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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.

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You’re On Facebook So Now What?

I just read a great book called I’m On Facebook, Now What??? with a lot of good information you can apply immediately. It covers all points from profile optimization to leveraging the Facebook platform for business. Here are a few points that stood out to me.

The book explains that the demographic for Facebook is mostly GenY. This is where the under 35 crowd hangs out.

It also talks about organizing friends into Friends Lists on your own profile as well as joining groups of interest to you. If you have a subgroup of friends that you want to consistently send particular types of info to then you can choose the list name without needing to select a bunch of individuals each time.

One of the nice features are advertising apps written by creative programmers. You can also use Facebook’s add creation button. Business apps are populating Facebook’s space daily. It’s worth your while to spend time investigating some of them to aid business generation.

I learned a completely new term, Social Network Optimization. Including specific search terms (a Search Engine Optimization technique) in the application you create can push it higher on search engine results pages when Facebook users are looking for something new to add to their profiles.

Great chapter on privacy including pros and cons of various settings. I’ll leave it to you to read but suffice it to say you  can restrict your friends access to specific pieces of information on your profile, your feeds etc. Everyone doesn’t have to know everything. You can also restrict their ability to comment. These features are particularly helpful if you have colorful friends you want to keep up with but don’t necessarily want to have all your other FB friends scratching their heads about who you hang out with online (smile).

Great book. Check it out from your library or buy it soon.

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Use Social Media for Your School Group Fundraisers

A friend who made mention on Facebook of her fundraiser for the cheer leading team got me to thinking about how social media – specifically Facebook, which she is familiar with – could be used to make fund raising more effective for the team. If you were a coach or close supporter of a cheerleading or similar school club here’s how I’d recommend you approach it.

Create a Facebook Page for your team with the “Brand, product, or organization:” set up. Pick the “Non-Profit” option from the drop down list. Non profits raise funds all the time so this should easily accelerate your team’s fund raising efforts. Invite your student’s parents, fans and community supporters to “Like” the page. Even though it’s generally assumed that kids participating in school system sponsored activities will be videoed and photographed you may still want to check with your school system and parents to obtain permission to use the kids’ images for photos and videos on the FB Page. You know your school system so I leave that part to your sense of judgment.

You will also need to determine how your local school system wants you to disposition any funds you collect. Will you need to turn the money in to a book keeper, accountant or CFO in your school or at the school board? If this is the case then you will need to work closely with that financial person to make sure  online transactions are routed properly through your site and properly accounted for by your board of education. That’s the last step though so more on that later.

There are three components of your FB Page plan that will make your efforts effective. These are the pieces of your virtual club marketing/public relations system that you will need to explain clearly to the financial person.

First and simplest is to activate the “Events” tab on the Page. This is where you can add the games where the team will be cheering, the camps and competitions they’ll be attending and any public appearances they make. This tab and the “Wall” are fundamental to the basic public relations for the group.

Next you’ll want to create an Eventbrite account. Eventbrite is an online ticketing website that allows you to sell tickets to your events. When you create the event and people buy from your link they can print tickets and their money is deposited into your account. It’s simple online purchasing with a credit or debit card like people do every day only now it benefits your cheering squad.

Finally, should you decide to get fancy, consider adding a PayPal donation button to the site. It should go perfectly on a custom designed landing page for your Fan Page. People love helping kids and a well designed graphic with the school name and school system with mascots, logos, maybe a good action photo or two, would surely encourage people to give in general during the times when you’re not selling anything in particular.

As far as accounting for online fund raising this is where the financial people do their part. The accountant/book keeper etc.  will enter the school or school system’s bank account info into the PayPal and Eventbrite accounts so that purchases and donations are routed properly. That’s as easy as sitting down next to them in their office logging into the team’s Eventbrite and PayPal sites and turning your head while they enter the confidential bank account and routing information. At that point your Facebook Page is fully functional as a fund raising tool and it’s a matter of drawing people to click the “Like” button to use it.

Most people love online ticket buying so it shouldn’t be too difficult to convince your target audience to use the Page to buy a car wash or competition or bake sale or whatever type of ticket once you make them aware of it as a purchasing option. The only difficulty I can anticipate is convincing your local educational powers-that-be to jump into the social media sphere, especially if they are skeptical of the online world. Know the important contact people, schmooze and prepare well in order to broach this subject to any hesitant parties in order to launch your plan successfully.

If you need an example take a look at this cheerleading team’s Page and see how it could be improved with the income generating tweaks mentioned here. If you have a cheerleading team or any other school organization whose supporters you are trying to groom into financial supporters then consider using these basic social media tools that more people are using every day.

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Use Social Media to Sell Boy Scout Popcorn

Scouts and Scouters now is the time to ramp up your online sales planning for the 2010 popcorn sales campaign. This is the third year that the Boy Scouts of America has allowed the use of e-mail to increase sales. The BSA created unique sales ID codes for each scout to e-mail to their relatives to buy popcorn which would be credited to that Scout. This year have your parents extend that system to their social media networks which are likely much larger than their e-mail address books.

It’s the obvious next step in using online tools to help your unit excel by using the social media sphere. A number of units and councils are using all manner of social media. This Pack from Virginia has outlined their campaign goals and achievements on their web site along with other useful information about their unit. The Bay Area Council has links to the national BSA listing of social media links such as the national council’s Facebook Page and Twitter page. These folks have set the precedent so it’s time for your Pack and Troop to get on the ball with leveraging social media for your benefit.

Start with a Facebook page. You need to have a personal account first. Then create a Twitter page for your unit. Pretty sure you need to have a personal account to do this as well. Assuming you already have personal profiles for both of these platforms though, invite all of your personal FB friends and Twitter peeps to “Like” your unit Page and “Follow” your unit Twitter account. Then send invites to your Scouts’ parents to Like and Follow and have them forward both sites to their friends and peeps to help build momentum for the virtual sales effort. The main thing though is to make sure that your parents forward their son’s online ordering code to their social media connections.

For your Page consider creating an Events tab to advertise the neighborhoods, football tailgates and other events and places where your Boys will be selling popcorn. Also think about creating a landing page and adding a PayPal button to it to accept general donations to your unit year round. Naturally you’ll want to keep the wall updated regularly so that your growing list of Facebook fans can brag about your unit and encourage other youngsters to join your unit.

Use social media to have a record breaking sales year for your Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and make this 100th year of Scouting a memorable one for your unit.

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Are You Underutilizing Your Fan Page?

O.K. Facebook Page owners and administrators time to liven up that site and make it the tool it was meant to be. Pages are designed for interaction with your fans/Like list.

At a minimum, you want to populate your basic four tabs with information. Use the Wall the same as you would on your personal profile, only, with business or organizational information instead of fun or personal stuff.

Fill out the Info tab so people can quickly see why they should “Like” your site. This should include your website, mission, services, phone number etc. so they can get a feel for who your organization/company is and what you do. It seems obvious that you would do this much but many neglect to fill in these details so be sure you remember.

Definitely use the Photo tab for your visual fans. Nothing makes your page more human and relatable than pictures so be sure to upload images on a regular basis to reinforce your message.

The Discussion tab is the perfect medium to engage your fans and get them involved by engaging with you the administrator but more importantly with each other so that they begin to develop a community. Ultimately this will motivate them to start advocating the cause to their personal audience by advertising the page to their friends, thus growing your “Like” list.

You can also add your own customizable tabs to enliven your Page site. Clicking on the + tab allows you to select more tab options. Want to add videos? Pick that option. Want to add events? Pick that one too.

These foundational tabs help fans and potential fans take your Facebook Page more seriously. So add a few today, begin using them and see what a difference it makes.

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Inbound Marketing University Class 3

Social Media and Building Community

Class # 3 was about my favorite subject, social media. The presentation was given by Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs. The homework assignment was to write up a step-by-step plan for how I could develop a community around my company on a social networking site of my choice. That assignment is in the works and the choice is a Facebook fan page.

Chris gave ten key points in developing a community. Among them are to listen to and acknowledge community members. Respond to comments and give content that is useful to them. Also it’s not about the platform (FB, twitter etc.) but the people. When the next big thing comes along  your community will follow you to that platform as well. Serve them well in the mean time to insure that. Also celebrate your community members. Celebrate your community’s personal and professional successes.

The other tips were great too. Play the video and take in good information provided by Chris and be more effective in growing your online community.

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Blogging While Brown 2010, Technology Review Panel

Saturdays are the typical meaty day of information and learning during Blogging While Brown weekend and this year was no different. The first panel on June 19th was a Technology Review featuring Cheryl Contee of Jack and Jill Politics, Angela Benton of Black Web 2.0 and Adam Conner of Facebook’s Washington, D.C. office.

There were so many great comments and suggestions that I can’t properly credit each answer to each panelist. I was making my first attempt at live Facebooking and Twittering and between that and my notepad I just lost  track of myself (LOL). But here are a few items that stood out to me as things to follow up on post-conference.

  • One of the panelists mentioned the value of having contributing writers for your blog. That’s a good point. You add fresh perspective and new ideas in that way. For political blogs in particular you can submit your site to Google as a political resource.
  • Add widgets designed for personal interests. It’s a way of improving your site as a design change. I might add that  contracting or having a good programmer on your blogging team could prove beneficial too.
  • Use Disqus as a commenting platform for your blog. Jack and Jill Politics uses it to manage their commenting community. Seems like a good management tool.
  • Many colleges and universities have ceased establishing new student email accounts on their servers. Instead they use texting and Facebook communities.
  • Semantic widgets were mentioned as a potential tool for our blogging tool  boxes.

Another that seems to have great potential for wider spread use is something called augmented reality. Seems to have been around for a little while but here’s more in case it’s new to you as it was for me. According to the Wikipedia page on the matter “With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable.” In reading only that much I’m imagining business possibilities from my animation curriculum. Thanks again Blogging While Brown!

The panelists were outstanding, giving us insights into their world as successful bloggers and answering questions from the floor. Each of them had a key take away that was valuable to me. Cheryl suggested the we invite consistent commenters to be contributing post writers and integrate them into our team. Angela suggested incorporating webisodes into our sites.

The keys for me though were the main reason I went to the conference this year, social media tips and Adam gave me a good twofer on fine tuning Fan pages. One was the official Facebook Pages page and Facebook Insights, the social media company’s analytics tool to measure your fan page traffic. I have the foundation set for my new company’s fan pages and these tools definitely solidify the ground beneath me.

I thought it couldn’t get much better than this but there was more great subject matter to come the rest of the day. More about those panels in the coming days.

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Connect, Engage, Thrive

Do you know this lady? If not, you probably should. I’ll tell you why in a post or two coming soon.

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Nan Ross, Owner of Corporate Cosmo

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Tweets and Greets on Hootsuite

Thanks to Terry Crosby I figured out how to engage particular groups that I want to follow in list fashion on HootSuite. I can create a list – or a column as it is known on HoostSuite – using keyword phrases under the Keyword Tracking option. Then I can pick a person within the column to both follow and tweet a message to on the Hootsuite interface. It gives the option to make my choice of the Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn platforms to send the tweet simultaneously. Take a look at Terry’s tutorial for a quick lesson.

As for today’s activity in particular, I’m looking up other bloggers and social media experts who are attending Blogging While Brown in the Nation’s Capital this summer. My objective of course is to take the initiative in my real world networking by connecting virtually and touching base with potential new friends and business associates a few months ahead of time.

Also discovered today that the regular Twitter account allows you to create lists as well. The Blogging While Brown site has a list of attendees so I just followed the entire list (By the way why aren’t you on there already?) and now I’m following up with particular greetings to each of them.

So I encourage you to create a HoostSuite account today and spend some time learning the fundamentals. Create a few columns using keywords relevant to your blogging and social networking. Then work your columns in tandem with your favorite Twitter fan page lists and watch your contacts blossom.

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Install A Facebook Share Link Button On Your Blog Site

Have you been wondering how to add the Facebook share button to each of your blog posts? Simple. It’s as easy as using this share button Javascript directly from Facebook’s site. I just Googled facebook share links and it was the first item on the search list.

It gives you options to make it a button or a link. With the button option you can display a counter above the button, to the side or have no counter at all.

For those of you using the WordPress platform, copy the code and paste it into the body of the single.php file within the loop. I recently stumbled upon the ease of editing the PHP code by accidentally clicking in the editing window of one of the files. That’s all you have to do. To add code click on Presentation > Theme Editor > Single Post and click in the editing window. It will change from gray to white. Then paste the script and click the Update File button.

Placing the code in the Single Post file is what automatically creates the share button on each post. Give it a shot and see if you don’t have those great posts you’re writing passed on to a wider audience.

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