A Digital Marketing Insider's Point of View by Winston Bromley.
Select Page

LinkedIn: The Misjudged Social Media Platform?

LinkedIn: The Misjudged Social Media Platform?LinkedIn, the Business Social Media Platform, is a social media monster on the rise again. Often I find people I work with don’t have a LinkedIn profile or very basic as they feel it’s only for people looking for a job. But it is a lot more than that…. and has been for a while. I started using LinkedIn back in 2005 and it’s gone through many changes. All for the better and maybe this is why people feel it is best used looking for a Job as you may not know the potential of it.

LinkedIn is often the misjudged Social Platform of the bunch. But it shouldn’t be. Here is why:

With new changes that took place in the past year, this profitable media monster has taken over a large portion of the business world looking to grow and expand their customer base as well as connect with others in the same niches of the business world.

With this network, you can reach people who actually can make your business money and vice versa. Reach up to 160+ million others who are on the site to do business and learn more about how to do business better. Now that’s not the same as Facebook however people on LinkedIn are business-minded people, who generally have money and can, if positioned right, spend money with your Business.

There are great features you can use that do not exist at the same level as they do on LinkedIn. For example, you can create specific interest groups on LinkedIn that pertain to your genre of business. You can use this group to drive traffic to your website and gain a ton of members. It is very possible to get thousands of people to join a specific business network. The best part is you can do more with it than just having “Likes” as done on other type of media.

You can also host events and webinars for your group to keep people interested and they will network with each other as well. You actually create your very own network which is relatively unique in social media. You can even do one on one counseling and mentoring on LinkedIn through your business page.

Unlike other platforms, with LinkedIn, people can actually see how other professionals feel about you and your Business through your Endorsements, Skillsets and Recommendations. Once you have a personal profile, you can also create a separate page for your company which you can grow exponentially by putting out good content and keeping people engaged, by talking to them, helping them and answering questions.

It’s worth working on your profile as well as having a business page for a lot or reasons. You can get a lot of feedback from actual customers. This is invaluable if you use the information to your advantage. You can earn business from some new people by growing your network and trying new things that you are learning from customers. It may also be a great tool for you to meet other professionals that you can network with and even learn some new things from too.

To sum it all up, don’t let LinkedIn be social platform you use when the moons align. If you are a professional business owner or Entrepreneur or working your way up through a Company, you really should be using LinkedIn on a regular basis to find new contacts, connect with others, post about your skills, share your skills, etc. It’s truly where the professionals with money are.

Come connect with me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/winstonbromley and if you want to find out more about learning about using LinkedIn correctly, contact me

Enjoyed this post? If so, please share on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to let your friends know about it. Your help spreading the word would be really appreciated.

How setup a Pinterest Business Account | Pinterest Training Video

In this quick Pinterest for Business training video, I walk you through how to setup or Convert your Pinterest account to a Pinterest Business Account.

VIDEO: how to create or convert your Pinterest Account into a Pinterest Business AccountPinterest recently created even more buzz to their Platform by launching the Pinterest Business Accounts. At the moment, the difference between the two types of account at the moment has only a few important things (including the Terms and conditions and a great categorization feature – such as Celebrity, Local business, etc.) HOWEVER if you are a business on Pinterest, you should be moving over to the Business Accounts as Pinterest has hinted at adding in more resources (can someone hope to say “Buy IT”) to help businesses succeed on the Pinterest Platform.

Enjoy!

 

Social Proof And Why It’s The New Norm In Your Business

Social Media Proof for BusinessesWith Social Media being integrated into everything from TV shows to businesses, some may see it as a great tool that people have learned to utilize to better their business and personal lives, while other see it as the bane of existence, something that is only cluttering up our internet waves and depriving kids of exercise. Whatever you feel it may be, there is definitely no stopping it now. Many people have found that having an online presence on any one of the most popular websites of today such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and even Instagram have helped them build a long list of social or business contacts. Each platform fulfills a need. These are the building blocks of what social networking is all about.

As someone who helps coach and train business owners leverage social media, I am going to share why social proof is so important to building a product, brand, or business these days… and without it you aren’t going to be able to leverage yourself that well.

Here it is in just 6 words:

“People like what other people like”

In the online world, Social Proof is really just something that we share or see others engaging in or sharing, feel it is something worth checking out because other people are into it, see that others like it, and that helps us to confirm our choice. It’s human nature. A little bit of Darwinian Internet Selection if you will.

It’s the reason Justin Beiber is famous and Lady Gaga has world tours. Alone, these people would be a pre-teen who came too late on the boy-band train and a talented girl with an interesting fashion sense, but because they had a niche that someone liked, people began to flock to it in droves. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and social sharing, we have the behemoths that are these celebrities.

In business, getting the social proof such as the number of Facebook likes, Google’s +1, and Twitter followers and Re-Tweets is a matter of building up a network around the brand or product, and spreading the word about it. To do it smart, you must leverage yourself with tools to speed up the process.

As you see above in my article right below the title, with the social sharing buttons, as people like this, re-tweet it or pin it (which you can do as well when done here 😉 ), what it does is build up a credibility about this particular Article to others, that give it more of a credibility and makes it worth reading (more people that read it, it must be good right? – not always the case but stick with me here)

As a business, you need to ask your clients, friends, people on your email newsletter list and customers to like, pin, share your website links and your content. And you need to make it EASY for them. As humans, we like things that are SIMPLE so make sure your site has Social share buttons on them as mine do or hold a contest.

The best part of this Social Proof, in my mind, is being able to leverage yourself and business. If Dan likes this article, and presses LIKE on the Facebook Button, it goes into his Facebook Timeline where the people that follow Dan will see. This usually results in more people reading it and helps to build the social proof that this Article is worth reading.

Now, the down side, it may seem like it is an easy thing to do, however it require some convincing to getting people to go out of their way to Like or Re-Tweet something for you, if they don’t already like and trust you. However this can easily be fixed with great fresh content. Great Fresh Content is number one in building up your Social Proof. Reviews, ratings, viral videos, and interesting stories and images. These can all can help — It’s about getting more people involved that is really the key.

People like what other people like – so build up YOUR Social Proof today so you can build your Business online AND offline.

———————————- W ——————————————-

Enjoyed this post? If so, please share on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to let your friends know about it. Your help spreading the word would be really appreciated.

Video: How to create Pinterest “Secret Boards” or Private Boards – Business Tips

Pinterest has finally created Secret Boards! This is a great thing for the Pinterest Platform.

How to use Pinterest and the Secret BoardsThe benefit to businesses is that these Secret boards can only be seen by the people you invite to them so you can collaborate on these boards as a team and keep the details private, such as new client images, or social media strategy articles or even Event ideas for your get-togethers..

My favourite thing for these Secret Boards is that you can create Client Boards for each Client (You get 3 secret boards from Pinterest. So use them wisely!). This way you can then assign the Client to contribute to the board and you can share ideas back and forth visually.

Watch the Pinterest Tip video above for how to set up your own Secret Board.

———

Enjoyed this post? If so, please share on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to let your friends know about it. Your help spreading the word would be really appreciated.

10 Best Pinterest Business Tips for Online Marketing

10 Best Pinterest Business Tips for Online MarketingSocial networking has swept the world, taking along with it best friend and business alike. There is now no better way to communicate effectively with the people around and across the world from you than the use of any of the great social networks. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest have all drawn a heavy flow of interactivity to the internet in ways that have never been seen before.

Not only is communication that much easier, but business techniques and means of selling things have now been forever revolutionized. No longer is a storefront necessary to become a successful small business; almost anyone can do it from behind a computer.

Here, you’ll learn 10 best Pinterest business tips for online marketing.

  1. Plan Properly – Set your log up correctly to allow it to pin the things you want to it properly. Have your follow button prominently displayed on your website to ensure that a high volume of traffic is able to reach your Pinterest blog.
  2. Research – Know and research what your ideal client or customer is pinning, and set up your boards to get things going!
  3. Honor The Source – Know the copyrights of everything you post, and keep an eye out for any infractions. Know the sources of the things you re-pin and make sure things you post have your own watermark. These things can save a lot of headache down the line.
  4. Pin Strategically – Be social when it comes to pinning. Pin across several boards and follow, pin, re-pin, and comment.
  5. Drive up Traffic – Being social and pinning across several board will see a return on that invest back towards your board. Add appropriate web links to pins as well as time your pins out over time. Don’t just dump them all out at one time!
  6. Visual Content – The internet is all about instant gratification and seeing things. Use this to post great visuals to your and other boards.
  7. KISS – Keeping it simple with easy to understand, clear visuals will get you noticed a lot easier.
  8. Create & Curate – Cultivate the culture of your brand by pinning things not just about you own business but about others in the same niche as well. Finding these people are a great way to ‘buddy-up’ and reach and even larger audience.
  9. Content, Content, Content – Creating fresh content is another great key to finding and building report in your customer base.
  10. Learn from the Best – Being a diligent student by learning from other brands and what they have pinned successfully can become very profitable, as well as connect others to you.

Enjoyed this post? If so, please share on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to let your friends know about it. Your help spreading the word would be really appreciated.

Well done, LinkedIn: Your Company pages are ideal for business owners

LinkedIn Company ProfilesSocial networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have taken over the world by storm, connecting people in ways that no one ever thought possible. There are many different types of people that use LinkedIn and access its benefits in the best ways possible, and this has quickly become a great tool for those seeking to expand their personal professional networks to others who they may only know from afar.

What is great about the success of these social media outlets, is that anyone can sign up for a profile and start meeting people, even companies. With the new LinkedIn Company Pages, companies now have the ability to make connections to others via the social network that wasn’t available a while back.

Getting a company page is akin to making a page on Facebook; both are meant to outsource a person, brand, or products availability in a way that is convenient and conducive to finding out more information. LinkedIn has created a way to share a company’s information on its site, versus the personal profile layout of the majority of its visitors.

The LinkedIn Company Pages allow companies to express their brand through pictures that they might not have the ability to share otherwise. This is invaluable since the internet is really about instant gratification and pictures can many times speak for themselves (I am looking at you Pinterest!). It also allows companies to showcase what they have to offer, such as being able to quickly give a customer the ability to scan what it is that you offer in a hands-off, non-intrusive way. This quickly builds a customer rapport on a level that regular advertising does not. These pages allow a company to highlight what’s important and keeps their followers up to date.This allows for a connection to the individual in a way that companies in the past could never even dream of!

People all over the world connect to each other every day through social media. Now, with the revised LinkedIn Company Pages, even companies can connect to their customers at the base level like never before through status updates, pictures, highlights, and comments. Companies are now able to interact directly with the people who are buying their product, supporting their brand, and who have questions. Although similar only in idea as a Facebook company page, companies can now interact so closely with their consumers like they can through LinkedIn Company Pages as LinkedIn is more about doing business and connecting,  whereas Facebook is about sharing information.

Well done, LinkedIn.