LinkedIn Today 101: What You Might Have Missed in 2011

Most companies understand the importance of social media, and some may even understand all of the different networks available. However, there is one social network that does more than just offer a place for people to connect and share their thoughts and/or business promotions—LinkedIn. Although the feature has been available since March of 2011, many publishers as well as consumers are unaware of what is known as LinkedIn Today.

3 Ways LinkedIn Today Gets Personal

LinkedIn Today is a way for LinkedIn users to access different news stories circulating the web. Not only is it great because it pulls different news sources together, but it gives readers an easy way to sift through the site and only read the information that interests them. The best part: the feature actually pulls news stories that LinkedIn thinks you would enjoy. The network pulls these articles based on a three things:

1. Connections: LinkedIn will take a look at your connections and see what types of information these connections are reading and discussing. This works for LinkedIn because it is the professional network, so chances are there is a common theme amongst a profile’s connections. This would probably not work with a network like Facebook nearly as well, but has proven to work great with the professional platform.
2. Follow Patterns: LinkedIn offers the feature of following certain industries. This is a surefire way to know exactly what interests a user when it comes to news about their careers.
3. Industry Connections: Once LinkedIn Today finds the industries you are following and pulls articles based on those industries, they actually look to what other industries are saying about a particular article or topic. This is a great way to keep up with what others are saying about a subject that likely connects with your profession or future profession.

Not only is LinkedIn Today great for users looking to keep up on news that affects them, but it also works extremely well for publishers. Articles are shown to users based on popularity, so it’s important that your news source gains as much visibility as possible (obviously). Many companies are already doing what they can to increase their SEO as well as social media efforts, but they must make sure they stay active on LinkedIn through sharing and connecting. Once your company becomes more popular and starts becoming recommended to users on LinkedIn Today, you’ve tapped into a great source!

Amber King is a writer and marketer for a Calvin Klein Underwear retailer. She also writes for various blogs and marketing communities giving startup companies financial advice.

At Web Marketing Therapy, our mantra is “we do not plan to fail, we fail to plan.” (also said as “strategy first, execution second”). Defining clear goals of what you and your business are, how you are perceived and what you expect from your online efforts are necessary to do before they go live on the page.  However, such planning takes time and effort and for busy entrepreneurs, a reasonable place to begin. So I produced my favorite marketing tool, the 36 Hour Course on Online Marketing by Web Marketing Therapy CEO Lorrie Thomas that is chock full of helpful directions and began to carve out a marketing plan of attack.

First, we took baby steps and answered the online marketing questionnaire to gather some notes. Second, we used those notes to devise a rough marketing strategy that married the offline efforts with the new online ones for consistency. By taking the time to consider these questions, certain facts revealed themselves quickly. Lacking from her marketing materials was her knowledge, expertise and product offerings so there was work to be done to establish a unique virtual identity.  Here were the main three key points we focused on:

1. Is What You Have To Say Different?

Are you saying the same things the same way your competition is?  It is important to distinguish yourself so create a marketing message that establishes a leadership role in this industry and highlight your unique brand. Explain in that message why clients need your services. Customers make decisions with their emotions so doing a little web marketing therapy on messaging (as well as channeling Maslow’s hierarchy of needs into it) can work wonders on your results.

2. Who is Your Target Audience?

You can’t be all things to all people, but by deciding who your clientele is and what motivates them will help to laser focus the message directly to them. This purposed, focused concise message means a better chance of capturing other non-targeted audiences as well. With this in mind, the spa client is targeting a larger professional client base that she knows is currently underserved in the community.

3. Can You Take The Heat? This question was of particular interest to the spa owner as she was also redefining and shaping her new and improved offline image. The following questions helped to focus online goals and priorities.

• Do you have what it takes to tell your story in a way that people remember?
• Are you ready to focus on a new audience who is motivated to say yes?
• Are you able to ignore complaints to the new cutting edge approach?
• Are you ready to start marketing with visual images such as video?

The difficulty with creating a strategy was just making the time to just sit down and do it. Once the effort was made and information analyzed, the plan came together easily and a thoughtful marketing plan was created. With her new business image in tow, the spa owner reports an uptick in web traffic and bookings from fresh new faces. Way to go!

In this increasingly online world, your website is often your first interaction with a potential client. And, yours is probably not the only site that this potential client is going to check out. If your website looks neglected, is confusing, hurts the eyes, or just doesn’t exist, it’s very, VERY likely that you just lost a new client to one of your competitors.

Remember: We let our fingers do the shopping online, and it’s incredibly easy to click a back button and move on down the list without ever even calling or stepping foot in your store/office/restaurant. So even if you’re just a small, local company, or have been in business for thirty years, a strong website is always a valuable thing!

On our other blog (appropriately titled Wild Web Women), we recently talked about some basic Do’s and Don’ts for your website. These basics are great for a brand spanking new website and a website that’s already been created. Some of the basic Do’s include having a great “About Us” page that focuses on who you are and keeping your site simple and easy to navigate. Some of the Don’ts include abandoning your site once it’s created and annoying your website viewers with something like an auto-play movie or music.

Enjoy a spoonful of web marketing therapy and check out the Do’s and Don’ts of Websites and get your site on the right track!

Invest a couple of extra minutes to do some keyword research so you can increase the chances of more people actually reading your brilliant post.

Blog Optimizing Keyword Research Tips:

• When you sit down to write, ask yourself “What words would my customers use to search this topic”- and be realistic. Your choice of words is critical (particularly in the title).
• You want to think about who your customers are and what they search for. I know this seems like common sense, but you would be surprised by how many bloggers miss an opportunity to be found online just because they did not think about the keywords in their title.
• Utilize Google’s Keyword Tool.  This free and easy to use tool is one of the best ways to conduct your keyword research (and it is free & easy to use). Type in the topic you want to blog about in the “word or phrase” and it will pull up the most searched for terms relating to that topic.
• Something to keep in mind: The higher searched terms are more competitive and may not produce the best results for your blog.  You might be better off using a slightly less competitive term for better search engine ranking.
• If you want to explore other options there are lots of great tools out there to explore. Here are a few to get you started: Wordtracker; WordStream; and  Thesaurus.com
• Practice makes perfect: Making good decisions on which words to use takes practice.  Just keep up with the Keyword Research and you will soon learn to optimize your blog like a pro!

Use this video tutorial to learn more about Google’s Keyword Tool

Prezi

Prezi is an online presentation tool that uses zooming animation technology that instantly engages the viewer in an creative way. Made famous by TED conferences and an investment by TED as a startup in 2009, Prezi is a truly unique (and super fun) presentation tool for visualizing complex concepts and mental engagement through storytelling.

Ideal for marketing pitch presentations and mind-blowing “A-Ha!” educational lectures, Prezi is also a fun tool for resumes, portfolios, and – of course – conference presentations. Users can embed YouTube video content and images, and use customizable templates to kickstart your creative side. When I used Prezi for the first time, I played around with the fun features for about 45 minutes – and then I was able to start designing my presentation.

A “Public” Prezi account is no-cost and allows for full functionality. Buy a yearly package for more storage space and capabilities.

SlideRocket

If you like the feel and familiarity of PowerPoint, but wish it were about 1,000 times cooler, SlideRocket is the presentation software for you.

SlideRocket is a feature-packed, intuitive and elegant online presentation tool that allows the user to create interactive slideshows with animation, embedded YouTube video content, surveys, and even Twitter feeds. You can access your slideshows online, on your iPad or iPhone, embed into your website, or use as a live presentation – and then track your viewers’ interaction using built-in analytics tools.

What else can SlideRocket do? Users can import existing content from PowerPoint presentations and Flickr photos. SlideRocket is Google App integrated so you can feed data from your Google Docs in real time.

Like Prezi, SlideRocket offers an attractive and functional suite of dynamic features for free, plus the ability to use their powerful analytics tools at the next paid account level up.

Tools for Content Storytelling

I’m not getting paid to plug these great online applications. But I would love to see every small business owner and marketing team exploring business marketing resources available in the cloud. Online presentation tools are not only efficient and innovative for client sales meetings, they can boost visibility and credibility as dynamic content for your website.

Charitable organizations looking for nonprofit discounts on software should also contact Prezi and SlideRocket for special pricing and take advantage of presentation tools to give you a competitive fundraising edge.