Quick Stats to LinkedIn

With the continuing advancement in technology and social media accounts, it’s crucial to stay up to date with everything that’s out there. Businesses need to jump on every opportunity to get their name and brand out there. LinkedIn is advancing and expanding into a dominating social media outlet for professionals and businesses. Through the info-graphic shown above, people can see the stats to prove that LinkedIn is a powerful tool to be used.

Whether using LinkedIn for personal use or for business use; these stats are useful. Following brands and companies on LinkedIn can give you updates to all their new information at a live time feed. It’s a great resource to have for expanding your company and to get your name out there. Expanding your network will only further benefit you in the business world from both a personal and business standpoint.

5 Tips for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn to Recruit

1. Use your current network.

If your company needs another accountant, ask your accountants to search and renew their LinkedIn connections. Using the friends of friends strategy to fill positions is one of the reasons LinkedIn can be so useful.

2. Don’t just focus on active candidates.

By eliminating passive candidates who aren’t on the job hunt, you’re losing out on 80% of the market. Many times the perfect person is doing a great job somewhere else, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still recruit them.

 

3. Use status updates.

It’s simple– the more visible your business is on LinkedIn, the more likely you are to attract a wider variety of candidates.

4. Join groups.

This is an easy way to find people who are interested in discussing similar topics and trade tips. While excellent for networking, this is also a smart way to stay in touch with what potential candidates care about.

5. Use LinkedIn’s Paid Products

In order to contact people outside of your network, you have to upgrade from the free LinkedIn account. LinkedIn Premium can cost anywhere from $19.95 to $74.95 a month, but with it you can view full profiles for second- and third-degree connections.

 

 

 

LinkedIn Reveals the Most In-Demand Employers

http://mashable.com/2012/10/11/linkedin-top-employers-infographic/

5 Ways to Utilize Twitter and LinkedIn when Networking

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1. Find the authors of the content you read: Find influential people in your field and learn what they have to say about issues that pertain to you. Find them on Twitter and Facebook as well, and be sure to comment on posts. Let them know what you think.

2. Become an author yourself: write about what you know, there’s no better way to join the conversations about your field than to write about it.

3. Leverage Twitter Keyword Searches: Use keyword searches to find the things that you’re interested in. For example, if you’re in marketing… an obvious keyword would be marketing.

4. Join Relevant LinkedIn groups: members often share ideas and start discussions that are relevant to you. You could also connect with other professionals in your field.

5. Meet the people who are looking at you: Scan this once a week and consider why these people are looking at you.

Why You Shouldn’t Care About Influencers

Influencers are important, but when you have limited resources to dedicate to your social media brand presence, it makes sence to focus on allocating your resources to the aspect of your online presence that is going to have the most impact.

Use Visuals for Brand Engagement

Engagement is one of the most difficult things to achieve with your brand online.  You can be active in all of your social networks, but without engaging material, you will hear crickets.  Engagement is one of the most widely struggled with aspects of a brand’ online presence.

Do You Have An Online Communication Strategy?

 

Whether your company has a website, a Facebook Page, Twitter handle, YouTube, Blog, or all of the above, you must have a strategy.

Engage, Engage, ENGAGE!

The World Wide Web is a source of information content to the consumer.  Consumers regularly use the Web to find answers to their questions, research, and learn.  A pushy banner add or pup-up advertisement is inconvenient and annoying.  It interrupts the consumers content-search. 

Content search is the first step in the buying process for many consumers.  According to David Meerman Scott, “when people come to you online, they are not looking for TV commercials.  They are looking for information to help them make a decision”.  Successful businesses build a relationship with their customers before applying high-pressure sales.  Simply put, offer content to build reputation, reputation builds trust and loyalty, trust and loyalty leads to sales.  “Content drives action” is the bottom line.

The key to driving sales through offering content, without the high-pressure banner ads and pop-ups, is an optimized website.  The example that Meerman Scott uses is Amazon.com.  Amazon.com uses website optimization to guide its buyers through the final decision to purchase.  The flow of the customer’s clicks determine at which stage of buying they are at.  Amazon uses these patterns to direct the customer to certain websites which will help the customer to make that final decision to make the purchase.  Make it a point to avoid the traditional marketing experience – we no longer want to interrupt the customer’s buying process with pop ups and loud banner ads, we want to help them through the decision making process by providing information content in a user-friendly way.

We are not giving content to our competitors, we are giving content to our consumers.  A blog, for example, gives customers a chance to make a personal connection with a company, it offers an opportunity for the customer to interact with the ‘company’, and have a voice.  It also gives companies a perfect opportunity to reach the niche of the market.  Research where your customers are spending their time on the Web, become active, offer your knowledge and expertise.  Accept criticism, and know when to act.  Allow loyal customers to step in for you, should your company be on the verge of a public relations crisis, you are already a trusted member of the blog, you already have an ‘innie’ – you have a way of reaching your customers directly. You are IN!

Sure, the competitors can take the content and do what they please with it.  What is important here, is to realize that you, as a company, need to set yourself as the leader in the industry.  Sure, competitors will offer the same content eventually, but who offers it first?  Who offers the most?  From the words of Scott, “Content turns browsers into buyers”.

Resource: The New Rules of Marketing & PR 
By David Meerman Scott

Infographic: How Men and Women Use Social Media

If you’ve ever wondered how men and women vary when it comes to social media use, this infographic clears things up. Do you think more men or women use social media? Do more men or women set their profiles to private? Who posts more status updates? The answers are revealed below.

Officially Social Media Day in Michigan

On June 27, 2012 Governor John Snyder ( @onetoughnerd) offered his signature to make June 30th officially Social Media Day, making Michigan the 3rd state in the country to officially recognize the day. 

According to Katrina Ball on mashable.com, Michigan has a strong social media presence. The state’s government maintains 137 social media accounts across Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Its Facebook presence is the second-largest of any tourism agency and @MIgov has the third-largest state government following.

Social Media Day is a virtual event- but no less important than a live event.  Are you excited about the official proclamation what do you think this says about Michigan?