Archive for LinkedIn
Bring Twitter to LinkedIn
Posted by: | CommentsLast week, I wrote about getting your Twitter fix on LinkedIn by using the Company Buzz feature to search for topics while in LinkedIn. Wish I would have known then that Twitter and LinkedIn were going to be sharing updates as it would have been all one article – so this will be pretty brief.
It was announced this week that folks using LinkedIn now have the ability to have their LinkedIn updates go to Twitter. I even got a personalized invitation to link my two accounts.
It’s a very simple process. Log into your LinkedIn account and look under ‘Applications’. There you’ll see the Twitter hyperlink. Click and you’ll get to Twitter settings:
Of course, you’ll need your Twitter log in information. After that’s entered in, then you’ll be able to apply further controls as seen in the graphic below. It’s nice to have the flexibility to control who sees the tweets and what kind of tweets you want to share.
Adding your tweets to LinkedIn probably isn’t a good idea if you’re using Twitter for personal purposes instead of business. It’s probably not advantageous to your professional profile to see ridiculous tweets coming through for co-workers and prospective employers to view. A workaround is the ability to use the hash tag #in when you want to have your tweets go to LinkedIn. For me, it’s a good fit since I use both Twitter and LinkedIn for business. Of course, you can post an update either at Twitter or LinkedIn and it will appear in both places.
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Social Media…Thoughts and Resources
Posted by: | CommentsLet’s face it, many us are blogging because we know it’s the ‘right’ thing to do. We’ve heard it’ll drive traffic to our websites, build community and establish ourselves as ‘experts’ in what we’re blogging about. And it’s all true. Then we heard that using ‘social media’ will exponentially increase our readership and expand our reach out there. We’re told to ‘comment thoughtfully’, ‘use outgoing links’, ‘use social networking sites to build community’, etc.
When I started my weekly blog almost two years ago now, I had two reasons: 1. I just like technology. The commitment I made to post weekly keeps me always on the lookout for helpful tools or tips that I think the small businessperson will benefit from. It also keeps me ‘sharp’ (well, that’s debatable), by trying to be current on the new tools. 2. I was told it would drive traffic to my website, and I wanted that to help me in establishing my VA business.
So here’s a definition of Social Media from the Ebook: Let’s Talk Social Media For Small Business by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing.
Social media is the use of technology combined with social interaction to create or co-create value.
John was sponsored by Microsoft Small Business Live in the writing of this book, and is free for the downloading. It’s a great basic book for those of us getting started with blogging for business, and trying to understand how this ‘social media’ revolution works.
He begins by contrasting how we might find in our dusty Marketing textbooks the four P’s of Marketing vs. today’s four C’s of Marketing:
| Old Style Marketing | New Style Marketing |
| Product | Content |
| Price | Context |
| Placement | Connections |
| Promotion | Community |
When most of us hear all these new terms about social networking and what services we should be signing up for, our heads spin. So he presents this graphic to guide us in our progression down the social media highway beginning with blogging and ending up with the micro, i.e. edgier tools like Twitter.
The book has several case studies where he makes the point that any business can distinguish themselves from their competition with their blogs, interactions with their community and the resulting establishment of trust among that community.
It’s a good read for those of us who see others talking about the above buzz words and wondering, “what does that mean”.
Below are links to some of the various social media sites as well as the sites that help manage our social media. Some are from the book (and a few of my own), along with their definitions you might find helpful:
Social & Business Networking:
LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com
Plurk – http://www.plurk.com
Tools to Manage your Social Networks & Other Sharing Sites
Delicious http://www.delicious.com this is a bookmarking service that allows you to tag any page with a category and then share it publicly
PingFm: http://www.ping.fm This is a tool that will broadcast your blog, doings, etc. across multiple platforms
StumbleUpon - http://stumbleupon.com/
Flickr – http://www.flickr.com
YouTube – http://youtube.com
Slideshare – http://www.slideshare.net
Digg – http://digg.com
Friend Feed – http://friendfeed.com
Twitter and Twitter tools:
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com
Twellow, http://www.twellow.com/, is like a Twitter phone directory that sorts people by industry. This can be a great way to find people in your industry.
Twitterrific: http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific/
Twitter Search: http://search.twitter.com/
Twhirl: http://www.twhirl.org/
Twitterfeed: http://twitterfeed.com/
The book by Jantsch is a great starting place if you’ve just begun experimenting with social media marketing. His Duct Tape Marketing Website could be helpful to you. Another site I subscribe to is the ProBlogger.
I know following these suggestions work because after I set up my Facebook and LinkedIn pages and took advantage of the tools from within these apps to publicize my blog, my readership increased by five to six times. It does take time and effort and the content you publish definitely matters.
If any of you want to share your blogging stories or have tips, please leave a comment!
New Linked In Applications
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LinkedIn introduced nine new applications a couple weeks ago that we’ll take a look at. It’s great to have some ways to customize my LinkedIn. I also use Facebook, which has a seemingly unlimited number of apps/widgets, etc. to add, so this is a very welcome addition to LinkedIn.
You can find the ‘applications’ icon on your home page-click it and you’ll see the offerings.
Of the nine, I was most impressed by Company Buzz. I added that application and it almost instantly added tweets (from Twitter), from a former employer and schools I’ve attended. This app will let you know what others are saying about your company and performs searches on key words to bring those tweets to you. This app could provide some interesting insight into a current, past or prospective employers or personalities. This app will let you customize and share with co-workers.
Reading List – this is from Amazon and pretty self-explanatory. Browse through recommended or current books being read by either your industry, your connections or you. Looking at the lists, I wonder if these people are really reading all theses books…
My Travel – if you want everyone in your network to know where you’re going and what you’re doing – add this app. It’s being promoted as a way to get together with your connections while traveling. I see it as TMI.
The next six apps, we’ll discuss in pairs as it seems to me they do pretty much the same thing:
Blog Link & WordPress – Adding the Blog Link app will enable it to search out and install on your page, all the blogs from your connections as well as your own blog. Rather like a feed reader feature. The WordPress app will put your blog on your LinkedIn page. When I added it, it showed snippets of my four latest blog postings-nice.
Slideshare Presentation and Google Presentation – Do you have a product, service or event you want to highlight? Perhaps you want to let your connections know about your new business, a side business or new employees. Here are two ways to have it appear to your connections. The Google app is handy if you already have a Google account and use their docs feature. Slideshare Presentation is a free on-line service where you can post your presentation to the world. You will need an account with one of these in order to upload. There are file size limits (very generous), and format limits that should meet about everyone’s needs.
Huddle Workspaces and Box.net – here are two collaboration/file sharing sites that have partnered with LinkedIn to provide users with a way to collaborate from within LinkedIn. Both allow 1GB of free storage whether you sign up here or already have an account with them. Documents can be uploaded, edited (even photos), and shared with team members or others. When I clicked to add Huddle to my apps, I didn’t have to set up an account (one less log-in and password to remember). There is a nice interface with tabs where I could add files, invite contacts or have discussions. This is a nice feature to have if you’ve made a connection with someone and have a need to share files.
So there you have it – a nice assortment of apps to add to your page. Although you are given the opportunity to arrange your apps in the order you wish, they all will still line up on the right column and they extend downward quite a ways (depending on how many apps you have). This is not real eye-appealing, but maybe they will do some work with that later. Try some out and let you connections know they are available.
