Ten ways to get more out of LinkedIn http://ping.fm/YPOAA

Ten ways to get more out of LinkedIn

You may have a profile, several connections and even a handful of peer recommendations. But are you really using LinkedIn to its full potential?

Here are 10 tips and tricks to help you improve your experience on the world's largest professional network:

1. Raise your profile

Your LinkedIn Profile is one of the easiest ways potential clients, employees and industry partners can track you down online.

To get your profile to appear higher in search results, customize your LinkedIn Profile URL so that your first and last name appear as one word (i.e. JoeSmith). Also, make sure you profile is visible to everyone by selecting ‘public’ in your account settings.

2. Put your best foot forward

Make sure you fill out the summary and experience sections of your profile. People with at least one past position listed on their profile are 12 times more likely to be viewed for potential opportunities. Include keywords and phrases that clients might search in your profile description. Also add skills to your profile and don’t forget to upload a photo. Professionals with a photo are seven times more likely to be viewed in general.

3. Update your status

Let your connections know what you’re up to and how your business is growing by updating your status regularly. Use status updates to announce new products, to post interesting articles, and even to get answers to business questions you’re pondering (like, “Does anyone know a great corporate realtor? I’m hunting for office space.”). Another time-saving tip: Sync your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts so your updates get posted to both networks.

4. Create a company page

Create a LinkedIn Company Page so clients can “follow” your company. There are more than two million company pages on LinkedIn. Add a “Products & Services” tab so you can inform potential clients about your offerings. Make sure you follow competitors, clients and companies that you admire so you get the latest information from those companies.

5. Grow and nurture your network

Connect to at least 50 people that you know and trust. It’s the ‘magic number’ of connections to have on LinkedIn. When you connect to at least 50 employees, clients, business partners, friends, family members, etc. that’s when you start seeing more first, second and third degree connections that can help you get in touch with people or companies that will help propel your business. Import your address book to find out which of your contacts are already on LinkedIn.

6. Let customers vouch for you

Recommendations are one of the best ways to secure new clients, because they spread virally on LinkedIn. They also enhance your professional credibility and create a good impression when potential clients read your profile. Request recommendations from happy customers and don’t be afraid to hint at some of key things that you’d like them to mention in the recommendation. (For example, “Sarah, I’d love it if you could post a recommendation on my profile. If you could note that you’ve been using out product for X years and also discuss how we were able to customize it to fit your company’s needs, that would be fantastic.”)

7. Find other passionate small business owners

Search for “small business” or “entrepreneur” related LinkedIn Groups. Groups are a great way to engage with like-minded people who can provide you support and answer SMB-specific questions. Also join groups that are related to your industry, city or province. Look for groups where you can get information about potential clients too. (If you usually sell to marketers, join marketing related groups to get a better feel for the topics and discussions your potential customers are concerned about.)

8. Find employees and experts

Whether you want to hire a rock star salesperson or if you’re looking for an expert to help you solve a problem, LinkedIn’s Advanced People Search is an easy way to search by title (vice president of advertising), company name (RIM) and even zip code to find exactly the person you’re looking for. Any member can search those facets for free by clicking the “Advanced” link in the top right hand corner of LinkedIn after they sign in.

9. Get info on the go

Use LinkedIn’s Android, BlackBerry or iPhone apps to get info when you’re on the move. Are you running late to a meeting and want to get more information about someone before a meeting? Use the app to look up their profile. You can also use the apps to find connections you have in common with people before you see them in person at a conference.

10. Gain insights

Visit LinkedIn daily to get valuable insights about your connections and their activities. Follow the top trending news each day on LinkedIn Today so you’re up-to-speed on industry news.

How To Get The Word Out Quickly and Successfully http://ping.fm/GPmzZ

How To Get The Word Out Quickly and Successfully

Today’s digital marketplace offers B2B marketing professionals a plethora of tools and channels to distribute messages. However, the quickly expanding net also provides challenges.
Internet users have dynamic activity patterns and today they spend more time on the web than ever. A 2010 study by Forrester research found that online viewing now equals that of TV viewing. The average North American consumer spends 13 hours a week on both.
They have become the drivers of the buying cycle rather than passengers on the sales train. They are smarter and tougher to convince. But the good news is there are a lot of opportunities in the marketplace and with a little creativity; a well written and distributed press release can turn into a successful marketing campaign.
Consider these 5 B2B marketing tips for press release success:
1. Use Social Media for extended reach – Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are great outlets for extending your carefully-crafted public relations’ messages. Successful content appeals to the community-oriented atmosphere and offers valuable information that research-oriented viewers crave.
When your message is well-received, you can cover a much wider audience with less distribution costs.
This exposure advantage must be balanced with the quality of message you send. It’s one thing to get thousands of hits on a video, for example, but if the viewers don’t fit your target market, you are likely wasting resources.
2. Update your email marketing strategies – Targeted email marketing is still a B2B favorite. A Forbes Media study showed that email and e-newsletter marketing are considered the second-most effective tool for generating conversions, finishing slightly lower than Search Engine Optimization.
Be sure to integrate your press release and email marketing efforts where it makes sense. For example, a PR campaign intended to announce a new product/service offering is also well suited for an email campaign/newsletter to prospects (so they have the opportunity to see the message in multiple places) or existing customers (who might be interested in upgrading or expanding).
3. Leverage keywords to make your content visible – Integrating the phrases your brand is trying to be visible for online is critical in reaching your online marketing goals with your press release
Leveraging relevant keywords ensures that the content is optimized and your press release can be found when prospects are searching for information.
4. Keep brand information consistent – You’ve got multiple channels to share your press release through and each has its own communication style.
If you’re leveraging Facebook and Twitter to extend the reach of your press release, for example, do you present the same information on both outlets?  The answer is yes, but each needs to be tailored to the outlet and any audience nuances that may exist between the two.
Also, keep the look and feel of your brand consistent both online and offline. Despite the different places viewers find your messages, in order to achieve the highest levels of brand recognition, consistency is key.
5. Get the most out of your content. With all the messaging you create, there are multiple channels to recycle a message.
To get the most out of your content creation efforts consider using parts or all of your press release in blogs, email letters, landing page, media kits, interviews or even creating a video to support the message. Get creative about where you can re-tool/re-purpose the information to increase the life of the message.
Examine how you can insert key words and anchor text that will continually drive readers to your brand.
The sky is the limit when it comes to creating informational campaigns for the net. B2B marketers who stay on top of Internet trends and continue to maximize the reach of the message will outpace the competition. A well written and promoted press release is a great tool for reaching a larger audience and beating your competition to the sale!

Top Search Engine Optimization Tips To Get Noticed http://ping.fm/m13gv

Top Search Engine Optimization Tips To Get Noticed

Following these simple tips will definitely boost your traffic and search engine rankings for free.
1. Make sure your site is not under construction, incomplete, with little or no unique content.
2. When your site is ready, submit it to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com. Consider also submitting to other search engine but most of them are powered by these four leading search engines. Submit also your site to reputable high PR web directories, open directories, yellow pages and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl, etc.
3. Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com (sitemap for search engines usually in XML format)
4. Offer sitemap to your site visitors for easy page navigation. (sitemap for visitors in HTML format)
5. Create unique and rich content sites. Avoid duplicate content. Do not create multiple pages, sub-domains, domains, mirror sites or sites with different domain names but same content.
6. Check your keywords and make sure they are relevant and actually are contained in your site. Avoid keywords stuffing.
7. Use text instead of images in your content, links and important subjects.
8. Make your TITLE and ALT tags descriptive, simple and keyword rich. Avoid irrelevant and repeated keywords.
9. Title tag should be 60-80 characters maximum length.
10. Meta tag description should be 160-180 characters including spaces. (about 25-30 words)
11. Meta Tag keywords must be 15-20 words maximum.
12. Optimize Pages with Headings (H1, H2, H3..) containing your site’s primary keywords.
13. Validate your CSS and HTML. Check for errors and broken links.
14. If your site contains dynamic pages(i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), make sure you use SEO friendly URLs. Search engines’ spiders having difficulty indexing dynamic pages.
15. Maximum links per page must be fewer than 100. Avoid the risk of being flagged as link farm by search engines.
16. Use Lynx as text browser to check your site. (http://lynx.isc.org/)
17. Allow search bots (good ones) to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site.
18. Check your web server/host if it supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. It tells search engines whether your content has changed since last crawled your site. It will save you bandwidth, resources and avoid server overload.
19. Use Robots.txt file to manage and control search engine spiders in indexing your site. You can allow and disallow spiders and choose directories you want to be crawled and indexed. But with bad bots or spam bots you need to modify your HTACCESS file to properly and effectively manage bots or spiders. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn more about Robots.txt file.
20. Do not attempt to present different content to search engines than what you show to your site visitors.
21. Avoid dirty tricks and exploiting loop holes to improve search engines ranking.
22. Avoid links to bad neighborhood such as web spammers, link farms, phishing, hacker, crack, gambling, porn and scam sites. Linking to them will greatly affects your search engine rankings.
23. Do not attempt to join in link schemes, excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging and link exchange web rings.
24. Do not use unauthorized programs or online tools to submit your site, check page rankings and other automated queries. Avoid the risk of being flagged as spam.
25. Do not use hidden text and links. Show to search engines what you show to your visitors. It will greatly affect your site’s reputation.
26. Do not attempt to create pages that contains phishing, scam, viruses, trojans, backdoors, spyware, adware and other malicious programs.
27. Make your site useful and informative.
28. Improve your link building. Link to high PR websites. Quality of relevant links are far more important than quantity. Links will greatly improve your site’s visibility, popularity and rankings. Search engines consider links as votes to your site.
29. Check your page link structure. Every page should be reachable by a single static text link.
30. Be extra careful in purchasing SEO services. Some uses illegal and questionable ways to improve rankings.
31. Do not buy or sell links.
32. Do not create sites that contains purely affiliate links and no valuable content that are useful to the users.
I hope these tips will add more popularity and visibility to your site. Enjoy!

Investors look to social media for financial advice: survey http://ping.fm/y2dIG

Investors look to social media for financial advice: survey http://ping.fm/WXM6N

Content Marketing IS The New SEO For Online Marketers http://ping.fm/EYBvV

Content Marketing IS The New SEO For Online Marketers

Given Google and Bing’s recent revelation that social media is now a factor in determining website rankings, content marketing should be considered the number one search engine optimization strategy.  For inbound marketers this totally makes sense, because frequently publishing high quality content and distributing it via social media is the best way to take advantage of this new algorithm.  If your search engine optimization strategy focuses on content marketing here are a few of the SEO benefits you can expect.
1.  Fresh Content – It has long been known that the more frequently content is posted to a website the more often that website will be crawled by the search engines.  This will definitely help a website in the SERPs.
2.  Competitive on New Keyword Phrases – Posting on a blog at least three times per week will allow the website to focus on new long tail keyword phrases.  This is especially powerful if the keyword ranking “wish list” is over 100 keyword phrases.  Simply include the phrase in the title, body copy and alt text of the post’s image.  Also include a tag for that keyword phrase.  This will create an RSS feed for that phrase and all subsequent posts that you tag with that phrase will be included in the feed.  This will maximize a website’s chances to rank for that particular keyword phrase.
3.  Increased Website Traffic – The process of frequently publishing quality content will increase the number of unique visitors to a website and the frequency to which they visit.  Search engines reward websites with lots of traffic in the SERPs.
4.  Backlink Magnetism – Constantly publishing quality content to a website will undoubtedly drive others to link to that content.  This is considered the first rule of link building and the core of content marketing – publish quality content.
5.  Social Media Distribution & Profile Building – Distributing quality content via social media will not only increase that content’s visibility to the users of those social media platforms, but it will increase the content’s visibility to the search engines.  This will also lead to increased followers or fans for the social media profile doing the distribution.  Overtime, this process will raise the “clout” of the social media profile to users and search engines.  The result of this is better SERP rankings in the search engines.
The benefits of content marketing won’t be obvious overnight.  Content marketing is an ongoing process that typically takes six months to see measurable benefits.  Overtime, content marketing will bestow upon its practitioner the status of “thought-leader” while creating lots of brand advocates.  The search engine optimization benefits are icing on the cake.

5 Ways to Aggravate Your Twitter Followers http://ping.fm/aJRCN

5 Ways to Aggravate Your Twitter Followers

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I find Twitter to be one of the best social media tools around. The fact that it only allows you 140 characters to get a message across usually means that there’s no waffle.
People genuinely think about what they want to say, and it’s a great way to connect with people you share interests with, personal and professional.
Yet lately I’ve been getting a little frustrated with Twitter – not the service itself (although the fail whale is never a pretty site). No, my frustrations lie with the way many users are spoiling what Twitter has to offer – at least for me.
I know that people use Twitter for different reasons and I have no qualms with that at all. I just feel that some use it less effectively and far more selfishly than others. So here, in no particular order, are my Top 5 peeves when it comes to Twitter use. (These are just my peeves – it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right – Twitter should be used how you want to use it).

• Shameless self-promotion. Yes, we’re only human and that means we like to talk about ourselves. Yet social media is all about the conversation and interacting – sharing others as well as yourself. There’s nothing more annoying to me than a Twitter stream from someone that is nothing but a plug for their latest blog post or product. To me, that doesn’t offer anything to the community – sorry.

• Selfish shouts. One of the reasons I love using Twitter is the way I find great new content, thanks to users I’m following recommending new blogs to check out. This has introduced some great opinions to me that I would never have been aware of otherwise. However, only recommending blog posts where you’re mentioned? Just as bad as shameless self-promotion (and possibly a little egotistical).

• Twitter DM spam. So I’ve just agreed to follow your Twitter updates, and BAM! All of a sudden you feel it’s acceptable to send me direct messages telling me to sign up to your newsletter or join this group or that forum. Sorry, no – show me that you’re offering something selflessly and I’ll find that information anyway. Bombarding me with DM’s is akin to email spam and I instantly delete that.

• Open conversations. This might be a bit contentious and I apologize if it comes across wrong – that’s not my intent. But if you feel that you’re going to have a long conversation with a particular user, can you use the DM option? Seeing half a conversation taking up every other Tweet isn’t particularly conducive to community spirit. You wouldn’t like me listening in on your phone conversation, would you?

• Competition Tweets. While it’s nice to have the chance to win something at any time, Tweeting about it every other minute is not a great way to go about it. Instead of blasting everyone in your Twitter stream, why not have the competition URL and short spiel about it in your bio?

I’m not saying that Twitter is becoming annoying per se – just some of the ways that it’s being used.

Twitter Tips for Business and Brand Building

When it comes to social media, no one “gets it” as well as Twitter. According to Econsultancy, as of Jan 2010, Twitter has 75 million user accounts, with about 15 million of that total being active users. See http://tinyurl.com/yetgcru . That’s a lot of people sending a lot of Tweets. This micro-blogging service makes it easy for small businesses and entrepreneurs to stay in touch with those who choose to follow them, and stay updated on new products, services, special offers, industry news and more. It’s a win-win for both the Tweeter, and their followers.

 When it comes to using Twitter, there’s a right way and a wrong way to use it. Your messages must be kept short, under 140 characters, and they need to be helpful or informative. Don’t carry on about what you ate for breakfast, or the fact that you just brushed your teeth. People will unfollow you faster than they can hit the button, even if you do have good oral habits.
I’ve been using Twitter for a long time now and here’s what I’ve found works best when participating in this close knit community of few words.

1. Regular Postings: Now I’m not saying you need to post every day, although that would be nice. You do need to make an appearance on a regular basis. It’s like school – you need to show up to pass. Be a contributor that your followers get to really know and look forward to your Tweets. If you’re the type of person who needs to plan ahead, you can always use a service that allows you to schedule tweets in advance, such as http://www.socialoomph.com/
   
2. Retweet: If you see Tweets posted by other users that you think your followers would like, then retweet them. It only takes one click, and you’ll also be creating goodwill with other Twitter users at the same time. If you’d like, you can add a personal thought or comment before sending it. Also, make it easy for others to retweet your posts by adding RT buttons to your website or blog. It’s easy with http://tweetmeme.com/about/retweet_button
   
3. Be Helpful: Keep in mind Twitter is a form of social Media, so social interaction is key. It’s not all about you. Whenever an opportunity arises to answer a question, participate in a survey, or help solve a problem, do so. In this way you’re participating in the community. This also will help your brand and image when others know they can count on you for support or feedback.
   
4. Don’t Be A Follow CopyCat: Don’t follow everyone who follows you. This is probably my biggest pet peeve when it comes to Twitter. So many people turn this feature on to auto follow those who follow them. Why would you want to do this? I’d prefer that those I follow are people and topics I’ve hand-selected that interest me, and not a mish-mash of followers who may be ranting about things I have no interest in. Be selective in who you follow or your Twitter stream could quickly fill up with junk or spam. For quality people to follow, see-http://followontwitterlists.com/
   
5. What to Tweet: Make sure that the tweets you post are helpful and/or informative. Late breaking news pertaining to your industry, as well as any specials or sales you may have going on are always good topics. If you find something you think your followers would like, especially if it’s free or a bargain, share the love. Plus, if your tweets are good, it will encourage others to retweet them. For ideas see- http://www.artbizblog.com/2009/07/what-to-tweet.html
   
6. Comment: Particpate in the community by commenting on other people’s tweets. If you can answer a question, do so. It never hurts and people really will appreciate it when you take the time to comment on what they have to say. It lets them know that others are actually listening to what they have to say in the “Twitterverse”.
   
7. Say Thank You: When someone takes the time to retweet one of your tweets, make sure to reply to them with a “thank you”. Manners rule online as well as off, and they’ll like the fact that you noticed the retweet and took the time to show some gratitude. It may even inspire them to retweet more of your tweets in the future.
   
8. Be Personal: Again, I don’t need to know what you ate for dinner, but every now and then you should show your human side with a creative thought, quote, or other statement. Let people know you’re “real” and not just a lean mean business machine. You want to tread lightly in this area. Too personal is overkill, but a little can help in establishing a connection with your followers.
   
9. Post Pictures/Video: Remember, Twitter is not just for text. It’s easy to post short videos, and pictures too. It’s nice to mix it up a little and share content in other formats as well. Here are some resources http://freenuts.com/video-sharing-websites-for-twitter/
   
10. Talk About More Than Yourself: It’s not all about you, so please don’t make all your tweets one big marketing message, such as only tweeting about your latest press release, blog posting, or article that was published. No one will want to follow you if you’re one big commercial. Yes, some of this is fine in moderation, but you need to walk a fine line and mix it up with other helpful, interesting topics.
    

Now it’s time to start putting these tips into action. Social media is all about participating and listening to what others have to say. It’s all about creating and sharing information and becoming part of the community. If you approach Twitter in this fashion, you’ll not only have a lot more fun, but your followers will like and respect you -and if that doesn’t strengthen your brand, nothing will.

Twitter Tips for Business and Brand Building http://ping.fm/bvKA6

Social Media and Investor Relations in the Dodd-Frank Era http://ping.fm/XJjn9

Get People to Opt-In to Social Media http://bit.ly/eRUYIb PR IR Toronto

Get People to Opt-In to Social Media

Although you are a firm believer in social media and all that it offers, you are still bound to come across business associates who don’t seem to understand its value and how amazing it can be for their business. 
The nonbeliever
Social media nonbelievers are generally intelligent and well-educated people. They are well rounded and interesting. The only thing that is missing when it comes to online activities is their desire and their need for social media (or so they believe). Nonbelievers come from the school of thought that aspires to see no value in all things technologic.
However, if you can see your way clear to opening up a discussion with a nonbeliever about social media, in other words, if you can pique their interest enough for them to want to know what it is all about, you have a chance at converting them from nonbelievers to believers. Nonbelievers initially believe that it is not possible to have discussions online that will lead to any real business. Everyone who understands anything about social media knows that interactions through are based on interactions among people. Although it isn’t always obvious how discussions turn into revenue, it is easy to explain how this happens. Conversations lead to a relationship that is built on trust and credibility and trust and credibility eventually leads to people wanting to buy what you are selling because you have a relationship that has become important to them.
The stereotype of social media
It is entirely possible that people who have no involvement in social media have been paying enough attention to remember some of the names of the various online channels. Remember that their familiarity with some of the more popular names, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, doesn’t mean that they have an understanding of the capabilities of those channels. As you know, social media has gotten some seriously bad press over time and there are still many people who actually believe that the more popular social networks are only interesting and appropriate for teenagers. Of course, that couldn’t be any further from the truth. In your mission to convert a nonbeliever, one of your principle obligations is to educate him/her about the tremendous usefulness that social media has for business.
Your online business marketing strategy
Once you have had the conversation about social media only being useful for teenagers, you next line of defense is producing solid evidence that proves that you can actually successfully do business online and truly increase your business’s revenue. Please don’t be surprised if the reaction that you get is still rather skeptical. Once you have produced positive proof that social media seriously contributes to the bottom line of your business, it should hopefully get that person to start thinking that maybe there is something to it. Even if the conversion seems rather slow at first, you should try to be patient. Your goal was not to snap your fingers and poof, the nonbeliever was converted instantly (although that would be delightful). Rather, your goal was to create a small crack in his or her solid wall of nonbelief and skepticism. Once you have created that small crack, you can inundate the person with more and more useful information on social media. The more information you supply, the wider the crack will become until eventually, the wall will completely crumble and the nonbeliever will become one of social media’s most loyal and passionate fans.
Putting social media in terms that the nonbeliever can understand
If you speak in terms of advantages that he/she can appreciate and apply to his/her own business, you have a good chance of truly making him/her see what you see. For example, a good angle to discuss is how the Internet allows you to keep a close watch on your business activities, how the information that you gather online allows you to categorize your online connections very effectively, and how the Internet allows you to gather solid metrics that will enable you to hone your activities so that you can serve your target market most appropriately and successfully.
Conclusion
Fortunately, the majority of people whom you come across in business understand and believe in the power of social media and its vast and extremely positive implications for your business. On the rare occasion when you come across (or perhaps have known for a long time) the nonbeliever, you should consider it a welcome challenge to educate that person and really enlighten him or her about all that social media has to offer their business.

5 Social Media Tips for E-commerce Marketing http://ping.fm/pDdU2

5 Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Marketing

If you run an ecommerce business, chances are your customers – regardless of their age, gender or economic status – are active on social networks and social media sharing sites.
Just consider the statistics from social media monitoring site Pingdom:

• Males and females almost equally use social sites (47% vs. 53%)
• 61% of Facebook users are middle aged or older, with the average age being 37
• 18- to 24-year-olds don’t dominate any particular social networking site; they’re spread out all over

The bottom line: If you aren’t discovering which in social networking channels your customers spend time and include them in your ecommerce marketing mix, you’re probably  missing out on building relationships, community and increasing new customer acquisition through online word of mouth.
Leverage these five social media marketing tips for ecommerce to either get started with more social digital marketing or take your current social strategy to the next level:

1. Go Where Your Customers Are

Very few things in life promise endless options – digital and social media marketing being one exception. From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to YouTube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking channels available for your business to leverage. Key to successful social media marketing for ecommerce is choosing the right channels to reach customers.
Find out where your customers are congregating by:

• Asking them. Sounds overly simplistic, but sending a formal survey to customers or more informally polling them on your website can provide a wealth of knowledge.
• Monitoring social sites. Use a free tool like Social Mention or Trackur. For something far more robust use tools like Radian6 to discover how and where customers are talking about your brand, your competitors or target keywords.
• Leveraging the stats. Some sites like Facebook are transparent when it comes to user statistics. Or leverage research conducted by third-party firms like eMarketer.
• Revivew backlinks, job postings, news announcements and keyword rankings of competitors on a regular basis to get a glimpse into their online marketing health.

2. Monitor What Your Competitors Are Doing

Whether your ecommerce business is new to social media marketing, or just need to take your efforts up a notch, competitive intelligence can be very useful. Spend some time by conducting a competitive audit of your top five competitors on the social web. Include:

• The social sites in which they are active
• The type of content they publish on the social web
• The number of followers/fans/views they have on each site
• How they promote specific products, programs or events via social media

For even more inspiration and insight into what works well on the social web, look to ecommerce sites in other industries or even successful B2B social media examples.

3. Promote Exclusive Offers Through Social Media

In order for your ecommerce business to gain a following on whatever social channel you choose, entice customers with something they can’t get anywhere else.
For example, promote a contest via social media. Last fall, TopRank® Online Marketing leveraged this tactic for one of its ecommerce clients. TopRank used the client’s blog and Facebook fan page to promote a Halloween contest to name the best costume. This initiative not only drove additional traffic to the client’s website, but also helped increase the number of Facebook fans.
Alternately, offer an exclusive item to social media followers or fans, such as free shipping or a weekly coupon. You can also offer “breaking news” that does not appear anywhere else, like pre-product release announcements or an inside look at your company’s inter-workings.

4. Don’t Just Push Products and Promotions

The primary goal of your ecommerce site may be to sell products, but your social media marketing strategy should encompass a wider range of tactics that simply promoting offerings. With too much product pushing and not enough engagement, you’re unlikely to experience optimal success.
Incorporate some of these ideas into your ecommerce social media marketing strategy:

• Share messages or news stories from external sources
• Create a blog on your website and feed blog content to your social accounts
• Ask questions, participate in discussions or poll your customers via social media
• Post pictures from company events or videos from your CEO’s speaking engagements

5. Sell Products Through Social Networks

1-800-Flowers maximizes the use of social media for its marketing efforts.

Many ecommerce sites leverage social channels to make it even simpler for customers to purchase their products. 1-800-Flowers has taken this idea to the max (see image above). It was the first ecommerce site to launch a Facebook store, allowing customers to browse and purchase its products directly through Facebook.
1-800-Flowers may be an extreme case, but ecommerce sites large and small can still indirectly sell products through their social profiles. For example, highlight new products or best-sellers and provide a link to the order page on your website. It may not be quite as simple as purchasing directly from the social profile, but it can be just as effective.
The five ideas are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ecommerce social media marketing. What social media tactics have you found to be successful?

Social Media for Competitive Intelligence http://ping.fm/WIKUi

Social Media for Competitive Intelligence

Today, thanks to the ever growing world of social media, it’s a whole lot easier to find information about your competition.  Here are a few simple tips to get started:

1.       Be a Twitter Spy. Set up a Tweetbeep. If you can use Google Alerts you can use Tweetbeep. Just go to Tweetbeep.com and enter your competitors’ names. You’ll be notified when anyone Tweets about your competition. The information you receive will be a gold mine. Your competitors’ clients will tweet about how well (or poorly) the latest pitch went, their employees will complain about working all night to get the new product into beta. A reporter will talk about using them for a source. Customers will talk about pricing. The HR intern will tell you that layoffs are coming today.

Did you hear that something big is happening at a competitor and you can’t wait to be Tweetbeeped? Then just go to http://search.twitter.com and type in search strings like “[Competitor name layoff” “[Competitor name] acquired” “[Competitor name] president” People will share scoops on Twitter that they never would in person or on the phone.

You can also start following your competitors’ executives, managers, employees, interns and contractors. Not to mention, their biggest clients.  When news is coming from the company, you’ll get it from every perspective—giving you the full picture. Of course, don’t be surprised when you get the spin from the company president and PR director and the juicy stuff from the interns and contractors.

2.       Get LinkedIn. I’m willing to bet you already have a LinkedIn profile and some good connections on the site. But now, it’s time to start mining LinkedIn for information on your competition.  First take a moment to consider what LinkedIn knows about a company:  it knows who just joined a company, it knows who left, it knows who received a promotion and it knows who is connected to whom at other companies. Now, rather than rely on a person to write a company profile, aka Wikipedia, LinkedIn can create an automated feed to pull all this together into a shockingly accurate profile. Go ahead and check out your own company profile by searching here: http://www.linkedin.com/companies.

A quick scan will tell you how many people work at the company and who recently left the company. Seeing who left is not only a great tool if you’re looking to recruit from the competition, it’s also a good way to see if a particular department is in the midst of a shakeup.

You can also identify the companies most connected to your competition. This may help you identify where they recruit their employees, who their biggest clients are, and what strategic alliances are most important.

Company divisions and acquisitions are also listed, allowing you to understand the corporate hierarchy. The information on number of employees, revenue (listed even for many private companies), median age, employee gender and the various schools their employees attended, rounds out the picture.

3.       Dive deep with Manta. Manta.com is one of the largest and most popular business information sites on the Internet. Manta has profiles on 63 million plus companies, including yours. The site specializes in hard-to-find information about small businesses and other privately held companies. Membership to the site is free and you can use the free contact management system on the site to track and share competitive information with the rest of your staff. The information on companies varies, but in general, you can find annual revenue, key contacts and number of employees. Premium financial reports are also available for a fee. Can’t find the information you need? The site has a question and answer feature that allows users to post a question that can be addressed by the site’s other members.

Interested in seeing who is affiliate with your competitors? Visit their company pages on Manta.com and find Manta members who are associated with the company. You can also see who else (maybe your clients and prospects) who are viewing your competitors pages. And, similar to Tweetbeeps for Twitter, you can an alert on your competitors to be notified when something on their pages changes.

One other point: Your competitors are probably using these same tools to keep tabs on you. Keep an eye on your own social media presence to see the image that you are projecting.

Social media has changed the way we do a lot of things in the business world, including how we keep up on what our competition is up to. Somebody, somewhere out there, is talking about your competitors, opening up a world of information never before available. Now is the time to take advantage of it. 

Three Tips for Monitoring Your Competitors on Social Media

Marketers the world over are using social media not only to connect with customers and prospects, but also to see how well their competition is doing. As the wired social world grows in sophistication, so do the means to monitor the conversation.

Sure, it's easier than ever to keep an eye on the competition, but exactly where does one begin, you ask?Here's some help.

Founder Bill Balderaz of Webbed Marketing has offered three sound tips for using social media to keep an eagle eye on your rivals:

Set up Tweetbeep. "If you can use Google Alerts, you can use Tweetbeep," Balderaz notes. Visit Tweetbeep.com to enter competitors' names; you'll get email alerts whenever someone tweets about them: "Competitors' clients will tweet about how well (or poorly) the latest pitch went, their employees will complain about working all night to get the new product into beta. A reporter will talk about using them for a source. Customers will talk about pricing." Twitter spy tool—check!

Get "LinkedIn." Q: What does LinkedIn know about a company? A: Who joined, who left, who got promoted, who's connected to whom. Visit linkedin.com/companies to see your company profile (and your competitors'). Great for recruiting competitive talent, identifying companies intimately connected to your competitors—or checking the veracity of rumors that Rival, Inc. is having a shakeup.

Go deeper with Manta. Manta profiles more than 63 million companies and specializes in hard-to-find information about small businesses and private firms. Use its free membership to track competitive data like annual revenue, key contacts, affiliates and number of employees. Premium financial reports can also be had for a fee.

The Po!nt: Stay in the know. Don't get caught off-guard by rivals that likely use tools to track your movements. Like any good spy, you can know them as well as they know you.

How Do You Identify Who is Influencing Who

Gaining respect, trust and social capital with digital influencers in your space is fast become the holy grail of online marketing.

But how do you identify who is influencing who?

Using a variety of web analytics and social metrics can help you map influence across social platforms and identify patterns with the key players in your market.  Here are four (note the absence of the word easy) steps to create your own target list of influencers in your space.

1. IDENTIFY YOUR KEYWORDS

Before you can figure out who is talking about you or your industry (or who should be talking about you!) it’s important to understand your keywords so you can identify who is using them. Many of us have already gone through this process when looking at advertising buys and SEO. If so, you’re in luck and can skip to Step 2.

Remember that influencers in your space might not be talking about you yet, so it’s important to identify who is talking about your competitors and other topics in your space in addition to your brand itself. For those of you who haven’t yet dipped a toe into keyword (and keyphrase) identification, here are a few popular tools to get you started:

• Google AdWords
• Keyword Discovery
• Wordtracker

2. IT’S ALL ABOUT RESEARCH

In the past, marketers and communicators have typically monitored media mentions and online conversations after a campaign for analysis. That process is flipped on its head in influencer identification: monitoring and research are one of the first steps before a campaign.

Monitor the web to find out who is talking about your brand, your keywords and your competitors. If you have the budget, the easiest way to do this is through a paid monitoring platform, like those offered by Cision, Radian6 or Moreover, to name a few. If you don’t have a big budget, there are myriad free tools available online, but you’ll be doing a little more legwork collecting the data. The below table lists my personal favorite free tools and what they monitor. 

This next part of your research is more intuitive, and less about the metrics and monitoring.

As you dig in to the content you identify through your monitoring, you will start to see which content producers (whether it be through Twitter, a blog, traditional media or another social platform) are posting most frequently, are getting the most comments and responses and are producing content that is being shared by others.

Those content producers will be the building blocks of your influencer list. Start to document names, handles and blog URLs to prepare you for Step 3.

3. DO THE MATH

Once you have a solid list of potential influencers (the size will depend on your brand, industry, organization and/or campaign, but a nice benchmark is between 100 and 500 contacts in this initial phase), it’s time to start putting the math back into your identification process. Unless you are a metrics nerd like me, this part may be a bit tedious, but worth it in the long run.

Choose five to ten web analytics and social metrics by which you will start to map your influencers. It’s best to choose a mix of metrics across platforms (so one or two for Twitter, a few blog metrics and so on). My recommendation is to play around with these until you identify the metrics most relevant for you to navigate. These include (but are definitely not limited to):

1. Unique Visitors per Month (or per Day)
The standard metric that we can compare to print circulation, UVMs provide you with a straight up gauge of the sites that get the most eyeballs. My favorite resource for this is Compete.com.

2. Other Web Analytics
These tend to cost money if you are going to gather them without the help of the sites themselves, but can give you a great idea of which sites readers spend the most time on, return to most frequently and more. My favorites are Page Views per Unique Visitor, Time Spent per Visit, and New Visitors versus Return Visitors. Again, I get my web analytics from Compete.com, but these additional features are only available with a Compete PRO account.

3. Twitter Metrics
Not just followers anymore, you can now measure Retweets, Authority, Follower/Following Ratio, etc. I find the best way to do this is to choose one or two Twitter graders like Klout (also includes Facebook) or Edelman’s TweetLevel. They all have different algorithms, but for the purpose of identifying your influencers, they will do the job and save you the legwork.

4. Inbound Links
Frequently dubbed “the currency of the blogosphere,” inbound links will provide you with a glimpse into which influencers other influencers are citing and referring back to as experts. You can get inbound links by going to Yahoo! Site Explorer (you just have to log in once with a Yahoo!, Google or Facebook account) and typing in the URL in the “Explore URL” search box. You will then return the number of “Inlinks” and can even exclude links from that domain back to itself to get a true picture.

5. Comments & Unique Commenters
Great ways to gauge engagement, comments require, unfortunately, without a paid solution, legwork to quantify. Get in there and start counting!

4. MAP YOUR RESULTS

You are probably saying, “This is a huge pain! Why do I need to get ALL these metrics?”

Quite simply, digital influencers are as unique and varied as snowflakes, and they all influence others in very different ways.

By measuring across multiple outposts, you can begin to identify patterns of influence. Take this graph of influencers in the Internet Marketing space for example (note, I have no intention of leaving anyone off of this list, it is merely for illustration and includes some of my favorite Internet Marketing gurus): 

The blue highlights indicate the top 4 scores in each category. If we solely focused on Unique Visitors per Month for this list, we would never identify 3 of the 4 most influential people on the social web according to Klout. We’d also miss how much impact Jeremy Schoemaker has on Facebook, or how, along with Michael Gray, people are spending more time on his blog than on others.

Once you complete your mapping, you will have a clearer picture not only of who your influencers are, but which platforms they engage in the most.

A final note on influencer engagement: Paid media is one thing, but if you are looking to truly build relationships with the influencers in your space, don’t take the list that you’ve created and send a spammy-sounding email touting your merits. Read what your influencers write, learn their likes and dislikes and build a relationship with them the same way you would in the offline world. Happy influencing!