Posts tagged ‘LinkedIn’
LinkedIn is the Business Lunch, Facebook is the Cocktail Party
One of the most often asked questions I receive is “when do I use LinkedIn and when do I use Facebook?” People, especially business professionals, are looking to take advantage of popular social networks as a way to build their personal networks, add to their “Rolodex”, and build professional relationships that can help them further businesses and careers. So when it comes time to select somewhere to spend your time, the natural question is, “where do I focus?” (Twitter is also effective, but we’ll leave that one aside for now)
The short answer is – both. It seems like a lazy answer, but let me explain why. When you want to build a true relationship with someone in the analog world (not online), how do you typically go about it? You will most likely set up some sort of formal meeting, such as a business lunch. Once you get through the formalities and a couple of business lunches, you begin to build your relationship on more of a personal basis. It is at that point you feel more comfortable talking about family, hobbies, likes and dislikes, etc. This is typically something you would do at a cocktail party or after hours event, such as grabbing an adult beverage together.
If you want to build lasting relationships with high value contacts, start with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the online equivalent of the business lunch – quick, professional, exchange of business cards, a few probing questions, etc. Once you have built your relationship at the professional level, try broaching the personal realm using Facebook. Facebook is the cocktail party. This is an area where you can ask, “how are the kids doing?”, “how was the fishing trip?”, and “how is the new house coming?”.
Online relationships often mimic what we do offline. Take advantage of all the opportunities you have to connect with people. However, just because you are “connected” doesn’t mean you are friends. As the old saying goes, people do business with friends. We have unprecedented access to each other. Use that access to build friendships, both online and off.
How to Arm Customers to Spread the Word
Up to this point, I have emphasized the Navel Model for creating a company worth talking about. It is critical that you do this piece first. As the great military strategist, Sun Tzu, once said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Most literature in the marketing realm is about tactics. In social media, people go right to Twitter and Facebook. In advertising they go right to the 30 second spot or the full page print ad. However, in order to have successful tactics, the strategic pieces need to be in place first.
Once you have created an organization worth talking about, the next step is to arm your customers to spread the word. It doesn’t matter what the medium is, the process remains the same. The six steps below work especially well in social media, but also work in public relations, advertising, direct marketing, or any other medium. The six steps below are also not linear but are circular because they are not always done in order. By implementing the steps below, you can better find your target influencers, arm them with tools to spread the word, and amplify their efforts.
- Publish – There is an argument in the social media space about whether content is king or conversation is king. The reality is that both are important for successful word-of-mouth. Content without conversation is advertising – it’s one way. Conversation with content is chatter. It is social media strictly for the social benefit. The first step is to publish great content. With all of the tools available today, there are many mediums you can use – it simply depends on your audience. If they have time to read and revisit often, then right a blog. If they are more inclined to download content and listen at a later date, then a podcast may be the best option. If they learn visually and your content is meant to be demonstrated, then produce a video series, or vidcast. For tools, check out WordPress, Libsyn, and YouTube. If you want to know what to write your content about, always think “educate and advocate.” Provide educational insights, how to’s, or insider information. When advocating, look to the cause you created in your Navel Model.
- Syndicate – Now that you have produced great content, step 2 is to find all the places you can share that content. Obviously, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other online communities are a natural fit, however, also consider how you can share this content in your advertising, PR, and direct marketing efforts. Link to it within your social communities. Use snippets in advertising. Use it to pitch editors to cover important topics about your company or industry.
- Integrate – The amazing thing about where technology has come from in the recent past is that today, everything talks to each other. That means you can spend less time and get better results from your efforts. By integrating your blog utility with your social communities, every time a new post is created on the blog, it can automatically be posted to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. Every time you Tweet it can update your status in Facebook, both your personal profile and your business pages. The key with integration is to amplify your efforts.
- Converse – Referring back to the argument under “Publish”, once you have great content, the next step is to talk about it. Talk about your content. Talk about others’ content. Talk about a recent lesson you learned in your business. The key is to talk. Dare to be human; to be more than just a brand. The more personal you can be, the more others will grow in affinity for your brand and share it with others.
- Help - This is the concept upon which social media was built – people helping people. The Golden Rule is as applicable in social media as anywhere else. The more that you help others, the more benefit you receive in return. This is where you solidify your customer evangelists. It can be something as simple as re-Tweeting their Tweets or something more complex, like writing a blog post about them. You can answer questions on LinkedIn (and syndicate by linking to your content) or you can comment on another person’s blog. These are all forms of help.
- Monitor – Lastly, one of the most powerful aspects of social media is that it is infinitely searchable. I can monitor conversations going on almost anywhere in the social web and (politely) engage in the conversation. I can measure how much chatter there is online about a particular brand. I can even automate monitoring so that I am instantly notified when a conversation is taking place. The ability to monitor online conversations is one of the most important aspects of the social web and the reason it is one of the fastest growing marketing mediums today.
With the six steps above, you create great content, share it in as many places as you can, make your technologies talk to each other, engage with others, be helpful, and monitor conversations in order to start the cycle all over again. If you have done your previous work, such as creating a position, cause, culture, and message, you’ll know what to share and converse about. While you may go through the Navel Model only once in a while, the above steps will be a daily to do list.
With the six steps above, you can adequately arm your customers to quickly spread your message for you. Which do you do already and which could you improve upon?
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Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…Oh My
I recently wrote an article in Eagle Magazine on social media and the 3 major networks. This covers the basics of social media and the reason behind the phenomenon. I have reprinted the article below. Enjoy:
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn… Oh My: Social networking isn’t limited to coffee shops and cocktail parties anymore
There is an analogy I often use in my seminars to describe how social media has not only shaped the evolution of the Internet, it has changed how we interact as a society. When you go to any coffee shop in town, you will find small tribes of people gathered around tables and comfortable couches, favorite beverage in hand, simply chatting about everything from relationships to what was on TV last night. These bands of socialites have simply moved their discussion from a face to face interaction to what can only be described as the “Virtual Coffee Shop”.
The web has become simply one giant coffee shop, with groups huddled around computer monitors discussing everything from green living to cancer to cars. As these conversation technologies evolve and new tools emerge, the need to discuss important topics in our lives any time of the day or night becomes even more compelling. Social media technologies are just an extension of our daily interactions with those in our lives.
Take Twitter for instance. Three years ago this 10 million strong (and growing) social network was merely a gleam in some programmer’s eye. Today it is the fastest growing social network on the planet. According to Mashable.com, the social web’s source for news, Twitter grew 1382% in year-over-year growth as of February 20091. The media is replete with mentions of Twitter. Jimmy Fallon uses Twitter to solicit questions for guests on his new late night talk show. Shaquille O’neal uses Twitter to interact with fans and give away tickets to games. Major brands are searching the “Twitterverse” to monitor conversations about their brands in order to contribute to the discussion.
What is Twitter you ask? It was built on the notion that anyone could describe what he or she was doing at any moment in 140 characters or less. In practice, it has become a valuable tool for building deeper relationships through much more frequent contact and for aggregating content from many other sources on the web. Twitter can turn you into a mini “rock star” by creating your very own media channel to which anyone can subscribe.
Another network experiencing exponential growth right now is Facebook. A mere 5 years old, Facebook currently has 200 million users and is growing at a pace of approximately 1 million users per week. To put it into perspective, if Facebook were a country, it would be the 6th largest in the word based on population. When my 59 year old mother communicates with me regularly on Facebook, you know it has leapt from the land of geeks and bleeding-heart teens to mainstream.
While Twitter is like being in a busy coffee shop trying to hear your friend over many different conversations going on at once, Facebook takes a more segmented approach to online conversation. First of all, your home page is a news feed that shows only the changes that have been made to the profiles of those in your network. Second of all, you can join groups, become a fan of your favorite business or artist, and even play interactive games with those in your network. It can be both a time waster as well as a valuable business tool. In fact, most people will tell you it has even become one giant high school reunion for them.
Twitter and Facebook serve as that unique intersection between your social and professional lives. They can be valuable business tools or simply a way to stay in touch with family and friends. LinkedIn, however, is all business. In its simplest form, LinkedIn is an interactive resume and Rolodex. In practice, however, it is the online version of the business cocktail party, without the constraints of time or space. You can make introductions, provide a recommendation for those you have worked with in the past, and even ask for help from your network on a pressing question you may have. If you are a professional, own a business, or work in an field you would consider a “career” you should be on LinkedIn.
While the networks may come and go (MySpace is on the decline, for instance) one thing is true. Social media has brought the world together. No longer are we limited by time or space, but we can stay in constant contact with those that matter most to us. If you haven’t yet made the plunge, there is no better time to jump on the social media bandwagon. There is plenty of company.
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All Media is Social Media
I have been involved in social media for about the last 5 years, although it has gone by many names: grassroots, word of mouth, new media, Web 2.0, viral, social networking, etc. It seems like we have finally arrived at a term that everyone is comfortable with: social media. It appears that the reason why most are satisfied with social media to describe the blog/podcast/MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn phenomenon is that what all these technologies have in common is that they are all about conversations. They encourage people to engage with each other.
I think that is a great way to describe the explosion of conversation technologies. However, I would argue that based on this definition, all media is social. All media encourages conversation, good or bad. However, social media simply captures that conversation in a nicely oraganized format online.
There are many who think of social media as a tactic only and fail to realize that it is, in fact, a cultural phenomenon. Much the same way that you feel frustration when you can’t fast forward through a commercial on a DVR because we have become accustomed to controlling our content, we feel frustrated when a brand does not have the proper tools for discussion online when we need to react to what they are doing. The conversation will take place, online or off. Wouldn’t you rather have take place in a way that you can faciliatate and participate in that conversation? This is what made shows like American Idol so popular is the ability for the audience to engage with the brand.
So while I praise the industry for arriving at a standard term for all of the online mumbo jumbo, let us remember that all media, when used correctly, should be social. So why not use social media to capture the conversation?
The Missing Ingredient: Automation
For about the last 5 years, I have been involved in the word of mouth marketing and social media space. I have seen new technologies grow overnight and become relevant components of the online marketing mix. Names like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn were mostly non-existent 5 years ago. Using the term “blog” in every day conversation would elicit strange looks. The landscape has completely changed in that short amount of time.
Previous to my consultant days, I marketed and sold enterprise software. I have sold everything from enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) programs to accounting and retail systems. These software systems were all about automation. You automate the menial tasks and the critical path processes as much as possible.
As social media shifts from techies to early adopters and the early majority, people begin to ask, “where is the business value?” Honestly, that has been the argument for the last 5 years. Now that it has finally taken hold, people are beginning to see how social media can build relationships and grow businesses.
That being said, there are a lot of people who have the same problem with social media that they do with CRM systems, you actually have to go there and open them up and check them/input information. It takes time and effort to do the little things.
I have seen a new trend in social media where the combination of the automation principles from enterprise software with the ambient awareness of social media are creating integration, making social media simpler and more pervasive.
I first heard the term “ambient awareness” in a New York Times article discussing the rise of Facebook and Twitter. The concept of ambient awareness is the ability to passively monitor what is going on in all your networks until something sparks your interest and you comment on it. Facebook took off once it added the News Feed. Twitter grew solely based on ambient awareness. The beauty of ambient awareness is that through RSS, you can integrate your networks in order to consolidate your monitoring. Twitter can even act as a consolidation tool.
Let me give you a few examples:
I can connect my Twitter account to Facebook so that Twitter updates Facebook’s status field. Everytime I update my status in Facebook, it shows up on the News feed of my entire network. You can also comment on someone’s status in Facebook. Therefore, I have held conversations on both Twitter and Facebook from a single Tweet. That’s automation and integration.
Also, you can connect RSS feeds into Twitter. This means you can have a new blog post, a social tag, or any other form of social media post automatically to Twitter. I have found Twitter to be a very effective tool for blog promotion. Everytime I post a new blog post, I see a spike in traffic from Twitter. It is also great for furthering a cause using social tagging.
However, I have found a tool now that will allow me to use e-mail (which has a much higer adoption rate than any of these other tools) as an ambient awareness vehicle. I have mentioned InfusionSoft in previous posts, but I wanted to talk about why I became a Certified Marketing Automation Coach for InfusionSoft.
I am a technology junkie and I have been looking for technology that could help me deliver what I preached. I stumbled across InfusionSoft (actually they found me) and was impressed with its automation capabilities. Combined with social media, I had finally found a combination that could drive sales and give me the ability to track almost every aspect of my customer interaction. Best of all, it was automated and didn’t require people to have to go in and input all the information.
I can produce some great content (white paper, blog post, eBook) and create a web form from InfusionSoft that will allow someone to enter their information in order to download it. That information is automatically entered into my system and a follow-up sequence set in motion to keep my subscriber posted on what I am doing. Each month, I aggregate all of my social media content into an eNewsletter and push it out to subscribers with links to the social web. Now I can use the great content I produce with social media to build relationships and move people down the sales pipeline.
Whatever the tools, integration and automation are where social media is headed. Even Google’s OpenSocial initiative is all about integration. With the number of social media sites and tools out there, you have to be able to integrate in order to lower the switching costs and maintain your sanity.
How are you using technology to integrate and automate?
Mr. 500
Goals are an important part of life. They instill passion and drive. They make us better people. They help us achieve our dreams.
I have had a goal (dare say I a dream?) ever since I started using the professional social network, LinkedIn. My goal was to be one of the few, the proud who could display that “500+” next to his name for the number of contacts I had linked to. It says more than just the fact that I know more people than you. It says, “I know so many people, I am not going to tell you how many. You only know that it’s more than 500.”
I would lay awake at nights staring at the ceiling and drawing out “500″ with my eyes. When my daughter was born, my wife had to snatch the birth certificate from my trembling hands before I could write in “500 Contacts Critchfield.” I wanted to instill he importance of my dream in my children.
Well, after many months of blood, sweat, and tears, I can finally say I am part of the 500 club. The agony, the pain, and the sleepless nights were an easy price to pay for the euphoria I feel today. I did it without becoming a “link whore.” As Ol’ Blue Eyes would say, “I did it my way.”
Who was the lucky person who made my dream come true, you ask? Mr. Mac Wrigley, Assistant Vice President, Construction Loan Officer at Syringa Bank. I have known Mac for almost 8 years now and he is a scholar and a gentleman. So, Mr. “Give Me a Loan So I Can Build Another Ugly Strip Mall,” this one’s for you. You made one young man’s dream come true!
Web 2.0 Brings the World Together
As many of you know, I am in the Global MBA program through Thunderbird. This program has helped me to look at the world with a new global eye. Recently, I was reflecting on social media and the rise of Web 2.0 tools. I have been reading the book Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide and it sparked a thought. I know of no other technological advancement that has brought the world together like Web 2.0.
If you think about it, in the past we were limited by phone and face-to-face contact to build relationships internationally. The Internet, or Web 1.0, helped us to view online brochures from other people and companies from around the world. However, with blogging, social communities, and wikis, we can build relationships virtually and instantaneously.
There are people with whom I am connected on my LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter profiles who I have never met but who live in various countries around the world. I am fascinated by the depth of knowledge I have access to just in my own personal networks. Many of these people have blogs (that I try and read as often as I can) and when I have a cultural or subject matter question, they are more than accommodating.
Globalization has been painted with both positive and negative strokes. However, it is my belief that the advancements in Web 2.0 have done more to accelerate globalization than any government, organization, or treaty.
In the end, we are all just human beings sharing an existence. As I have had the chance to watch the Olympics with my kids and have them ask me why people from other countries wear or do certain things, I have had a chance to reflect on how small the world really is. I have been fortunate enough to visit several foreign places in my career and am amazed that no matter where I go, people are basically the same.
No matter what your opinion of globalization is, one thing is true: we can all benefit from greater tolerance, understanding, and simply growing closer together as a human race. Lest I begin to sound like the latest Al Gore documentary, my purpose in writing this post is to highlight the greater purpose and benefit of the social networking technologies available today. While social networking helps build collective knowledge and relationships, it also helps us expand beyond borders and beyond cultures.
How have you experienced greater international exposure and understanding through your Web 2.0 efforts?
What is Web 3.0?
I have heard this term rolling around for a little bit. At first, I thought it was another guy trying to make a name for himself by coining a phrase (and not a very creative one at that) and then trying to get it to stick. I mean, people are just starting to figure out how to use Web 2.0, but then you heap 3.0 on top of us and we are drowning in a sea of 1s and 0s (OK, let’s not be dramatic here).
The reality is that, although Web 3.0 is still being formulated, one thing is for sure – Web 3.0 will take advantage of artificial intelligence to create a more productive and intuitive user experience. You can read the Wikipedia definition here. Basically, this simply means that Web 3.0 will better understand what you want and need and will automatically serve it up to you. Pretty cool, huh?
There is still a lot of theory behind Web 3.0 and a lot of buzz words being thrown around like semantic web, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, however, we have recently seen actual applications in this space that cause one to think that Web 3.0 may not be far away.
One such company is Certona Corporation. While the company has bee around for a few years, it is finally establishing a customer base with solid results to showcase. The company produces software that turns your eCommerce website into an artificial intelligence engine that will serve up content, product recommendations, or even coupons based on your browsing behavior. Picture a retail sales rep that knows exactly what you will want next and gives you a recommendation for it or even a coupon. Bet you would go back to that store again.
One of their more prominent case studies is with Personal Creations which, according to a press release, it the “top provider of personalized gifts in the United States.” Personal Creations is attributing 20% of its sales revenue to the system created by Certona. That is pretty impressive.
Not to sound like a Certona ad here, there are several other companies popping up now that are taking advantage of Web 3.0 technologies to create highly customized user experiences, beyond anything we have seen before. While Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia, and YouTube have taken ownership of Web 2.0, we have yet to see who will emerge as the reigning champions of Web 3.0. Will it be you?
(**Author’s note – this post was NOT sponsored by Certona. I just thought it was cool)
Are you LinkedIn?
I have been a user of the online business community, LinkedIn, for a couple of years now. Yet it is only recently that I have started to discover the power of a networking site for business users that is truly global.
For one of my clients, I generate business from international clients looking to launch technology products into the US. Now where do you find a group of those guys hanging around? As I mentioned previously, the web has become a collection of “coffee shop” communities. So I thought I would try my own theory out and utilize a powerful tool that I am already using to find this particular coffee shop.
With the recent re-design of LinkedIn, groups became a much more prominent part of the community. In the past, it was almost as if the powers that be at LinkedIn wanted to obscure the groups from view so that nobody would find them. However, with the power of groups, you now have a group of people who self select as those interested in a certain topic (i.e. Mac Users, Friends of Italy, French Consulting Group, you-name-it). Granted, you have the (what I fondly refer to as) “link whores” who are in this prize-less contest to see who dies with the most contacts in LinkedIn. They tend to join every group imaginable and link to anyone and their hamster. However, linking with them can give you good exposure as well.
However, these groups are an excellent way to meet and greet. It gives you an excuse to drop someone a line (i.e. “I saw you were on the Friends of Italy group and was wondering what type of business you have in Italy”).
One of the biggest advantages to using LinkedIn to contact people, however, is the amount of information available to the person you are contacting about you. Before responding to your message, they can look at your work history, your education, your list of recommendations from other users what groups you are involved in, and what your list of hobbies are. They can even see what you look like. I have found it to be a much more effective way of contacting someone than just a standard e-mail.
Heck, I will even browse the local network in Boise and find people in targeted organizations who have backgrounds that interest me and invite them to meet for lunch or coffee (OJ for me). I have never once been turned down.
There is a constant debate raging over who will win out in the end. Will it be Facebook, LinkedIn, OpenSocial, or even some upstart business community. Even Plaxo has made a resurgence. However, I have discovered it is all in how you use these tools to meet your networking needs. LinkeIn is a powerful tool for networking with business people all over the world. I now have business contacts in distant places with which I have begun to build relationships. I also have business contacts right here in my own backyard that I had never met before. If you are not LinkedIn, I would highly recommend it. If nothing else, it is great for your search engine optimization.
H ow have you used LinkedIn to further your business?
Facebook, LinkedIn, OpenSocial, Oh My!
The battle for the de facto business social networking platform continues. It seems the big boys are finally getting into the mosh pit (you know when Microsoft gets involved, there is finally money to be made). Social networking has finally “crossed the chasm” with business users where it is no longer looked as a way for your kids to to waste time “MySpacing” their friends.
LinkedIn was the first to prove that social networking can work for businesspeople. At first it was a glorified online resume and business card swap, but it has evolved into a true networking application, with the ability to see someone else’s network and ask for introductions from people in your own network. It has seen a wide adoption because it is an easy progression for businesspeople to move what they are already doing online. Next, Facebook saw the writing on wall (and was tired of shivering in MySpace’s shadow) and went after the business crowd. It could provide true social networking including the ability to post on someone else’s profile, event registration and management, knowledge sharing, and also the ability to see someone else’s network and ask for introductions. However, Facebook took it a step further and opened their architecture for 3rd party development. LinkedIn even has an application that integrates your contacts into Facebook. Microsoft liked their shift from the college crowd to the business crowd so much that they invested the sizable sum of $240 million in Facebook for a 1.6% stake (enough to put their market value at $15 billion).
Supplement these social networking applications with other business-focused tools (such as Jigsaw – a giant wiki for business cards, and ZoomInfo – a businessperson specific search engine) and web 2.0 technologies have now proven their value to the business world.
Enter Google, the new king of the heap in the technology world (sorry Microsoft). Not to be undone, Google recently launched their own social networking platform called OpenSocial. Instead of going to a social networking website, Google annihilated traditional boundaries once again and created a platform that allows the entire Internet to be social. According to Joe Kraus, Google Director of Product Management, “This is about making the Web more social, how do you have your friends go along with you to any site on the Web?”.
Rather than having a profile on every social networking site, this would allow you to have one profile that follows you to every website. What an incredible concept, not only for users but for the companies themselves. Rather than having to create their own online community, they can piggy back off of the Google OpenSocial platform. This equates not only to huge cost savings, but instant access to an existing leviathan of a social network. As usual, Google is revolutionizing everything. Even LinkedIn is signed up as an initial developer to this platform.
Wherever business social networking ends up, one thing is clear. Those who are not utilizing social networking in their own business are quickly being left behind. I discover new Web 2.0 tools every day that help me broaden my network. What are your favorites?
