• 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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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: (more…)

For the last two years I’ve written this blog to help people more effectively use LinkedIn.  I decided it was time to benchmark the blog’s success by competing in the BlogOff 2 competition.  I need your help to have a chance to win the competition.

Your Task:  Visit my new blog post “The 7 Worst Mistakes on LinkedIn and Their Fixes“.  This post will help you identify and correct the mistakes I see many people making on LinkedIn.

VOTE NOW:  Your click is your vote.  *******Comments on tT7he post are a major component of the voting so please consider adding a comment.*******

Thank you and have a great day.

Sean Nelson

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. (more…)