WSI Marketing, Surf, Search and Social

In just about a week, we’ll be hosting our annual WSI Global Convention! From September 24^th to the 26^th, WSI franchisees will be traveling from all around the globe to converge in Miami, USA, for 3 days full of workshops, case study presentations and endless collaboration opportunities to exchange world-class digital marketing methods and strategies. Put simply, we’re literally forming an international “Think Tank.”

Just as impressive, perhaps, is the keynote address that’s we’ve lined up. In fact, we have two keynote speakers for this convention: Avinash Kaushik and Scott Klososky!

Day 1 Keynote Speaker: Avinash Kaushik

As many already know, Avinash Kaushik is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and public speaker for a topic that is at the very core of the WSI community: how to reinvent your digital existence.  He has championed the evolution of countless organizations’ online strategies to a more customer and data driven approach. As an established authority on leveraging data analytics, an essential addition to everyone’s reading list should be Avinash’s blog Occam’s Razor, and of course his best-selling books Web Analytics: Hour a Day and Web Analytics 2.0.

Day 2 Keynote Speaker: Scott Klososky

Next up we have social technology expert Scott Klososky as the keynote for day 2. He’s a former CEO and has worked with a number of large corporations assisting them with the latest media technologies and how to leverage such tools to boost their profitability. Having already heard Scott speak, he is undeniably a thought leader in this continually evolving field. Like WSI, Scott shares in the vision to recognize and utilize emerging fields to help businesses thrive and prosper.

I can safely say that the whole WSI community is looking forward to hearing both these gentlemen speak. It’ll be a pleasure to have them join us for this year’s Global Convention!

Read more about how WSI leverages the latest and most innovative digital marketing tools to deliver practical, revenue-building solutions for businesses.

LinkedIn is a business network that has grown exponentially over the past few years and the reason for this is that it is an invaluable digital marketing tool for finding people who can help you to reach your goals. One of the main benefits of using LinkedIn is that it helps you to discover the relationships between people and the mutual contacts who can introduce you to other influential people. Also for people who run professional organizations or associations, LinkedIn will stimulate the dialogue and interaction between members thereby attracting more members.

Your LinkedIn Network

LinkedIn is a three degree network in as much as it only considers your first three degrees as your network. So people you know are the first degree, their connections are the second, and those that know them the third. This makes sense since the more degrees of separation the less personal the connection and the harder it is to reach them. If you want to reach people who are outside of this you should become a member of a group that they are a member of. You may then contact them directly, as long as they have not changed the standard privacy settings, which most do not.

Join LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups can also help you to raise your online visibility. If you think of online networking as being based on increased communication, then you should be taking part and sharing or giving information, asking for help and thanking others for help provided. This will increase your visibility and profile, as well as strengthen your relationships with those in your network.

So take some action and

• Answer questions in the Discussion forums and post relevant articles in the News section
• Ask for help and information from your network, make sure you have thought through the question and people will provide help and assistance to you, which helps to build relationships
• Thank people in public, in a current discussion or forum or start a new thread. Be specific and generous and you will be amazed at the results you will obtain.
• Provide a recommendation to someone who has provided a service or helped you in some manner.

So if you wish to use the network to find new customers, a new employee, supplier or partner, then LinkedIn can provide the information and connections to make that happen.

Join our network on LinkedIn for daily updates and some best-in-class industry tips for your company’s digital marketing strategy.

The most important aspect of starting any new business is to network with other business owners. Networking allows you to not only promote your products and services to others, but it also allows you to educate people about the unique aspects of your business and enrol them into finding you new prospects and leads.

Business networking becomes easier with online “social networks” like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Online social network sites are web-based services that allows individuals or groups to construct a public or semi public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users and groups with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature of these connections may vary from site to site.

Back in the day, you used to listen to the radio, watch television or you picked up the newspaper to see what is happening. Social networking has changed this so that anyone can communicate, broadcast and interact about “what is being said” and share it with others.

Social Networking according to Wikipedia

A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relationships among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service

Business Social Network

A Business Social Network is a variation of the ever so popular social network service but it focuses only towards business networking, business opportunities, etc. It has become a very effective method for both small and big companies wanting to reach specific people internationally and demographically. With the help of a Business Social Network, businesses are given the opportunity to reach more people and have a bigger audience.

Just like networking in real life, the basic rule still applies – it is all about having the same interests. On the Internet, online businesses that shares the same interests would contact each other. If all goes well, they would forge a partnership or an alliance to boost their status.

Why Business Networking is important

The important part of Business Social Networking lies in the smart ways to link to people around you. On Business Social Networks you are not only linking to people but gathering knowledge about their business whereabouts. A professional Business Social Networking service attracts, aggregates and assembles prominent business-focused audiences by creating virtual, interactive and informative meeting places.

Business networking sites also allows you to showcase you or your company’s unique services, position and talents in the most positive way. In the past, your business dress created lasting first impressions. Now, a more realistic picture is formed through the web before any actual face to face meeting takes place. This means height, weight, etc no longer plays as important a role in business success as in the past– and we are all on a more even playing field.

Business Network Marketing

Whether you own your own business or work for a company, there are distinct competitive advantages for better understanding and using Business Social Networks to promote your products or services. There is a lot of information on the topic of Business Network Marketing, that it can be difficult to separate the good from the bad. LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, flickr, YouTube, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, etc are just a few social networking sites to consider when planning your online marketing campaign.

Business Social Networking can be the answer for promoting your business, through the easy cost-effective marketing it is capable of. Clearly, social networking means are less expensive, more cost – effective, than advertising and other marketing plans although it takes time and dedication.

Business Social Networking provides the exposure every business dreams about. With this kind of exposure, new opportunities are not hard to get. People looking to invest in a business will look for a well reputed person, group or organization, the more your name is repeated, the more chances you get for new opportunities.

Business networking is an important aspect for any existing and new business to grow. Networking can range from virtual online networking tools such as blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and even Twitter to face to face meetings.

Which form works the best? I have found that a mix of real and virtual networking (social networking) is best. An important aspect to consider when networking is to research the age of your targeted customer. Once done, you can determine which way is best. Always match the preferences of your targeted customer with the networking strategies that you feel most comfortable with.

Determine the age group of your target customer that you would like to network with.

Baby Boomers

These are people in their 50′s and 60′s and will always prefer face to face meetings. They usually tend to be less comfortable with computer communication and they like to interact verbally and when possible, always in person.

Generation X

These are people in their 30′s and 40′s and they tend to be more comfortable with technology. They usually prefer keeping it simple and will most likely use LinkedIn and other business social networking tools to network with other people sharing the same interests.

Generation Y

These are people in their teens and 20′s and they are most comfortable in using all forms of technology. This is due to the fact that they have been exposed to technology most of their lives. They know what they want and they will find you. They usually have a good presence on Twitter and Facebook.

Targeting your message to your readers (business or social networking) is the key to growing your audience and reaching interested people. It may sound like a contradiction, but directing your message (sales pitch) to the people most interested will greatly increase the number of interested readers that will actually read your website or blog and respond.

How are you going to network?

Face to face networking

Face to face networking can include lead groups that meets your industry and niche. If you want to connect with senior level readers, attending a pricey plate dinner may be a better investment than attending a dozen networking breakfasts.

Many professional associations have terrific opportunities for face to face business networking.

Virtual Networking

There are thousands of good social networking tools and websites found online with new ones created every day. The best ones with some research, are those that can get you in front of your targeted customer. LinkedIn is a professional networking tool and it seems to be the most accepted internationally. Other popular tools includes Twitter and Facebook.

One great digital marketing tip to legitimize your customer feedback is to use LinkedIn to encourage customers to post testimonials about you and your business to your LinkedIn profile. These testimonials are many times more powerful than listing testimonials on your website from “Kevin B,” for example. Who is Kevin B? How do I know it is even legitimate? For testimonials to show on your LinkedIn profile, they must be submitted by other LinkedIn members, so they have the appearance of being much more legitimate. Once you have several nice testimonials on your LinkedIn profile, you can include a link to those testimonials in your proposals for work, or link to them from your blog, Facebook or other Social Media sites when you do a post announcing the completion of a customers’ project, new partnership, etc. These testimonials are some of the most legitimate PR for your business since they are clearly coming from other LinkedIn members.

Using LinkedIn to solicit testimonials can be done in three easy steps.

1. First you choose the position you want to be reviewed for.
2. Second, you select the list of people (up to 200) that you want the request to be sent to.
3. And third, you add a personal message requesting the testimonial, hit send and that’s it!

When I email proposals to clients, I include a link to my LinkedIn testimonials at the end of the proposal so that prospective clients can easily read these unbiased reviews of my business. I can also include a link to them in emails I send out, or even better, in my email signature file.

None of us like to ask customers to give us testimonials about our business, but those testimonials can have a significant impact on your ability to attract and close new business so they cannot be ignored. Testimonials may be from business partners, former bosses or former clients, current clients, associates, or friends. Consider that you can also write your own testimonial about someone else you highly recommend, and this often encourages them to respond by writing you a testimonial.

Human Resource Managers are also reporting an increase in resumes that contain LinkedIn testimonials about the candidate at the end of their document and they consider that a great idea to include with job submissions.

You should make soliciting testimonials a regular part of your business processes. As soon as a project is complete and you know you have a happy client and you’ve just received a thank you comment or a brief thank-you email, it’s time to use the LinkedIn Testimonial Request feature to kindly ask your client to give you a testimonial.