Internet Marketing Tools

Let’s now apply the information about making powerful testimonials to the Making and Receiving Recommendations for your Linkedin Page.  I’ll start with Making a Recommendation.  If this is your first Recommendation, it is always good to spend a few minutes reviewing what other people are using for Recommendation.  You can learn what you like and dislike about these Recommendations by looking at the work of others.

You can initiate a Recommendation from your profile, from the profile of the person you are recommending or in direct response to a request you receive from the other person.  Here are the directions from Linkedin for using these three options:

                                          To recommend a person from your profile: 

1. Click the ‘Get Recommended’ link found in the ‘Recommended By’ section of the profile.

2. You’ll be taken to a page that allows you to ‘Mange recommendations you have received’ or ‘Make a Recommendation’.

3. Under the ‘Make a Recommendation’ section, enter a contact’s first/last name and their email address or click the ‘Select from your connections list’ link. Scroll to the lower part of the page.

4. Choose a category: service provider, business partner, colleague or student.

5. Follow the instructions provided based on the category you selected. 

                                              To recommend a person from their profile: 

1. Click ‘Recommend this person’ found in the upper right hand corner of the profile. You will also find a recommendation link in the Experience section under the position for which you want to recommend them.

2. Choose a category: service provider, business partner, student, or colleague.

3. Follow the instructions provided based on the category you selected. 

                                        To recommend a person in response to a request: 

1. Open the message in your email client or from the Received Recommendations page in your LinkedIn inbox.

2. Click ‘Write Recommendation’.

3. If this is an original request, you will be directed to a page where you can compose and submit your recommendation.

4. If this is a request to replace an existing recommendation, you will be taken to a page where you can edit the previous recommendation and submit the revised text. 

Once you have completed the name the person and identified your relationship with them (you are given a number of choices), then click on Continue and you are taken to series of questions to complete before you write your recommendation.  

What to Say?

Write the recommendation using the framework discussed in previous posts.  Make it exciting.  Be specific about the work done by the person, the strengths and responsibilities demonstrated by the person and the results or benefits produced. 

A message will be sent to the person through Linkened sharing the Recommendation you have just written.  You can customize this message that goes along with your recommendation.

If the person you are giving the recommendation for is not on your first level network, check the box “Invite XYZ to join your professional network.  When you send this you will be sending a Recommendation and an invitation all at the same time.

Click Send and submit your Recommendation to the person.  They will have the opportunity to review it, accept it or ask for revisions.  Most people will accept what you write, however, they can ask for revisions to clarify points they want in the Recommendation.

Email or Call

I’ve found the best method is to email or call a colleague and offer to exchange Recommendations.  They supply one for you and you supply one for them.  In this way, you can specify what each person would like in a Recommendation.   You can always send an email with a draft of your recommendation.   The other person can send it back to you with the changes they would like.  Then you put the revised Recommendation through the Linkedin process.  This is an easy way to quickly generate recommendations.  

Withdraing a Recommendation

You can Withdraw your recommendation.  Situations changes; jobs may change.  You are allowed to withdraw your Recommendation.  When you do this, it is permanently removed from Linkedin and the recipient is not notified.  To withdraw a Recommendation go to your Managing your Recommendations and click on Withdraw Recommendations.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

Before we start focusing on the Group functions in Linnkedin, I thought you might enjoy an short article on ways to use Linkedin in your business by Peggy Murrah.  Enjoy.

Al Hanzal
www.successfulmarketingtools.com/wordpressblog

Social Media Tip of the Month -5 Ways LinkedIn Can Help Your Business

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By now, you should be familiar with all of the social networking aspects that LinkedIn offers. LinkedIn has helped so many professionals get in touch with each other and forge new relationships. Many jobs have been found through the use of connections and members have been well placed in their respective company networks. LinkedIn remains to be one of the largest networks of professionals seeking to build their careers.

LinkedIn is, however, more than just connecting with others and building relationships. Here are 5 other ways that can help you as a member of LinkedIn.

Have your questions answered

Similar to Yahoo! and Google Answers, LinkedIn offers an area where members can type in questions that can be seen by all members of LinkedIn regardless of connections. Since LinkedIn is a network of professionals, you can expect to get better answers than other sites like forums.

Conduct reference checks

LinkedIn is a great source for looking up companies and individuals for reference purposes. All you need to do is fire up the Reference Check Tool and just search for a person or company to see some information about how long they worked there and other backgrounds. It is great for crosschecking the legitimacy of profiles since LinkedIn is officially networked to some top resource sites like BusinessWeek.

Obtain information on competitors

Knowing your competitors’ progress and connections can be advantageous in taking your team above them. By taking the time in getting information on individuals and their connections belonging to rival companies, you can highlight their main strengths and weaknesses and find ways to work around them.

Get indexed in search engines

Since LinkedIn has a high Google page rank, you can take advantage of this by setting your profile on public and filling it with as much information as possible. What happens is all that information is indexed by Google and other bots while taking in keywords in the process. This gives you an opportunity for non-registered LinkedIn users to see your profile just by doing simple searches that may match your profile’s description. It also makes it easier for people to find more information about you and don’t know where to look. You can even use this to advertise other websites and gain exposure through LinkedIn.

Find more information about people you’ll meet up with

If you are going to have a huge meeting with a few top executives of a company, try to learn more about them by searching in LinkedIn. Even if their profiles may not be listed, you can do other checks such as searching for the company and see any familiar names there. It is important to know the backgrounds of the people you are about to do business with so you can make better decisions and judgment.

These 5 ways are sure to help and encourage you to use LinkedIn more for any business related tasks. Use these methods to your advantage so you can have the edge over competitors and other people in your network. You can really stand out if you utilize the LinkedIn network using your own creative ways.

http://www.linktoprosper.com [murrah@linktoprosper.com]

Here’s how to install Linkedin on your Outlook tool bar.  Go to the bottom of any page on your Linkedin site and to the Tools section.  Click on Outlook Toolbar.  You will be given instructions on downloading Outlook to create a coordinated tool bar.

When you have completed this simple process, you will have a new tool bar on your Outlook program with your standard Outlook functions and many new Linkedin functions.  Take a few minutes to mouse over the various new buttons to see what you can do with these.  You can arrange how you want your new Outlook toolbar to look.

Here are a couple of my favorite fun or useful things you can do with this nifty tool:

Search Bar: You can search your Linkedin website right from your Outlook program.  No need to log into the website.  All the results are shown directly in Outlook for you to see.

Info Icon:  As I have already described, when you receive an email and it has the Linkedin Icon in the upper right hand corner, you can mouse over this icon and a new box appears that allows you to “keep in touch” with the person or “invite” the person to join your connections.  All of the pieces are there for you to complete these tasks right from Outlook.  (If you click on “keep in touch”, you will be given a reminder in 60 days that that you have not emailed this person—your own personal secretarial reminder!)

Grab Button: You can curse over the signature of the person on any email you receive.  Then hit the Grab button on your tool bar.  This tool goes out and grabs their contact information and creates an Outlook Contact Card for you.  The Contact Card basically includes their name, address, company name, phone numbers and email address.  (Some street addresses may not be included)  Click Save and Close and now that person’s information is part of your Outlook Contact file.

More information on Linkedin is coming, your comments are welcomed

Al Hanzal

I am interrupting my blog entries on Linkedin to share a few thoughts from my vacation.  Our family left the cold confines of Minnesota and spent 8 days in the Ft. Lauderdale, Fl area where it was typically 75-80 degrees.   Here are some vacation thoughts as they pertain to social marketing.

I love vacations for many reasons.  There is the obvious reason of a warmer climate.  It always gives me some space and time to step back from the daily grind of business and gain new perspectives.  I always find time to do more writing on vacation.  There is airplane time.  There is beach time.  It also gives me an opportunity to listen and see what is happening in other parts of the country that have yet to appear in Minnesota.

New Things I saw on Vacation

A couple of new things I noticed on my vacation.  One local TV station offered with each new program comments from their Face Book and Twitter accounts.  People now feel free to make comments about the news on the stations social networking accounts and the TV station shares the comments on the air.

Watching the Today show, when they had their Expert Help Segments, instead of just letting the experts tell their story, they have webcams where people actually asked questions of the experts directly from their home computers.

As I watching the last day of the golf tournament, several times during the tournament, the announcers read emails from viewers and answered their questions directly on the air.

Do you see a pattern developing?  An interactive mode of programs and marketing now is replacing the traditional models of controlling the news and TV programming.

The Question for Small Business Owners

The question becomes how will this interactive mode affect your small business?  How are the Social net tools going to change the way you do business?

Let me start by suggesting that the Social net will not eliminate other marketing tools to create awareness for your business.  Physical networking groups can still meet and produce results.  Some of you may still put an ad in the local newspaper or create a brochure to help advertise your business.

However, it becomes even more critical for you to ask the question, “What results are my current marketing tools producing for my business?”  Don’t use any marketing tool because someone tells you to use it!   Keep evaluating what you are doing.  Keep what’s working; discard what’s not working.

Along with your traditional marketing efforts, you will need to develop an internet strategy on which tools you are going to use to help promote your business in this internet marketing medium.   You need to go where your customers are going.  They are going to the internet.  As you do create a strategy for the Social net, I make two notes of caution.

Follow Basic Marketing Principles

First, if you are weak on the basics of small business marketing, you will fail on the Social net.  By the basics I mean clearly knowing your customer niche, clearly knowing how your products benefit your customers, and showing proof that people can believe what you are telling them.

If you are missing these critical ingredients, you will quickly fail on the Social net.  Why?  There is too much competition from people who follow the basics.  You don’t have the luxury of dealing face to face with people to overcome your marketing limitations with your charming personality or a face to face encounter.

Adopt a Different Marketing Mentality

My second warning, you must behave differently on the Social net.  In traditional marketing, you talk directly at people telling them about your business and what you can do for them.  On the Social net you must be willing to give up control and find ways to influence people rather than tell people.

Your primary skill in these social net programs is listening.  You are invited as guest, to participate along with other guests.  You can listen, you can add suggestions, you can ask questions, you can share your insights as an expert in your field.  You can become a person of influence.

If you think you can go to a social networking group and blast your business in front of them, you will be shut out.  Worse, people will simply ignore you.  The key is to come as a person of influence.  When you do this, you can have some success on the Social net.

I believe you cannot avoid the Social net if you want to really be successful in your small business.  The world has already moved there.   Each of us needs to develop a strategy on how we are going to make our business presence on the Social net.

To be continued, your comments are always welcomed…

Al Hanzal

Here are some ways to begin building your Linkedin network rapidly.

Use the Linkedin “Add Connections” Function

On the side of every Linkedin page you will find a green button Add Connections.  Click on this button to begin your first step in building your network.  This will take you to a page where you can manually add six invitations at one time.  We will come back to the manual input in a moment.  First we want to use Linkedin automated tools.

You will find a tab on that same page “Import Contacts”.  You will click here to import contacts from Outlook, and webmail services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and other electronic address books.

I’ve had a Hotmail account for eight years.  From the Icon choices, I clicked on Hotmail.  My connection did not go through the first time (See the tip at the end of this secton).  The second time Linkedin connected to my entire email list in Hotmail and displayed a 193 contacts.  (Since I only use Hotmail as a back up email program, I had forgotten most of the people listed on this email file.)

If a person is already on Linkedin, they will have a small blue cross after their name.  This is a great place to make your first invitations.  These are people who are already familiar with Linkedin and suitable candidates to add to your network. (Use your own set of criteria for who you want on your network).

You then click to identify which of these people you want to send an invitation to.  In my case I choose  the 18 current Linkedin people as my first set of invitations.  This created a list (their names and email addresses are already on the Linkedin list because it extracted the list from your webmail accounts), on the right side of the page.

I checked the box that says I want to “Personalize my Invitation”.  I was then greeted with a screen box in which I could type my personalize invitation rather than the standard Linkedin form.

Since I was sending 18 of these invitations at one time, I wanted to make the invitation semi-personal.  This is not a mass mailing nor is it a one to one mailing.

Here’s what I wrote:  “I see that you are on Linkedin just as I am.  I would love to connect with you.  I am currently working on an e-book of tips for people using the Linkedin program and would like to send it to you.  Let’s try to connect on each others network.  Thanks.”  Al

You will notice a couple of things about this semi-personal note.  It is more general than a one to one (you can always send out individual personal invitations) .  Second, I offered them something in return for joining my network.  My mother taught me that whenever I visited a friend’s house, I should bring some type of treat or gift.  This is my version of “visiting” someone.  It is my hope that the email tips sheet will be seen as useful to the other person and an incentive to connect with me on Linkedin.

Once I was finished with my message, I click to send the invitation.  Linkedin will personalize the invitation with the person’s name.  I was immediately notified that 18 invitations were sent. By the next morning I already had four responses that people had joined my network.

Because my hotmail list had almost two hundred names, I went back several times and follow the above steps until I had send email invitation to all the people I wanted to from my Hotmail list.  If you have a large list you can go back to your list several times to do this process.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

If you have completed your profile as I have described, you now have all the ingredients of your own brand.  Unless you have a totally unique product or service, you are always selling YOU.  Let’s break down this brand called YOU.

Recently, I needed a new furnace for our home.  After receiving several bids from local heating contractors, I went on line to do my own research.  What I found was a mess.

Every websites was full of pictures and promises about their products.  No just one product but dozens and dozens of products.  I just wanted one website that could clearly show me the advantages and disadvantages of the various brand names and furnaces I was seeing.  I never found it.  When I mentioned this fact to the contractor who finally sold me our furnace, he said, “You’re right.  Even I am confused when I go to the websites?”

Creating the Brand YOU

What do you do? Your first challenge in creating a brand is to provide the prospect with a clear picture about what you are offering.  What do you do or what does what you are selling do?  You must be able to answer this question simply and clearly.  Confused buyers never buy.

Write down the answer to this question in simple and clear words.  Then show it to three people.  Is it simple and clear to them?

What is your specialty? A second branding question is what is your specialty?  People don’t buy from Jack of all trades and masters of none.  They have too many buying options.  When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.   Make it clear about your specialty.

How are you different from the competition? How are you different or better than your competition?”  You don’t just want to be different.  You may be the only sales person with green hair.  That would make you different.  Does this different matter to your customers?

Here is the heart and soul of branding.  Does your difference make an emotional connection with your customers?  What’s the one thing they can get from you that they cannot get from your competition?

When you think of Tiffany’s—what do you think of?  Fine jewelry and romance.  When you think of Tiger Woods, what you think about?  Golf!  Your difference is what makes the deep connection with your customers.

Dominate your market. The fourth quality, do you want to just be another peddler in the market place?  Be the best.  Be recognized as an expert in your business.  Understand your customer better than your competition.  Tell the world about your expertise.  Dominate.  Don’t just exist as a brand.

When you bring these qualities to the market place, you have a successful brand.  You become enviable.  People will look at you and admire you.  And that makes your entire business operations more enjoyable and prosperous.

To be continued, your comments are always welcomed…

Al Hanzal

You have completed your profile and saved your changes.  There are five additional steps you will take in the next week to make your profile even more effective.

1.  Take a look at how others will see your profile.  Click on the Button that says, See Your Public Profile.   What you see on the screen is actually what others will see on Linkedin.  Note any changes or revisions you want to make and make them now.
2.  Make a copy of your profile and place it into a word document and then print it for you to use as a working copy of your profile.  Start making notes on this copy by asking yourself the question, “If I saw this profile, would it catch my attention?  How well does this profile push my agenda or goals for using Linkedin?”  Make any notes on this working copy.  You may also wish to view the PDF form of your profile that has been created by Linkedin.  You can send a copy of this to anyone.  (Upper right hand corner of your site page with the PDF symbol).
3. In the next week, use Linkedin to visit Profiles of others people you know or other people in your same industry.  What can you now learn from their profiles to use on your profile?  You will find some things you absolutely want to avoid and other things that you may wish to incorporate in your own profile.  Make notes on the working copy of your Profile.

4.  The following is a check list professionals use to review Linkedin Profiles:

• Add your voice.  Is your profile boring?
• Make sure you are writing recommendations for others
• Find ways to connect with your old colleagues
• Make sure you have personalized your Linkedin address
• Add substance to your Headline
• Make sure your specialties are attention grabbing
• Explain what you did at previous companies
• Add board or advisory positions you have held
• Get more recommendations about yourself
• Indicate your interests outside of work
• Customize why you want people to reach you

5. Wait a week, making notes on the working copy of your profile as you go.  Then go back to your profile and edit your original version with your new additions or subtractions.  The beauty of this effort–when you reedit your profile, everyone who is connected to you gets notified that you have made changes to your profile.  You now have created another opportunity to put yourself in front of others without looking like a sales person!

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

As we prepared for a recent vacation, I used several of my social networking programs to ask people if they had any recommendations for places to eat in Ft. Lauderdale where we were going for vacation.  My wife loved the idea but asked, “Wouldn’t people know we are out of town and maybe rob our house?”

Privacy is a concern for many internet people.  For this reason, some do not use social networking programs.  Linkedin allows you to create whatever privacy level you want on your Linkedin site.  You can structure your privacy so that no one can see your information; everyone can see everything on your site; or a mixed level of who can see what information.

Most successful social networkers let everyone see their information—the whole point of social networking is to be seen by others.  However, they carefully guard what information they place on a social networking program.

Privacy Options and Your Public Profile

No Views can be seen
Full View can be seen

You can specify any of the following:

• Photo
• Headline
• Summary
• Specialties
• Current Position
• Past Positions
• Education
• Websites
• Interests
• Groups
• Honors and Awards
• Interested in

You will recognize these as the categories you have just completed.  You judge what areas you want open to the general public and what areas you want to remain private to selective people.

You are also allows in this part of the profile to choose a Linkedin button that you can place on your website or email signature file.  Once a person clicks on the button, they are immediately sent to your Linkedin site.  You will notice how popular these social networking buttons have become on internet sites and email signatures.

You can switch and use another Language to create your profile.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

I call the next three areas Power Points on your Linkedin Profilef your profile.  These are critical areas for achieving your goals on Linkedin.  Spend additional time completing these three items.

Recommendations

Three months ago, I was in the process of buying online a winter coat for my wife.  This is always dangerous because you need to get the size; the color and the style right or you get the product returned!  I found a coat I liked and ask my 13 year old daughter, what she thought.  She liked it.  Good sign for dad!!  Then she began reading the reviews about the coat.  She told me, “Dad, you don’t want to buy this coat.  Read the reviews.  Most of them have bad things to say about the coat.”  I did not buy the coat.  This example shows the power of social media, recommendations and reviews.

You should have at least three recommendations about you on your Linkedin profile.  Like customer testimonials for your products and services, these should be regularly changed.

Visitors read recommendations.  You are a stranger to them.  Recommendations give them insights into what you can do for them.  Request recommendations from others much like you would request a reference from them for your resume.  Make sure the recommendations are diverse enough to give the reader a good picture on how you can produce results for them.

Here’s another tip.  Give Recommendations to others on Linkedin.  You can ask each other to exchange recommendations.  Every time you make a recommendation for another person, it gets noted on your profile.  Users see this and see that you understand the business process of giving as much as you gain!

Recommendations are an important part of your Linkedin profile.

Your Photo

Experts say that 65% of the people on today’s internet social networking programs join a connection or become a friend because of the photo of the other person.  If people like what they see, they like being connected with you.

Use a professional photo head shot for your Linkedin profile.  A quick browsing of Linkedin will show you how different a professional photo stands out over the pictures of a person taken at their family more recent picnic.  Who would you rather do business with?  It’s a simple process to upload your photo from your computer.   Let your photo help achieve your Linkedin goals.

Status

You have an opportunity to type in on a regular basis the current status on what you are doing.  You know about Twitter which is the fastest growing social networking program on the internet.  Twitter has made its mark from this one feature “What are you doing now”.  You are allowed only 140 characters to complete this sentence.  Millions are joining Twitter each month. (If you are linked to Twitter, your Twitter lines will appear on your Linkedin page).

The Status Line on Linkedin can be used much like the Twitter 140 character line.  It keeps people informed.  And each time you change your status word goes all the people connected to you.

This is a very useful tool to keep fostering your business efforts.  In advertising they have the expression, “Top of the mind awareness” which means keeping your product in front of people.  You can use the Status Line function to keep yourself in front of your connections.

Since this is a business social network, most often I use the Status function to keep my business in front of my connections.   For example, I wrote recently in my status line, “Just finished a new website for a client, check it out www.dhisprinklers.com”.   I will occasionally put something more personal in this status line to show people that all work and no play make Jonnie a dull boy.

You should be updating your Status line 4-5 times per week.  It will take less than five minutes to do so.  Think of the exposure you get with this five minutes?

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

How You Want to Connect with People

How do you want people to contact you?  You have an opportunity on your profile page to specify exactly how you want to be contacted via Linkedin.  How a user should contact you will depend on how they are connected to you.
•    If a connection views your profile, he or she sees your email address
•    If a user in your network, they can use the “Get Introduced” button or “Contact Directly” button.
Besides helping you find people and opportunities through your network, LinkedIn makes it easy for opportunities to find you.  Here are the three areas to complete:

What type of messages will you accept?
I’ll accept Introductions and Linkedin inmail or I’ll accept only Introductions

Opportunity Preferences
What kinds of opportunities would you like to receive?  You get to check the ones you want to use.

• Expertise requests
• Consulting offers
• Career opportunities
• Business deals
• New ventures
• Personal reference requests
• Job inquiries
• Requests to reconnect

Contact Advice
Contact Advice gives a user considering sending you a request some guidance. So be clear about what details you expect, what kinds of things you are open to, and not open to. Also include information about any limitations.
Include comments on your availability, types of projects or opportunities that interest you, and what information you’d like to see included in a request. To avoid unwanted contacts, do not include contact information, since your response will be visible to your entire network.
Here’s an example: I’m in the middle of several projects right now, so my time is limited. Specific, limited-time contracts will be considered, especially if they can be handled via tele-commuting.
To be continued, your comments are always welcomed…

Al Hanzal