With a little over 50 million users worldwide, creating a LinkedIn Business Profile allows members to instantly connect and follow organizations’ online activities.

Below are the top 5 reasons why your company should be leveraging this powerful tool.

Reason 1: To promote your business and brand

Creating a Profile allows members to find your company on LinkedIn when searching for keywords, specialties, a specific location and/or company size. By doing this, you are ensuring that members do stumble upon your Profile which in turn leads to exposure for your business and brand. It is worth also mentioning that Profiles appear in Google search results.

Reason 2: To connect employees personal profiles to Business profiles

When employees indicate their employer on their personal profile, LinkedIn connects the two pages together. This feature allows those viewing a specific person’s profile to click through and learn more about the company.

Reason 3: Connect your Tweets and Blog Posts

You can now also incorporate your company’s blog posts along with Twitter feed which in turn enables followers and those who search for your profile to read your most recent news & updates. Another reason for interested viewers to start “Following” your Profile.

Reason 4: Connect with your businesses followers

Another great feature recently rolled out is the option of following Business Profiles. When you “Follow” a company, you receive their recent news, job opportunities as well as new hires and departures. From a businesses’ perspective, it’s interesting to view those who have opted in to receive your updates and initiate InMails and Introductions to take the relationship one step further.

Reason 5: Post Job Opportunities

Have a recent departure and looking to hire? Profiles allow you to add job opportunities and vacancies available within your business through the “Career” tab.

Now, your turn! Share with us other ways you are leveraging your Profile.

I have been asked this question several times by clients and thought it was time to put this into perspective.

Group

Facebook originally started out with groups. Groups are for small group communication and for people to share common interests as well as express their opinions. Groups allow you to set join permissions to:

• The general public
• A specific network (such as a location, university or employer)
• No one, aka, closed. In this case users need to request to join.
• Secret where the administrator has to send out invites.

Groups have an administrator who manages discussions, updates, posts, etc. Administrators can also promote members to “Officers” who are nominally in charge, but do not have authority to administer the Group.

Similar to Pages, new posts within the group are visible on members profiles’ news feed.

Fan Page

Facebook launched their Fan Pages in late 2007 when they realized that people were trying to connect with brands, public figures and businesses.

Unlike a friend’s profile, these pages are visible to everyone within the online community by default. Everyone using Facebook can connect with someone’s Fan Page by “Liking” it. In other terms, you are opting in to receive this Page’s updates within your profiles’ news feed and in turn can interact and engage with the brand, public figure and/or business.

You can add as many administrators as you like. Administrators speak on behalf of the brand, public figure or business when posting status updates, replying to fans and managing the Page.

These “Likes” are visible in each person’s profile, under the “Info” tab. Facebook recently also rolled out yet another feature allowing you to see common likes you have between friends.

How do I know which one is right for me?

At the end of the day, your business needs to determine its objectives and core purpose for using Facebook before deciding which feature is right for them.

A few more things to keep in mind before making up your mind:

• Pages are designed to host applications which in reality allow more personalization and customization where Groups cannot.
• When you post an update to your Group, it appears to be coming from your personal profile. Whereas with Pages, the post comes from the Page itself and is not linked to you personally.
• Facebook Pages are indexed by search engines such as Google & Bing and in turn appear in search results. While Groups do not.
• Groups allow Administrators to send their members messages (provided they are under 5,000 members) that appear in their inbox. Page Admins can on the other hand, send updates to their fans directly through the page and these updates appear in the “Updates” section of fans’ inboxes. Pages do not have a limit on how many fans you can send to.

Google recently came out with its new search enhancement that takes the technology of search engine to a whole new dimension. Google now loads your search, as you search. According to Google, Instant can save you up to 5 seconds per search totalling an estimated time saved per search users on a global level of about 11 hours per second. This function has started rolling out to users within the US and will continue over the next several months to other countries as well as mobiles.

We all know how difficult it can be at times when searching for specific keywords and initiating research. Google along with other search engines have previously made recommendations based on what you type in the search field and based on that showed it as a suggestion in a drop down. However, with Instant, you do not need to finish typing nor do you need to press enter. You keep typing until Instant tells you what you are looking for! It predicts and steers you in the right direction which helps you formulate better search terms as you type.  How much easier does that make your life?

Of course there is always a downside to anything. Yes, it’s true that Google Instant will give you incorrect results at times, especially while typing in the first few characters. It really depends on the type of search you are running and is based on how common the search is. F for instance will automatically pull up Facebook for you, while if you are searching for McDonalds, typing in M will pull up a few other common words before suggesting McDonalds. Looking at the overview of it though, it is exceptionally handy in comparison to what was currently available to us.

I personally have found it to be efficient and powerful when researching. It definitely will take me a moment to go back and use Google.com rather than typing my search query directly into my browser address bar. But that is a change I am willing to make. As a starting point, I believe that Google has once again introduced a new level of search that will continue to expand over the coming years and will change how we use the internet. The instant feedback I get has helped tremendously and steered me in the right direction on numerous occasions.

I’m curious to know how beneficial (or not) Google Instant has been for you.

Q: Is there a limit to the number of InMails I can send out?
A: In order to send InMails, you need to upgrade your account. There are 3 different packages which have different features that you can upgrade for. Of course, it’s directly proportional to the amount you want to spend. InMails start from 3 per month and go up to 50.

Another alternative would be to purchase InMails without upgrading. InMails are for $10.00 each and you may purchase up to 10 at a given time.

Q: Is there a certain number of Open Introductions I can have at a time?
A: You may have up to 5 introductions open at any one time. If your introductions run out,  you can either wait for the recipient to take action or upgrade your account.

Q: How many connection requests can I have opened?
A: There is not a limit to how many people you are connected to, however, rumor does have it that you are allowed up to 3,000 invites to connect with others. Each time you are prompted to invite someone from your own personal e-mail and they do not join, you have, in essence, wasted a contact.

Q: When I want to add someone to my network and click on I don’t know this person, what happens?
A: LinkedIn will not allow you to send out the invitation. A warning pop up appears telling you that you are not allowed.

Recipients can indicate that they don’t know you. If they do, you’ll be asked to enter an email address with each future invitation.

Q: Can I search a group for a specific member without going through entire list?
A: Yes, there is a search bar available within the group under ‘more’ tab.

Q: Can I see the groups my connections are on?
A: Yes, if you go into their profile, it is displayed towards the bottom of the page. It does not however show common groups you share.

Do you have more questions? Or have answers? Share!

The announcement is expected to take place shortly after 1:00pm ET, on Wednesday.

“I can confirm that our new, simpler user controls will begin rolling out tomorrow. I can’t say more yet,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told CNN in an e-mail Tuesday.

The website also implemented, among other changes, a new tool that spreads user preferences and data across the Web. This tool allows Facebook users to share articles and “Like” pages. In return this had an impact on the privacy settings and some members voiced their concerns to changes that switched their settings to default making their profiles open to the public.

“I know we’ve made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve,” Zuckerberg said in the e-mail, which Scoble printed after receiving permission from the Facebook CEO to do so.

What kind of changes are you expecting to be rolled out?

CNN Tech was used as a source for the above information.

Page Structure

One of the most important factors for search engines to determine what a page is about is by looking at the structure. This translates into looking at content that is in bold, in headers, and in titles. Making sure that your keywords appear in these locations is essential to building a good SEO foundation.

Copy Density

SEO copywriting involves taking your already reader-friendly content and massaging it in specific ways so that the search engines can find it. Without copy, you will not rank at all. Search engines look at the content of a page to decide what it is relevant for and what it is about. If you do not have enough copy, it cannot make an informed decision. It is also beneficial to users to have a larger amount of copy, specifically on the home page. More copy also leads to more keyword targeting, which is in turn valuable to everyone.

Inbound Links

Relevant incoming links from other websites that are ‘trusted’ can improve the site’s search engine ranking. At any cost however, AVOID paid link backs and too many reciprocal links.

How are you doing your company’s research? What other SEO tips do you have up your sleeve? We’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

We usually start by breaking down each approach before analyzing and making a decision as to which route to proceed with.

Ask yourself not only what your target market is, but also WHERE they are at. Are they on social media platforms? Are they listening to the radio, watching tv or perhaps just reading the newspaper? Any campaign you decide to run with needs to be carefully thought through. Brainstorm your objectives and set your direction.

I went over to my Gmail account to see how I could import these contacts. To my surprise, it had its own set of steps that were much easier to say the least! One thing that really impressed me are the options it presented me with to further facilitate my transition. It allowed me to import my contacts, import my mail AND import any new mail I receive from my hotmail account for the next 30 days! In addition, once the import started, it let me know that I can close the window and keep using Gmail, or even log out and close my browser. It would still keep working in the background.

Now, I am one of those people who has been using hotmail for the past ten years. Being in the social media and marketing community has proven me otherwise.  A few reasons I have decided to switch over to Gmail:

Google Calendar

Is web based and really easy to synch with your mobile phone. You can also create different calendars and color code them to your needs.

Labs

There are so many features that are being developed by the community everyday that further simplify your life. Two examples I found to be helpful are the Undo Send & The Title Tweaks features.  The latter isn’t as clear so I’ll further explain it. It basically changes the order of the elements in the browser title bar from “Gmail – Inbox (10)” to “Inbox (10) – Gmail” which allows you to see if new mail has arrived even if the Gmail window is minimized!

Labels

I don’t know about you, but I like keeping my emails organized.  You know those emails you get, the ones that have a tendency to fall into numerous categories? With the label feature, you don’t need to assign it in ONE folder! You can have multiple labels for it which is easier to search for should you want to refer back to it.

Archive

If you don’t want to delete the email, yet it is something you have already read, archiving it is the way to go. All archived mail remains in the archived folder and you can use the search bar to find it later.

Reader

Reader allows you to subscribe to websites you frequently visit and brings you their latest updates right to your email! You can also share your entire list with friends.

Documents

With this feature, you can create a word document, excel file, presentation and/or form all within your account! Not only does it allow you to do that, but also, you can share specific documents with friends and co-workers.

Go on, give it a try and let me know what you think!

Now that’s taken care of, I’m starting to buzz! – add me to your buzz environment!

How do I earn expertise when answering questions on LinkedIn?

This is what LinkedIn has to say:

When you see a green box with a white star on a Profile, you know that person has proven their expertise by answering questions posed in the Answers forum. They have had answers selected as the ‘Best’ answer and are given expert status. Answer experts can be found at the bottom of the Answer home page. To earn expertise:

1. Find questions in the areas you know.
2. Browse questions to find categories familiar to you and answer those questions.
3. Every time the questioner picks your answer as the ‘Best’ answer, you gain a point of expertise in the category of the question. The more points of expertise, the higher you appear on lists of experts. Private answers don’t count toward expertise.

Once the question is closed the member can rate the answers that came in. Answers is a good way to share and exchange information.

What do I benefit if I am listed as an expert?

It is a great way to add value to your Profile by displaying your writing style, personality, organizational abilities and subject matter expertise to those viewing your Profile. If your answer is voted ‘Best’ it is hoped that it was because you provided the best information in a way that helped the member to resolve their query.

This will help you stand out amongst the crowd and will also draw attention to your business. People will keep you in their mind and will know who to not only go to for answers but for services!

Still not sure?

Start by trying to ask a question, yes, you are entitled to ask up to 10 questions per month and see what/how people respond back. And note the amount of time it takes! You will be surprised by the amount of people who are offering their knowledge.

Depending on how specific your question is, you will receive responses. One question I asked received 5 different answers within an hour time span while another received 10 within half an hour!

Keep in mind that questions you ask can also be flagged, reported and removed if they are inappropriate which might lead you to become blocked by LinkedIn from asking any more questions.

Best Practice- Make sure to thank the person who’s answer you ranked as best.

I like what they have done with the top menu and think it’s a great idea to have those icons up there for easier navigation. Even more, the concept of having the icon light up when a new notification/ message is received is a splendid way to grasp one’s attention.

Explore it and give it time, we only need to adjust to the modifications before being able to accept them!