Notes from the Hive (Entries tagged as linkedin)

Generating Leads Through Linkedin

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:40:56 -0700

What I find interesting is just how under estimated Linkedin is. The more popular Facebook, Twitter, Youtube get all the hype and attention while this gold mine quietly sits and grows and grows. My guess is that because it is a professional networking site it doesn’t have the universal sex appeal of the others, but a savvy sales and marketing executive knows – or should know the power of Linkedin.

Generating more business is everyone’s job at a company no matter what your position. Everyone should not only be a brand ambassador but should also be a lead magnet. Linkedin is primo for the B2B market and even for B2C companies. When one conjures thoughts of vendors, strategic alliances, investors, allies, partners, employees, consultants and prospects, START with Linkedin.

Market research reveals that it is the first place HR checks when either looking for or vetting a candidate. Statistics reveal that the education and earning levels of members is one of the highest of all the social media properties, with the exception maybe of practice specific sites for lawyers, accountants and the like. Becoming successful is not a result of hard work and smarts alone, it often boils down to ‘not what you know, it is who you know’ and Linkedin will help you get those valuable connections.

So what can Linkedin do for you and how can you start generating leads?

Before I venture into some of the lead generating activity suggestions, please spend some time on your profile and settings. Make sure that your profile is complete, that you are incorporating keywords in your titles and descriptions, and above all, make sure that you describe yourself in a way that clearly delivers the value in knowing you!

1. Grow your network: Linkedin has tools that connect directly with Outlook and has the ability to search other email accounts to see who you know already on Linkedin. If you don’t connect your email program, at least perform a monthly check for new contacts in your database for who is on Linkedin.
Tip: Every time you go to an event carry a small envelope with the date and name of the event. Place all the cards you collect into that envelope and when you get back to your office start reaching out to those people to connect and use a personalized message such as ‘it was great meeting you yesterday at the EVENT, I would love to stay in touch and see how we might be of service to one another.”

2. Updates: there is a feature much like Twitter and Facebook that allows you to post an update that will show up on your profile and in network updates to your connections. Use it wisely.

3. Introductions: Give them, ask for them. The idea of 6 degrees of separation is made apparent on Linkedin. If there is a contact at a particular company you seek, by searching on Linkedin you will discover who you already know that knows who you want to know. Introductions make a cold call a warm call and a faster track to closing a sale.

4. Get Visible: Linkedin provides updates to members you are connected with. Some people adjust their updates to daily, some weekly but the point is that delivered to your connection’s inbox are updates and you should find ways to have your name show up in those updates. Read on for some suggestions on how to accomplish this.

5. Referrals: say thanks to someone – a vendor, partner, even a customer – for a job well done or just acknowledging some special talent or skill that had a positive impact. Chances are they will reciprocate. And don’t be shy about asking customers to write a recommendation but be careful to ask only those who have actually worked with you and can speak to your professional brilliance.

6. Groups: join groups that are relevant to your business and interests and that you can contribute to meaningfully. Groups where your prospects participate are a good place to start. Much like real life, hanging out with the right people is a solid step toward successful connections.

7. Books: Linkedin provides the opportunity to mention what you are reading or have read with a short blurb regarding the book. I could write volumes on why this is a pivotal tool but for now just let me say that sharing this information is a really good idea.

8. Events: the events feature on Linkedin lets you browse what is happening and in some cases, people will actually make notation that they are attending. You might just find that the person you are trying to meet will be at an event in your area.

9. Slideshare: has expanded to not just power point decks but now includes video and other documents. This is a great way to show off some of that industry specific knowledge that no one knows you have.

10. Blogs: Linkedin can automatically pull in your blog posts. If you would like to grow your reader base, or just keep your contacts in the know with the great material you are providing through your blog, don’t forget to activate this feature.

11. Twitter: ugh. Yes, Linkedin will allow you to stream your tweets into your profile. I say ugh because I caution you as this can become annoying. I am not a fan of this feature as I find it clutters the page as most tweets are inane at best and often times out of context and offer no real value. Each person is different and it might work for you but I would exercise caution here.

12. Saved Search: if you want to keep tabs on a company you are interested in, conduct a search on that company and save it so that any changes with the people in that company will be in your updates. Are they letting more people go then hiring? Did someone get a promotion? Did they hire someone you know?

The take away: Linkedin is a professional networking platform where the information is rich and powerful and the opportunity to break barriers of entry exists. A lot of searches are done on Linkedin and this is another opportunity to get found by the people you want to find you. Link your way to success!

I'm B2B So Social Media Isn't For Me

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:45:30 -0700

Because I spend my days working with social media I sometimes forget that the rest of the world isn’t seeing what I see and so I am always brought back to reality when I hear “I’m B2B so social media isn’t for me.”

I believe that most people in business are aware of the value of social media to engage consumers but haven’t made the leap to understanding the value to business clients. I say ‘leap to understanding’ because as a B2B business (business-to-business) we think of our companies as a body of products or services as it relates to the value of another company. This is where the shift and leap occurs as social media brings B2B into P2P (People to People). Social media puts us in the right places to begin building relationships with the people at those companies that are either making the buying decision or influencing the purchasing process. These people are our consumers.

So, let’s take a quick look at how social media does in fact play a role in the B2B market.

Recently Mashable posted a great blog giving 5 examples of B2B companies that have had great success using social media. These companies range from aviation maintenance, equine dentistry, commercial paper supplier and a paint manufacturer and are successfully using platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Not the sexy stuff you are used to seeing in headline news is it? Your business doesn’t have to have sex appeal to have social media success. You also don’t have to go for hundreds of thousands of friends, followers and fans to be successful – you just have to get the attention of the eyeballs of those that matter.

This is where strategy becomes important in gaining some traction and success using social media to generate leads and grow your business. Not sales and marketing strategy but engagement strategy.

A client of ours who is in the B2B service industry has been experiencing success getting in-person appointments with key decision makers by first connecting and engaging on Twitter, as well as using video creatively to break down the barriers and getting him invitations into accounts where in the past they never had success. Their activity on Facebook and Twitter as well as video blogging helps to keep their web site at first or second place in Google searches, which in turn generates leads.

Still not convinced?

Recent Hubspot studies support companies that use Twitter have greater success with their blogs, and companies that blog regularly have better results with search engines and those that use video do even better. The power of Linkedin is often times under rated by companies and underused.

There is no silver bullet and no single activity or platform that will bring instant success. It takes time and effort, and like any other form of communications and marketing, the quality of your message and your presence will be the final kiss of glory or death. These are tools – and in the right hands are quite powerful. The better you understand each platform, the better you are at using them, the better you know the audience, the better your chance of engaging with them to earn their attention and their trust, which increases your rate of success.

So get out there and blog, vlog, tweet, post, comment, friend, follow, like, digg, and link and we’ll see you at the top.

Where Web Site Visitors Come From

mardy@bumblebeellc.com (Mardy Sitzer) — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:01:30 -0700

It is Sunday afternoon and pouring rain. I can’t go out to play so I am catching up with work while co-mingling my attention and efforts with home projects. One of the items on my to-do list was to check out our website traffic statistics, and so off I went to the admin panel to begin digging into our reports. In order for these reports to be relevant I also pulled up my history files for recent activities such as blog posts on our site, Linked-In updates, Tweets on Twitter, article submissions to ezinearticles.com as well as comments posted on other’s blogs and now, embarrassed as I am to admit it, Facebook entries. Yes, I have only started on Facebook and I will address that in a future blog.

Why pull up this information? It should all be relevant to the traffic spikes on our site. I look at the posts, updates and entries to learn what was interesting, and well, what was boring. Allow me to share some breadcrumb facts.

Breadcrumbs? Yes, hopefully you read my entry on getting a life on line. What all this activity is meant to do is to leave a breadcrumb trail back to you. Your activity on the internet leaves breadcrumbs for the search engines to follow you home and leaves breadcrumbs for people interested in you and what you do.

Some things I found interesting on our most recent report.

• Linked-in drives more traffic to our site than any of the other social sites, with Twitter coming in second.
• Length of stay and pages viewed is higher from Twitter followers than from Linked-in.
• The third site driving in traffic with meaningful visit time and pages viewed is ezinearticles.com where I post some of our blog articles.
• The highest traffic is direct traffic and with the percentage of new visitors being higher than returning, I can assume that our drip marketing and networking efforts are having an impact. I can also assume that there is little reason for our clients to return to our site – something we need to work on.
• Breadcrumb results were interesting as I am now able to tell what posts drive the most interest and my communication efforts can now be refined and targeted toward those topics and keywords.
• We have great organic volume as well, however not as impressive for length of stay and pages viewed so we need to take a look at what general searchers are not getting form us when they search. In all fairness to us, many of the searches that take away from having impressive statistics is the number of searches for bumblebees and hives rather than web design and marketing.
• Maximizing the advantage we have from designing and maintaining so many websites is that our name appears – a tiny link at the bottom of those pages – and this drives more traffic to our site than any other medium. It is safe to assume that if someone visits a website that they like and are in the market for a new site, they would explore the company that designed and developed the site that they are on. Yes, this is an unfair advantage but not necessarily one that you can’t explore. Look toward your vendors, clients and partners for linking options.

Hopefully this offers some insight as to why we have been preaching to get out there and get going with activities on the internet. Social networking should be a key component to your marketing efforts. The goal is to build a network, make new connections, sources and nurture prospects. The exposure for your firm comes along for the ride and therefore you are brand building in the process. Now it is not ‘miracle grow’ but it is Miracle Marketing.

There is valuable feedback to be gained from these endeavors. Understand that these activities are geared toward prospecting and brand building, and it is not for selling. Warning: You will not experience instant gratification or instant success, but you just might deliver on the promise for a bright future.

THE BLOGGING NETWORKS YOU NEED TO KNOW!: A Journey into Social Network Marketing, Pt. 3

() — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:24:38 -0700

So you started your company blog, now what? You need to get your blog seen by more people, more often and get comments and start building a community. Check out these sites and register your blog. These are the communities in the blogosphere that have the most users and pack the biggest punch!

Technorati – www.technorati.com
Register your blog or blogs, including microblogs like Twitter. You can make friends, share blog articles, comment, etc. From there you add your tags (stay tuned for an upcoming post from the Hive about tags), start making connections with like minded bloggers. With an index containing 112.8 million blogs and 250 million pieces of tagged social media, Technorati is one of the big boys. That’s a whole lot of reach, so sign up for your piece of that massive blog pie!

Digg – www.digg.com
Digg is as large as Technorati but goes beyond the blog. It’s a more general news aggregator and social content site. While a blog’s visibility is increased using Digg they also pick up content from larger news, gossip and media sites. While that may dissuade you at first, Digg is set up with community and communication in mind. It may not always be about you or your company but with these other types of sites added to the network you can find even more specific groups with more specific interests. Great networking tool!

StumbleUpon – www.stumbleupon.com
eBay’s shot at the website ranking and discovery biz, StumbleUpon focuses on personal recommendations based on your interest, to the point they want your stumbling tools right on your web browser. Like Digg, StumbleUpon utilizes user voting, as well as being able to submit just about any article, blog or video on the internet. You may also want to check out a site that’s coming to be the ‘new’ StumbleUpon, Twine (www.twine.com).

Other sites definitely worth your attention are Del.icio.us (www.delicious.com) and Slashdot (www.slashdot.com) for various blog and media sharing communities. As you work on your blog you need to make sure your readers have access so they can recommend your blogs for these sites! AddThis (www.addthis.com) is a great tool for that! With one button on your blog, your readers can submit your blog everywhere from FaceBook, Propeller, LinkedIn, even Fark and of course all the sites mentioned above - 43 in total at the time of this post.

As we continue to assist you in the journey into social network marketing, we look forward to your leaving a comment or let us know if you would like us to expand on any of these topics. Next up we’ll have some fresh information for you on tags and Yammer.com - the business oriented microblog network. Stay tuned!