WSI Marketing, Surf, Search and Social

I am often asked why many of the social media profiles created are never visited or found by search engines. To get the most value from your social media activities you need to ensure that the profiles you create are easily found for the keywords that you are targeting. Here are a few basic steps to add to your digital marketing strategy that will get you results.

Keyword Placement

Place keywords in the important places of your profile or posting. If you are targeting a specific keyword on your website or blog to generate traffic, make sure these same keywords appear in your profile in areas such as titles, headlines, biographical paragraph, description of your business and past positions etc. If you use keywords consistently it allows you to control what searches you are likely to be found for.

Linking Strategy

Always make sure you are linking back to specific pages on your website, so include those links where it makes sense to do so. You should also try to make sure that the actual link page on your website or blog is very descriptive and contains the keywords you are targeting whether that is your name or relevant keywords. My LinkedIn profile contains my name as a part of the URL, and my profile contains many keywords that I wish to be found for http://ca.linkedin.com/in/wsibruceallen.

Remember that if you visit a prospect and they do a search on your name to get some background information once you have left them, you need to make sure they find excellent relevant content easily. This is where your profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and ecademy will be found.

Social media profiles offer more ways for potential customers to find you, so make sure you make the most of the opportunity.

Learn more about how to leverage your company’s social media profiles now.

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.

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.