $50 million for the software
company, money that will be paid out in cash and Twitter stock. In February
Bill [...]
explained to TechCrunch on Monday that the social network has agreed to pay
somewhere in the vicinity of $40 million to $50 million for the software
company, money that will be paid out in cash and Twitter stock. In February
Bill [...]
Growing Your Business: Insider Tips from Growco
Last week I had the opportunity to speak at Inc.'s Growco conference in Orlando.
Not only did I meet some amazing business owners, I also had the opportunity to collaborate with Deluxe (yes, the check printing company!) who is making a bold move to extend their business beyond branding printed items to supporting small businesses in their need for digital branding as well.
Deluxe hosted a dinner on Monday night with approximately 50 business owners in attendance. They invited me to be their guest speaker and lead a discussion on how growing businesses can get the most out of online marketing.
From innovative product retailers like Rich Johnston of KeyPlex Direct who had some excellent questions like "When is blog content considered too old and no longer trustworthy?" to fine art photographers like Anne Day of Anne Day Photography who was at the conference helping to produce social video content for an inspring book project targeting youth entrepreneurs, to builders like Peter Feinmann, who was "hoping that I would be stimulated by new and creative ways to grow my residential design/build business. I was not disappointed." The dinner hosted a dynamic group of successful businesses that all had unique and fascinating challenges, questions and experiences to share about how to maximize their online brand.
One of the biggest topics of discussion for almost all of the business owners was deciding whether to and how to market using a blog. It is a question many business owners are still facing. How do I get started? How do I come up with content that is interesting? How often should I post? How important is blogging for Search Engine Optimization? What else can blogging do for me?
Luckily I had answers! We had a passionate discussion about these and other topics during the cocktail hour and over a fantastic dinner at The Ritz Carlton. I thought in honor of our event I would post some quick references for you to get answers to those questions and share with everyone what was discussed at our intimate dinner.
Growco Attendee Question: How do I get started?
The Internet Strategist: Dive in! One thing you'll definitely want to do is make sure you've thought about the purpose of your blog and how often you plan to post. Make sure you're choosing a frequency you can keep up with for the next 2-3 years minimum. To test the waters you can even start posting without making your blog public. Take a look at my 10 Step Guide to Blogging and use it as your step-by-step planning guide to get you started with your blog.
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Growco Attendee Question: How do I know if my content will be interesting?
The Internet Strategist: I strongly recommend not worrying too much about this one. The best bet is to write about things you are a) passionate about, b) extremely knowledgable about, and c) will be able to stand writing about for the next several years! The wonderful thing about the Internet is that there are just so many darn people on it. There's likely to be a sizable group of people who are just as passionate as you are about just about anything. Keep in mind however that your goals will impact your topic choice - are you looking to drive advertising revenue or are you looking to build credibility in your industry? Make sure you choose a topic that is appropriate for your goal and don't worry about the traffic yet. That comes with marketing. But do be honest with yourself - if you're really not a great writer, blogging may not be the venue for you. There are so many other Internet Marketing Techniques available to you. You can download my free Internet Marketing Checklist to get your head around what they all are. When it comes to marketing it's all about the cost/benefit. If you have limited resources (as we all do) make sure you are making the most of them.
Growco Attendee Question: How often should I post?
The Internet Strategist: So I get this question a *lot*. This is completely based on your goals. If you are looking to create a high traffic blog that will generate advertising revenue, minimum once per week but even better is once per day. Time and time again bloggers have seen that the more you post, the more traffic you receive. If you are not looking for advertising revenue, my advice is don't sweat it. Do what you can handle now (monthly, even quarterly is ok) and then build up to more frequent posts if you can.
Growco Attendee Question: How important is blogging for Search Engine Optimization?
The Internet Strategist: blogging can be a great way to boost your search engine rankings and is often a large factor in choosing to blog. But note - to reap the benefits of SEO, you have to have your blog content built within the same site you want optimized. So you can't build a free blog at WordPress.com and then just have a link to your corporate Web site if you want your corporate Web site to improve in the search rankings. If you want more detail on this take a look at these two articles: "Build Your Blog" and "Blogging for Coin"
Growco Attendee Question: What else can blogging do for me?
The Internet Strategist: That's a big question. There are so many things from building credibility, creating content that can go "viral", being the basis of other kinds of social media marketing, Twitter links, LinkedIn profile content (see this post for details), being fodder for other materials (ebooks, printed books etc.), helping people truly understand what it is that you do and what your expertise and strengths are. To help you understand the myriad benefits of blogging and decide which benefits you want to pursue, I would strongly recommend referencing these three articles:
I'm looking forward to the next big Inc. event and hope I'll see you there! I've been promised some video from the dinner - if it's not too horribly embarrassing I'll try to post it here!
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Enterprise 2.0 Study Needs Participants (Portals and KM)
Jacob Morgan at Chess Media Group is conducting a study on enterprise 2.0 and
collaboration. The purpose of the survey is to address issues that executives
will find relevant when considering to invest in enterprise 2.0 initiatives.
They are asking...
collaboration. The purpose of the survey is to address issues that executives
will find relevant when considering to invest in enterprise 2.0 initiatives.
They are asking...
Why It Pays to Be No. 2 in Your Industry
The Study: "Legitimacy Vacuum, Structural Imprinting, and the First-Mover Disadvantage," by Stanislav D. Dobrev, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah; and Aleksios Gotsopoulos, Boston University; Academy of Management Journal
The Finding: Contrary to the accepted idea of "first-mover advantage," the best time for a start-up to enter a new industry is after other companies have already gotten there. Because basic practices, such as lining up suppliers, have not yet been established, first movers perform poorly at these tasks.
The Methodology: The authors researched the U.S. auto industry going back to the 1880s. The most successful companies entered the industry only after some 20 others had launched. The researchers compared their findings with the experience of French and British auto firms to corroborate the relationship between first movers and failure.
Intriguing Insight: Most people believe in the first-mover advantage because they rarely hear about the many first movers that fail.
The Takeaway: If you are second—or third or fourth—to market, you stand a better chance of success by learning from the first guy's mistakes.
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