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Insights from My LinkedIn Event at the Wright Institute
If you ever get the opportunity to attend anything sponsored by the Wright Leadership Institute don’t ask questions just go and take plenty of cards with you. I went to the Connect to Success with LinkedIn Networks and Training Event at their headquarters in downtown Chicago on Thursday May 5th and received a wealth of information.
The evening began with about a half hour of networking before the presentations. Mine actually started in the elevator bay on the way up to the event. I met a good handful of interesting people in that time and in fact that was one of the questions we were asked when the formal meeting began. How many of you met a few new people in the back of the room before the presentations started? That was the key to building our network “hubness”.
Dean DeLisle is well known in the social media realm especially on LinkedIn and he gave the first presentation. He is also the social media coach for the Wright Institute. Dean gave great pointers on how to maximize our LinkedIn profiles. His keys points for me were:
- When prioritizing which social media platforms to use LinkedIn should be your first focus. Here’s why. It’s the one that most fully rounded profile of you as a person and professional. From there you can cut and paste details to Facebook, Twitter and any others you belong to. That makes your social media presence consistent throughout.
- Also search your name online to verify the thoroughness of your profiles. Your social media profiles are always the first to appear on search lists.
- Use LinkedIn for the 2nd and 3rd degrees of separation. It’s not just 6 degrees of separation as in the popular literature but only 3 the LinkedIn way. Any updates to your profile (information edits, blog post feeds, updates you type in under your profile picture, connections) go to the feeds of your 1st, 2nd and 3rd level connections
On average 4% of your network (Those 1st, 2nd and 3rds mentioned above) sees what you post so the more connections you make the more people will see and will potentially want to connect with you.
Here’s an example of LinkedIn hubness showing the primary connections and 2nd and 3rd degree connections that extend from them. Still don’t think it’s important to have a LinkedIn profile? Fill in the gaps in yours and grow your indirect connections (4% of 13 million is 1,690,000) by millions.
Dr. Bob Wright , cofounder of the Wright Leadership Institute gave the second half of the presentation. Cranes Chicago calls him a top executive coach so these tips come from a guy who knows what he’s doing.
Some of Bob’s major pointers for me were:
- One of the New Laws of Networks is that You Must Give to Get. In other words you must be a net giver. Give more than you want. It’s known as the “host strategy”.
- One of the keys to ultimate success is knowing Network Science. You want to go from being a Node (individual) to a Hub (a major connection source). LinkedIn can help improve your “hubness”.
- Here’s a question to ask your clients. “What are your five major challenges?” If you want to know how to help them just ask.
There were lots of other good pointers but you’re going to have to check out their upcoming free events and determine what value you can apply from the experience.
Blogging While Brown 2010 The Business of Blogging
The subtitle of the Business of Blogging panel was “Beyond Add Networks” and these guys got my juices flowing with their creative ideas on generating online income via methods other than adds and pay-per-click adds.
Donna Maria Coles Johnson of the Indie Business Blog, Nichelle Stephens of Cupcakes Take the Cake and Navarrow Wright of Global Grind shared their expertise with us and I got bunch of useful take aways.
Donna Maria gave us a couple of good tools to consider. Ever wonder where those online surveys come from? Good chance that one of them is SurveyMonkey . Not only does it create surveys though, but the site also generates charts for your survey data so you can get a statistical feel for what your responders think.
If you’re considering podcasting Donna Maria uses CinchCast as her platform. It also has a number of other useful features to help you optimize your account so check it out and install a podcast on your site.
Another of her suggestions for an extra income stream is one many of us have heard over the years. Blogging for hire. Follow and contact companies on their blog sites and offer your blogging services for their team. Donna Maria’s efforts show that initiative online can pay off just as in the physical world.
Nichelle contributed some great ideas as well. In fact she was representing two enterprises. Her own Cupcakes Take the Cake is about everything cupcakes. If you enjoy home baking or are a lover of deserts you’ll enjoy this site. She also had a table for Pepsi We Inspire which she edits. It’s a site for women to uplift and entertain each other with encouraging expressions. You ladies should definitely look into Pepsi We Inspire.
Two online resources that Nichelle recommended were new to me. Quantcast helps you to identify your audience to improve your marketing efforts. Having trouble nailing down your target demographic? Quantcast is worth looking into.
Another site helps you to compare your site to others. Compete uses a variety of analytics metrics on other web sites to see how your competition is performing. It’s a great competitive intelligence tool.
Nichelle is quite the enterprising lady and I really appreciate the tools she informed us about.
Although Navorrow is best known for the Global Grind blogsite he suggested excercising more technical expertise for profitable blogging. Specifically, create something useful for others. He told us to create technical products that are needed like apps and widgets. Considering all the Facebook games and feed apps that regularly come on the scene this shouldn’t be too difficult an idea for the programmers among us to take to heart.
Navorrow is well respected in online world and if any one knows about tools that work it’s him. His personal consultancy Maximum Leverage Solutions is proof enough of that. He knows the value of providing good tools so all you coders, get those great ideas online and in circulation right away.
I really enjoyed this panel because of the practicality of information given by the presenters. There was something for everyone and no doubt if you’re serious about your blogging and social media pursuits there’s something here for you too. If it’s been in the back of your mind today is a good day to create “top of mind awareness” for yourself and get more serious about the business of blogging.
Blogging While Brown 2010 Where I Learned How to Make My Blog Suck Less
The funnest and funniest presentation by far this year was given by blogger extraordinaire Scott Hanselman. I don’t know if Scott is a Toastmaster but he definitely knows how to use humor effectively.
These are a few key points from his presentation “32 Ways to Make Your Blog Suck Less” that stood out to me:
- People read blogs around 9:00 AM Eastern time on Mondays. Nobody reads them on Saturdays.
- Nothing will lower your readership more quickly than writing about politics if that’s not your main topic. That also goes for anything else significantly off topic from what you usually write.
- Integrate search into your blog site (Google or Bing for example).
- Don’t just reply to an e-mail for help back to that one person. Write a post on the subject and e-mail the link to them instead.
Fortunately Scott distributed the presentation and you can take a look for yourself to pick up a few tips to apply to your site.
Another great part was getting to know Scott on a personal level. Myself and a handful of other bloggers hung out with him the night before his presentation and he had us cracking up the entire time. He is one of those folks who is the same guy on stage and off. Nothing inaccessible about him.
If you ever get to hear Scott in person you should definitely do so. In the mean time get to work on making your blog suck less.
Inbound Marketing University Class 2
SEO Crash Course to Get Found
Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing was the leader of this class. The homework assignment this time was to “Write a blog article that explains why a marketer would want to include SEO in his or her web marketing”. Since it worked so well for me on the first assignment I’ll stick to the three-takeaways format. The presentation was loaded with great Search Engine Optimization tips but here is what I settled on.
- When it comes to ensuring that your posts are found and indexed by Google’s search spiders text is the key. Search engines look for words not images so you don’t want your site too picture or Flash heavy if automated ranking is important to you. Don’t restrict yourself to word of mouth only and bells and whistles to grow your blog readership. Consistently writing solid keyword intensive content is still the key.
- Inbound links also help elevate your blog’s position on search engine results pages. Mores specifically, links from authoritative sites are the key here. Good content again is how you make that happen. Be a thought leader that people want to save and fave.
- And key point number three for me involves search analytics. Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics are must haves. The Webmaster Tools help optimize your site. The analytics code helps you track and analize readership traffic on your site. HubSpot has an analytics tool that Lee recommends as well. It also has a bunch of other tools that I wasn’t aware of. I will definitely begin incorporating more of each into my blogging and social media repertoire.
Here’s the lecture from class number 2. Take a look and listen for yourself and see what else you may find useful.
Blogging While Brown 2010 in Review, Friday the 18th
This year’s Blogging While Brown Conference in Washington, D.C. was great as usual. Actually I rate it as better on a personal level since, as a second time attendee, I was meeting old friends from last year again. Many of us tweet and Facebook through out the year to stay in touch so the reunion effect was really nice. Made more new friends this year too of course and I’ll introduce you to some of them over the next few days.
I got into the nation’s capitol on Friday afternoon and didn’t get to catch the first session Who We Are, What it Means, Why We Matter. Had to check into the hotel and freshen up after a full day of travel. Fortunately Maurice Cherry one of the panelists had someone taking notes which you can read here. Maurice is the owner of 3eighteen media and creator of The Black Weblog Awards. He was joined on the panel by University of Iowa professor Dr. Andre Brock, and blogger Anna John of Sepia Mutiny.
It was good to see Andre again and to meet Maurice. He and I had a chance to chat briefly while I took some video of him and Lamar Tyler – one half of the Black And Married With Kids blog – talking to each other. Didn’t meet Anna – because I missed the panel – and walked by her a couple of times during the weekend not realizing who she was so may be we’ll catch up next time around.
Speaking of meeting new people, I bumped into a couple of folks on the way from the Metro to the conference center. At the rail station near the center I met Patrice Muhammad of the Fascinating Womanhood blog who happened to be asking the attendant for directions to the Washington D.C. Conference Center, the conference meeting site. Along the way we met a young guy, Leon Scott who helped us find the right meeting room in the humongous center. Check out his site and Listen to Leon for his humorous take on life.
A fun tradition of Friday night is game night. After the panel there was light food for the dinner hour. Got a chance to roam the room with my camera and video cam (continuing to network as I went along of course) and got some nice stills and digital film. Working on composing the images into something decent very soon so hang tight.
After chowing and hearing from a few sponsors we got down to the fun part of the evening. We had seriously amazing prizes this year. I sat in at the spades table with Andrea Amir of Smart Money Chicks. We played Danyelle Smith Little, The Cubicle Chick , and Curtis Johnson the Communications Associate for the NAACP’s national office. Andrea and I dispatched Danyelle and Curtis and moved on to the championship round against Michelle and Deirdre on our way to winning netbooks. Yeah, netbooks, niiiice.
As you can see we had a wide range and breadth of professional and online experience to mix and mingle with and learn from. And this was just Friday night. Over the next few days this week I’ll write about my insights from the great panels during the main Saturday sessions. Plenty of great tools you’ll be able to use for your personal and professional blogging. Stay tuned.
Inbound Marketing University Class 1
How to Blog Effectively for Business
Now that spring quarter is over and I have the summer to myself, I am back to working on my first social media certification. HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University was recommended to me within the last year but I couldn’t fit it in with classes, work and home work so now is the time and today was day one of my certification studies. And perfect timing now that my new company Aqueduct Media Corp. has officially launched online this week.
Part of my homework assignment was to write a blog post about three best practices that I will adopt into my blogging strategy. Smart strategy on their part to assign work that spreads their reputation. Not a best practice directly from the video but definitely one I noticed and will begin to incorporate. But take a look at my three take-away’s. Perhaps these or others may inspire you to improve your blogging.
The first best practice is one that I believe I’d ever thought of before and it involves managing your blog roll. Specifically cluing in on how to keep yours relevant. The helpful hint is to make it a habit to follow comments back to the commenters sites and read their blog rolls. That’s of course where you’ll see what interests them. Over time you should see a handful or more of common blog roll links on your most frequent commenters sites and that’s your que to include them on your blogroll as helpful links for the rest of your readers.
Best practice number two is to pick happy and passionate bloggers as contributing writers to add content to your blog. That makes perfectly natural sense to me. My contributing blogger Bridget Wright is one such person. I’m a happy go lucky guy in general and can’t stand to be around emotional boat anchors. Best to have a complimentary personality to keep the online tone consistent so this confirms how I operate. I’ll stay intentionally conscious of it should we decide to grow our team.
Tip number three is somewhat related to point one. Write about what interests your readers. Their blog rolls will give you an indication of this. I think focusing on fewer topics will help me get there. Up to this point I’ve been writing about a lot of personal interests some of which resonate with my readers from time to time but not consistently. A little more balance towards user needs and less towards personal musings. My mix will begin trending towards media, arts and techy stuff all of which grad school and my new company are about so I think I’ll have this under control sooner than later.
Take a look at the video and see which three tips can help improve your blogging. I also encourage you to create an account, go through the entire series and see if you don’t come out a better blogger at the end.
How to Embed A Google Map
Easy as pie. When you go to Google Maps and plug in the address you want to share or you see one on a blog/web site that you want to share, here’s how you plug it into the site you’re editing.
At the top right corner of the map you will see three options, Print, Send and Link. Click on Link and it generates two sets of code. The first gives you the option to post a web link into an email or IM (text message). The second creates the HTML embed code you can add to your web site or to a particular blog post that you’re writing.
Copy and paste the code and you’ll get a Google map like I have above. It will be fully functional with the usual capabilities to zoom in or out for greater or lesser surrounding geographic detail, the travel to or from address feature and the nearby search link.
Currency Flexibility on Eventbrite
Did you know you could use international denominations on Eventbrite? Say you want to plan an event in Great Britain like this web design conference in Norwich, Norfolk.The site sets the ticket prices on the British pound.
Alright, my entrepreneurial American friends. If you’ve ever thought of taking your conference, concert or strade show on the road Eventbrite has the infrastructure to facilitate that.
