LinkedIn Groups: Your Blog Away From Blog

By Chris Ilcin, Account Superintendent, Sonnhalter

According to a recent survey from The Content Marketing Institute 89% of B2B Marketers use LinkedIn as a way to distribute content.

But if a potential customer isn’t already following you, all you’re doing by posting it to your company page is having a closed conversation with friends. While that’s good for strengthening relationships, it’s not an effective strategy for growing business, brand or thought leadership in your industry.

So, short of requiring all employees to share everything you post, what’s a marketer to do?

Join Groups.

If you’re not familiar with them, LinkedIn Groups are smaller “communities within the larger LinkedIn community where people and companies can connect by shared interest rather than work or personal connections.”

The advantage here is that instead of waiting for people to find you or your company, you can use your industry, process or other qualities to go out and find them.

How do you find the right group, and what do you do once you’ve found them? A lot of things you’re already doing. (more…)

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LinkedIn Still the Top Performer for B-to-B

I don’t know about you, but LinkedIn continues to be a top performer for me and my blog posts. The top referrer is search engines, but LinkedIn is a strong second and Twitter is third for getting the right eyes on my blog.

A recent article in eMarketer.com confirms the fact that among top social sites for B-to-B, LinkedIn remains on top for both usage and effectiveness.

I use LinkedIn exclusively to share my posts with not only the folks that linked to me, but to the numerous LinkedIn groups that I belong to. I’ve had clients who have great success in recruiting the right kind of talent using their paid job searches.

Are you using LinkedIn, and if so, are you having similar success?

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Are You Getting Your Sales Force Involved in Social Media?

No, I’m not trying to delegate the social media tactics and implementations to the sales force, they’re too busy selling. But if you aren’t getting them involved to a degree, you could be missing some opportunities for prospecting, research, networking and branding.

Let’s face it, your sales forces are in the trenches every day solving customer’s problems. Chances are other folks are having similar problems. Why shouldn’t you share those solutions with other customers and potential new ones?

Don’t Overlook One of Your Best Resources for Great Content – Your Sales Force

Here are four things salespeople can do that will help marketing by using social media:

  1. LinkedIn – Make sure all your folks are on LinkedIn and their profiles include a uniform and concise description of the company. The marketing department can help with the wordsmithing. Messaging should be on your business and the solutions your company offers. Don’t forget to include links to appropriate videos and websites. Have your salespeople join and be active in LinkedIn groups. Chances are that one of your trade associations or users have groups already set up. Have them monitor and participate when appropriate, but make sure they aren’t selling. Have them put on their problem-solving hat and offer solutions.
  2. Social media training – We’re not trying to make them experts, but to give them an overview of what social media is and how you are using it as another tool. Once they understand the why and how, they can be a great resource for you. The training could be a 30-45 minute “go-to meeting” with refreshers possibly at the annual sales meeting. This could pay off big time with the next two items.
  3. Company blog – If your company doesn’t have one, maybe you should consider doing one. The biggest challenge is writing good content, and if you train your sales force, they will give you plenty to write about. Make sure they know you have a blog. Make them read it and make suggestions on future topics. First ask them for ideas on articles that would benefit the users. Once you get a list, identify those within the sales force that has the most experience/expertise in that product or market. In some cases, they might want to take a stab at writing it, but I’d suggest someone in marketing interview them, write a draft and get it back to them for approval. It would be ideal, when possible, to get an actual customer involved and quoted in the post.
  4. Content Generation – Your sales force is or should be the experts in the field. Are you taking advantage of their problem-solving expertise? Why not have them write down the problem and solution. Then they could do several things with it.
  • Get it to marketing to be put on a FAQ section of the web, and it also could be used for other social content down the road.
  • Share it with the other salespeople who may have customers with similar problems.
  • Share it with other clients/prospects of theirs via email that might benefit from the outcome.

 

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Tips on Getting the Most out of SlideShare

SlideShare is gaining traction more and more and it’s not just for slides. SlideShare is averaging over 60 million visits a month and 120 million page views. That means great traction for your SEO and you can target buyers/influencers via tags and channels (customize content).You can also use it for lead generation and there’s a great post in social media examiner,how to generate leads with slideshare that you may find interesting

It’s now owned by LinkedIn and they are doing a great job making it easy to connect with your LinkedIn contacts and groups.

So if SlideShare is becoming so important, we should start paying attention to the details on what and how things should be put up there. I recently read an article by Roger C. Parker in the Content Marketing Institute’s daily updates on a to-do check list (you can download it here) to make sure you’re getting the most out of SlideShare.

He outlines 22 tips on proofing, uploading files and even tips on working with PowerPoint. Here are a few of his points that hit home with me:

  • Are slide titles and text consistently placed and aligned?
  • Other than the title slide, are they numbered?
  • Does your presentation title appear at the top of each page?
  • Did you add your firm’s name, URL and contact info at the bottom of each page of your handouts?
  • Did you convert presentation files to Adobe Acrobat to preserve text formatting?
  • Did you check each link after uploading to make sure they work?
  • Did you create links between SlideShare and social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter?

I guess the point is the devil is in the details and if we all take some time, we’ll get more out of our efforts on SlideShare. Roger suggested if you want to learn more you could read The Marketer’s Guide to SlideShare by Todd Wheatlan.

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LinkedIn: Are You Missing a Golden Opportunity to Network?

If you’re not on LinkedIn you should be, and if you are, when was the last time you updated your page?

Did you set goals when you first went on, but as time has passed you kind of let it slip a little? You and 120 million of your possible friends are on this site. How many are you connected with?

Let’s review some basics and make sure we’re all on track.

  • Profile page – Great place to make a good impression. Have you updated your photo or are you using one from 10 years ago? How about your accomplishments? I’m sure if you haven’t touched it for a while, something good must have happened at work that you could highlight. Have any other things changed like you started a Twitter account, a blog or new website? Be sure to include links.
  • Key words – SEO is king. When was the last time you looked at key words within your profile? The best place to do this is on the summary section.
  • Adding to your network – It was easy when you just started to get a list of contacts linked in. But what about all those grandiose plans of adding so many new contacts each week? I’m sure you haven’t stopped taking phone calls or going to meetings? What ever happened to asking them to link in with you? At least then when you do a posting, you’ll be getting it in front of them. I admit I’m as guilty as everyone else, but I’m back on track now to add at least 3 contacts a week. What’s your goal?
  • Status updates – So what good is 500 connections if you never connect? You need to be active and say something. It doesn’t have to be something original. It could be something as simple as  a comment and link to a morning news story that might have some impact on your industry. Try to do at least one a day.
  • Groups – This is the “holy grail” as far as I’m concerned. Search and join relevant groups. They allow you to join as many as 50. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel…where else can you find a group of like-minded individuals to hold a conversation with? A great place to build relationships and also build your visibility and credibility as an expert in the field.

Those are some of my thoughts on recommitting to using a great networking site. What are you doing to capitalize on LinkedIn?

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