Balance

One of my LinkedIn profile secrets for business referrals is that your profile does not have to focus entirely on appearing very high in search. What you do need is a 100% completed profile that focuses on content, credibility, conversion and search but not at the expense of one or the other.

Painful truth

The painful truth for some people is that their profile may appear very high in search but few people view it. Go to your LinkedIn home page and look down the right hand side to “who’s viewed your profile?”. Check the number of times it has shown up in search against the number who actually viewed your profile. Go even further and think of the number of people who did view your profile how many actually contacted you? Think beyond just a completed profile for search and start to also think about content, credibility and conversion.

Search

Lets quickly recap how to complete your profile 100% before we move on to a few LinkedIn profile secrets.

1. Use a head and shoulder picture.

2. A current position with description.

3. Show 2 previous job positions.

4. Show 5 skills or more.

5. Write a summary about yourself.

6. Fill out your industry and postcode.

7. Add your education.

8. Add 50 or more connections.

LinkedIn Profile Secrets for Business Referrals

Now the real skill is encouraging people to actually take the time to view your profile and contact you.

What in your profile would make people want to contact you?

How can you show you are credible?

Why would people be willing to give you a business referral?

Do you concentrate on promoting the benefits of your products and services?

View your profile with your customers’ eyes. What are their needs?

It’s not what you want to say it’s what they want to hear.

Google Adwords can help to identify key words that you want to be found under in your title and summary. However go further and think of the niche you excel in and what key words would best describe that. Type one of your chosen keywords into LinkedIn search and see where you appear. Also check “viewers of this profile also viewed” to learn from the types of profiles that are also coming up when people are searching for your profile type.

Remember though not to get carried away with key words. Keep your content, in mind and ensure it also reflects on you as an individual, that it is credible, offers benefits to people and not just a keyword stuffed profile. Don’t underestimate the value in any of this, I regularly receive work through LinkedIn.

Tip

A little tip is don’t be frightened to ask for a referral from a satisfied customer to someone they may know.

LinkedIn Roadmap

This post is just another small part of my unique B.A.T.S. (Brand, Attention, Trust, Success) system. I will be sharing many LinkedIn profile secrets in my  LinkedIn Roadmap To Success Masterclass.

Image Credit sheilascarborough

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Could you handle more business?

If you could then it’s time you had a LinkedIn roadmap to success?  If LinkedIn is not giving you more business then change your approach to change your results. Stop agonizing over your LinkedIn profile and focus more on the tactics that will deliver you success on LinkedIn.

Success

What would that success on LinkedIn look like for you? Are you trying to generate Sales, Recruit talent or focus on building business relationships? Write that success down it’s your benchmark for your actual return on investment (ROI). For example how many profitable business referrals do you like to generate each week, month and year? How much profit do you expect to make from those business referrals each year? A clear end game is essential to decide how much time and expense you will need to invest in order to build a LinkedIn roadmap to success. Look where that time and investment is coming from.  Examine all your marketing efforts and their returns. Are there some that are under performing?  Could  that time and investment be more profitably spent on LinkedIn. We all have the same 24 hours in the day it’s just how effectively we allocate those hours.

Target

Target the business people you would like to receive a referral for. Use LinkedIn advanced search to find them. Note why some people’s profiles appear higher in search than others. Think why you are drawn to some profiles more than others. Learn from those profiles and model them to improve your own profile.

Use LinkedIn Signal to listen to your target business people and start to look for common points of interest. Join groups that they are in and comment on their posts. See if there are opportunities where you could help them, no not sell to them, but genuinely help them. Remember givers gain! Consider using your second connections on LinkedIn to introduce you to those business people.

LinkedIn Roadmap

This post is just a very quick glimpse at a LinkedIn roadmap to success . It is a small part of my unique B.A.T.S. (Brand, Attention, Trust, Success) system and hopefully will give you a few ideas.

Image Credit  Coletivo Mambembe

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Yes!

The first six tips help. Tip seven is the one that will add the most to the success of your Facebook Page.

1. Cover Picture

Change your cover picture, 851×315 pixels; every fortnight to keep your Page fresh with the added benefit that every change appears in the newsfeed. Be creative and also use visually engaging photos that capture the essence of your brand, product or service. Ensure you keep to the Facebook’s guidelines for cover photos content.

2. Profile Picture

Use a logo that people associate with your business as your profile picture. Ensure that it scales well from 180×180 to 32×32 pixels, as it will follow you in Facebook as a thumbnail and appear on your posts and adverts.

3. Likes

Some people still buy likes. Why I am not sure other than maybe to give an impression their Facebook Page is a success. Growing your number of  likes is similar to farming a crop. It takes time, with regular irrigation. You don’t want a flood followed by a drought. Three of many ways to build quality likes is to invite friends, invite email contacts, and create targeted adverts.

4. Talking about this

This is how many people engaged with your Page in the last seven days. Set yourself a Target of 5% of your likes with a stretched target of 10%. Aim to create at least two posts a day, five days a week to improve your visibility in the newsfeed. Posts tend to last just a few hours. Experiment to find the best posting times for your Page. Ensure 90% of your posts have a photograph to rank high in search and attract your fans attention.

5. Tabs

The photo tab is standard and you have just three other tabs that are visible as Page defaults. Don’t waste one of them showing likes because the number of likes already appears to the right of your profile picture (logo). Customise your tabs with your own tab designs and names.

6. About

The about field is in a prominent position and should always show your website and in my case I have added a link for my workshop in Dublin.

7. Top Tip

Spend at least one hour a day, five days a week on running you Facebook Page to give yourself a competitive advantage. This can be outside your core business hours. Don’t have the time? How much time do you spend watching TV?

“IF you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” – Jack Welch

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It usually comes down to a poor strategy, the wrong tactics and sloppy mistakes. Even with a good strategy and tactics it’s easy to fall at the last hurdle. Lets avoid that and have a look at seven sloppy Facebook fan engagement mistakes to fix now!

1. Static Cover Picture

Don’t leave your Page cover picture unchanged for months. Remember every time you change your cover picture the new picture is placed in your fans newsfeed. It’s a great way to tempt fans back to view your page and engage with posts they may have missed.

2. Watch What You Ask For

Asking people to click “show in newsfeed” when they like your page is rather pointless. Why? Because it is already clicked as a default. In fact there is a danger that your request highlights to fans that the option exists and they may unclick it to avoid seeing your posts in their newsfeed.

3. False Expectations

Achieving a reach to thousands of people on a Facebook Page is very easy and does not represent the number of engaged users. Understand what the Facebook Insights (analytics) are telling you. Focus instead on the “Engaged Users” statistic and write similar posts that score highly on this stat.

4. Business Address Missing

Leaving out your business address in the basic information field will mean that the recommendation box is not available for your fans to recommend your business. Good recommendations encourage fan engagement.

5. No Visual Content

Learn from the success of Pinterest. Believe me visual content is one of the hottest things in social media right now. Use memes, quotes in photos, Infographics, etc.

6. Poor posting times

Experiment with different times and see when your posts get the highest engagement. Don’t be lazy and just post at the recommended popular times or you will be competing with the highest number of posts in your fans newsfeed.

7. No Personality

Show your personality and use I, me, love this, etc. in your posts. Always keep in mind that people engage with people.

Any questions?

Ask them on my Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/net4wiseowls

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In time we hate that which we often fear

Some businesses fear social media. This Net4wiseowls social media policy for business – 10 key areas will hopefully help towards reassuring the fearful

1. Negative Comments When a negative comment is posted keep calm. Always have the businesses brand reputation in your mind. Do not ignore any negative comments and remember there is an online audience watching. If you feel out of your depth seek support from a social media specialist.

2. Buy In This is the hardest part and requires excellent communication skills to engage employees and explain why and how the policy will be implemented. Few people like policies and even fewer like being told that the businesses social media policy operates 24/7. Training should be given to all employees. This includes employees signing they have read the businesses social media policy.

3. Productivity Business and social media are becoming more blurred so it is important to highlight that time on social media should not distract or interfere with work.

4. Participation The employee’s writing on the businesses social media sites praising the businesses products, services, fellow workers and positively engaging with customers etc. should be encouraged.

5. Respect Always respect your audience. Employees should not rant, swear, knock fellow employees or post derogatory comments about the business or competitors, etc.

6. Confidentially A billboard is similar to social media and is not the place for confidential information, i.e. classified material, revenues, potential innovations and tenders, competitor analysis, sensitive customer information, etc.

7. Humanise Don’t speak in a cold corporate politically correct voice. When you make a mistake admit it and deal with it. Do not post anonymously on social media sites.

8. Ownership Clarify to employees that the business owns the content posted on the businesses social media platforms and intranet sites.

9. Monitor The employers monitoring of social media must be consistent with the Data Protection Act and the Employment Practices Code. Existing business policies still apply regarding bullying, sexists / racist remarks, discrimination, harassment etc. These will be subject to the normal business disciplinary procedures.

10. Legal Its essential that your legal representative agrees your final draft policy to ensure best practice and compliance with the law. The impact on human resource, marketing, sales, and existing email, Internet policies, etc. should also be taken into account.

If you require a robust and concise social media policy please contact me.

Bill McCartney

Founder of Net4wiseowls – The Social Media Specialist

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All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

Strategy dictates tactics and just having a list of social media tools with random engagement are poor tactics without a clear strategy. Align your strategy with marketing, sales, customer service and human resources, which will support your overall business strategy. Within this your social media strategy may be to raise awareness and influence customers to buy your products or services. The tactics could involve Facebook advertising, Mobile apps, YouTube demo videos, Twitter for customer service and LinkedIn for business referrals etc.

Why you feel your business will succeed with social media is the start of your journey. Know your customer’s demographics and their decision process to buy your products or services. The social media sites they are active on, market research from listening to their needs / expectations and competitor intelligence will help focus your strategy and dictate your tactics. Visualising what success looks like will also help you set SMART objectives and KPI’s that align with your overall business targets.  While a winning strategy takes time to write it’s important to balance it with the size and complexities of your business. I am always reminded of a cartoon that showed two business people spending weeks talking strategy while their competitor served their customers.

Your people are your greatest resource and should be trained to act as brand ambassadors. A simple clear social media policy should be in place to reassure them what is and is not acceptable online. The tactics to be employed on your social media sites can be put into action with an opportunity to move ahead of the competition. Few businesses understand how to exploit their social media sites. Failures to understand the importance of Mobile, to use content calendars to encourage engagement and to optimise social media sites to be easily found are other lost opportunities.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

Sir Winston Churchill.

There are many excellent tools on the market to monitor, measure and analyse the success of your strategy and return on investment, from free Google Alerts, to paid social media monitoring tools. It’s important to understand the stats.

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital

Professor Aaron Levenstein.

Regular reviews will support continuous improvement and fine-tuning to ensure your social media strategy is a winner.

Join the conversation in the Northern Ireland Social Media LinkedIn group

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Northern-Ireland-Social-Media-3751949

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Their obsession with Likes just as a number is the killer. If obtaining Facebook Page Likes is a complete hit and miss affair then it makes it very difficult to engage and influence your fans (Likes). Put simply your Facebook Page will not align with your audience needs and expectations.

A Facebook Page for profit is built on a strong foundation of fans (Likes) that genuinely are interested in your business. They are people the business can build a relationship with and will become your best customers. Remember we do business with people we know, like and trust. This foundation building is a critical step and to ignore it will make future engagement extremely difficult. Facebook rewards businesses that have a close affinity with their fans, post regularly and provide valuable content by ranking their posts higher in the all-important newsfeed. Posting regularly with valuable content is relatively easy; having a close affinity without that strong fan foundation base is rather more difficult.

There is always the temptation at this early stage of building a valuable fan base to go for the quick easy random Likes. Just remember social media is more a marathon than a sprint and is significantly more challenging than most people realise. Taking the time, effort and cost to build a solid foundation of targeted Likes on your Facebook Page will make a huge difference in the long run. Once you have built a strong fan base then you can start putting more effort into engagement and influence. So don’t handicap yourself with a poor fan base.

It’s all too obvious the number of Facebook Pages that have failed to build a strong foundation and are now obsolete, having lost their way. It reminds me when I asked directions to a little village in Ireland and was told, “I wouldn’t start from here”. Enjoy your time on Facebook and if you feel lost then I am happy to start improving your Facebook Page wherever you are with it.

Contact me at http://www.net4wiseowls.co.uk/contact

Image Credit stoneysteiner

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