15 Tips for Getting the Most From LinkedIn Groups

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I spend a lot of time in LinkedIn groups and have learned a bit about maximizing their potential as conversation-starters. Here are 15 of my favorite tips. Please add your own as comments.

1. Ask Questions

The best way to provoke discussion on LinkedIn is to ask questions. Rather than sharing a link to an article, use it to kick off a discussion. For example, instead of posting a headline and a link to an article about cloud security, formulate it into a question:

“This article on Cloud Computing Path makes the case that the recent Dropbox security breach proves that the cloud is not yet secure enough for the enterprise. Do you agree?”

http://www.cloudcomputingpath.com/dropbox-security-breach-prove-that-cloud-is-not-secure/

2. Make it Personal

LinkedIn is the only major social network that doesn’t permit brands to interact as members. Only people can post content. With that in mind, make sure your posts have a personal tone. For example, instead of saying, “This webinar on the benefits of platform as a service has particular relevance to business partners,” try “This webinar on the benefits of platform as a service looks interesting. I hope you’ll join me there.”

3. Follow Up

This is very, very, very important. Don’t post a question and just walk away. When people do you the courtesy of responding, return the favor by responding to them or simply “Liking” their post. Remember that you started the conversation. That means you own it.

4. Fill Out Your Profile

When you contribute something interesting to the group, people will want to find out more about you. It’s disappointing when their click takes them to a skeletal profile page with no photo. It’s a lost opportunity for you, too, because you’re missing the chance to create a professional contact.

5. Use Active Voice

Why “facilitate the implementation of” when you can just “do?” Corporate speak doesn’t work in social channels because you communicate there as a person, not as an institution. Cleanse your prose of passive voice, buzzwords and superlatives. Write like you talk.

6. Keep Headlines Short and Avoid the Ellipses Of Death

LinkedIn gives you 120 characters for a headline, which is pretty generous. Headlines over 120 characters are truncated with an ellipsis (…). You want to avoid this because you’re forcing readers to click through to read the rest of the headline. The more clicks you require the more visitors you lose. The “Add more details” field gives you plenty of space to spread out.

7. There Are Three Parts Of Any LinkedIn Post. Use Them All

They are:

• Headline – Keep it brief and use it to communicate basic information or arouse interest.


• Add more details - Provide background and explanatory information. Tell people why you think this information is important.


• Attach a link – Use this area to post links. Never include links in the headline. If you need to have more than one link in your post, use a URL shortening service (see below) and include it in the “Add more details” section.

For example, instead of writing a headline like “Can anyone recommend a useful eBook on cloud computing? I’m looking for something oriented toward professional developers that has recommendations for the major PaaS and/or IaaS solutions.” post the question as a headline and the second sentence in the “Add more details” section.

8. Think of the Benefit to Your Audience

Success in social channels is all about helping other people. Keep that in mind when composing a post. It’s not about you, it’s about them. For example:

• Instead of “A Primer on PaaS,” try “This Paas Primer could be a great conversation-starter for your prospects.”


• Instead of “Spot Market Pricing, New Services Fuel Amazon GovCloud Growth,” try “What You Need to Know about Amazon’s Government Strategy”

Use words like “you” and “I” a lot. This is a discussion, not a billboard.

9. Minimize Copy and Paste

Respect your readers’ time by minimizing pointless verbiage. Don’t just copy and paste the promotion from a webcast. Boil down the basic facts and tell the reader why you recommend it. The more you make your post a personal message from you, rather than a rehash of somebody else’s message, the more compelling it is.

10. Don’t Copy From Twitter

When I see hash tags in a headline, it tells me one thing: This person was too lazy to customize the message for me. The language we use on Twitter doesn’t fit well in the more generous confines of a LinkedIn or Facebook post. Rewrite the message for the network you’re using and the people you’re hoping to reach. Think of the context, too. Facebook is more playful than LinkedIn. The Sales Best Practices group on LinkedIn has a different membership than the Construction Professionals group.

11. Avoid Repetition

LinkedIn does you a favor by copying the first few words of any article that you post as a link. Don’t copy and paste those same words into your description field. You have 15 minutes to edit anything you post in a group, so check your work to make sure your description isn’t a carbon copy of the item to which you link.

12. Take Advantage of Polls

Polls are a basic tool you can use to solicit feedback. You can specify up to five answer choices and choose how long the poll runs. Try mixing it up; instead of posting a question, occasionally formulate the topic as a survey.

13. Use Trackable Links

It’s easy to measure the response to content you post. URL shortening services like Bit.ly and JotURL make it easy to shorten links and then track the number of clicks they generate. LinkedIn processes these short links just like regular URLs. You can also use Google URL Builder. It generates longer links, but they’re compatible with Google Analytics. You can also shorten those links with Bit.ly prior to posting them.

14. Be Provocative

I don’t recommend overusing this technique, but it’s fun to try from time to time. Instead of a descriptive headline, try one that piques curiosity. Here are a couple from the Sales Best Practices group:

Eat that Frog!

If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first. ~ Mark Twain

How do you start your day? Do you ‘eat that frog?’ Do you have a ritual that starts your morning?

Who’s ruining it for the rest of us?

The member goes on to ask why sales people continue to use spamming tactics that don’t work and give the whole profession a bad name.

15. Connect with Other Members

When you request a connection with another LinkedIn member, the service asks you to verify that you have an existing relationship. If you don’t, it denies the connection request. You can get around this by joining a group to which the other person already belongs and requesting the connection as a fellow member. Be aware that if your request is denied, LinkedIn won’t let you try this trick a second time.

via Paul Gillin

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Twitter Tips: 6 Brand Building Uses For The RT

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What’s the one thing more than 500 million Twitter accounts have in common? Love of the RT, of course! The retweet is more than a basic mechanism for engaging in conversation on Twitter – being retweeted is one of the thrills of participating in the micro-blogging platform.

Many Twitter users are able to leverage it as currency. In fact, we’ve noticed many retailers using retweets in their brand-building efforts. A cursory look at apparel brands on our Retail Social Juice Index over the last day or so reveals a number of opportunities retailers are seizing via the retweet, including influencer marketing.

1. Complement influencer marketing efforts

Lucky enough to have influencers tweeting about your brand? Retweet them. Not only does it flatter influencers when you take notice, but also it gives you extra mileage from the buzz they’re creating around the brand and its products. In these examples, @Anthropologie and @EileenFisher retweet fashion bloggers, and @GUESS retweets an associate editor from Allure Magazine.

2. Share lifestyle stories

Consumers are out there every day living with your products. What does your brand make possible in their lives? Use the retweet to curate story-rich, lifestyle content from your customers. Here are examples from @OrvisFlyFishing and @NewBalance:

3. Have fun

Remember that lots of people on social networks are there for leisure. Be playful. Be interesting. Curate content that’s just plain entertaining, like these retweets by @Saks and @JuicyCouture (this one also involves an influencer).

4. Talk with customers

Problem-solving is only one aspect of customer service. Much like the brands here – @VSPINK, @NeimanMarcus and @shopbop – your brand can interact with customers to encourage purchases and answer questions.

5. Publicize brand efforts

Instead of the brand delivering news of every effort directly, it can use the retweet to interact with brand news that already exists. @Stuart_Weitzman promotes a branded asset (a sort of thanks for the venue), @Aeropostale shares a photo of Olympic gymnast @McKaylaMaroney wearing anti-bullying bracelets and @Nordstrom accepts accolades from an advocacy group.

6. Showcase praise of employees

Influencers aren’t limited to bloggers and customers; all brands want good employees to be their ambassadors. Sharing positive feedback about stores and team members, like these retweets from @DSWShoeLovers and @JosABank_Brand, lets employees know they’re appreciated and tells consumers good things are happening offline.

So, six brand-building activities as easy as a RT? Absolutely! Then everyone must be doing it, right? Not really. While some brands reweet all day long (take a look at the streams for @CharlotteRusse and @Jockey), others don’t seem to take advantage.

We haven’t seen one RT all week from @ExpressLife, @AmericanApparel, @jcpenney and many others. Don’t follow their example: missed retweets are missed opportunities for brand-building. All that’s required is a solid brand voice and some good monitoring: Look for keywords, mentions and hashtags. Sample follower tweets. Curate tweets via tools like Twitter lists, which can organize your influencers and other resources.

via Carolee Sherwood

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10 Original Ideas To Use Twitter To Promote Business

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Today companies are not only using the traditional ways of marketing and promoting their products or services. But they are also spending immensely in new age advertising methods like, online promotions, website launch, promoting through social networking sites, broadcasting Medias and etc. Recently social media sites Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or etc. are used by all companies to promote their product or services. Twitter can be now used to promote business.

Various Ways Of Using Twitter To Promote Your Business

Business is not only about selling products and earning revenue from the sale. It is lot more than that. It is also about branding and sustaining in the market. Hence to know all about Twitter and how it can help in your business, just read below;

1. Grow Your Network: Use twitter to get new and potential customers for your product. Post tweets and attract readers so that they are interested about the business.


2. Build Brand: You can use the social platform to build individual brand. In this way your prospective clients will perceive you as a friendly personality who can be approached and discussed about the product or services frankly.


3. Share Advices Of Experts: You can arrange free workshops or seminars or discussion forums and encourage customers to retweet on the discussion. Share videos so that you develop one on one relation. Relationship building helps in branding as well.’


4. Offer Tips And Solutions: If you are in services and not into product sale. Do offer tips of solving problems. For example, if you are an insurance agent, write about why should someone plan his or finances or save money for emergency. Share useful ideas to grow strong relationship with your follower. They are then interested about the services and often invest in it as well


5. Employee Relation:Within the company you may write short tweets on the company’s page and communicate smoothly with your staff. No need to send bulk messages or mails. You can even save on telephonic expense by using twitter for your business.


6. Communicate About Special Deals And Campaigns: You can easily save money from advertisements and promote about your product services via tweets. Your flowers will soon know about the upcoming discounts and campaigns.


7. Customer Feedback: In a business you must understand what your customers feel after using your product or services. Thus twitter helps in such an effort. You can easily get your customer’s feedback and discuss with them if needed.


8. An Open Platform:It helps in communicating freely with the customers. Thus not only product feedback but while launching new product it helps a lot. You can introduce new product as per customers demand.


9. Building Brand Loyalty: In a business brand loyalty is very essential. It is through this social platform you can create brand image and if you successfully retain your followers they will become loyal to the brand.


10. Interact With Competitors: You can communicate with your customers and discuss in the forums. In this way you can grow in the market.

These are the various ways in which the twitter platform can help you in your business.

via Sirangi Kalpana

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Inbound Marketing: Social Media Ideas for Small Businesses

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Social media plays a huge role in the success (or failure) of most small businesses. Having great social media pages can be an unbelievably effective marketing tool. Social media is considered an example of inbound marketing – where the customer seeks out the business. Many people have seen the major effects that social media can have on their personal relationships. Who hasn’t had family members or friends go at it on Facebook? Unfortunately, the same can be true for businesses. Comments from consumers, both positive and negative, can garner lots of attention, and quickly. Customers actually seek out the social media pages of companies to post their thoughts, positive, negative, and everything in between.

Here are some ideas on social media do’s and don’ts when it comes to small businesses:

• Do – post interactive content. Asking questions of your customer base and encouraging them to interact with you and their fellow customers is great. Even creating polls or quick games will keep people coming back to your social media posts over and over.


• Do – make your pages visually interesting. This can be accomplished easily on most large social networks. Facebook now has timeline, which offers the ability to put up a large photo at the very top of your page. Twitter allows users to change their background. Some social media sites, such as Instagram or flickr, are based solely on photos.


• Do – update often. The more people click on your page, the more people will be able to see your posts. We are not suggesting to bombard your customers with updates, but changing your status or tweeting meaningfully once or twice per day can be a great way to get people to see your posts. Also consider posting around the same time each day, that way customers will know when to look for your updates.


• Do – post relevant information. Your customers probably don’t care what you and your dog ate for breakfast. Keep your posts short, sweet, and meaningful.


• Don’t – automatically delete negative comments. Most people’s knee jerk reaction is to delete any negative comments on social media posts. But this is not always the most effective. Your company may gain a reputation for sweeping problems under the rug. Instead, ask the customer why they feel they were wronged and what the company can do to fix it. You may be surprised at how simple the solution is. And as a bonus, other users of your page will see that you did your best to remedy the problem.


• Don’t – overload your page with information. Having a lot of great, basic information on your social media pages can be very helpful, especially as Facebook or Twitter pages can be your first hit on a search. But be mindful not to put so much information on your page that your customer becomes overwhelmed. If anything, you can always use a social media site to drive more traffic towards your full website.

Following some or all of these tips can help you and your small business to use your social media presence to its fullest. If customers seek you out, you want to make them glad that they did. Useful and pleasant social media can be a large part of this strategy.

via Megan Totka

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