The Steps:

    Step 1: Go to www.LinkedIn.com and start filling in the blanks for a new profile.
Use your common email address as a secondary and use your business email for your primary (you don’t want business contacts to find you at your college email address at ILOVESPRINGBREAK89 @ hotmail.com), but you need to have an email on file that you will always be able to access.
    Step 2: Upload your picture. Many people will not accept connection invitations if they do not see a picture. They may not recognize the name among the hundreds they met at a recent convention without a picture. The picture should be appropriate for business. LinkedIn pictures don’t have to be overly formal, but they do need to be something better than your best at-the-gym picture.

    Step 3: Add a tag, or a description to your name if you have a very common name. I have a very common name, so I add “Leadership Expert” after my name. It sounds a bit pretentious (I was uncomfortable doing that until a friend of mine told me that there were thousands of Mary Kellys out there (thanks Mom and Dad) and he couldn’t find me), so I added the tag to my last name and voila!  My connections increased because my friends and contacts found me.
    Step 4: Use your resume and background to build great content. Fill in the blanks of your education and work experience. Be interesting. Bullets for your summary are a great way to provide concise, eye-catching information.
    Side note: I don’t recommend starting a profile (or a website) with a video. Two reasons: 1) it takes time to load, and most people won’t wait; 2) unless you are very interesting (like Henry Kissinger) or very funny (like The O’Shea Report ), no one wants to spend that time watching you introduce yourself.
    Step 5: Get some high-quality recommendations. Go to the recommendations tab at the top and ask some of your trusted colleagues for recommendations specific to you as a professional. For example, comments such as “Mary is great!” or “Mary was wonderful!” sound nice, but they do not describe what I do, or the value I provide to a business client.
    “Mary provided timely economic expertise and leadership advice that allowed us to increase productivity immediately. Mary’s advice saved us $567,000 for the year” is a much stronger recommendation.
Ask your recommenders to focus on the results you provide.
    If you are a roofer, ask customers to describe your GREAT service as a roofer. “Ken’s prompt response and accurate estimate was indicative of the fast, quality work that his company provided. He and his team were on time, polite, and trustworthy. They got the job done on time and under budget.”
    If you are a lawyer, request that your clients describe the characteristics that make you a GREAT lawyer. “Cris is smart, responsive, personable, and knows she the law. She drafted a will and trust package that covered all of our family’s many issues, AND she was affordable! She earned our trust and confidence.”
    Step 6: Join groups of your peers. In the upper right corner is a search box. To the left of that are options with an arrow. Click on the groups and then search for your business interests, your alumni organizations, and your business peers. Join groups to allow you to connect with the other members of those groups. Increase your interaction in LinkedIn groups and get to know what others are doing in your field.
    Step 7: Join the groups that your clients join. This allows you to understand the concerns of your customer base, and then you can provide solutions in the group discussion areas, which increases both your presence and your credibility.
    Step 8: Use the applications. My favorites are the book list and the slideshare functions. The book list lets you type in the name of a book, select the book’s cover, and make comments about the book. I also like this function to feature some of my favorite authors and friends. The slideshare function is an easy upload for large presentation. This lets people share presentations and notes that otherwise might be too large to email. There is also a travel application that lets your network know where you are going, leading to simple coordination and more opportunities for meetings.
    Step 9: Be the expert. Use the answers function in the upper right box. Click on answers, and type in your topic of expertise. When the questions appear, provide an answer and include your website. You become a known subject matter expert and others get the benefit of your wisdom.
    Step 10: Enjoy your online connections! Thanks to social media, we can connect with people all over the world. LinkedIn is a terrific way to find lost friends and to stay in touch with new ones. (Next month: How to increase connections) I hope you have fun with social media!

The post How to Build a Great LinkedIn Profile appeared first on Websites by Robyn.

Company Page
Building out your company page is the first step to optimizing LinkedIn for lead generation.  Your company page tells users who you are, what you do, and why they should follow you.  Follow these key best practices when building out your LinkedIn company page:

• Optimize your company page for keywords—people frequently run searches on LinkedIn, so make sure you show up in results.
• Add tabs to your company page— these are usually “Careers”, “Products”, and “Insights”. Your “Products” tab should be optimized for search.
• Post on LinkedIn at least once daily to establish your presence.
• Consider adding interesting videos and other media relative to your business to your product pages to further engage users.

LinkedIn Sponsored Updates
To get into the lead generation game, LinkedIn began offering Sponsored Updates, allowing companies to put paid promotions behind status updates.  These promoted updates are seen by your followers and targeted users outside of your follower network. Like all other social ads, LinkedIn updates should include a visual, and then link to a gated asset.

Sponsored Updates allow you to target users—you can choose to include or exclude users based on the following criteria:

• Location
• Company name
• Job title
• Skills
• School name
• LinkedIn Group associations
• Gender
• Age

LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn ads give companies the chance to target their audience in powerful, unique ways. How?  The information found on a user’s LinkedIn profile is different than other social networks, and it’s particularly helpful for businesses.  This data maps well to the lead data you want from users—such as job title, company, industry, geographic location, and other demographic targeting.  LinkedIn allows you to customize your ads—you can opt for text-only ads, images, or video ads.  However, according to LinkedIn, adding an image to your ad can bring you 20% more clicks.   

For more information like this:  www.Marketo.com

The post Marketing Your Business with LinkedIn appeared first on Websites by Robyn.

According to www.contentfac.com, here are 8 reasons why it’s imperative you get on the Social Media bandwagon:

1. You get to see your target market, up close and personal. Part of what makes marketing with Facebook and Twitter so cool is the interaction you get to have with your customer base – you can read their tweets and status updates to get insights into their daily lives (and maybe adjust your marketing strategy as a result).
2. You can respond to problems immediately. If there’s a problem with your product or service, you want to know about it immediately. With the feedback you get in the process of social media marketing, you’ll be the first to know when there are issues – and you can take steps to resolve them right away.
3. Your competition is Tweeting and Facebooking like crazy. The early bird gets the worm, and the sooner you start up Facebook and Twitter pages, the sooner you can start amassing a ton of fans and followers. This isn’t something you want to fall behind the competition on, because it’s much harder (and more expensive) to play catch up than it is to get in on the game early. Truth be told, your competition is probably already marketing with Facebook, and maybe even Twitter and LinkedIn, too.
4. People are receptive to your messages. People view Twitter and Facebook as social networks, not marketing machines. As a result, they’re less likely to see what you post as an advertisement and will be more likely to hear what you have to say.
5. It will get you more sales. Not surprisingly, when you stay in front of your customer base, they’re more likely to buy from you when they need the products you sell. Social media marketing doesn’t just keep your company’s name in front of potential buyers, but it also gives you the opportunity to constantly give them incentives to buy. Try Tweeting or posting coupon codes, good only to those who are your Facebook fans or Twitter followers. You’ll be surprised at how many people make purchases using the code!
6. You will find customers you didn’t know existed. If you follow specific keywords in Twitter, you can find people who are looking for the products you sell (and then direct them to your site).  In the process of marketing with Facebook, you’ll probably join a ton of groups related to your products, industry and customer base. By posting links in these groups, you’ll help influence customers to check out your site.
7. It’s free. How can you argue with that? If you handle your own social media management, running a social networking campaign is as cheap as it gets. If you hire a social media management or online PR agency, it will cost around $3,000-$7,000 per month, but it’ll be an investment that you’ll be likely to see a return on.
8. The social media marketing arena is a fairly level playing field. Unlike the brick and mortar world where you need to have millions of dollars to run traditional ad campaigns, all companies start off on pretty equal footing when it comes to social media marketing. The people who thrive and go viral in cyberspace are the people with the most clever, attention grabbing tactics and the most useful, link worthy content.

The post 8 Reasons To Use Social Media to Market Your Business appeared first on Websites by Robyn.