Archive for the ‘Linkedin’ Category

A few questions asked by my network… Appreciate the questions – all good. And a couple recent pictures to add color.

Golfing at The Johnny Cup, Cleveland

1. What are the best techniques to deploy to get your personal/business appearance in search results higher?
2. How to promote your business more on Linkedin.
3. How to use LinkedIn for job postings.
4. What should I be doing to stay engaged with the contacts I have on Linked In when there is no pressing business need to do so?
5. Ideas on how others are using LI to expand their network and more about what’s possible with forming and participating in various discussion groups.
6. What companies do you know of that have set the bar for making really great use of their corporate pages to attract potential employees and promote their business?
7. How often do people take time to update/tweak their profiles?
8. If you have updated your profile, is there something specific you can point to that immediately made a difference in how often your profile was returned in search results or how often you were contacted by recruiters?

Following is my best attempt to shed light and add value. But like with most things, the more POV’s we can get on the subject, the better. So perhaps add your and then ask your network to take a look and add their thoughts as well. There’s a lot too it, so I’ll tackle these questions one at a time.

#1 Appearance in Search Results

Now just to be clear, this question relates to the stats you see on your home page (or on this page http://www.linkedin.com/wvmx/profile). Appearance in search results is different than Views. Views include actual visits to your profile – so someone clicked on your name and hit your profile. “Appearance in search results” relates to how often your profile is returned in a Linkedin search made by someone else. But the real question relates to the all-important word “higher”. So if there’s a list of 421 people that fit the search criteria, how do you get on page one or two, just like Google search results, right?

To understand the question, you really have to understand Linkedin Advanced Search. Take a look at the Advanced Search form, from top to bottom. The Boolean (AND OR etc.) fields are at the top. Second, notice the search “filters” in the middle. Lastly, look at the “Sort by” choices at the bottom.

Finding Dad/Grandpa, Vietnam Memorial Wall, Akron

Now I will say that I searched high and low on the Linkedin site for information on search ranking. As is no surprise, there is NO mention of exactly how the Linkedin Search results page returns results. It seems a closely held piece of information – understandable; kind of the secret sauce.

So how would your profile show up higher in search results? To a certain extent, it seems out of your hands; dependent on the filters and sort-by choices a searcher makes. But to get on the list to begin with, it would seem important to do the following things. Consider this list as table-stakes – things to do to get invited to the dance and show up in someone’s search results:

• Keywords in Headlines and Titles
• Connections with as many people as possible (legit connections, unless they are LION’s)
• Keywords in other areas, especially Interests, Skills, and Groups & Associations
• Keyword matches the Industry selected in the individual job profiles
• Obviously, your profile has to fit the other Boolean criteria as well (location, etc.)
• Numbers of Recommendations
• Group involvement

Now to the question of Search Rank. Again, it depends on the searchers choices in the “Sort by” field. Since the default is “Relevance”, it would seem to make sense to pay particular attention to that concept. So how do they define relevance? Intuitively, one would think it would be based on the following:

1. keyword density across the Profile (relevance)
2. number of Connections (influence/importance)
3. number of Recommendations (positive influence, also to the keywords, though less-so)
4. number of mutual connections (relationship)
5. number and activity within keyword-related Groups (relevance, influence, relationship), especially shared Groups

With this in mind, what are some of the critical must-have’s/must-do’s with your profile relative to appearing in search results?

1. Add keywords everywhere, but especially in the high profile areas listed above.
2. Focus on Recommendations, especially from people you do business with (versus employees and associates)
3. Connect with as many people as you feel comfortable with. My recommendation? If you were to meet someone at a job, industry or social event and they have some relevance to your job, career, or interests, connect with them.
4. Join and be active with Groups that have relevance to your job, career, or interest. How active? Up to you – how fast you think and type, how visible you want to be, how much influence you want to develop. Time is scarce, but do something. Know that, depending on your activity broadcast settings at the time, Comments in Groups also show up in your activity list to your 1st level connections. So Group comments can also keep your profile fresh.
5. All this applies to Linkedin Answers as well, though I freely admit to not getting engaged in that element yet.
6. You might also consider paying the $25/month to become more of a player in the space as well. We’ll get to where the value is in that in future posts – and there IS value, depending of course on what you are are trying to accomplish.

That’s it for now. Please Comment. Thanks in advance.

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Top Sources:

http://www.slideshare.net/vferraro/increase-visibility-on-linked-in-presentation-updated-3-7-2010

http://www.youtube.com/LinkedIn

http://twitter.com/#!/linkedin

http://searchengineland.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-linkedin-today-how-to-optimize-your-presence-on-it

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Next: Company pages, Promotion, and Recruiting

What do YOU want to know? REALLY.

A bit of background: I remember when I first started using Linkedin in 2007. It was shortly before the PIMA meeting in Cancun, Feb. 2008. It sticks in my mind because I spoke to many people about Linkedin at the meeting. I remember that the predominant reaction around the industry and with my network at large was a natural sense of skepticism. Some companies were a little more intentional, blocking Linkedin on their servers as part of a broader approach to Social Technologies. Many people brushed Linkedin off as a waste of time for the gainfully employed, useful only for job seekers and recruiters. In fact, some of these attitudes still persist four years later. I heard this comment just this month at the PIMA conference at the Broadmoor by one of the speakers. “I don’t really use Linkedin – I’m not job-seeking…”

Fast forward to today and the prevailing sentiment seems to be, “I’m on it, get lots of invitations to connect, some from people I don’t really know, most I accept, but I don’t really know what to do with it. I’m in a few Groups but don’t really check-in very often. Should I upgrade to the Premium version???…”

In the meantime since 2008, I have migrated from an e-commerce sales guy to an independent Social Tech consultant, facilitator, and speaker, primarily focused on the insurance vertical, with secondary emphases on coaching sales organization on how to leverage Linkedin and Twitter. I also am building a line of business helping Cleveland-based companies, across industries, with Social Media Marketing strategies and tactics.

All that to say, as a part of my profession, I’m paid to know more about this stuff than the average professional. I also use it continuously for my own marketing and sales efforts.

Thus I thought it might be useful to share some of my learnings and help move our collective use of Linkedin to the next level. How? Let’s “crowdsource” both the questions and answers.

What’s in it for you to participate?

1. First and foremost, learning. The more you engage, think, and write on the topic, the more knowledge transfer happens.
2. Second, you can Share the discussion with your network – and thereby help them as well.

Part One: What do you want to know?

Think about your business objectives. What are you trying to accomplish professionally today? Really.

A suggestion: Before you look at the other questions in the Comments, think of your own top 1-3 questions. Then add your questions to the list, regardless of whether someone else already asked about your issues. That way we’ll get a great list, including redundancies indicating added importance to those topics.

Above all, please don’t LURK – add value.

Oh yeah, it may be tempting, but please perhaps check yourself from answering the questions in this round. I’d like to curate the questions and then open up the flood gates for answers in Part 2 – a little more organized approach from the left-brain side of things.

Thanks in advance for participating. Ask a question in the Comments below (and perhaps subscribe to the blog or the Comments), then copy the link, post it on Linkedin or Twitter, and ask your network to ask a question as well. Let’s crowdsource this. I know you’ll be pleased with the results.

Thanks again.

Hope I get this right… Kind of did it in a hurry…

Recently, I started coaching a B2B sales team on how to use Linkedin. I discovered a very simple barrier, easy to rectify, and thought I’d share the solution with you. This is something I had taken for granted, but it apparently isn’t common knowledge. Pardon the redundancy if you already know this…

Problem: When you go to your Linkedin Home page and scroll down, notice the “Updates”. Are the references all about who’s connecting with who, new job postings, and group updates or comments? Is this of value to you? If not, IMHO, perhaps the most useful part of your Linkedin Home Page is being buried – thoughtful Updates by your network. (These Updates come from the “Share an Update/Attach a Link” box at the top of the Home page.) I find them to be quite useful most of the time.

Solution: How to change your settings to see more of these Updates by your colleagues rather than the default Linkedin network Updates

1. First, open a new tab or window with a new instance of Linkedin so you can keep this thread open while you follow along…

2. Go to the top-right under your name and click “Settings”
(You might have to Log-in on the next page)

3. On the Settings page, scroll down and look for the lower left tab “Account”. Click that and then slide to the left and click “Customize the updates you see on your home page”.

4. On the resulting dialog-box:

a. First consider clicking the top toggle “How many updates do you want on your homepage?” and change that to 25. If you’re in there scanning your network’s activity, you might as well see as much as possible at a glance, my opinion.

b. Most importantly, un-check three items:

i. “New connections in your network”
(unless you really like to see that, but this data also shows up in “People You May Know”)

ii. “Jobs posted by your connections” (unless you’re job-hunting of course)

iii. “Groups your connections have joined or created” (unless you’re actively looking for new groups to join)

c. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the dialog-box.

5. Return to your Home page (top left) and scroll down, scanning the updates that were previously not there. Notice the difference? Helpful?

One final tip: This will vary depending on how many or few connections you have and how active they are. But if someone is dominating your resulting Newsfeed with content that’s not really useful to you, if you float your mouse over one of the update bars or rows, a little, gray “Hide” button will show on the top-right corner of the bar. Click that to Hide updates from that person. It won’t un-Connect you, it will just remove them from your news feed. You can also unhide them later. So this might be appropriate for headhunters in your network (no offense, perhaps you’re just not in the job market), people that are more personal connections that share a lot of perhaps useful content, but just not of interest to you, of course that Mike Wise dude (geesh!), etc. etc.

FWIW. Hope it helps optimize your Linkedin utility.

Shameless Plug: For more help maximizing Linkedin for business, or other Social Tech training and marketing/sales strategies including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, etc., give me a shout.

Oh yeah, if you’re on Facebook, perhaps also Like my WebWisedom Facebook page. I will be testing a new Facebook business marketing tool this summer on that page, so watch and see the change… https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hudson-OH/WebWisedom/392220300843

If you have any comments or other related tips, by all means Comment and/or Share.

Thanks, Mike

Insurance, Compliance, Social, & Multi-Channel Marketing – “It’s a lot to bite off all at once.” -What About Bob!

Wanted to give a quick shout-out about a Webinar I was asked to help with.

Background: Distribion, a new member of the association I’m involved in, PIMA, caught my attention at the last conference. So I decided to check out their system in an effort to better understand their value prop , especially in the context of PIMA members. After a quick, high-level demo, I could see that the tech definitely has great utility for organizations that are leveraging multi-channel marketing. Of course my expertise is about e-Commerce, Web sites, Web marketing, and Social Technologies. So it was interesting to see how Direct Mail, Call Center Marketing, and other channels can be integrated into a common dashboard.

In talking about the insurance industry, they asked me what I felt were some of the biggest challenges in the insurance space relative to Social Media Marketing. Short answer… legal and compliance issues have kept many insurance marketing organizations on the Social Tech sidelines. I shared a recent project I’m working on where I’m helping an insurance company with a pilot marketing project. I’m orchestrating a process with the carrier, a couple of their agencies, and compliance folks. Interesting.

Of course that started with a research project sponsored by the company’s marketing department where I was tasked with an assessment of the Social Media Marketing and Compliance landscape. That ended up being very helpful in bringing the legal and compliance folks up to speed on Social Technologies, breaking down some functional myths about Social, illustrating what other carriers are doing with Social, researching and describing current guidelines by the NAIC, etc.

At the time, Distribion folks reached back to me and suggested perhaps we do a joint White Paper, perhaps a joint Webinar, that brings together these Social Media Marketing and Compliance concepts together with Marketing Technology concepts. So fast forward several months and here we are.

Next week we’ll be jumping on a call to discuss these subjects. Edgar Rodriguez, Sales Exec with Distribion will be facilitating a session with myself and Deb McAlister-Holland. Deb recently joined Distribion to lead their marketing efforts – very interesting background that brings a rich perspective I’ve appreciated getting to know in preparation for this Webinar. Check out here new ecosystem at www.distributedmarketing.org

Here’s what the Agenda looks like:

• How Google Changed Marketing Forever
  
• The Empowered Customer & the Echo Chamber
  
• 21st Century Marketing in a Regulated Environment
  
• Social Media Guidelines & Compliance
  
• Empowering Producers & Local Marketing
  
• 7 Things Marketers MUST Know About Online Marketing

Again, “It’s a lot to bite off” in 60 minutes. But it seems like it should be a worthwhile effort. The ensuing White Paper should be good as well. If you have anything you really want to know, feel free to use the Comment below, Linkindin, Twitter, email, call me, etc. Happy to help in any way…

Btw, not sure how many of the attendees will be on Twitter during and after the event, but I’d like to suggest the Twitter hashtag: #MCRE for Marketing & Compliance in a Regulated Environment. In fact, I’ll make a note to stay on Twitter for a half-hour after the Webinar to kick around thoughts and ideas. Ala HubSpot, we’ll call it the “Twitter After-party!” I love it.

Links:

Register here

Linkedin Event (Click “Attending” for an easy way to Share with your Linkedin network)

Perhaps Share this post as well. The more insurance folks that assimilate some of these concepts, the better. Definitely encourage you to send it to legal and compliance folks.

Thanks!

Hey, I just found another use for Blogging! It’s a productive use of time at 6am during a windstorm power failure when the only thing you have is battery power on the laptop – no internet, no lights, no coffee – can’t decide which is worse?!?!

So I read and shared this article this week. My guess is many of my colleagues in the insurance space will read it, gently cross their arms, lean back in their chairs, and think, “Yep, this is what I’ve been saying all along…and exactly why I haven’t gotten into all that Facebook, Blogs and Social Media stuff. It’s all a fad.”

Yes, we ARE in a bubble. But here’s the thing (and I’ll ask the crowd of readers to Comment their take below):

The article makes a sound analogy with e-Commerce during the ’98-2000 era. There certainly was a bubble and a burst. Dot-com’s were getting huge amounts of money with no revenue model, etc. etc. The crash hit, many of those companies faded out, etc. Don’t need to rehash all that.

But what came out of all that? Solid e-commerce platforms by solid companies. Not sure what the latest numbers are, but billions of dollars are running through the internet as companies put their products on Web sites and buyers buy them. Again, no need to justify and explain all that anymore – common sense and acceptable.

Why did e-commerce outlive the Bubble? I’ll argue the following. What do you think?

Individually – I’ll list three. Please add yours.

IMHO, it really boils down to Fundamental Human Behaviors

e-Commerce efficiencies with time and money – Didn’t people see pretty quickly that they could browse for books and music on Amazon.com faster than they could in the store? Didn’t Google make it incredibly easy to find pretty much anything you want and compare prices, vendors, choices, user ratings, etc.? [And now we have all of that on our smart-phones? And now we have things like Groupon, Web specials, discounts for Fans, check-in savings on FourSquare?]

Sharing – Didn’t people love to tell stories about what happened to them after they bought the products? Give advice to others in similar circumstances? Make recommendations? Comment from the peanut gallery? Be the arm-chair quarterback? Share uses? Rant about injustices? Solve problems? [Back then it was mass emails and Fwd Fwd Fwd, right? Now it’s Facebook and YouTube, etc.]

Helping – Didn’t e-Commerce make it easier for people to help each other? A fundamental behavior? Why do drivers flash their lights at cars approaching a speed trap?

Corporately – I’ll list five. Please add yours.

1. Industry leadership – Did the early adopters of e-Commerce realize long-term benefits as their systems matured through trial and error before the rest of the pack? When they figured out ways to do things better, faster, cheaper; to become known as an innovator in the industry; to develop ecosystems that snow-plowed the road for the industry, was there value in that?
2. Competitive advantage – Did companies with better e-Commerce platforms do better in the 2000s than the competition? And how are they positioned today in 2011? What were the difference makers? How about those that did things in-house versus outsourcing to specialists? Pro’s and con’s on that to be sure, but if we limit the thoughts to the legit, real-deal outsourcing companies…
3. Cost savings – Netnet, now that we’re 10 years down the road and e-Commerce platforms are in place, are cost structure differences yielding gains compared to the 80s and 90? Shopping? Distribution? Inventory management? etc?
4. Mass marketing – Did e-Commerce realize the potential for companies to immediately get new products out to wide bases of constituents? How about selling overstocks? What else? And now, what about this concept called “Revenue on Demand”?
5. Personalization – How about letting the consumer design their own product? Colors, features, accessories, timelines, etc.? Of course often for either a fee or for competitive advantage, right?

What are some other advantages of mature e-Commerce platforms?

Interesting side note: As I mentioned previously, I heard an insurance executive last summer say from a podium, “When will e-Commerce realize its potential?” I wanted to stand up and shout, “When you start doin’ it right, buddy.” Funny how that exec about 3 months later was canned. Oh, and 6 months later his Linkedin profile still lists him in the CEO role. Doh! I swear……. (I’ll save him the embarrassment of linking to it.)

So are we in a Social Media bubble? Absolutely. Will it burst? Yep. Then what? To answer the question in the original E-Consultancy blog…

“We’ll get back to reality and figuring out how to do Social Tech right like we shoulda’ been doing in the first place.”

My take? Social Tech is a specialization like anything else? It’s a discipline that must be mastered and kept up with? As to marketing? There’s a host of things that need to be done urgently today? If we don’t keep up, we WILL be left behind – just common sense. How costly will falling behind be? Again, my opinion, that seems to depend on customer switching costs and your competitors. Don’t underestimate the power of consumer ratings and recommendations, the viral nature of the social Web. Don’t be complacent. Change never stops.

What do you think? Good use of an hour to write this post? Any of this make sense? Please comment. Certainly link back to your site, your blog, or other writings. Please share with your network, ask them to comment, and see if we can get some of your thought-leader friends to pipe in.

Bubble or not, the critically important questions seem to be: Are there long-term utilities in Social Technologies? Does Social Tech align with core human behavior? And will early corporate adopters (caveat: who do it Social RIGHT) have long-term competitive advantage?