• 95% of new media users believe companies or brands should have a social media presence.
• 89% believe that they should interact with their consumers in this space.

If you have to ask whether or not you or your company should be engaged in social media, go back and read the two statistics above.

Your customers and prospects are telling you that they want you or your brand to have a LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other types of social accounts. They are also telling you that they want you to engage in conversations with them.

One of the questions I get asked by business owners often is “why would someone want to connect, follow, or friend ‘my company’, ‘my brand’, ‘my product’, etc.? People using your product or service already have some level of attachment to it. Social media just allows them to have a deeper attachment. If they have a question, a comment, or a concern they like that they can reach out and communicate that message directly.

One of our client’s is Copeland’s New Orleans Style restaurants. Here are some comments from people that follow Copeland’s on Twitter:

“Going to enjoy some bow-tie pasta spinach artichoke dip @CopelandsATL with the in-laws. Oh yeah!”

“Chillin’ at @CopelandsATL with @MissTikiBaby for drinks and desserts White Russian and White Chocolate Bread Pudding #dying”

“Hands downs @CopelandsATL has the best brunch!!!”

“@CopelandsATL I’ve had the fried crawfish its great. Goes great w/ a cheesecake Napoleon w/ the rum sauce/ pralines”

Some from Facebook

“We LOVE Copeland’s. And we love our Saints!! Come on North Cobb County. Let’s get a great crowd to show up for Superbowl Sunday for the Saint’s WIN! ?I want to be with a huge group of fans at the Kennesaw Copeland’s, watching on the big screen, eating some great food like shrimp and grits!”

There are more comments, tweets, retweets, photos posted …all from people who want to share their experience with a restaurant. I’ve seen similar results with Political Candidates, Business Coaches, Insurance Brokers, Chiropractors, and a number of other businesses.

People want to be heard and if you make the effort to engage them in the social networks where they interact, they’ll talk. Often what they say will be positive thoughts and opinions about your business.

I’ll end this with two more statistics that I think are relevant.

• 51% of respondents saying that social media has influenced their online transactions.
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations

These two statistics reinforce the value of others posting positive messages about your company and how that can impact the purchase decisions of others.

If you’re still wondering if you and your company can benefit from social media, then I’m not sure what I can say that says it better than the statistics above. Its not so much a question of can it work but more a question of how are your going to make it work.

You need to become your own VP of Getting It Done!

And now a special announcement: Social Media does not produce miracles and will not work for you if you do not know what it is that you do (very well I hope) and what messages you want to communicate to deliver your compelling offer or interesting (people actually want to consume it) content.

Having 5,00 Twitter followers will not make it happen automatically. Those 1,000 Facebook friends you have, most do not personally know you. The same if you have over 500 connections on LinkedIn. Doesn’t mean that they can’t become customers, it just means you won’t sell them based on your winning personality.

So let’s set the stage.

Marketing: Management process through which the goods and services you offer move from concept to the customer. Its doing business in terms of customer needs and their satisfaction.

As a practice, it consists in coordination of four elements called 4P’s:

• Identification, selection, and development of a product
• Determination of its price
• Selection of a distribution channel to reach the customer’s place
• Development and implementation of a promotional strategy

Advertising: A form of communication intended to persuade its viewers, readers or listeners to take some action. It usually includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume that particular brand.

Getting down to Business
I’m going to assume that you have a product or service and that you have determined your pricing strategy. Social media is the channel you’re using to reach you customer.

That leaves us at the point of developing and implementing a promotional strategy. Since you have been selling a product you should already have a promotional strategy. You simply need to determine if that strategy will work with social media or if it needs to be tweaked.

Direct sales messages often are not effective in social media unless you have an established brand.  Companies such as Dell, who generated over $1 million dollars in sales using Twitter, have an advantage in that people already know, like, and trust them to some degree. They simply had to put out compelling offers to drive business.

What if you’re a s small local business and not a national brand? You’re going to have to work a little harder and a little longer. You need to establish your bona fides. One of the best ways to do this is by sharing compelling content with your community.

Consider a CPA that is looking to use social media to drive new business. Based on the size of our tax code there is obviously a lot of information available to share.  Its important for our CPA to know who he is specifically targeting and the content that engage this audience.

Using social media he can communicate and share in a number of ways:

Twitter: Tweet to

• Drive traffic to blog posts
• Drive traffic to website content including white papers, case studies, an online brochure, video, audio, and other relevant documents
• Provide access to forms
• Drive Registration for Events
• Share Tips
• Put out coupons, discounts, and offers

Facebook: (profile account not Fan Page)

• Integrate tweets in Wall Posts
• Feed the blog into Notes
• Add Video
• Add Photos
• Post Events and send Invites
• Tap into applications for even more options

LinkedIn

• Feed Tweets into Status updates
• Use Applications to add video, documents, slide shows, and the blog to profile
• Use Groups to share the blog through News Articles
• Start Discussion Posts
• Conduct Polls
• Schedule and share Events

YouTube, Flickr, and Blogs allow more sharing of content.

Using these tools our CPA can go from an unknown to establishing himself as a trusted resource.  He just needs to be active and consistently share value.

If you’re looking to use social media to grow your business it comes down to knowing what you do, who you help, and what message you are trying to communicate. As you build trust through sharing value (your content) you’ll position yourself to have an audience that is willing to act on your offers and calls to action.

If you need help or assistance with developing and implementing a social media strategy call (404) 939-7186 and ask for Sean, send an email to results@sonarconnects.com, or visit the SONARconnects site.

Social Media is everywhere. They talk about it on the news and radio, there are articles in newspapers and magazines, and searching “Social Media” on Google returns 194 million results.

If you want to learn more about it there are hundreds of thousands of blogs, podcasts, and videos available to review. There is no excuse why you cannot figure out how to put social media to work for you. Well maybe one excuse.

That excuse is the missing ingredient in most people’s social media strategy and its “Time”. You can’t learn time and its a limited resource. You either have it or you don’t. Or you need to find or create it.

You really have three choices if you want to get serious about making social media a part of your marketing efforts.

• You can learn it from scratch by simply diving in and figuring things out.
• You can tap into the knowledge of others through classes, books, workshops, blogs, audio, and podcasts.
• You can outsource your efforts.

Regardless of which you choose you will still have to invest some time, but In the end its more a matter of time and money.

Learn it From Scratch:
For the most part this is how I originally learned social media. The benefit in this method is that by building your knowledge through trial and error you learn it from the inside out. Its sort of like working your way up from bag boy to CEO, you have a better feel for all of the moving parts. Its also costs nothing but your time (what’s not getting done while your doing this?).

In the first year of trying to figure out LinkedIn I estimate that I invested over a thousand hours. My path was a little abnormal because I was doing research for my blog and for writing my first LinkedIn book. How much business and sleep did I lose in that first year?

I’m certain that I lost out on a lot of opportunity that year, but based on the results since I’m confident that it was time well spent. I went from 0 social media inbound calls to 3 to 5 per week. At a minimum thats 156 leads calling me.

Tap Into the Knowledge of others
There are some times in the past and still today that I take a step back and invest in my education by buying a book, reading blogs, and watching videos. This has helped me shorten the learning curve on Facebook,Twitter, and the other tools I utilize.

The positive is that I’ve decreased the learning curve, spending more time working on my business. I’ve decreased my time but my costs have increased a little. The money I spend on time, tools, and resources is a good investment.

You need to do your research though before investing your money. Not every resource is worth the dollars you spend. You may find that you spent your dollars on a resource that provided information you could have obtained for free by searching the FAQ’s of the different social media sites.

Outsource Your social Media:
Your last option is to let someone else handle your social media. The benefits to outsourcing your social media is the same as outsourcing any work task …you can focus on what it is that you do best. To save the time though you’re going to have to spend some money.

I’d like to believe that the sole reason our client’s chose to outsource their social media to SONARconnects was because we were able to articulate how we would help them create and implement a social media strategy. A huge part though is that they realize that without outsourcing they don’t have the time or knowledge to handle it on their own.

One of the ways we’ve been able to develop new clients is by telling people exactly what they need to do. In our workshops we show people how we use each of the tools so that they can walk out an immediately get started.

What we find though is that after they go back to their office and begin following our instructions, a significant number call us within next two weeks. They realize that while they now know what to do, they lack the time to consistently do what it takes.

Wrap Up
Over the last two years social media has played an important role in my marketing efforts. Its expanded my ability to network, connect, engage, educate, share, and communicate to grow my business. It can do the same for anyone that is willing to invest the time and/or money.

You simply need to determine whether it makes more sense for you to spend time or money to put it to work for you.

Note: There are thousands of social media/networking sites so its important to spend your time utilizing the tools that will give you the most bang for your time or buck. We recommend that you start with some or all of the following: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and a blog.

Sean Nelson is a Partner in SONARconnects. If you have questions you may contact him at (404) 939-7186 or sean@SONARconnects.com

I’ve talked about the tools we use with our clients in the past, segmenting them as social networking tools (sharing conversations) or social media (sharing content). The reality is that on social networks you can share content and with the social media tools you can have conversations. The one that splits the difference is Twitter. Its the one that many business people don’t get.

LinkedIn is easy. Its a business professional social network that in simple terms is online networking. Facebook is more of a social interaction tool but with over 350 million people there are consumers and business people on it. And its easy to interact.

Twitter though is just noise right? The misconception is that its a bunch of people tweeting about their latest coffee conquest. The reality is… that happens, and a lot of people are ready to tell you the latest money making scheme. But there is also a lot of great information being shared by individuals and companies. And its a valid business tool.

Here are some thoughts on the business use of Twitter.

You Need a Plan
Like anything in life if you want to mazimize your results you need a plan. (Thats a Social Media plan and a plan for Twitter’s role) You ned to understand what you will tweet about. How often will you tweet. When will you tweet. Will your tweets seek to brand you, drive traffic, or both.

Most business people I know have the same problem …not enough hours in the day. If you don’t have specific times set to tweet you’ll likely find that after a week you missed some days. I use a Tweet schedule to lay out the tweets for our clients. I schedule two tweets a day for every day of the month.

My schedule is simply a spreadsheet with 6 sheets. On the first four I layout seven days broken into two hour increments. On the fifth I have 3 days for the 29th, 30th, and 31st. The last sheet is where I put the 62 tweets I write. I then add the tweets I’ve written into the schedule.

Over the month I will release a minimum of two tweets each day. If something else is wortth tweeting I’ll send it as well.

Target the Right People
There are over 25 million people on Twitter and numerous tools to target users by location, industry, tweet words, words in bio, etc. I use these tools to build a list of followers that fits each client.

You have to get your message in front of the right people to have a chance.

Keep in mind that if you want to add followers you’re going to have to initiate contact. On average for every 100 people I follow, 35 to 40 will follow back. You also need to make sure that your ratio of followers to following stays somewhat in balance.

If you’re following 1,000 people and 800 are following you thats fine. Keep in mind that as you follow more people you’re going to have to remove those that do not follow you back to keep your ratio balanced.

A good ratio break-point is 1.5 Follow significantly more people than follow you and people will wonder why others are not following you back. If you’re following is significantly lower than the number following you and you may be seen as self-interested.

Here’s a good timeline to follow: Add followers and give them three to five days to follow you back. After three to five days remove those non-followers, reciprocate with those who followed you, and follow more people.

Communication
Twitter can be the hub of your social media communication efforts. You can feed your tweets into the LinkedIn status feature, post your tweets to your Facebook account, and even to your Facebook Fan page.

On LinkedIn you can control which tweets update your status through the us of a LinkedIn hashtag. For our clients we only send tweets that are going to be relevant whether on twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook. If you using Twitter for business purposes then you should be able to do the same.

I’ve seen lists of the different types of tweets but for me I classify tweets as a branding tweets, traffic tweets, or informational.

A branding tweet communicates a message without a link. It might be a quote that I like, or it might be simply asking a question.

A traffic tweet is one that includes a link and the purpose is to drive someone to click on the link. This works great for sharing blog posts, articles, or driving someone to a landing page.

Informational tweets allow me to share information with others that was created by someone else. It might be a interesting article I found, a cool application, a great social media tool. etc.

The majority of your tweets should share value.

Slow Your Tweets Down
Tweets on Twitter have a short shelf life. How fast tweets move depends upon the number of followers a person has. A tweet to someone with a couple of thousand followers may only be on that persons first page for 15 seconds.

Two ways you can slow your tweets done is by filtering them into LinkedIn and Facebook. On LinkedIn your tweet will show in your status update until your next tweet. On Facebook that tweet is visible on your wall for three or four days if you’re tweeting twice per day.

When I review the click from tweets I often find that Facebook and LinkedIn produce more responses than retweets.

Wrap Up
Twitter is a great way to communicate to large numbers of people. There is a lot of noise, but if you listen close you’ll hear a lot of great information being shared. One thing I do is periodically use the search function to find tweets about a topic. This allows me to stay on top of what others are saying about social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, and a number of topics that interest me.

If you’re trying to figure out how to use social media to drive busines, Twitter is a tool that should be in your toolbox. It may take some time to get used to it but you’ll find that its a great resource to communicat, to share, and to learn.

If you need help or assistance with developing and implementing a social media strategy call (404) 939-7186 and ask for Sean, send an email to results@sonarconnects.com, or visit the SONARconnects site.

Back in 1998 I started building my first website for an Insurance company. The CEO had heard that in one of my graduate school classes I had had to submit a class project using html. He decided that I was just the person he was looking for to build the companies first website.

It was true that I had used html in that project, but all I really did was sit next to a project member while he copied snippets of code from a book to create our first web page. At the time I started creating the companies website it was cool and cutting edge to have a website but it wasn’t necessarily viewed as a business requirement. That would change over the next year.

In 2010 I think we’re at a similar point. Social Media/Networking is still viewed by some as not a business requirement but I expect that will change over the next year. Some will do so because they get it, others because they fear getting left behind. Even if they’re not sure what it is they might be left behind by.

To start off the new year I’m going to discuss what I call the 4 C’s of social media. These are the four concepts we focus on with our clients.

Communities
Traditional advertising and marketing is about interrupting. Social media is about sharing and interacting. You have to have someone listening in order for interactions to happen.

The interesting thing is that people want to interact. The following statistics make that clear.

• 78% of social media users interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools, an increase of 32% from 2008.
• 95% of new media users also believe companies or brands should have a social media presence
• 89% believe that they should interact with their consumers using social media

Its important that you build communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter that are made up of your prospects and clients.

Content
Content is King. Its been that way since cavemen began writing on walls. Since then only the means of delivery has changed.

One of the mistakes I see is companies jump into using social media and immediately begin communicating sales messages. A sales message here and there is likely fine but when its all you do…Houston we have a problem.

Regardless of what you sell someone out there is looking for information about it. They want to be informed, educated, and even entertained. If they like your content they will like you. If you share good content consistently over time they will likely begin to trust you.

Social media provides great vehicles to share video, photo’s, written, and audio content.

Conversations
The difference between traditional advertising and marketing and social media is the difference between talking at someone and talking with them. If you’ve built the right communities and are sharing the right content conversations should naturally happen.

There are different levels of conversations. A comment on a blog post, a retweet, a comment on your LinkedIn or Facebook status are all forms of conversations. Tou just need to be sure you are tracking these responses and reply back.

Even something that seems as trivial as a “Thumbs Up” on a Facebook wall post is a positive. The important thing is you put out a message or content and someone chose to respond.

These conversations and those among others will have an impact. These two statistics support this.

• 51% of respondents saying that social media has influenced their online transactions.
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations

Conversion
The final piece of the puzzle is for the preceding steps to lead to conversion. If you’ve taken the time to develop a strategy than all of the pieces should work together to lead to this point.

One of the mistakes that I see is that companies indiscriminately send people to their home page. While that may help you build site traffic it may not necessarily help you with conversion.

If you’re communicating about a product or service why not funnel any responses into a Landing page. Seth Godin has been talking about landing pages since 1991 and lists five actions that the page can generate:

• Get a visitor to click (to go to another page, on your site or someone else’s)
• Get a visitor to buy
• Get a visitor to give permission for you to follow up (by email, phone, etc.). This includes registration of course.
• Get a visitor to tell a friend
• (and the more subtle) Get a visitor to learn something, which could even include posting a comment or giving you some sort of feedback

Your home page can generate these five same actions but its not designed to focus on one of these five actions specifically. Sending them here is like sending them to a neighborhood rather than a specific location.

Wrap Up
The 4 C’s are important if you want social media to work for you. There are different ways to build communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. There are different ways to communicate messages on each. The conversations are even different.

Focus on applying the first three to each of the networks and begin to see the Fourth C happening a little (maybe a lot more) frequently.

What do you think?

If you need help or assistance with developing and implementing a social media strategy call (404) 939-7186 and ask for Sean, send an email to results@sonarconnects.com, or visit the SONARconnects site. (What no landing page?  For now a comment is all the conversion we’re looking for.  Plus read some of the other articles and focus on learning.)

Since September I have been working on a 10 part series asking the question “Can LinkedIn Work for You?” The better questions should be “Can Social Media Work for You?”

In both cases the answer is yes. If you’re willing to put the time and effort required to make it successful. What I’ve often found is that many people start experimenting with the various tools but then abandon their efforts when they don’t immediately see results.

Here are the previous 9 articles:

Can LinkedIn Work for You? (part 1 of 10)

Why Are You On LinkedIn? (Part 2 of 10)

Enhance Your Networking with LinkedIn (part 3 of 10)

Expand Your LinkedIn Reach (part 4 of 10)

Building Credibility on LinkedIn (part 5 of 10)

New Opportunities-New Hires on LinkedIn (part 6 of 10)

Prospecting with LinkedIn (part 7 of 10)

5 Ways to Communicate Your Message on LinkedIn (Part 8 of 10)

Growing Your Business with LinkedIn (part 9 of 10)

Within these posts is much of the information you need to make LinkedIn work for you. Many of the same concepts apply to the other social media tools. What’s missing is how you personally can take this information and make it work specifically for you and what it is that you do.

Back in 1999 I was working in internet marketing, first with Budget Rent A Car and then with MyPoints. I remember all of the talk about how the internet was going to change the world and be the end of traditional marketing. And it did too some extent, but more as a new channel to sell and communicate. More of an addition rather than a replacement.

Today you hear the same type of comments about social media and social networking. Once again the new tools represent an additional way to network and communicate, not a replacement of existing methods. Many of the same rules apply you just need to tweak things some to make it work.

I previously posted a graphic that we use to explain the framework we use to implement a social media strategy – Social Media Process in a Picture. This graphic breaks the Social Web into Social Networking and Social Media… sharing the conversation and sharing the content. We use 6 tools/sites to manage the process.

I saw a recent graphic that showed hundreds of social media/networking sites and you could likely find a use for most of them. At some point, though, you need to think in terms of efficiency. There are only so many hours in a day so you need to focus on those that will provide the most bang for the buck (in this case time).

These are the sites we use. You can use them or figure out which make sense to you. The most important thing you can do is take action and participate.

Blogger note: As I finish this blog, likely the last for the year, we come to the end of the second year of blogging. For two years I’ve written primarily about LinkedIn.

The original blog was GotLinkedIn.com. After LinkedIn took exception to the name it was changed to Linked101.com. I decided I didn’t like that name so it was then changed to the LinkedIntuition.com blog. Once again LinkedIn stepped in and asked me to change the name. So this past summer the blog changed to the Social Media Sonar blog.

Many of the posts have still revolved around LinkedIn but in 2010 I’ll continue to expand the focus. You can expect to see more articles focussing on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other tools. I also plan to use more late breaking news and stories about social media.

Thank you to everyone that has taken time out of their busy day to read something I have written. I didn’t set out to be a writer and those who have suffered through my consistent misuse of apostrophe’s would likely say that I haven’t reached that status yet. That’s OK. In the end all I hope to be is a business owner who is sharing what I’m learning to help others more effectively use social media/networking.

Have a Happy New Year and make 2010 the year that these great tools go to work for you.

-As always if SONARconnects can help you or your company understand how to develop and implement a social media strategy visit our site, send us an email to sean@sonarconnects.com, or call us at (404)  663-3997.

Over the last two years I’ve written often about the tips and strategies to more effectively utilize LinkedIn. It’s just as important to consider the mistakes that people make on LinkedIn that will affect their success. Many of these mistakes are often errors of omission. Today I’m going to discuss seven mistakes and then I’m going to show you how you can correct them.

Let’s get started.

1. Bad Photo Choice

One of the first things most people do when they visit a profile is look at the photo. Its natural to want to see the person behind the profile. People connect to people and a photo helps improve your visitors perception.

One of the worst mistakes is to not include a photo. What does it say about you as a business professional if you don’t understand the importance of the profile photo?

Another mistake I see is that someone decides to include the family in their photo. That’s fine on Facebook but on a professionally based network it misses the point. Add to this photos with effects or simply unclear. If someone can’t see your face or recognize you there is a problem.

Finally avoid including a logo or product shot. The same advice goes for cartoon photos. Its a professional site. You’re a professional. Your photo should support your brand.

The Fix

Spend $25 $75 to $200 with a local photographer and get a professional quality headshot. If you choose to take your own photo make sure you have proper lighting. (note: Teryl Jackson a friend, connection and photographer in Atlanta would like to clarify that a good headshot will run from $75 to $200 and is well worth it.)

2. Lack of Detailing Your Profile

Your profile isn’t meant to replace your resume but it should tell your visitors who you are. There are some key areas that not only allow you to tell your story but provide an opportunity to add keywords naturally into your profile.

The first opportunity is your summary. I like to start my profile off with my elevator speech. This short sentence has been refined to capture attention when presented in face to face networking. There’s no reason it shouldn’t work the same on your profile. The rest of your summary should answer the questions of “Who you are”, “How you help people”, and “How they can help you”.

One area of missed opportunity is failing to add in your previous employment. First people want to know the path you travelled from college to your current position. Not including this introduces questions into your profile visitors perception. There’s also the lost opportunity to include keywords into your job descriptions.

There are also some other areas to add information to such as specialties (great place for keywords), Interests, Awards, and don’t forget to include your phone number and your personal contact information (phone number and address if relevant).

You never know how someone will find you

The Fix

Include as many previous employers that are relevant to your development as a business professional. It’s OK to skip that college job delivering Pizzas. Also be sure that when you write the job descriptions to write them from the perspective of how that job contributed to making you better at what you do today.

3. Ignoring Applications

When you look at the number of applications on Facebook (1,000’s) verses the number on LinkedIn (13) you might think that applications just aren’t that important. That would be a bad analysis. While few in number, the applications available are a key to sharing what it is that you do with your fellow LinkedIn members. They provide the opportunity to take your profile from two dimensional to three dimensional.

The basic LinkedIn profile is simply a lot of text. Sure you can tell people all of the relevant information about yourself, but I always recall my freshman English teacher imploring me to “Show, don’t tell”. Applications give you the opportunity to show what it is that you do.

Applications give you the ability to post a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation (Slideshare or Google Presentations), add a video (Slideshare or Google Presentations), feed in your blog (WordPress and BlogLink), add PDF files or Word documents (Boxnet), announce and RSVP Events, conduct Polls, share the books you’re reading (Amazon), and the just released Twitter application.

Just about any way you want to communicate a message or information on LinkedIn is available. Your profile visitors can engage with your profile in print, video, even audio (add your podcast to a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation.

The FIx

Start going through your resources to see what information will help you show others what it is that you do and how you can help them. If you don’t have a blog WordPress makes it simple to create one. It’s simple to create a presentation to share, just be sure to make it interesting by including more than just bullet points. Load up those brochures, white papers, and one-pagers.

Finally, add a video to your profile. If you don’t have the tools to record yourself in a professional manner (think lighting and sound), go to http://www.jingproject.com and download this free software. It will allow you to record a 5 minute screen capture as a video. The hardest part is figuring out what to record.

4. Not Securing Recommendations

When I visit at a profile one of the first things I look for is recommendations. There’s no reason why anyone shouldn’t be able to build up to 10 recommendations if they’re good at what they do.

The reason most people fail to get any recommendations is that they sit back and wait for someone to take the initiative. You have to remember that only 24% of the people on LinkedIn are regular users (spend at least 5 hours a week interacting), so the majority of your connections are still trying to figure it out.

These irregular users probably haven’t thought about recommending someone else because they’re still trying to understand LinkedIn.

The Fix

Get proactive about generating recommendations. Whenever I start working with a new prospect one of the first things that I do is connect to them. Then once I’ve finished serving them, or moved to a point where I’m delivering results, I send them a recommendation request.

I keep the request simple and reference the work I did for them and then state “I’m using LinkedIn to build my online brand. If you feel the work that I did on your behalf exceeded your expectations I would appreciate your taking a moment to write a brief recommendation”.

There are some people that feel that you should not do this, but based on the response, and the recommendations, I’ve received from clients I don’t see a downside to sending the request.

I prefer client recommendations but if your position doesn’t involve clients then you’ll have to impress your fellow coworkers and business colleagues.

5. Fail to Join Enough Relevant Groups

There was a time on LinkedIn when you could belong to as many groups as you would like. These days there is a imposed limit of 50 groups, yet many people have not yet joined any groups. Failing to do so severely limits your LinkedIn reach.

Currently I have 4,500 direct connections on LinkedIn so at any moment I could reach 4,500 people. In the 50 groups that I belong to there are over 1.3 million people. These are people that I can communicate directly to or through using discussion posts and news articles.

Groups are also a great place to engage in conversations and cultivate new relationships. The key is to find as many groups as possible that are relevant to your business.

The FIx

Go to the groups directory and search for relevant groups. These might be groups that are alumni, industry, location, networking, topical, etc. Be sure to think about the groups your prospects would belong to and join these. Then you simply need to start engaging fellow group members through discussions and news articles.

6. Overlooking Answers

One of the keys in social media/networking is to seek out opportunities to share or provide value to others. LinkedIn Answers is the perfect vehicle to do so. Each day thousands of new questions are asked by fellow members looking for help. You simply need to find the questions that surround your industry or specialty and share your knowledge.

There are several benefits to answering questions. First you’re building good will with the person who asked the question and potentially everyone else that reads your answer. Second you have the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise.

Your answers are also Linked to your profile which is then viewable by profile visitors. Let’s say you’re a health insurance broker that only sells in Georgia but you answer a question from someone in Louisiana. The person that asked the question will never be your client but at least you were able to help someone (Good Karma). But since your answer is Linked to your profile, anyone in your local area can see your answer and it can impact their perception of you.

The Fix

Go to LinkedIn Answers and search for questions related to what you do for a living. Then start answering questions. Be sure to include a link back to your site or blog in your answer. I find that when I answer a question traffic to my blog increases.

Most categories also have a RSS feed. You can set up a RSS reader that will display the latest questions asked in the category. Using the Google RSS reader I simply check for new questions every morning and answer away.

Just be sure to provide quality answers. Everything you do or say on LinkedIn either adds to or subtracts from your brand.

7. Selling Directly

I’m sure that on LinkedIn someone is having success posting direct sales messages or sending messages to their connections. That being said you are more likely to do harm to your brand over time. People are not looking to be sold to directly on LinkedIn.

That doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities to sell using LinkedIn, its just that you’ll find more success communicating your messages indirectly. The one exception is with the status. It will be interesting to see if this changes with the new Twitter integration.

The Fix

Take advantage of the opportunities to communicate your message indirectly. One simple way to do this is to change your title to a tagline. My title might be “Blogger” but “Helping folks use LinkedIn more effectively with tips and strategies at the Social Media Sonar blog”. The title tells people what I am, the tag line tells them how I can help them. Plus that tag line is visible in a mini profile when I answer questions, post discussions, or add news articles.

Starting conversation using the discussion boards is a great way to interact with fellow group members. Adding news articles allows you to share value through the content. Over time people will get to know you. If they like your content they’ll begin to like you…and check out your profile. Share value consistently over time and people will begin to develop trust.

We discussed Answers above and its another communication opportunity. These are only some of the options available to communicate indirectly. you can also use your applications including polls and events.

Wrap Up

Many of the mistakes I’ve detailed are simply errors of omission. They can be corrected by simply taking some extra time to build your content. Your first goal on LinkedIn is to get people to visit your profile. Then once they’re at your profile page you want to ensure that they understand what it is that you do and how you can help them.

The worst thing that can happen is that they leave your profile with questions and move on to the next profile.

What are some mistakes I missed?

Sean Nelson is the author of the Social Media Sonar blog and has written three LinkedIn eBooks including one of the first books detailing how to strategically use LinkedIn to grow your business. “LinkedIn MArketing Secret Formula”.  He is a Partner inSONARconnects.

LinkedIn is a fairly harmonious place. People tend to act professional and when there are opposing opinions they typically become a case where people “agree to disagree”. Things change though when you began discussing LIONS. Suddenly the conversation isn’t so rosy.

LION’s, for those who don’t know are open networkers. They connect to just about anyone. They see opportunity increasing as the number of connections increases. Those who disagree see LIONS as simply driving their ego’s by counting the connections, as if the purpose of LinkedIn is to proudly claim to have 1,000’s of connections.

For the record I don’t consider myself a LION, yet I’m an open networker. When writing my first LinkedIn book I identified three LinkedIn connection strategies. This year I added a fourth to define how I now connect.

How you choose to connect will impact how you use LinkedIn and in the end your chances of finding success.

Before we look at the four connection strategies I want to make one point. How you choose to connect on LinkedIn should be of no concern to anyone else. It’s your network and your strategy. As long as it works for you thats all that matters.

The Four LinkedIn Connection Strategies:
The LION
As stated above LIONS are completely open connectors. They seek to increase their connections through actively sending out and accepting connection invitations. While I’m sure there are a few who take pride in touting the specific number, the majority simply believe that large networks lead to more opportunity.

Steve Burda is a LION with over 30,000 connections. I don’t know Steve but I’ve seen countless references to his taking time to help others. So yes he has a large network, but no its not about the number. Its about having the opportunity to help a significant number of people. If this leads to new business for him, more power to him.

The Turtle
Turtles are the opposite of LIONS. Turtles primarily only connect to those they know well. They see value in having a tight network made up of individuals that they completely trust. Their networks tend to be highly selective and can be counted on to pass on introductions, much like a private networking group.

I don’t know many Turtles but the ones I do know are like Steve interested in being a productive resource for those they choose to connect to. LinkedIn is a way to enhance their offline networking making their existing relationships a little more connected.

The Hound Dog
When I first joined LinkedIn I was only aware of LIONS. I knew right away that LinkedIn added an additional layer of connectivity to those I knew. I also realized that it could help me meet other local business professionals that I did not know.

At each Chamber meeting they would pass out copies of everyone’s business cards. After each meeting I would see who was on LinkedIn and then invite them to connect. At the next Chamber meeting the connection provided a great ice breaker. It also established connections with those people who only attended a single meeting.

I also used LinkedIn to seek out people I would like to connect with. Doing this allowed me to establish connections with other business professionals who might help my clients, become a referral partner, and some who were prospects. This ability to hunt for specific people led me to define the strategy as a Hound Dog.

A Hound Dog is someone who uses LinkedIn to connect to those they know, to connect to those they would like to know, and accepts invitations from those that would be beneficial to be connected to.

For the first year that I was serious about using LinkedIn I followed this strategy. Then one day I had a thought, “How do I know whether or not a connection I know could benefit from a connection that I didn’t know?” The answer was that I didn’t know.

It was that at this point that I changed my strategy for connecting on LinkedIn.

The Alley Cat
I still only send invitations to people I know or people that I have a specific reason for connecting to. What changed is that I now accept invitations from just about anyone. There is value in knowing your connections but there are also unexpected opportunities that develop from establishing new connections, known and unknown.

This connection strategy supports my overall LinkedIn strategy which is this: I seek to provide value to and help as many people as possible. Much of that value is provided through the Social Media Sonar blog, sharing tips and strategies with others on how to more effectively utilize LinkedIn and social media/networking. Sometimes its through being the hub to connect two people. At other times its through conducting workshops, writing LinkedIn books and guides, etc. The more people I am connected to the more people that I can share with.

I believe that to create opportunity you have to first be willing to help others. Then, by consistently sharing value over time, you allow people to move through the Process of Familiarity. A process that has to happen before someone will choose to do business with you.

What I call the Process of Familiarity likely has been called many things by other people. The three components are:

1.  People need to Know You or at a Minimum Know Of You: Often connecting or engaging in conversations will accomplish this.

2.  People Must Like You or Have a Positive Opinion: How you interact with others and the value of the content you share will help here. If people like your content they will like you.

3.  People Must Trust You: Building trust is dependent upon engaging on conversations or sharing value consistently over time. As people see you on an ongoing basis and are exposed to the value you share the “Like” will grow into “Trust”.

Through this process here’s what I’ve seen happen. Each week I write one or two blog posts that show people how to utilize LinkedIn. I then use the tools LinkedIn provides to communicate that there is a new blog post. People visit the blog for the first time or as a repeat visitor. At some point they check out my profile and learn what it is that I do and see how I can help them.

If they like the content they begin to have a positive impression of me and this eventually moves to a sense of trust. At this point if they ever have a need for my services I am top of mind and they will contact me.

Something else happens as well. People like to share content on other Social Media sites so at some point they become my social media amplification system. This introduces my blog to people outside of the communities I’ve built.

Wrap Up
The connection strategy you choose will depend upon how you want to use LinkedIn. There is no right or wrong choice as long as your connection strategy supports the goals you have determined. For me the change to an Alley Cat has helped generate 3 to 5 contacts per week about my services.

Which strategy are you using and why? If you agree or disagree with the post please leave a comment. Your perspective is as important as mine, so share it with everyone.

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Sean Nelson is the author of the Social Media Sonar blog and has written three LinkedIn eBooks including one of the first books detailing how to strategically use LinkedIn to grow your business. “LinkedIn Marketing Secret Formula”.  He is a Partner in SONARconnects.

When I first joined LinkedIn my thought was that this would be a good place to network and connect to other business professionals.  What I’ve learned since is that LinkedIn is a great place to communicate your message to millions of business professionals.  Most often through indirect methods.

Most people think in term of communicating directly, but that’s a traditional perspective.  Social networking/media has its own rules in regards to sales related activites and most often using a direct sales pitch will fail and potentially cause damage to your brand.

There are a few ways to communicate directly on LinkedIn.  The most obvious is to send a direct message to your first degree connections.  Personally when I receive a direct sales message I immediately archive it.  Most often it’s from someone I’m connected to but do not personally know.  If I receive several I simply remove the connection.

If you want to sell to me you have to first introduce yourself and then start a conversation.  It all starts with the three requirements necessary for someone to choose to do business with you.  First they have to know you, second they need to like you, and finally they need to trust you.

Connecting or interacting within LinkedIn groups can accomplish the “getting to know you” requirement.  Moving to like and trust requires time and interaction.  You’re going to have to share value over time for this to occur.

Here are some of the ways that I communicate my message to tens of thousands of LinkedIn members each week.

1. I have replaced my title with a tag line… from “social media consultant” to “Showing businesses how to leverage Social Media to Build Communities and Monetize their Business”.  Now everytime my mini profile is displayed I’m indirectly telling people how I can help them rather than what I am.
   
   Action Step: Modify your elevator speech to 160 characters and replace your title with it.
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2. I’ve used my status update to communicate to my direct network.  Most often I use it to share success stories…”Sean just helped a client create a social media strategy and implement it”.  With the new Twitter integration now I can simply Tweet my message and it’s displayed in my status.  Be sure to only integrate your business related tweets.
   
   Action Step: Either update you status manuall or use the Twitter integration.  Keep your integrated tweets business related.  You have two choices:  Post only business related messages or use the #in hashtag for messages you want to display on LinkedIn.
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3. I’ve written the Social Media Sonar blog for two years now to help others more effectively utilize LinkedIn.  I share a lot of value in my posts.  I add each post as a news article in the 50 groups that I belong to.This drives traffic to my blog and helps people get to know me.  If they like the information they will normally grow to having a favorable opinion of me (Like).Over time this consistent sharing of value leads to building trust.At this point if they have an issue that I can help them with there is a high likelyhood that they will contact me.
   
   Action Step: If you write a blog or articles join the groups where the information will be relevant and post these as news articles.
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4. Another great way to share value is to engage inconversations in group discussions.  You can add your own discussion topic or join a conversation someone else has started.  Participate enough consistently and over time you will go from know to like to trust.  The key is in how you interact and the value you provide through your comments.Also if you add value be sure to share a link to your blog or website.
   
   Action Steps: First make sure you have joined as many relevant groups as you can find.  These can be location, alumni, industry, or topic specific groups.  These should be groups where you prospect belong.  Once a member join the conversations and participate.  Just be sure to conduct every conversation as you would if you were speaking in person.
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5. Answering questions is a great way to share value and communicate your message.  This is your opportunity to provide value by answering another person’s question and to demonstrate expertise if the questions is related to what you do for a living.You can also ask questions.  Both the questions you ask and answer will be viewable to your profile visitors.
   
   Action Step: Be sure to periodically look to answer questions in your field.  You can set up a RSS feed to see new questions or integrate them into your LinkedIn home page.  Take your time and provide well thought out answers.  Remember every answer either adds to your brand or subtracts from it.

These are only some of the opportunities to communicate your message on LinkedIn.  You should explore the various features to see how you can put these to use.  Utilizing the various means to communicating my message has led to my receiving from 3 to 5 inquiries a week from fellow members needing help with the services I provide.

What are some of the ways not listed that you have used to communicate your message to your fellow business professionals on LinkedIn?

SONARconnects helps businesses leverage social media / networking to build communities of people, communicate their message, engage in conversations, and monetize.  Our clients include Lenny’s Sub Shop, Copeland’s New Orleans Style Restaurants, Action Business Coach (ATL), Aussie Pet Mobile (ATL), The Fredrick Group, and MyCustomDay.

If you’re struggling to understand how to use these tools to build brand awareness and drive new business call us at (404) 663-3997 or visit our site:  http://www.sonarconnects.com.

Last week I discussed New Opportunities, New Hires with LinkedIn that discussed using LinkedIn to advance your career and for companies to find new employees.  Todays conversation addresses using LinkedIn to prospect.

Most people use LinkedIn to connect to other business professionals that they know or meet while networking.  It definitely can help put an additional degree of connectivity to these folks.  But limiting your use to simply networking leaves a significant opportunity out of your monetization toolbox.

The tool that most people fail to take advantage of is the ability to prospect for potential opportunities.  Let me be clear, prospecting is not sending sales messages to your direct connections.  It’s not posting sales messages in groups.  It’s simply identifying potential people or companies that could eventually become clients.

LinkedIn, like other social networking sites, are not great places to overtly sell your products and services.  Can doing this work? Sure, but you’re more likely to turn people off than to turn them on.  A better approach is to connect and engage in conversations so that people first get a chance to know and like you.  Then you can begin converting the “like” into trust.

I recently received a message form someone stating that they had looked at my profile and read my blog.  In the message they simply asked if they could follow up with a question.  I said sure and then next communication was an offer for me to use their services.

Bad strategy.  I’ll talk about how they could have approached things later.

The two ways you can prospect on LinkedIn are People and for Companies.

People:

There are over 50 million people on LinkedIn, making it a significant source of information.  You can use any number of variables to narrow your search down.  Most financial planners make it a point to network with accountants.  You could search accountants in your city, use keywords for specialties, and narrow it down to those in your network.

Once you have the list then you simply need to leverage LinkedIn to connect to them.  Your only goal at this point should be to connect.  Don’t try to explain in depth why you want to connect (I’m looking to partner with a accountant that I can share referrals with, etc., etc., etc.).  Simply state that you’re a financial planner and looking to identify local resources that may be able to help your clients.

Remember at this point they don’t know you and can’t lie or trust you yet.  Let the connection sit there for a couple of weeks.  Than at some point pick up the phone and call your new connection to set up a time to meet for coffee or lunch.  Now you have made a personal connection.

You can take this approach with potential referral partners, resource partners, and potential clients/  The key is to establish to electronic connection and then make it a personal connection.

Companies:
There not much difference between prospecting for people or for companies.  In both cases you’re simply leveraging the search function to identify potential prospects.  The difference is that with companies you’re first identifying the company, than identifying the person that you can tap into to get into the company.

At SONARconnects we know that in order to get into a sales opportunity we need to connect with the person responsible for making marketing decisions.  For some companies its the owner, for others its the marketing manager.

What the Companies section allows me to do is to begin my prospecting based on a industry or segment.  One area that we work with is franchises, helping them leverage social media to build communities of people to engage in conversations with using social networking and social media.  Using LinkedIn I can identify the companies that are on LinkedIn creating my prospecting list.

Then since on the companies page they list the employees who have LinkedIn accounts, I can identify individuals to target to get a foot in the door.  I can start by looking for the owner or the marketing person,  But what if these people aren’t listed?

I can still look at the individuals that are associated with the company and connect to them.  Then once connected I leverage this to make a personal connection.  In that meeting I hope to be able to learn who I need to speak with and then leverage this meeting into an introduction.

Its a slow process but that’s OK.  I know that by taking my time I have an opportunity to make the right connections and ensure that when it comes time to make a pitch, its made to a decision maker.

If the decision maker is listed on the company profile then I can try to connect directly.  Or I can look at their profile to see which groups they belong to and join some.  this then gives me an opportunity to naturally engage in conversations over time within the group.

Ideally by the time that I seek a connection the person is already familiar with me.

LinkedIn is more than a place to connect to those you know.  To monetize your efforts you need to proactively search out opportunities and make them happen.  In Atlanta the best companies database is provided by a company called Businesswise.  The only problem is that for an individual or small company they’re not exactly a low cost solution.  LinkedIn provides a cost effective option.

If you’re not using LinkedIn to prospect you’re not taking advantage of 100% of the opportunities it can provide.

What are some of your success stories using LinkedIn to prospect?

SONARconnects is a full service advertising and marketing agency.  We help our clients by showing them how to develop strategies and tactics to build communities of people, communicate their message, and monetize their social networking/media presence.  Our clients include Lenny’s Sub Shop, Copeland’s New Orleans Style Restaurant (ATL), Action Business Coaching (ATL), Aussie Pet Mobile (ATL), The Frederick Group, and MyCustomDay.

If you’re struggling to understand how to use social networking/media to build brand awareness and drive new business call us for a Free consultation at (404) 663-3997 or visit our site:  http://www.sonarconnects.com.