LinkedIn recently announced a change they will be making to their email notifications to make sure users get important messages as soon as possible. Previously, the default setting was to receive a weekly summary  email listing any InMails or Introductions sent to the user by other LinkedIn  members. LinkedIn has stated that the reason the previous setting was enacted was “due to an error on our part,” according to an email they sent to users.

How often do you want to hear updates from social networking sites?

“We received a lot of feedback from people saying they’d rather receive these messages  right away,” stated the email sent to members. “With that feedback in mind, we will be changing  your setting on December 14, 2011 so you’ll receive InMails and Introductions immediately rather than in a weekly digest format. If  you’d like to receive these messages as soon as they are sent, no action is  needed. However, if you’d like to change  how you receive these messages in the future, you can change your email preferences by selecting the weekly digest format.”

Will this change be convenient, or annoying? “I’m a little surprised that they’re changing it to a default setting, when it’s already an option to regulate notifications under the current settings,” said Social Media Administrator Chelsea Janke.  “If they’ve been receiving a lot of complaints from users, they’re probably just trying to be receptive listeners. It’s good to know that they’re taking feedback seriously.”

We’ve always received prompt responses from LinkedIn about inquiries, and it’s been clear that their support department is working hard to please users.

To learn more about changing your email  notifications, please visit the LinkedIn help center.

What do you think about the increase of LinkedIn updates? Is it helpful? Or is it a nuisance?

What’s more frustrating for a customer than trying to connect with a company regarding service, and that company keeps redirecting the customer to various departments? Or, how about once the customer is finally connected with a real person, the service is handled either incompletely, incorrectly, or both?

What is a disgruntled customer to do?

More and more customers are reaching out to connect with companies via social media. As a result of this, virtually any company who deals with customers should have some kind of presence on social media.

How angry do you get when you get terrible customer service?

Now is the time to define ‘presence’ on social media. ‘Presence’ does not mean the company simply has a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account. ‘Presence’ means that the company has people on their staff who ‘get’ practical social media. They need people whoknow how to monitor, strategize and use social media to enhance the customer service for that company, as well as the having the ability to build authority for that company and their brand.

In other words, the company must have an active and knowledgeable social media person or team in order to have an effective social media presence.  After all, a company doesn’t want a disgruntled customer to tweet to their hundreds or thousands of followers something like this:

“Epic #fail 4 @companyname Was just told it would take 2 wks to correct phone#/message. Unable to receive messages/incoming calls in meantime.”

Those 140 characters or less in Twitter can do a LOT of damage for the company’s customer relationship. And what company wants their name or brand linked to the words “epic fail”?

Time to look at a couple of companies who use social media correctly.

Take Facebook for instance. Facebook has integrated Survey Monkey for their fan page survey. This gives Facebook information they can use in discovering how Facebook users integrate with different brands or companies.

Another company who uses social media correctly is AT&T Customer Care on Twitter. Right off the bat AT&T says “AT&Ts social media care teams (https://twitter.com/ATTCustomerCare/teams) are here to help you. For more online assistance, visit http://support.att.com.” By having a Twitter account and actively and correctly using it, AT&T engages their customers, builds authority for their brand, and knows that customers with a good experience will Tweet this experience to their hundreds or thousands of followers.  A case of simple inbound marketing.

If your company is on social media but does not know how to use it effectively, or doesn’t have a social media presence at all, it’s now time to step forward.

Branch Out is Business Networking on Facebook. This new Facebook application allows you to do career networking on Facebook by searching a company name, see which of your Facebook friends are connected to it and posting job openings.

A nice feature is that you can import your information that you’ve already set up on LinkedIn…and then easily network with your Facebook connections.

“While certainly not harmful, this seems redundant to LinkedIn from my perspective and seems to be a way that Facebook is trying to become relevant in the same way they are relevant for social connections,” said Social Media Strategist Caroline Melberg.  “I didn’t see anything with Branch Out that I can’t do with LinkedIn – only better with LinkedIn as more of my professional connections are participating there.  For now, I still see LinkedIn as the 800 lb. gorilla of professional networking online, particularly in light of their recent IPO and market valuation, as well as the increase in new members they saw after that took place.”

Empire Avenue is a combination of game and social networking, calling itself the “social stock market.” It allows you to “value your interaction, engagement and audience across social media accounts and gives you a “share price” against which others can “invest” their own online social capital in the form of virtual currency fueling our version of a “reputation economy.”

According to Melberg, there are several reasons why this site is popular. “This one could certainly be a good deal of fun, and you’ll likely stumble across many new connections that it could be argued would be helpful in building your network. It’s a lot of fun when you sign up and people start ‘buying stock’ in your profile!  That being said, it’s long on the ‘game’ aspect and so from a business perspective I’d recommend fully optimizing LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and getting everything you can from them before diving in here.”

Have fun as you explore these sites, but be sure to keep your social media strategy in mind as you do so!

How do these sites stack up against Referral Key?

In parts I and II of our series on LinkedIn for Marketing/Non-Sales Professionals, we discussed ways to increase your credibility online and how you can make the most of the resources available on LinkedIn. Now let’s take a look at using the social site to evaluate a potential new supplier or partner before meeting in person.

Say you’re considering working with a new supplier or partner company…wouldn’t it be nice to know more about the people you’ll be meeting with before walking into the meeting?

LinkedIn is a great tool for research.  You can visit individual profiles to learn the backgrounds and experience of each person you’ll be meeting with, as well as learn more about the company from their company profile page.

Evaluating a Potential New Hire Before Meeting Them

Of course, LinkedIn is a great tool from a human resources standpoint too.  Not only can you post jobs on LinkedIn when you have open positions, but you can use LinkedIn to research potential candidates as well.

When you are connected on LinkedIn, you can see who your candidates are connected to, and you can see who has recommended them and what they’ve had to say.  Knowing more about a candidate before you meet with them can be a great advantage.

You can also use LinkedIn to find potential candidates – one company I work with does not post openings on job sites any more – they go out to LinkedIn and find potential candidates for the position they have available and then connect with them to gauge interest – she says it’s much easier than sorting through thousands of resumes received for one job posting in the past.

So how have you been using LinkedIn to grow your business? Do you see LinkedIn as a helpful marketing tool?

In our last post we shared some tips on how to use LinkedIn to build credibility online. Regardless of the resource you need, whether it is someone to give you advice or share knowledge about a particular system, trouble-shooting issues you may be having with a software program, learn new ways of doing something that is frustrating you, or whatever you need to know — it’s likely that there is someone on LinkedIn who has had a similar experience and can offer answers or advice.

Sure, you could do this by looking in your address book and calling folks you know, but LinkedIn speeds up the process by allowing you to connect with so many more people, so much faster.  And even more important than the speed, is the ability to connect to people you don’t yet know (either through introductions or through the Answers feature, where you can post a question out to people who are connected to your connections and receive answers, as well as make new connections in that process).

Learning about New Opportunities

Many times, someone from within a company will post a status update or a question within a Group or the Answers section that will spark an idea you may not have thought of previously.

One of my client companies has a director of IT who was struggling with a particular networking challenge.  He happened to see a post from a connection related to a similar problem, along with a solution his connection had suggested.  He wasn’t even out on LinkedIn looking for an answer to that particular problem, but he stumbled across the answer just because he was associating with like-minded folks on LinkedIn, saving him time, headaches and (he says) a lot more grey hair.

Keep an eye out for part III of our LinkedIn for Marketing/Non-Sales series later this week!

It’s often easy to see how using the social networking site LinkedIn to find new potential customers could be very beneficial to sales & marketing teams.  But what if you’re not in sales or marketing?  How can you use LinkedIn to your benefit and the benefit of your company if your role within your company is not directly tied to bringing in new customers?

Here’s a few examples of the benefits of LinkedIn beyond finding new customers:

Building Credibility & Establishing Trust

Regardless of your role within your company, you are representing your company wherever you go.  Engineers, Information Technology, Research & Development and Quality Assurance personnel can use LinkedIn to build their own credibility online and establish trust – key elements in building relationships with anyone you want to do business with.  One of the things that has changed dramatically in recent years is the amount of importance people place on trust and credibility; if you can’t be found online when someone is looking for you, credibility suffers.

For instance, let’s say a potential new client is evaluating your company and one of your competitors.  The decision-maker searches online and discovers that not only are the sales & marketing folks she’s been dealing with from your company knowledgeable, but also your engineers and the people behind-the-scenes have great reputations online as well.

Having a presence on LinkedIn helps build your reputation and credibility for you and establishes your subject matter expertise.  This strengthens your personal brand, opening up new opportunities for you, and establishes credibility for your company as well.

Ways to do this:

1.     Participate in Groups pertaining to your area of expertise.  Answer questions that are posed within the Groups that demonstrate your knowledge and experience.  Ask questions within the Groups to get discussion started.

2.     Create your own Group pertaining to your area of expertise – invite relevant individuals to join your group and ask questions to get the discussion going.

3.     Participate in “Answers” on LinkedIn – go to Answers and do a search for questions pertaining to your area of expertise.  Answer those that are appropriate – answers are voted on at the end of a seven-day posting period, at which time your answer can be ranked “best answer” within a category, further enhancing your reputation and credibility.

In our next post we will cover the importance of making connections with new resources and how to find more opportunities via LinkedIn. Stay tuned!

Referral Key grows your business through referrals. On this site you give and receive referrals and you can get rewards for referrals you give. Mashable says: “The concept of this service is solid and if referrals can generate significant amounts of revenue then it makes sense to sign up…it could pay off big time as well.”

You might recognize requests coming via Referral Key – the subject line of the invitation e-mail asks, “Are you accepting new clients?”  We completely agree with Mashable on this one – the concept of the service is great.  What we’ve seen happen in practice, however, is different than what we believe the real value of the site could become.

For instance, we’ve received numerous requests from people we don’t know to join their referral network.  A true “referral” network, in our opinion, would contain business people you know and would trust to refer within your network.  As more and more requests come through from people we’ve never met, the value of the site is diminished.

Another issue with Referral Key is that when we do accept an invitation from someone we actually know, Referral Key sends us an e-mail inviting us to connect with all of THEIR connections – regardless of whether we know them or not.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, offers the same capabilities to build a referral network (minus the rewards piece), while maintaining network integrity by allowing us to indicate when we receive requests from people we do not know.  LinkedIn was designed to connect people who know each other, along with a mechanism for “punishing” those who abuse the system.

While time will tell with Referral Key, our recommendation is to stick with LinkedIn and develop a strong presence there (instead of trying to participate in too many similar sites and diminishing your effectiveness on all of them).

Use the “Introductions” feature to your advantage to refer people within your network and to receive referrals to business people who can help your company grow.  LinkedIn’s recent IPO and influx of cash will help them innovate, and we expect to see them grow significantly in terms of users as well as features that they offer.  With over 100 Million users, LinkedIn does it right, and is still the strongest professional business networking site around.

Next Steps:  Make sure you are getting everything you can from LinkedIn and using it to it’s fullest potential.

Once you know that’s the case, evaluate Referral Key.  Determine if there are a significant number of potential referral partners or prospects using the site that you can’t reach on LinkedIn.  If so, begin using Referral Key on a limited basis in tandem with LinkedIn, and test your results.

Remember, while the sites are free to participate in, your time invested has a value associated with it.  Make sure you’re investing your time wisely and that you are making strategic decisions about your use of social media, and you’ll have a much greater chance of seeing the returns you are looking for.

New social media sites are popping up all over. As a business owner you need to have a strategy for every social media site you engage in, not just run willy-nilly into them because they are “new”.

What points are beneficial to keep in mind as you explore new social media sites?

Know why you are participating in social media. Do you want to engage in more conversation with your potential clients? Are you looking to build brand awareness with social media?

Explore the site and see if the prospects you want to reach are spending time there.  Determine how the new site fits into your overall strategic plan for social media.

Keeping these tips in mind, we wanted to investigate 3 new social media sites that clients and folks attending our workshops have been asking about lately:

-       Referral Key

-       Branch Out

-       Empire Avenue

We’ll cover Referral Key today – stay tuned for part 2 in this series for our review on Branch Out and Empire Avenue.

Social media is an incredibly convenient communication vehicle and a powerful business tool as well. One of its greatest features is its accessibility. You can Tweet, text or post from just about anywhere – at home, at the mall, in the car – as long as you’re not driving! As the Star Tribune reported today, law enforcement is taking distracted drivers seriously in a one-day crackdown as part of a statewide campaign in Minnesota to stress the dangers and reduce crashes for drivers.

Reporter Tim Harlow points out that texting while driving will make you eight times more likely to be involved in a  crash than a driver who is not texting.

“According to the Department of Public Safety, driver distractions account for 20 percent of all crashes and result in 70 deaths and 350 injuries statewide each year,” reported Harlow.

If jeopardizing the safety of yourself and others isn’t enough, how about having to cough up $300 for being a “distracted driver”? This fine isn’t just for texting – eating, applying makeup, reading a newspaper or magazine are all reasons for law enforcement to pull you over and give you a ticket for being a distracted driver. Even talking on your cell phone, while it is still legal in Minnesota, can result in a ticket if you are driving dangerously (swerving into another lane, etc.) or are distracted from driving.

Read the article.

If it is an emergency and you need to use your phone or do another task that would distract you, find the nearest place to safely pull your car over.

Are you willing to risk your life and the safety of others just to send a text?

Social media is more than just a hobby or form of communication – it has become a valuable PR & marketing tool for companies of all sizes to increase return on investment (ROI). But for all businesses, it’s important to keep in mind that not all social media sites are right for every company. Why? The answer is because first you must find the right sites to reach your target market and cannot simply aim at the general public.

The more strategic you are with social media, the better your ROI will be.

Some might say, “I don’t know what to say or post on social media sites – I’m not a blogger.” In order to use social media as a business tool, you first must use your expertise, in whatever area it may be, to educate and engage your audience in a discussion. Presenting yourself as an expert in your field is key to increasing your social authority.

Are you strategically engaging your audience in a discussion to increase your ROI?