Social Media Sites

5 Steps to Creating an Amazing LinkedIn Company Page

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June 4 | Social Bookmarking, Social Media Sites, Social Networks | Alex Chan

Everyone knows that social media is latest platform for promoting their products but where do we go beyond Facebook and Twitter? Facebook lets us reach friends of friends and Twitter broadcasts to news addicts so what about everyone else? In the past year, LinkedIn has reshaped their site to present a new opportunity to reach professionals, businesses, and companies. They actually have and send traffic now. Creating a LinkedIn profile for your company is a step forward to building your company’s image and increasing its popularity.

Making a LinkedIn profile for your company is very easy and more important, it’s free! Here are a few tips on how to create a good LinkedIn profile for your company:

1. Don’t skip the “About Us” section
Write a detailed summary of your company under the “About Us” section at the bottom. Put effort into writing a good description for everyone to see. Tell people what’s important about your company. Upload a crisp and clean cover image. The cover image is much larger than your profile image so viewers will see that first.

2. Use the Products & Services tab
All social networks are a great way of promoting your products and services. With the Products and Services tab, you can put images of products and even provide links so people can buy them. LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to place your most prominent product on the top of the list so people can see it first.

3. Connect with your employees
After you create a profile for your company, ask all your employees to connect to the profile and say they work for your company. This increases the circle of people that can connect to your company, but also provides visitors a possibility to connect directly to the employees. It makes your company accessible and open to the general public.

4. Recruit people
The LinkedIn profile can also be used as a recruitment tool. The Careers Page is used to recruit talented people and make contacts with other professionals. If you wish, you can pay to have the Career page available on your LinkedIn profile.

5. Generate good content
Last but not least, always make sure you keep your profile page updated and interesting to users. Always generate good quality content on your LinkedIn page. Customers like to be constantly updated with the new information whether it is about your company or in general. Generating good content is the hook that attracts more followers. If you have nothing to say, then nobody would follow you.

Tagged Brand Building, linkedin, linkedin link building group, social network, Social Networks

5 Twitter Chats for Link Builders

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July 23 | Link Building Tools, Social Media Sites | annsmarty

Although I’ve known her for a few years now, I don’t think Ann Smarty has ever written a guest post, something she seems particularly fond of, for Linkbuildr. In our last correspondence I told her that she’s always welcome to post on the site and she whipped something up for us right away. Believe it or not, this is that guest post! I know, right?

Twitter Chats have really reached a new level of popularity lately. You basically set a time and date, as well as a topic (if you choose) and invite people to come. Then, you start off the conversation with a tweet using a specific #hashtag. That tag is then placed on all responses as people communicate with one another in real time by following hashtag updates.

Bloggers are utilizing this perhaps more than any other group right now. But that doesn’t mean they are the only ones who can benefit. Link builders can find great opportunities to learn some tips, tricks or just build links through a conversation. Think of it as the ultimate in 160-character networking.

Here are five Twitter Chats that link builders might want to check out.

1. SEO Chat

If you have questions about SEO or just want a good discussion on the topic, you will love this weekly Twitter chat. Every Thursday at 7PM Mountain the admin posts a question, then following questions every ten minutes for an interviewee that has been chosen beforehand. You can ask follow up questions, time permitting, using the hashtag #seochat.

2. MyBlogGuest

At 11 AM EST every Thursday, MyBlogGuest opens up their experts to a conversation with users and guest bloggers all over the web. They suggest TweetDeck as a good tool to keep up, but other people use TwitterChat or equivalents. The hashtag is #myblogguest.

3. JournChat

This is a recap done of the week’s best user posts on both sides of various issues, such as social media, SEO and blogging. They do their best to present different views to the best of their ability. You can communicate with the site using #JournChat.

4. PR Web

Every other Thursday at 2:00 PM EST, PR Web opens up the floor to a discussion with users and experts alike, speaking to the most influential online figures in the industry. This is an excellent chance to get some great tips and answers. The problem is that it is usually pretty busy so you might not get your issue addressed. See more at #prwebchat.

5. CommentHour

A great way to generate traffic, you fill out a form by Wednesday morning every week with a link to your blog and your Twitter username. Then, they select 25 people and feature them over the course of an hour with a link to the blog and Twitter profile. Those watching the #commenthour hashtag go to the link and leave a comment. It is a quick means of bringing some visibility to your Twitter account and blog. The hashtag is #CommentHour.

Of course, one of the best ways to use Twitter Chat is through starting your own. All you need is a date, a time and a hashtag and you are good to go. Try starting one today!

Ann Smarty is blogger and guest blogger running My Blog Guest, the free community of guest bloggers that preaches high-quality approach to guest blogging.

Google+ Adds Pages for Businesses, Music and Every Other Noun

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November 7 | Social Media Sites | Geoff

Google rolled out its pages for business today and, as per usual with Google launches, nobody really noticed.

I have been using Google+ to follow Matt Cutts and a few other notable people in the industry, but don’t have many friends actively using it, let alone women, which is the reason Facebook is what it is.

Anyways, I’m never one to hate on trends (I did not understand the appeal of Twitter), so I set up Linkbuildr’s Page to kind of get a feel for how it will work for businesses. So far, I only notice a couple of differences between the personal profile and a page:

First, your page has to be encircled to be able to circle. This will go a long way to prevent the twitter spamming method of following for followers and ensure that everyone who has you in a circle actively sought out your page and circled you. Opt-in marketing is something Google is very fond of and should encourage (enforce) some corporate responsibility. As such, I am currently the only person with Linkbuildr in a circle, and the page only has one follower. Change that for us! But I digress… The move will make it so that your page’s Google+ followers are of a much higher quality and anything you push to them via G+ should be pretty targeted content that they want to see. Hopefully this leads to much better interaction from the pages’ users and less opportunity to game the system.

Secondly, Google has added Direct Connect. Direct connect will use the plus modifier [+] to automatically bring you to and circle a page. If you’re looking for Linkbuildr, Googling +Linkbuildr should (one day, when we’re “eligible”) bring you to the Linkbuildr Google+ Page and automatically circle us.

Google+ pages will be showing up in the SERPS, so it’ll give your online profile a nice little bump for people searching for your brand name.

I think it’ll be great for businesses. The tools that Google+ offers can be very creatively applied to maintaining healthy relationships with your clients. The hangouts are a super easy way to connect visually and give face to face advice or what have you. Small businesses will be able to group their clients based on interests and only share what they think they’ll be interested in. You’ll be able to comment and interact with people in your circles and really get your name out there. Helping people will, I think, go a long way with these G+ pages.

As always, if you want to play nice with Google, do what they want you to do. In this case, they want you to create a Google+ page for your business. The links won’t pass juice, like any of their domains, but we know that Google accounts for social media profiles in their ranking algorithm and if you don’t have a G+ page for your business, your competition will. Google has more social information about your business here than it does anywhere else so you’d be silly not to.

Google also posted a clean little video sharing a bike shop’s experiences with Google+ pages and how it worked for him. It might be a nice little means of getting you pumped on working with your clientele.

The long and short of it is that if you want to be in Google’s good books, you have no reason not to create a page for your business and connect your site to it.

Badgeville social rewards platform – a.k.a. Farmville with benefits

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April 20 | Social Media Sites | Simon

Badgeville jumped onto the scene when they won “Audience Choice” at TechCrunch last fall. Within two quarters they’re captured 50 clients for their “white label” social rewards, loyalty and analytics platform. As the name suggests, the Badgeville concept is similar to Farmville. The big difference is badgeville is an entertaining online version of a frequent-flyer program and Farmville is an entertaining online version of crack. And unlike Foursquare, you don’t have to physically go to Starbucks four times a day (more crack anyone?); you just have to visit your websites you frequent regularly anyway. And for anyone like me whose crack comes in the form of online shopping, you might as well be hooked on Badgeville too. So, enough about crack, here’s my rundown of Badgeville:

For the Users

Badgeville brings a new level of entertainment and engagement for website visitors and ecommerce customers. Through gamification, Badgeville combines elements of social games like Farmville with a rewards and loyalty program. Instead of tending to a digital flock of sheep, your regular actions within websites earn your points, awards or rewards. This can be for buying products, commenting, watching videos, filling out surveys and much more. With Facebook and Twitter integration, liking, sharing or Tweeting can equal rewards. This can earn you virtual currency, discounts, premium content to just bragging rights through trophies and badges. The leaderboard widget showcases the biggest fans and lists your friends on the site. The best part of all this is you don’t have to run around in a video game or real life, you just have to do what you normally do when using a website. You now just get rewarded for it, along with an incentive for doing more while you’re there. Participating is nice and easy too: visitors just have to login with Facebook connect or create a regular account through the website.

For the Website

Badgeville is perfect for any ecommerce, news or social website, or any fuelled by user-generated content. Its white label functionality means that its widgets and API integrate to your site’s design and doesn’t eat up any of your precious on-page real estate and

branding. You can pick through a range rewards and goals for your visitors and how, where or when they can achieve them. Badgeville provides real-time analytics. While this is a regular feature of many applications, they bring their own unique advantages. If you’re find pages or functions on your site lacking the traffic they need, you can incentivize them through Badgeville. By adding rewards of your choice to the needed areas, with a bonus for sharing, you’re looking at a quick and easy on-page SEO/SMO option. For an online shop releasing new additions, a few rewards or discounts will spread your message through participants’ networks. The leaderboard widget showcases your top fans, letting them serve as brand ambassadors to your other visitors. It also lists your visitor’s friends, giving them a chance to compete over and share your brand.

For both the Badgeville participant and hosting website, everything is in real-time. If you’re using Badgeville, you get live activity streams, leaderboards and friend graphs. If you’re the host, you get more than just analytics, but the ability to influence your analytics in real-time and set marketing goals, all through the Badgeville platform. Online retailer BlueFly is a big name on board, with 50 under their belt as of March 30^th. SlideShare also plans to integrate Badgeville, which is great for online marketeers like me who find themselves there more often than not. For more, head over to Badgeville.

Follow me:

S_Gerard@Twitter

Tagged badgeville, ecommerce, farmville, foursquare, loyalty programs, SMO, social media marketing, social rewards

Facebook Marketing Win Via The Olive Garden

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January 25 | Social Media Sites | Ryan Clark

I’ve been wanting to showcase some excellent Facebook Page marketing examples by large brands and this opportunity came to light whole browsing today. The Olive Garden is currently running a Facebook contest that blew me away, mainly because of the sheer brilliance of how they’re doing it. This example should be looked over hard by companies struggling to grow their Facebook Page, especially ones with a large marketing budget.

I have been nagging and annoying the hell out of our clients to get more socially involved. A lot of them don’t see it as a marketing method worth going after hard…and this drives me nuts. I’m very well aware of the coming change in search trends, and more and more people are sticking on Facebook. This means organic search traffic is not going to be the only player in town, and it certainly might even become the market companies focus on the most.

The Olive Garden has recently hit a milestone of 1,000,000 Facebook fans which is down right amazing for any company. We only have one here in the west coast of Canada, so it’s mostly Americans they’ve tapped into although they got my like! To celebrate the achievement, they have decided to run a contest that is going to send them quickly on their way to another few hundred thousand more followers.

If you’re a social media manager for a big brand, I’d take note of how many followers they grow by the end of the month. The Olive Garden hopefully will respond to my email request to interview their marketing team about Facebook and Twitter marketing. I also see they’re doing a great effort with Foursquare which is just fantastic. I wish them the best of luck, but by the looks of it they won’t be needing any of it!

Tagged contest marketing, facebook, facebook marketing, social media marketing, Viral Marketing

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