10 Tips for LinkedIn Business Growth

Many companies sign up for a LinkedIn presence but then do nothing to optimize or utilize it. Yet, LinkedIn can go a long way toward bringing in new leads and sales, and ultimately toward boosting the company’s sphere of influence, depending on the business and how willing it is to invest in LinkedIn as a viable resource for strategic growth. 

Simply setting up a LinkedIn page gets you nowhere. You have to strategize, and you have to be diligent to tap in to the immense potential for business development.

Here are 10 tips that can help you invest your time and efforts for growth.

1.     START OFF COMPLETE

Before you begin to promote your LinkedIn page, you need to make sure you have something that’s actually worth promoting. That means taking the time to complete the profile, ensuring that you provide thorough and detailed information about your company. Ensure that there is a professional-quality photograph or image, as well, because good visual branding increases consumer trust.

2.     DOUBLE UP PROFILES

Create both a personal page and a company one. Whether you’re the CEO of the company or simply a consultant, you need to have your own page through which you can project individual authority—but of course, a company page is also vital. Make sure that your company page includes all pertinent data about the business, including the number of employees you have.

3.     PROMOTE THE COMPANY PAGE

If you’re going to be really investing in using this page as a tool for online branding and business development—which you should—then it helps to take the time to let people know it’s there. Include a link to it on your company website and on your Facebook page, and also in e-mail signatures and on business cards.

4.     BUILD YOUR NETWORK

LinkedIn will automatically recommend people for you to add to your network, simply based on the content you already have in your profile. The more connections you build, the more your customers and potential customers will see that you’re reputable and authoritative. Regularly search for contacts, import contacts from your e-mail address book, and use the recommendations that LinkedIn offers.

The contacts should not all be from the same industry. Let’s say that you own an advertising firm, you want to have connections from within the world of advertising, but you also want to have connections with realtors, and lawyers, and small business owners who might need advertising services. You’re not doing your company any favors by remaining within a small bubble.

5.     JOIN GROUPS

Join groups with high numbers of participants, and ensure that you’re in groups that are both directly and tangentially related to what your own profession is, for maximum impact.

6.     GET RECOMMENDATIONS

A recommendation is one of the best things you can get for engendering trust and goodwill from potential customers and clients. As such, it is very much worthwhile for companies and professionals to actively solicit recommendations from customers who are satisfied with the work done or the product provided.

7.     SEEK OUT AND CONNECT

Use the platform’s search feature to seek out people to connect with. Looking for a new employee? Don’t wait for him or her to find you. Search for someone who fits your job description and send a personalized request to connect. LinkedIn’s search tool is extremely effective, so use it!

8.     INCREASE PRODCUTIVITY WITH THE MOBILE APP

Business professionals can increase their productivity by using the mobile app. Access LinkedIn while you’re riding the subway, waiting for an appointment, or taking your lunch break. Approve new connections and take care of other housecleaning items during your down time.

9.     MAKE REGULAR UPDATES

Regular status updates can make any LinkedIn page more effective, and a good way to increase those status updates, fairly easily, is to tie in the company Twitter account. Integrating these two social platforms is a great way to really get more bang for your buck, in terms of those updates you’re writing.

10.   INCORPORATE THE COMPANY BLOG

As of fairly recently, LinkedIn has produced a way to automatically feature blog updates (you can manually enter them, as well). Make sure your company blog is linked from your profile page, perhaps with an attention-getting and descriptive title to keep your latest messaging and updates in front of your key business contacts.

How to Use Buzzworthy Guerrilla Marketing: Take it from a Rock Band.

It was a couple years ago that I read of Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire’s approach to launching their album and stumbling across the article again, I feel it’s worth another look at what businesses can learn and benefit from a more guerrilla tact to marketing and advertising. Indie rock bands are not often thought to be the fodder of Bloomberg Business Week articles, but such is the case with the Canadian natives in Arcade Fire. The band, in the process of preparing to release its latest record -- a double-disc project titled Reflektor – was hailed “experts of guerilla marketing craft.”

Arcade Fire isn’t exactly the type of band that needs an aggressive and mysterious street marketing plan to be successful. After all, the band, who arrived on the scene with 2004’s critically-beloved Funeral and won a surprise Grammy for Album of the Year with 2010’s The Suburbs, is arguably the biggest and most buzzworthy band in the so-called “indie rock” scene.

Indeed, the members of Arcade Fire, which include husband-and-wife vocalists Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, as well as a seemingly ever-shifting group of versatile instrumentalists, could easily have rested on its laurels and depended on the success of their previous album and the marketing sweep of their record label—North Carolina’s Merge Records—to help the upcoming Reflektor toward a hopeful (and highly likely) number one berth atop the Billboard charts. Instead, Arcade Fire took to a marketing route for this album that was anything but run-of-the-mill, using an inspired set of guerilla marketing tactics other bands and record labels—or even major businesses outside of the entertainment industry—could learn a little something from.

Arcade Fire’s innovative marketing campaign began suddenly and unexpectedly in July 2013, when one of the band’s Twitter followers sent them a tweet with the simplistic words of “you’re my favorite.” The band responded to the compliment with a tweet of their own, thanking the fan for his support and then tossing off a seemingly nonchalant comment that would function as the band’s announcement of their return: “Our new album will be out on October 29th.”

From there, the marketing campaign for Reflektor was executed largely from the shadows and almost entirely at the street level. Sidewalk chalk and mysterious posters gave way to secret shows, with small pieces of information gradually making their way to the press. First, the title was unveiled through the cryptographic symbol that the band continuously emblazoned on their posters or in their chalking campaigns; later, pre-order bundles on the band’s website revealed that the new record would be a double-album release; and eventually, song titles and lengths—most of them long—were revealed on iTunes and other digital music vendors.

There was also a single—the dance-oriented title track, which “leaked” to YouTube and began collecting buzz before the band even mentioned that iconic glam rock superstar David Bowie had contributed back-up vocals—as well as advance listening parties and reviews from major music publications that only fed the flames further. A euphoric write-up of the new album was published on Rolling Stone’s website a month prior to the album’s release, with the writer, veteran music journalist David Fricke, calling Reflektor “the best album Arcade Fire have ever made.”

The band’s marketing campaign managed to generate a huge amount of attention and anticipation for their new album, even though they have never had much of a presence on mainstream pop music radio.

So what’s the big takeaway? 

The most ingenious part of the campaign for Reflektor is that Arcade Fire managed to maintain the mystery of guerilla marketing forms while still sticking to the same advertising calendar that most major music releases follow. The band released a radio single, but did so in an unorthodox way; they also sent out promotional advances to key music publications to stir up anticipation, but have thus far done so without the album leaking to the public ahead of its highly-publicized release date.

Arcade Fire appeared on Saturday Night Live, taking over NBC’s late-night programming slot for a half hour after the popular sketch TV show’s 39th season premiere to unveil a batch of news songs. However, even the SNL concert special was far from commonplace. The special, which was directed by filmmaker Roman Coppola and which featured cameos from the likes of Ben Stiller, James Franco, Bill Hader, Zach Galifianakis, and U2 front man Bono—as well as pseudo “host” work from Michael Cera, a fellow Canadian—balanced oddball comedy and a near-nightmarish visual aesthetic with the obviously-promotional premiere of several new songs from Arcade Fire’s new album.

The whole marketing campaign ultimately boils down to one thing: Arcade Fire was able to keep their album in the public eye without resorting to invasive advertising. Instead of irritating pop-up web browser ads or repetitive television commercials, the band has built up a perfect storm of anticipation for Reflektor by disguising their true motives—ostensibly, to sell their product—in layers of performance art, self-mockery, and shadowy guerilla marketing. The band managed to forge a calculated marketing path while simultaneously making the whole thing look like an accidental mess, and that same kind of guerilla marketing model could be a refreshing substitute for the more in-your-face advertising strategies that most businesses use today.

How to Boost Online Business with Behavioral Targeting

It could be one of the strongest marketing tools you have; so what is behavioral targeting?

Simply explained, behavioral targeting refers to a range of techniques and technologies that online businesses and marketers can use to closely define and target audiences. These tools collect important strategic data about customers’ shopping and browsing habits while on a business’s website, including how they get there and what links they click on.

When used correctly, behavioral targeting strategies allow businesses to observe the online behavior of their customers and then customize their communication with those customers to match. This makes it a more powerful tool than the related demographic targeting, which can focus on groups of customers but not the details themselves.

Unless your online business caters to a very niche market, behavioral targeting can prove a very useful tool. Most ecommerce businesses cater to several different types and groups of customers with different values and habits. With behavioral targeting, you can take all of these details into consideration to deliver the best communication methods available for your customers.

Different Types of Online Behavioral Targeting 

Behavioral targeting is not a single thing that can be given a single definition.  Instead, it is a term that comprises a variety of methods and techniques. Some of the most common of these methods that many online businesses use include the following:

       Customizing Deals – Online retailers can use behavioral targeting to determine which of their products or services a certain customer may be most interested in by seeing which page they visit most often. Once they have a good idea which way customers are leaning in their prospective purchases, retailers can then offer these customers personal deals on those purchases. This can persuade customers to go ahead and make the sale.

       Personalizing Websites – This is a popular method utilized by many major ecommerce sites such as Amazon.com. By analyzing which products a customer has shown the most interest in, online businesses can determine which of their products it would be most beneficial to highlight for those customers. They can then personalize their product highlights for each customer based on these tastes. If customers see a selection of related products next to their online shopping carts, they are more likely to include them as well.

          Personalizing Email – Mass email notification can be an effective marketing tool, but for many online customers it just looks like spam in their inbox. To stand out among these impersonal messages, online companies can personalize customer emails based on their movement around that company’s website. By making the message instantly more relevant to the customer, retailers increase their odds of the customer taking an interest in it.

       Remarketing – This type of online advertisement has proven to be a revolutionary innovation in Internet marketing. Remarketing basically refers to online ads that follow customers from site to site. Retailers analyze behavioral targeting data to find which customers seem the most interested in their products. They can then strategically purchase ad space on other sites that display their marketing specifically to these customers. In this way, online retailers can keep up unobtrusive communication with their customers even after they have left the retailer’s site.

Privacy Concerns with Behavioral Targeting

While behavioral targeting is a powerful tool, it is not without its controversies. Chief among these is the distaste that many customers often have knowing that their personal data is being collected without their control.

If you don’t use it right, behavioral targeting can make your customers feel like you’re stalking them. And if you’re too persistent with your communication to a single customer based on behavioral targeting data, then you’re just going to look like a spammer and drive away customers who might otherwise be interested in your business. It becomes a fine line to walk; ideally, you want to do most of your data collection anonymously, collecting only a shopper’s habits and not their personal information.

If businesses do target one customer specifically, make your communication brief, courteous, and to the point. Don’t bombard customers with continuous marketing across all platforms by spamming their email and making every ad they see based on your business. With behavioral targeting, a little bit goes a long way.

5 Quick Tips for Great Content Marketing

Content marketing and other online search engine optimization strategies have become more and more important as print media has slowly been challenged in favor of Internet interaction. As I have grown my business and worked with other companies to grow theirs, I have seen the Internet grow from a niche marketing tool into the primary vehicle for companies of all shapes and sizes reach consumers. This has included the growth of content marketing from a relative marketing strategy to an essential tool of building brand trust and image.

Here are a few major do’s and don’ts for how business’s can successfully use content marketing to help advance their bottom line.

1. ESTABLISH YOUR AUTHORIAL VOICE

One of the biggest pieces of advice for content marketers is a tip that has likely been repeated hundreds or thousands of times since content marketing became an industry essential: Make sure all content marketing materials have a distinct authorial voice. While there is much to be said for attempting to adopt the voice of an entire business or corporation, there is also something to be said for creating content that is compelling, well-written, and sparked with personality. Most good content marketing writers innately know how to blend an undercurrent of compelling authorial voice with a professional and engaging tone. Do not publish content articles written like dry business memorandums. Content marketing is aimed at an everyday audience, either browsing a business’s website for case studies and blogs or searching Google for articles about specific topics. In both cases, readers will be more drawn to writing that feels like it came from a down-to-earth blogger than they will be to content that is clearly aimed at boosting internet traffic and selling products or services.

2. HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY

Content marketing articles are more or less worthless if they have nothing new to say on the topic at hand. Many content marketers trawl popular buzz topics in an effort to find out what is trending on Google, Twitter, or Facebook at any given time. There’s nothing wrong with this tactic as long as you take a news story and uses it as a springboard for an article that offers unique viewpoints, adds to the news story with updates or other relevant information, or poses questions of its own. Simply paraphrasing articles or blogs already published by reputable news sources will prove counter-productive. In other words, content marketers need creativity, analytical skill, and journalistic prowess to be successful. However, if a content provider can add his or her own spin to a popular topic, authorial voice will likely appear as well, and readers will reward the extra effort with more clicks and shares.

3. KEEP IT FRESH AND INTERESTING

It is far too easy for content marketers to fall into a rut with their material by not thinking outside of the box. For instance, a content marketer running a campaign for an educational institution should not only write blogs and articles revolving around schools and students. Myriad topics can be connected to education, from the state of the job market to trending health topics to questions of finance and inflation. Content marketers who are willing to venture into unexplored subject matter will stand a better chance of increasing their client’s Internet presence and boosting their own effectiveness.

4. KNOW WHEN TO WRAP UP

Similarly, content can become stagnant or dull even in the space of a single article or blog. A good content marketer is a writer who knows instinctually when he or she has run out of interesting things to say on a topic and when the content needs to move toward a conclusion. That is not to say that lengthier articles don’t have an audience—they do, especially among academic types—but traditionally, the attention span of Internet readers is shorter than that of the print media audiences of old.

5. STAY RELEVANT

It is easy to go browsing through news topics for content ideas. However, if a news story is more than a day or two old, chances is that the content’s lifespan is already running out, at least in terms of search engine optimization. A writer who believes he or she has something vital to say on a topic should not be scared away by “old” news, but in most cases, the same rules apply to content marketers as apply to journalists: if you aren’t one of the first to weigh in on a topic, there may be little point in expending the time and effort to weigh in at all. Instead, content marketers should consider holding off on old news topics and waiting for a similar story—or better yet, a news update—to come along and reignite the conversation.

Core Basics for an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

No matter how powerful social media and the presence it creates can be, efforts towards social marketing are inhibited by a company’s ability to publish high quality content that accurately — and subtly — publicizes the brand’s messaging. There is a lot of clutter out there on the Internet, and to keep your company alive and surging you need to form the right strategy in order to stand out against competition.

Content publishing – whether it is a whitepaper, blog, press release, news article, or webpage – requires interesting and informative material. People often skip right over chunks of text, because there are so many other (shorter) options to read; it is crucial for marketers to form well-found messages and write content around them.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

·      Timeliness: Whatever the post or piece is, it needs to come out at the proper time. This is especially important when companies are sharing industry-related trends and popular information that could get lost in an upsurge of publications.

·      Quality versus Quantity: The age-old battle is easily settled in the content war. Companies can benefit by promoting as much pro-marketing content as possible, without sacrificing its quality. This is important for reasons explained in the next section.

·      Exposure and Ranking: The primary goal of online publishing is to support a brand’s websites and online assets. Every article, mention, blog, and post increases the chances a potential client will find a company in the first place. Due to technical reasons with modern search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo), Internet powerhouses have begun efforts to meet the needs of online users in order to provide well-meaning content on search results. In essence, poor-quality content is ranked lower and disappears. Long-lasting, quality, and timely content on the other hand, can silently generate exposure with minimal effort.

·       Share-through: Create content that is worthy of a share and post it on major platforms where is can easily be seen and forwarded.  This necessitates making sure the content is relevant and interesting and taps your audience’s attention to want to take the time to pass along and/or share via word of mouth with other people within their social networks, both online and offline.