Archive for February, 2012
Written by Corrie Scott, February 27th, 2012
LinkedIn made many 
changes in 2011 including; LinkedIn Today, LinkedIn Classmates, and the ill fated social ads (which they quickly revamped after user backlash). Overall, though, LinkedIn is making all the right moves. Our favorite change of 2011 was the additions to company pages, and we highly recommend taking advantage of them and creating one for your business. Especially if you’re a B2B company. Speaking from personal experience, we’ve noticed that our B2B clients with company pages get a lot of referral traffic to their websites via LinkedIn. It’s hard to argue with the value of company pages when the Google Analytics evidence is staring you in the face!
Benefits of LinkedIn Company Pages
Increased exposure online. The more places you have a presence online, the easier it will be for people to find you. LinkedIn is especially beneficial for companies that offer professional services, such as finance, accounting, law, etc. LinkedIn is the most professional of the big social networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,etc), and lends itself well to these industries, as well as to B2B companies.
Search engine marketing. Links from LinkedIn to your website, blog, and other social profiles (and vice versa) helps your company appear higher in search results. LinkedIn can also be a huge driver of referral traffic to your website, where you have the opportunity to convert visitors into paying customers. You can also take advantage of LinkedIn ads to promote your company page and generate leads.
Your company resume. LinkedIn personal profiles are essentially online resumes where people share their education, what they know, and who they know. Your company page does the same thing for your business and allows you to showcase your professionalism in a way that is sometimes harder on Facebook or Twitter.
Tips for using LinkedIn Company Pages
Complete your profile. Don’t take the time to create a company page, and then leave it half filled out. LinkedIn is a professional social network, be professional in the appearance of your page. This means uploading a logo to the overview page, filling in your company address, description, keywords, etc. Also remember to link to your blog, website and YouTube account, and fill out the company products and services page. If you have any company videos, upload these as well. People love videos (YouTube’s success is a testament to this).
Get recommendations. Similar to recommendations on your personal profile, you can get recommendations for your businesses products and services. An added bonus is that people can recommend a specific product or service they’ve used, as opposed to a generic comment about your business as a whole. Targeted recommendations provide much more value for people checking out your business and the services you offer clients.
Status updates. You’ll have to enable these on your page and designate who at your company can update the company status. Once you’ve done so you can start posting updates and links to interesting content you find online. Remember to occasionally link to your website or other social profiles, but don’t always post about yourself. Another point to remember is that LinkedIn is a more professional space than Facebook or Twitter, so tailor your updates to reflect this.
Build your following. All those status updates are pointless if no one’s following your page. People will be able to see your updates if they visit your page directly, but the only way to get your updates appearing on people LinkedIn homepages is to have them following you. So, how to start a fan base?
1. Ask your employees to link to your company page with their personal profiles. The benefits here are twofold, 1. Visitors to your employees’ profiles will be to click through to your company profile, and 2. Employees will appear on the overview tab of your company page.
2. Send an announcement via LinkedIn to key people in your network. Let them know you have a company page and encourage them to connect with you there as well.
3. Announce your new company page on your social profiles and in your company newsletter. Remember to include a link to the page so people can easily find it.
Update frequently and monitor your results. Make sure to schedule time into your week to update your company status, post new content, and reply to any comments. The last thing you want is to create a page and then never do anything with it. If you last updated your status 3 months ago, people who visit your page may question whether you’re still in business. We recommend updating your page 2-3 times a week.
Now that we’ve shared the benefits and tips of having a company page, we can help you get started on creating one for your business. Contact us to find out more.
Related posts:
Why You Should Use LinkedIn for Business
Using Social Media for Recruitment – Part 1
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 22nd, 2012
Ever wonder how men and women differ in their social media useage and their approach to online privacy? This infographic from uSamp says it all.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 17th, 2012
Thanks to Wordstream for sharing this infographic on Pinterest. Can you believe that the most expensive keyword is $54 for Insurance related terms? Seems like a lot to pay for a click.
Source: wordstream.com via Out-Smarts on Pinterest
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 15th, 2012
If you haven’t heard, Pinterest is currently the fastest growing social network, not only that but it is one of the fastest growing websites ever. Launched in March 2010, the site began to take off late last summer after Time magazine noted it as one of the best websites of 2011. Since then the rate of growth has been phenomenal (the site now has over 2 million daily Facebook connected users) but is it simply a fun online network or does it have potential to be a serious business tool?
What is Pinterest?
So what, first of all, is Pinterest? Imagine a virtual pinboard that you can use to pin visually stimulating things that you find online on and you are halfway there. Then imagine being able to share your pins with other users and have them share theirs with you. Pinterest’s vision it to connect everyone in the world through things they find interesting.
Pinterest is succesful because of it’s simplicity, ease of use and because it appeals to those who appreciate eye candy. Pinterest users tend to be females between 18 and 40 and they spend on average 98 minutes on the site.
Is Pinterest a Viable Business Tool?
People may be spending time on the site but what I want to know is – is it a viable business tool? Many tech bloggers and social media heavyweights have yet to be convinced (many of them are male and most have yet to think of a professional use for it) and some have gone as far as ridiculing it, so I decided to ask our friend Sue Sinclair of Raspberry Kids. Raspberry Kids is an online store that sells kids toys, litterless lunch gear, books and gifts. Their target audience closely resembles that of Pinterest users and Sue has been using the virtual pinboard for a few months now. Raspberry Kids’ website has seen an increase in traffic as a result. Not only that but customers have been sharing and pinning images of Raspberry Kids products – RK made it easy for them to do so by adding the Pin It button to each product page on their site. This has spread the raspberry love to new audiences and sales have resulted.
I’m really excited about Pinterest because it is such a game changer for ecommerce sites and businesses like ours.- Sue Sinclair Raspberry Kids
Pinterest appeals to creative thinkers, to right brained types who appreciate visual stimulation. It also appeals to consumers and shoppers and lovers of cute cat pictures but that aside, we believe that Pinterest could become an important tool for businesses of all types. The obvious benefactors are companies like Raspberry Kids whose target audience is similar to the demographic Pinterest appeals to but other organisations can benefit too: design firms of all kinds, photographers, fashion houses, clothing retail, and other image rich businesses will be able to use Pinterest to extend their reach.
To test the waters, we launched our own Out-Smarts Pinterest page recently and we’re already discovering benefits. For example, the infographic we shared on our blog last week called Timing Your Tweets was found on Pinterest and we are using it to track and share other useful images that our audience might find valuable on our social media, Internet and email boards. We see it as a great tool to visually represent our brand, to share useful content and to show followers what Out-Smarts stands for. From a selfish perspective it is also a great tool to help us keep track of brands on Pinterest, widgets, books worth a read and more.
Whether Pinterest will eclipse Facebook remains to be seen (and is a long, long way off) but for now, Pinterest is without a doubt a fun way to share eye candy and it also has huge potential to help businesses reach new audiences (especially if those audiences are young women), display their wears, visually convey their brand and drive traffic to their websites.
Brands on Pinterest:
Follow Out-Smarts in Pinterest:
Written by Corrie Scott, February 10th, 2012
At Out-Smarts we like to k.i.s.s – 
now don’t go getting any ideas, we mean keep it simple, stup!d. We like to simplify the internet and social media for our clients, and thought a post outlining how to create a simple social media strategy was in order. So, here we go:
1.Grab a hot chocolate, coffee, or your preferred caffeine stimulant. We said this was about creating a simple social media strategy, not that it wouldn’t take you some time (time well spent, might we add).
2. Identify your target market and where they are online.
This is the first thing you should do, and key to your overall marketing strategy. Really think about your ideal customer; how old are they, are they male or female, what does their family situation look like –married, divorced, single, kids?, where do they live, what do they do for fun? Once you’ve narrowed down who your target audience is, spend some time figuring out where they hang out online. There’s no point starting a company Twitter page or YouTube Channel, if your target customers are LinkedIn and Facebook kind of folks.
3. Start listening to your community.
Now that you know where your target audience hangs out, start following them on Twitter and liking their pages on Facebook. There’s already a conversation happening online about you or your industry, start tuning in to get an idea of what’s being said.
4. Create content and engage.
Now that you’ve determine where your target market hangs out online, and listened in on what’s being said, you can begin creating and sharing content. This is the bread and butter of your online presence – post interesting content, and people will share it on Facebook and LinkedIn, RT it on Twitter, and +1 it on Google+. The more people that share your content, the more people see it, and the bigger your online presence becomes. Pay attention to patterns, if people respond really well to a particular style of post, for example, asking a question on Facebook, post like that more often. You’ve got a winner, engagement-wise.
5. Online cohesiveness.
Make your website your online hub. When people visit your website, they should be able to see everywhere else you have a presence online. This means including a Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, button at the top of each page of your website (or, at the least, on your homepage). Link these buttons to your social networks, and include an RSS feed button if you have a blog. While you’re at it, use the same color scheme and profile picture (your company logo) when you customize your account on each social network. This way people that visit your Facebook page or YouTube Channel will know right away that it’s your company. The easier you make it for people to find you online, the better.
6. Set a schedule.
Ok, now that you have a simple social media strategy and your building a presence online, don’t let it fall to the wayside. The worst thing you can do is start a Facebook page or Twitter account, and then stop updating it. Potential customers who find you on these social networks may wonder whether you’re still around if you last posted 4 months ago. Social media is technically free, but it can take a lot of time. We recommend making a list of things you need to do every day to accomplish your goals online, and then stick to it.
There you have it, a simple social media strategy to get you started online. Want a more in-depth strategy? We do that too. Contact us for more information and we’ll help you hit the mark online.
Related posts:
Avoid the Top 10 Social Media Mistakes Companies Make
Advertising on Popular Social Networks
Biggest Mistakes You Can Make with Your Facebook Page
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 03rd, 2012
We’re long overdue for a dose of cheer. Here are links to some of the online gems we are enjoying and exploring right now.
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks right now. It allows you to pin, organise and share images online. It is very visually stimulating and fun. Watch this space for a more in depth post all about Pinterest and feel free to follow me there.
We’ve been exploring online tools that allowyou to create simple graphics. We like Gimp, Aviary and Pixlr – there’s also “lite” version of Photoshop if you can find it.
Edge Rank Checker is a tool that allows you track the effectiveness of your Facebook pages but beware – it takes ages to generate your reports and pages with low fan counts will be skewed.
Mobile apps we are loving include: Ego (check web stats on the go), Flipboard (Social Magazine) and Evernote (to help you remember everything).
Want to customize yor Facebook page? We’re currently evaluating Shortstack, FaceIt Pages, North Social and Page Modo. If you have used any of these and have a preference we’d love to get your feedback.
And now some social media tools: Echofon (never read a tweet twice), Buffer (add posts and “automagically” post them through the day), CoTweet (manage mutliple Twitter feeds).
Enjoy!
