Social Media | Learn Internet Marketing

3 Ways To Leverage the New LinkedIn

How many of you use LinkedIn?
I have to say I have an account and I add my blog posts to it every time I have a new one, I also click on links when people want to add me to their LinkedIn …. but other than that I don’t do anything at all. I always found it abit hard to get around and although I have written a book all about how to use it ( well I didn’t I got outsourcer to) about 3 years back, I have not continued with it.

However I did note there have been some more changes lately and there is an excellent article on the Social Examiner about them so though I would posts it in here for you to take a look at.

Have you noticed the changes to LinkedIn recently?

Although changes to LinkedIn are less frequent than on Facebook, they can have significant marketing implications.

Read further to find out how the recent changes to LinkedIn impact your social media marketing.

What’s New With LinkedIn?

Recently the LinkedIn Homepage had a significant makeover. It’s now more sleek and modern. It also feels faster with an almost instantly updated user interface.

LinkedIn has made a few key design changes to make it easier to discover and discuss what matters most.

As LinkedIn says in their recent blog post, Introducing a Simpler Homepage:

“This is just the beginning of many more exciting, new features we plan to bring to the Homepage to offer more customization and functionality this year. We look forward to making the LinkedIn Homepage your go-to destination to discover and discuss what matters to you, your industry and your professionals network around the world.”

Mashable refers to the new LinkedIn Homepage as a mash-up between Facebook and Google+. I’d have to agree. There is something more appealing about it that makes you want to hang out for a while!

A Quick Overview of the LinkedIn Homepage Layout

On your new homepage, you will first notice a blue box to click that will show you the most recent updates from your network.

The top part of the new LinkedIn Homepage.

From there, underneath your status update box, you will see “LinkedIn Today recommends this news for you,” along with three recommended stories.

The news stories in this area are consistent with the industry you work in or publications that you have indicated an interest in following on LinkedIn Today.

If you click through one of these news stories, you’ll be taken to the LinkedIn Today aggregate news page, where you can view and comment on additional relevant news stories (more on the changes to LinkedIn Today shortly).

LinkedIn Today delivers the day’s top headlines that matter to people in your industry. Follow the industry and sources you care about.

Follow the Updates From Your Network

Moving beyond the latest news section, you’ll see updates from your network of connections and companies that you follow on LinkedIn. (If you haven’t done so yet, make sure to create a LinkedIn company page for your business so that you can start acquiring followers!)

The updates you see are based on who and what LinkedIn believes to be the most relevant for you.

Don’t forget to engage with your connections directly from your homepage!

You can typically like, comment, send a message or share to effectively engage. This will also help you to be viewed as someone who is “plugged in” and listening to your connections.

Engage with your network via your LinkedIn homepage.

LinkedIn allows you to filter your update stream and customize your view.

For example, I like to filter my stream by “Shares” to see what content my network connections are sharing. This filter takes away some of the clutter.

Filter your homepage updates with these options.

Overall, the Updates section of the new homepage is simply more social. The stream of activity is cleaner and easier to follow.

LinkedIn Homepage Images Are Bigger

Images are also more prominent within the updates from your network. When posting your own updates, use an image if possible to capture attention!

Images are now bigger within LinkedIn status updates.

Take Advantage of the New LinkedIn Homepage Features

Remember that anytime LinkedIn members visit the site, they typically start from the homepage.

Being active on LinkedIn can help you show up on the homepages of your connections.

Showing up consistently can lead to more profile views, and ultimately LinkedIn profile views can turn into website or blog traffic.

3 Tips to Make the New LinkedIn Homepage Work for You

#1: Update Your Status Frequently and Consistently

Strive to update your status or participate in some sort of LinkedIn activity 3-5 times per day, throughout the day.

This includes regular status updates from your own homepage, participating in group discussions, leaving comments, making new connections, answering questions, etc.

In order to gain traction with marketing your brand and building influence on LinkedIn, you need to be consistently visible and valuable.

If you have a company page on LinkedIn, make sure to update your status there as well. Typically 1-2 company updates per day are sufficient.

If you want to stand out among your connections, make your updates engaging. Ask a question, ask for feedback or even consider running a poll. Also, comments are a great way to spark dialogue with your connections.

#2: Use Images in Your Status Updates

I mentioned previously in the article that LinkedIn has made the sizes of images included with status updates larger and more prominent.

Therefore it makes sense to use images in your status updates whenever possible in order to attract attention from your network.

In the screenshot below, which status update stands out the most?

Use images whenever possible to make your LinkedIn status updates stand out.

#3: Get Active on LinkedIn Today

LinkedIn Today has also been given a couple of awesome new features recently to make the news site more social!

First, you can now click on “Trending in Your Network” on LinkedIn today to view specific news stories that have been shared by your connections.

Click on “Trending in Your Network” to view articles shared by your connections.

Second, you can like, comment, share and save news stories on LinkedIn Today.

The comments don’t appear to be threaded conversations; however, your commentary on a trending news story will appear on the homepages of all of your connections!

If you comment on a few news stories each day through LinkedIn Today, you will keep your status active, create potential engagement with your network and also receive the benefit of having an image inserted into your status update!

Share your unique commentary on trending news topics on LinkedIn Today.

LinkedIn is getting more social. Be sure to tweak your LinkedIn marketing to leverage these new social features.

And if you haven’t already got a LinkedIn marketing plan in place, it might be time to consider implementing one.

The ongoing improvements to LinkedIn continue to make it a compelling network for business professionals, business owners and anyone looking to improve their career or job opportunities.

What do you think? Have you seen the new LinkedIn homepage? Do you like or dislike it? Will you implement some of these ideas to grow your visibility? Are there any features I’ve missed? Please share your comments below.

How to use LinkedIn Video

So there you have it, 3 Ways To Leverage the New LinkedIn. Would love your comments and your shares

8 Tips for Using Facebook Scheduled Posts

By admin 2 Comments

8 Tips for Using Facebook Scheduled Posts

I know I have already showed and spoken about how to do the Facebook Scheduled posts but I say this post on the Social Examiner and thought it was worth putting on my blog and sharing with you all.

I just love the whole schedule posting it is fantastic. I have been away the last 3 weeks and it’s been so easy to not only schedule my wordpress posts but also to schedule my Facebook posts as well.

I have put the video in here on this posts that I did as well so if you like to watch and learn then this will be great for you. You you like to read and look at pictures this post will also work for you.

Here is the article from the Social Examiner
Are you crunched for time?

Could you use a little Facebook automation in your life? Well, help is here.

Facebook allows you to schedule your page posts.

Many people cheered this feature because Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm and other quirks make using third-party tools like HootSuite or SocialOomph for scheduling your posts less desirable than posting manually.

Let’s dig a little deeper and find out some of the nuances of using Facebook scheduled posts.

First, we will give you the steps to schedule your posts and edit them.

#1: How to Schedule Your Posts

Scheduling is easy—just follow these steps:

Write your post as you normally would. You can attach photos, add links, add YouTube videos, add tags to other pages and events or just include regular text.

Type your post as you would normally.

In the lower-left corner of your post, click on the clock symbol as shown in the screenshot above. You can now add the year, month, day and time you want the post to go out.

Add the date and time you want your post go out.

Notice that you can also backdate your posts to supplement your Timeline if you wish (more on that later).

You can schedule your post up to 6 months in the future (more months are shown, but if you select more than 6 months out, Facebook won’t accept it). You can schedule the minutes at 00-, 10-, 20-, 30-, 40- or 50-minute marks of the hour. So if you need a post to go out specifically at 2:15 pm, you cannot set it.

You can also add language and location targeting in your scheduled posts, just like you can in your regular posts. Just click on the Public icon and make the necessary adjustments.

Once you have everything set, just click the blue Schedule button. Voilà! Now just remember to circle back to your posts later after the scheduled time to watch for follow-up comments!

#2: How to Find and Edit Your Scheduled Posts

To see what you have scheduled and make any changes, just go to your activity log by accessing the admin panel at the top of your page (if you don’t see the admin panel, click the red admin panel button in the upper-right corner), then click Edit Page, and Activity Log. You then see all of your scheduled posts.

Use the activity log to find your scheduled posts.

View your scheduled posts.

If you need to edit your scheduled post, the only thing you can change from here is the time, unfortunately. To edit the text, you must cancel the post and redo your scheduling. To cancel or change the time, mouse over the upper-right corner of the post in the activity log.

You can only change the time or cancel the post and start over.

#3: You Can’t Schedule Everything

You can schedule links, photos, status updates and videos (although I found scheduling a video to be a bit buggy). You can also schedule a YouTube video link, which will attach as it normally does in your posts.

You can schedule a photo.

You can’t schedule some of the other types of posts as you can normally do from the publisher, such as photo albums, posting of events, questions, offers and milestones.

#4: You Can Backdate Your Posts

You can schedule things in the past. I’m not sure why you would want to use the backdating feature other than to fill out your Timeline a bit. But if you have a significant event that you want to post about in the past, I recommend a milestone post instead.

The interesting thing about backdating is that the post does go out into people’s news feed immediately and then is shown at the appropriate place on your Timeline.

The backdated post goes out immediately into the news feed with a note about when it was added into the Timeline.

#5: Scheduled Posts Won’t be Automatically Tweeted

If you have linked your Twitter account to your Facebook page by setting up www.Facebook.com/Twitter so that everything you post on Facebook gets tweeted (yes, we know that it’s not always a great idea but sometimes it isn’t terrible), be aware that your scheduled posts won’t go out to Twitter.

So if you rely on your Facebook page to supplement your tweets and you move to more scheduled posts, you will have to schedule your tweets with a different tool.

#6: Scheduling Posts Can Bring about More Engagement

What can you expect when you schedule posts? It depends on your baseline right now with your Facebook page—how often you are posting, how engaged your audience is, what you are posting and other factors.

One thing that scheduling can do for you is allow you to post more regularly and increase your posting without spending all day on your Facebook page.

Randi Thompson of How to Market Your Horse Business (and an active member of our Social Networking Clubs) tried an experiment where she upped the number of posts by using scheduled posts on two of her pages.

On her How to Market Your Horse Business page, she went from posting 3 times a day to posting every 3 hours and 5 times a day. Then she had another page, Horse and Rider Awareness, where she was not posting regularly at all. She tried scheduling 3 quality posts per day. Here are her results over a 5-day period.

Using Scheduled posts to increase post frequency helped increase engagement.

Now of course this is not a comprehensive study. And this could be done without scheduling posts. But the point is that scheduled posts can make things easier for you so you can batch your work, know that things are being posted at the times you want and you can get on with other parts of your business. I encourage you to try some experiments with scheduled posts on your page and see how things work for you.

And again, make sure you circle back to these posts to follow up on comments!

#7: Scheduled Posts are not Identified or “Punished” in Facebook

When you post from a different scheduling tool such as HootSuite or BufferApp, people can see that you’re posting through a different tool. But Facebook’s scheduled posts are seamless.

The posting tool appears under the post.

Using a different tool to post to Facebook is not all bad. Sometimes it’s much better to save yourself a little time and get the post out with the tool you’re using rather than not post at all.

But Facebook has been known to show posts using third-party tools a little less in the news feed or collapse them. As of this writing, I believe third-party tools are faring well in Facebook. But we all know how Facebook changes.

#8: Scheduled Posts May be Coming to Personal Profiles

The option does appear to schedule a Facebook post on personal profiles, which may be a good thing for people who are using their personal profiles to talk about business. But as of this writing, I could not schedule anything into the future, only for today or in the past.

Not everyone will see big changes by scheduling posts. You still have to deliver engaging Facebook content. But what scheduled posts can do is free up some of your time by allowing you to batch your social media posts into blocks and give you more time to focus on your business.

What are your thoughts? Have you been using scheduled posts? What results have you seen? Tell us in the comments section below!

About the Author, Andrea Vahl

Andrea Vahl is the Community Manager for Social Media Examiner and the co-author Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. She is also a social media coach, speaker and strategist. Other posts by Andrea Vahl »

Have a go at using this amazing tool and tell me how it’s working for you.
So there you have it: 8 Tips for Using Facebook Scheduled Posts

Promoted Posts on Facebook

By admin 1 Comment

Promoted Posts on Facebook

I have been using the Promoted Posts Feature on Facebook since it came out and have noticed a big increase in the amount of traffic I am getting to my websites. So much now coming via Facebook and also increase in sales. Now I am not going to say huge increase in sales. But a steady growth in that area.

I know some think it is not good that they now have to pay to get people to see their posts. But it is the way it is. and in a past video and blog I showed you how to set up groups and lists in Facebook and so using that feature will mean your message will get out to a more targeted group.

I have done a video to show you what I am doing with the Promoted Posts and then tagged on the end is the video from Facebooks promotion group all about it as well.

I think it is a great feature and worth using, just make sure you have a realistic budget.

Promoted Posts On Facebook Video

Here is an article which shows and explains it all very well

5 Tips for Using Facebook’s New Promoted Posts

If your business’ Facebook Page has more than 400 likes, you now have the option to try a new advertising feature called “Promoted Posts.” The button, which you’ll find at the bottom of the status update box, lets you select a budget and will generate an estimated reach of that post.

Promoted posts appear not only in the news feeds of the people who like your page, but in the news feeds of friends of the people who have interacted with your post, according to Facebook. This is the latest in a series of recent updates to Facebook business Pages.

Here’s a look at some of the feature’s highlights, plus tips from Facebook on how to best use it.

1. How to Promote a Page Post

To promote a Page post, navigate to the update status box and type in the post details. At the bottom of the box, click on the Promote drop-down button and set your desired budget. This budget is a lifetime budget and not a daily budget.

When you’re done, click Save.

Posts that are eligible to be promoted include Page posts you’ve created in the last three days: status updates, photos, offers, videos and questions. To promote a past post, click the Promote button just below where people can add a comment, select a budget and click Save.

If you need to, you can change your promoted post’s budget. Do this by clicking on the “Promoted for $X” button, selecting the pencil icon next to Budget and choosing your new budget. Then click Save. Your new budget will go into effect immediately.

Once your promoted post is live, it will appear in news feeds with a “Sponsored” label on the bottom.

[Want more tips, tricks and details on Facebook? Check out CIO.com's Facebook Bible.]

2. How to Target and Pause Promoted Posts

When you create a post, you have the option to target a specific location or language from the “Public” drop-down menu under the sharing tool. Targeting an audience based on location or language will likely decrease the estimated reach the post has, however.

To target a specific location or language, click on the “Public” button under the sharing tool when you’re creating a page post, then select “Location / Language.”

On the next form, enter in the location you want to target. You can choose by country, state/province, city and language. Then click Okay to finish.

To pause a promoted post, go to your Page timeline and find the post you’re promoting. At the bottom of the post below where people can add a comment, click on the “Promoted for $X” button. At the bottom of this page, click on the “Stop Promotion” link. Your promotion will be updated and the button will say, “Promotion Paused.”

To resume your promotion, follow the same steps.

3. How to View Your Promotions Performance

Soon after promoting a post, you’ll be able to see its performance at the bottom of the post in the links to the left of the Promote button. Hovering over the link to the number of people reached will give you more information about the people who saw this post, including information on your organic reach, viral reach and paid reach.

Hovering over the percentage link will give you insight into the total percentage of people who like your Page that you reached through the promotion.

4. How Your Promotions Are Billed

Your promoted posts will be billed to the same account you designated in your Ads Manager. You can view your primary funding source as well as access invoices from the gear-icon drop-down menu in the “Promote” button, or from your Ads Manager.

From the “Promote” button, click the gear icon and select “Change payment method.” Here, you can see all payment methods listed on your ads account and make any changes to your primary funding source.

5. Best Practices for Promoting Posts

To help you and your business succeed with Promoted Posts, Facebook put together a list of four tips:

Add photos and videos: “People tend to respond to bright, simple and attention-grabbing images, particularly of people using your product or service. For example, you could promote a photo of new products you want to sell. Keep in mind that your Page’s profile picture will show up next to your promoted post so everyone knows its connected to your business.”

Promote offers: “Promoting an offer can help increase the number of people who see and claim your offer. This can help to drive more people to your business and increase engagement on your Page.”

Highlight exclusive events or news: “Promoting posts with exclusive content gets people to talk about your Page and share your posts with their friends. This could be a daily special on the menu, an in-store event or the launch of an upcoming product.”

Ask a question: “Promoting a question tells people that you value their opinion. For example, you could promote a question asking people to vote on a new product or service, which encourages people to have a direct impact on your business decisions.”

Kristin Burnham covers consumer technology, social networking and enterprise collaboration for CIO.com. Follow Kristin on Twitter @kmburnham. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Kristin at kburnham@cio.com

Hope this has been helpful to you and would love it if you would share it, comment on it, Google + it . Tell me your experience of using Promoted Posts on Facebook

Live Stream With YouTube

By admin 17 Comments

Live Stream With YouTube

I just love YouTube. Now we can all Live Stream With Youtube which is amazing.

I have been using YouTube since it started in 2005, I don’t think I ever imagined it would be as it is today.

I have found this great article and also video online that I wanted to bring to you all today. The video will help you to setup and run your own YouTube Live Stream event.
YouTube Opens a Whole New World for You so if you are not using YouTube as yet to promote, yourself, your product or business then you really need to get that sorted.

Why should you care about getting your videos on YouTube?

You can be sure that a size-able portion of your audience is on YouTube. YouTube is reporting 3 billion hours of video streamed per day. And you can now broadcast live, inside of that stream. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that for their business?

Live YouTube streaming is not just on a computer platform. Most modern smartphones can take a YouTube live stream and more and more smart television sets are coming with that capacity as well.

Not only can you partner with the biggest video network in the world, but you can also broadcast, through them, to every screen that can take a live Internet video feed. Google’s billions in profit is making that possible for you.

Live streaming, even free, is not new to the Internet. But it’s now much easier and allows all of us including businesses the opportunity to reach a wider audience by integrating live streaming into their marketing plan.

Consider your live-streaming content options.

Spend some time to find the right live-streaming strategy to suit your personality and needs. You are about to share your video content on a social media platform that could potentially bring lots of exposure to you and your business.

In addition to live streaming while you are directly in front of the camera, you can also share your desktop content.

Does the idea of a camera pointed at your face broadcasting to the world scare you bit? Don’t worry. There are a variety of tools that exist to help you.

For example, you can use a PowerPoint presentation or a Keynote slide deck to share content on your desktop during your live-streaming broadcast.

And you’re not even limited to these pricey office suites. Products like Prezi or Mind Mapping products all make for compelling screen presentations.

Embedded below is a quick video that shows the live broadcasting process using the free Google Docs Presentation app.

Don’t let your fear of the camera get in the way

5 Steps to Stream Live on YouTube

Here’s what you need to do.

Step 1: Log into Google+. If you want to broadcast as yourself, stay in your own personal stream. If you’d like to stream as one of the Google+ pages you administer, switch to that page.

Step 2: Click the “Start a hangout” button. At the time of this writing, that button is in the upper right-hand side of the screen; but as Google is always updating Google+, the position might change.

The “Start a hangout” button is hard to miss.

Step 3: Check the “Enable Hangouts On Air” checkbox in the “Start a Hangout” screen. This simple checkbox tells Google that you want to simultaneously broadcast your Hangout on YouTube.

Check the “Enable Hangouts On Air” checkbox.

Step 4: Verify With Google That All Is OK. If it is your first time with Hangouts On Air, you’ll need to link your account with the appropriate YouTube channel and promise Google you won’t abuse the system. They’ll walk you through everything.

YouTube will confirm with you what channel you will be broadcasting on.

Step 5: Click the “Start broadcast” button on the screen. Once this is done, you’re live on YouTube. As an added bonus, you’ll have a link and an embed code that you can share through all of the other social networks.

The “Start broadcast” button and “Embed” link are right next to each other.

You’re now live! Say something awesome—the world is watching.

Make This About YouTube, Not Google+

Technically you’re broadcasting on both Google+ and YouTube. So it would be a tremendous marketing mistake to only focus on the Google+ side of things.

First let’s take a look at what happens on Google+. Anyone who has circled you or the page you are broadcasting from on Google+ will automatically see your Hangout in their streams.

But you want to leverage your social media platforms more than this. Don’t forget those who haven’t circled you on Google+!

The reality today is that the majority of your social media audience is more likely to follow a link to a YouTube page than anything else. So offer them one.

Use the YouTube Embed links mentioned in Step 5 above and share it throughout your social networks.

The choice of which platform to share with your audience, Google+ or YouTube, isn’t about which social network is considered best. It’s simply about marketing and positioning your content.

The brand recognition of YouTube surpasses Google+ many times over and the bigger the platform you are associated with, the bigger the impact that association is going to make.

Take Advantage of the Great SEO Value

You get a bonus the second you end your broadcast. YouTube will start encoding your broadcast to archive it on your YouTube channel. This is great because over time, you’ll build up a library of content and this archive is there forever.

YouTube does the first step of putting your live broadcast video automatically in your YouTube archive for you. But you’ll still want to retitle the video and add a good description and tags to optimize your video for search.

Of course you can choose to delete your video. But I recommend you don’t, because the more videos you or your brand has on YouTube, the better. Over time, you’re sure to appreciate the SEO value of building your video archive on this powerful social media platform.

The etón Corporation YouTube channel has 15 playlists, 42 videos, 5,282 subscribers and 379,952 video views. They’ve spent considerable time and effort creating great content (they do very well from search engine traffic). Do one live show a week for a year and you’ll have more content than they do.

What do you think? Does the ability to broadcast to the world on YouTube change your streaming video strategies? Is there a reason why you haven’t added it yet? Comment in the box below and let’s get this discussion going!

About the Author, Paul Colligan

Paul Colligan helps busy people leverage new media to get their message out to more people, with less effort, and for greater profit. Other posts byPaul Colligan »