Organize your connections into different groups via tags

LinkedIn is in beta with a new connections page that makes it easier to find, organize and stay in touch with your business contacts. The update adds a panel that makes it much nicer to browse contacts quickly, enabling you to find what you need with a few clicks. You now are able to browse contacts by their companies, industries or locations. Selecting the recent activity filter, you can see who has added new connections.

When you click on one of your connections, a mini profile appears in the right panel, showing you contact information, photo, current position and number of connections.

One feature that caught my attention is the ability to tag your connections. Similar to friend lists on Facebook and lists on Twitter, you now can segment your connections so you can send specific communications depending on which list they are on. It’s no longer an all or nothing selection! This is a feature many have been waiting for with LinkedIn and is a welcome addition.

The Marketing Impact

This new LinkedIn connections interface makes it easy to browse and get information on your connections. But something that this interface also points out is whose profiles need work. Profiles without pictures, status updates or website/blog addresses are profiles of people who don’t want to get noticed. In this very crowded market, you must go the extra mile to be visible. Having a complete and compelling profile is one simple exercise to help you stand out. By the way, using your company logo as your profile picture doesn’t count – people don’t build relationships with logos or companies. Relationships are among people and the more approachable you are, the more likely someone will want to connect with you. There’s a reason why Facebook differentiates a personal profile from a business page.

Spend a few minutes each day updating something in your profile. The benefits include making your profile interesting and the fact that you updated something in your profile gets publicized to your connections, ensuring you stay visible. What’s keeping you from filling out your LinkedIn profile (or any social media profile) completely so people can connect with you and develop those so very important relationships?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Organizing LinkedIn Connections via Tags is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

I have always been about quality. I know a lot of people, but value my few close friends. When it comes to clothes, I would rather have one quality, custom outfit than a dozen that were just ok. And when it comes to social media, I want to build a quality network of people rather than a massive list of names.

The first step in building a community is to develop relationships with people who have similar interests to yours and then engage in conversations, offering something of value and interest to them.

My goal is to build my networks strategically. I don’t add followers, friends or connections just because I can. I add quality people that have some personal or professional connection to me. To many, my networks may appear to be rather small, but they are enormous in their value to me.

In addition to my blog and email list subscribers, I am building the following social communities:

LinkedIn

I have 293 connections in my network on LinkedIn made up of people I have met in a professional setting, including previous employers, clients and prospects and those I’ve met at both live and online events. I am very comfortable inviting the people I’ve met to connect with me on LinkedIn. I know I have value to offer and want to remain in touch, even with prospects that never become clients. I always include a personal message to them and hope that they value connecting with me as well.

If someone invites me to connect that I have never met, I review their profile, looking at their picture (absolute must have), basic info and profile summary for common interests or business synergies. I view all people as potential business partners, future clients or someone who can open the door to an opportunity that is important to my business.

Facebook

I have 174 Facebook friends made up of life long friends and golf buddies, business contacts and social media contacts. Facebook is a wonderful place to meet people and interact with them. I love getting invitations from people from all over the world to become a friend. The stream of activity on your wall can help you learn a lot about someone. You can be more casual while staying professional in your conversation. I connect with all types of people on Facebook, including friends, colleagues and folks I meet networking because Facebook enables me to build Friend Lists, private groupings of friends based on my personal preferences, so I can organize my conversations and privacy settings.

Facebook Business Page

Every business should have a Facebook Business Page where you can make connections in a business casual atmosphere. Facebook provides many capabilities to enhance your Business Page to make it more interactive and interesting. Provide a steady stream useful and relevant information and those who are interested will become fans. Although some people send out requests for fans, I prefer to let the list build organically. I am thrilled when I see someone new become a fan. I currently have 66 fans and I am thankful to you all!

Twitter

With 914 followers and 742 friends (those I follow), Twitter is like going to an event and talking with everyone around you. The open conversation is very casual, but a lot of useful information can be found. My criteria is simple: I follow interesting people – not robots, spammers, automated accounts or adult content. A real picture of you will more likely get me to check your profile to see if there is a connection. Use a custom background image on your Twitter page to add important information about you and your value. If I don’t know who you are or what you have to offer, I probably won’t follow.

Bottom line is I’m very open to connecting, friending and following interesting people. I look forward to connecting with you.

What is your criteria for building your social media network? Share your strategy with us.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Seek Quality not Quantity in Your Social Networks is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Photo courtesy of kthypryn on Flickr

I’ve noticed that some of my contacts (10% to be exact) have made their connections private on LinkedIn. As a social network, hiding your contact list seems, well, not very social. When a contact list is private, I can’t browse my connection’s network to see who I may know or who may be of interest to me. I can still find people in their network via a keyword search showing them as the first-level contact that provides the connection, but I have to know what I’m looking for and I can’t just open up their connection list and peruse them for familiar faces.

Why Do People Choose to Hide Their Networks?

• To prevent competitors from gaining access to your customers and business partners
• To avoid having to make an introduction to someone for a person you don’t really know
• To preserve confidentiality
• To eliminate unwanted solicitations

All very valid reasons.

I’ve also discovered that originally LinkedIn set the default as private, so it’s highly possible that some people just don’t know that they can change this setting. So if you are in that category, go to “Accounts & Settings”, “Connections Browse” and select “Yes, show my connections list” radio button if you wish to open up your network.

Should You Make Your Network Visible?

One of the real strengths of LinkedIn is its ability to assist in connecting people. Everyone on LinkedIn has chosen to share their information to some extent with everyone in their network which includes your 3rd degree network and those with whom you share groups. By not sharing your connections, you appear to be anti-social and imply that you want easy access to my connections but are not willing to share yours in return. And although that may not be the case for your choice, networking is a two-way street and some people may take offense.

If you open your network, you can:

• Help other people connect
• Create new opportunities for you and others
• Build new relationships
• Grow your network

Professionals should apply the same networking skills to LinkedIn that you would in a face-to-face networking event and behave responsibly. I hope those I connect with act professionally and can be trusted to use the network appropriately, enabling me to expand and add value to not only my network, but to yours as well.

What’s Right for You?

The purpose of LinkedIn is to create an opportunity to discover other professionals that may be beneficial for me to know. Most often, I’m not going to spend a lot of time browsing other’s connections and mostly will make use of the search feature to save time. If someone truly feels that hiding their connections is right for them, then that’s their choice and it’s fine with me.

Do you open your network or protect it and why?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Do You Hide Your LinkedIn Connections? is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

As business owners, we know the value of networking. Expanding our ability to network using online social media opens us up to a larger world of possibilities. The time is right to add Twitter to your networking mix and gain valuable connections and relationships. A colleague of mine got a client because the person that needed her services searched Twitter for people who could provide it.

As Chelsea Moser advises in her post on Twitter and Promoting Your Business, be selective with who you follow. This is not a popularity contest. Following people just to raise your numbers is analogous to handing out business cards to everyone you meet at an event.

If someone follows you, you don’t necessarily have to follow them back unless you are truly interested in them. Look at their profile. If they have followed Jason Baer’s advice on the 7 Ingredients in the Perfect Twitter Profile and what you see appeals to you, then follow them back. Here are the things I look at when deciding:

• Are they real? Do they use a real name and picture or are they hiding behind some cutsie name and fake avatar? The value of social networks is in the folks you meet. Plus I’m suspicious of those who fake it as they must have something to hide.
• The ratio of followers vs. the number they follow – if they are following thousands and have a much smaller number of followers, I don’t immediately follow them back.
• Their profile description – your first impression is key to people wanting to follow you. If your profile says (this one’s real) “internet marketing s my thing am basicallraking millions per year with it and you might wanna consider joining the game”, I feel like I need a shower. I’m here to learn and build relationships with people. I enjoy getting to know people via social networking and then meeting them in person.
• Their updates – how many, how often and the content. If every update is a URL linking to something, that’s not a good sign. There’s no conversation going on, just a sales pitch. Or if they are following many people but have very few updates, I’m not sure what they are getting from Twitter so I’ll keep an eye on them. By all means, if they are new to Twitter, help them out, follow them and get them into the conversation.

How to Behave

Just as you would be guided by your first impressions when you meet someone at a live networking event, use that same instinct when you meet someone on Twitter. Don’t immediately start selling. I’ve experienced the automatic direct message (DM) with a link selling me something that Chelsea also doesn’t appreciate. Those that have done that are on my watch list of those that I will unfollow quickly if they continue to sell. This is not how you build relationships.

Talk to people, relate to them, get to know them through their thoughts and words. Learn from them and you will build relationships that will be valuable to you in the future.

How to Keep Track of it All

I’ve been using TweetDeck as my interface to Twitter recently. What I like about it is its simplicity and its visual layout. By hovering over someone’s image, you can reply, retweet, direct message and favorite a tweet. You can also split the main feed (All Tweets) into topic or group specific columns to make it easy to follow various threads. The default columns can contain All Tweets from your timeline, @replies directed to you and direct messages and you can define your own based on groups or searchs. Visit their site for more explanation and some screenshots of the interface.

For more Twitter tools, read Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals by Brian Solis.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Networking using Twitter is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

I occasionally have conversations with people who debunk the value and power of social media. They seem to think that some people hide behind social media to avoid actually meeting people in person. Although I’m sure there are some who are like that, I believe social media has more pluses than minuses and can benefit your marketing activities immensely.

I spoke about the global connecting, sharing, and learning benefits in my post on the Benefits of Social Media earlier this year. So I thought I would share some of my real experiences.

Social media enables me to:

• Connect with people through common interests (such as marketing, social media, and golf) irrespective of where they live. Through social media, I have connected with folks worldwide because we found something in common that drove the connection. People I have never met and probably would never have had the opportunity to meet if not for social media have introduced themselves to me either after I’ve connected via Twitter, commented on one of their blog posts or referenced a post in one of mine. It’s really just a matter of time before we’re at someplace in common and our paths cross for real.
• Get to “know” the people I interact with because they share information about themselves, including their photo. “Putting a face with a name” makes the person less of a stranger. Last night at the Institute of Management Consultants meeting I attended in Waltham, MA, Scott Monty, Laura Fitton (Pistachio) and Aaron Strout were on a panel to discuss social media (what else!). Other Twitterers such as Mike Langford, Stephen Dill and Dmitri Gunn were in attendance. Our profile pictures enabled us to recognized each other immediately and conversations bypassed the “getting to know you” banter and proceeded quickly to interesting dialog. It was a great evening made more so by not having to walk into a room of strangers. I hope to get many more opportunities to meet folks in person from my social networks as I did last night. It was a great experience.
• Constantly learn. I get updated on a lot of information from very knowledgeable people so I’m not the “last to know”. Between RSS feeds and Twitter posts with URLs to interesting information, I keep up on the pulse of what’s happening. By scanning various feeds, I can pick and choose the information I’m interested in at the time, flag that which I want to read later or share it with others.
• Carry on conversations with people as if I were in the next office. As a person who works from a home office (and loves it!), I can have conversations with people throughout the day and not feel cut off from the world. But just like co-workers who drop into your office and interrupt your concentration, you have to manage your use of social media to ensure you get work done.

For those of you who are still skeptics about social media, you need to try it in order to understand the value it can be to you. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s OK - it may not be the right marketing activity for your business. But if you are considering social media as a marketing strategy, start with the basics – a blog, LinkedIn and Facebook. Once you get these going, then add Twitter. After that, it’s up to you to determine which other tools may be beneficial to you based on your target market and how you want to reach them.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Building Social Media Relationships is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

In this era of social media and our ability to effectively connect and build relationships with so many folks around the world, why do some people think that by filling out my contact form, I would ever consider outsourcing client work to them? 

This is a really big pet peeve of mine!

A few times a month, I get several emails similar to the following from people using contact forms on my web site. Some come from freelancers and some from college students looking for work.

This bothers me because it’s:

• Totally impersonal and solicitous, showing no interest in me or my business other than looking for work
• Inappropriate since my contact form is meant for people who may be interested in my services, not the other way around (if I were hiring, I’d have a careers page)!

 (Bob Smith is an alias so sorry any Bob Smith’s out there!):

email: bobsmith@bobsmith.com
first: bob
last: smith
company: bobsmith.com
telephone: 508 555 5555
message: Dear Team Vista, (Really personal greeting)

I am contacting you to offer my services as a Freelance SEO Copywriter.

My name is Bob Smith and I’m based in Boston. You can view a few writing samples on my website here: http://bobsmith.com/

I am very dedicated and available to start work immediately.

I can write any type of SEO article that you may need me to write and I can also include screen shots and images via Flickr’s creative commons in your articles if you so desire.

My rate is US$35/article for any article between 300-1200 words. I also write blog posts of the same length for US$35/blog post. Please feel free to mark my rates up to your clients.

Let me be very clear – this does not build trust or make me want to partner with you. Most business owners are careful about who they select as subcontractors because it reflects on them. I’m sure this person is a very good writer, but it shows no initiative to build a relationship with me.

Before you will ever get people to trust you enough to hire you as a subcontractor, you need to first develop a strong personal brand and make yourself visible to me via social media.

• Find out more about me by visiting my LinkedIn profile (it’s clearly posted on all my web properties).
• Start reading my blogs to understand my areas of expertise to see how you could add value.
• Join my community via MyBlogLog, follow me in Twitter and take an interest in what I do.
• Start writing your own blog and make your knowledge and expertise visible.
• Comment on my blog with intelligence and relevancy.

Develop a relationship with me first and then, maybe if I need a writer for some client work, I will seek YOU out.

Social media makes it so easy to develop relationships with people anywhere in the world who could potentially send business your way. Don’t turn them off by taking this shotgun, impersonal, almost spammy approach. Take the time to learn about that person, what they may need in the way of resources for their clients, engage in a conversation and develop trust and a relationship that will help both of you in the long run.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

How Not to Get Business is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Works both Offline and Online

For many thinking of starting their own businesses, the fear of finding clients can paralyze them enough to sabotage their efforts. Cold calling prospects can make some of us break out in a cold sweat. One of the things that I learned early on in my business start-up days is that there are other ways to find clients. When you have worked in corporate America for your entire career, one of the skills you didn’t learn was how to network. As a business owner, networking is one of the best ways to get clients and today, adding social networking to the mix makes your ability to find business that much easier.

One of the first things I did when I launched the business was to join BNI (Business Network International). Some people feel that it doesn’t work, but when you are starting a business, being busy meeting new people, gaining a support organization and having a place to test your marketing message is really a valuable exercise. The next thing I did was to take a course on networking. The course taught me the basic principle of growing your business, called the VCP model – Visibility + Credibility = Profitability. Dr. Ivan Misner developed this three phase relationship development model: Visibility–Credibility–Profitability or VCP, to help business owners understand how to generate profitable relationships.

• Visibility – Be seen otherwise out of sight, out of mind.
• Credibility – Develop the relationship so that people understand your value and how to refer business to you.
• Profitability – Cultivating relationship with the right referral sources will result in profitable business relationships.

The principles of networking transcend to social networking. How does the VCP model work in social networking?

Building visibility and credibility using social media takes time but is worth it as it provides the venue from which you can create visibility and demonstrate your expertise. In many ways, it’s easier to develop this reputation online since the tools enable you to build your reputation on a daily basis. In person networking events happen frequently, but not 24×7.

Where to begin?

• Create a blog and write relevant posts;
• Create profiles on social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MyBlogLog and other social networks that relate to your area of expertise;
• Link your blog to your profiles and look for other opportunities to get link love;
• Comment intelligently on other blogs;
• Submit your blog to Technorati and Blogged.com;
• Answer questions on LinkedIn;



• Share presentations on SlideShare with linked audio if you have it;
• Create videos and upload to YouTube.

You get the picture!

So why do we do it?

Because according to John Jantsch, ”Tis better to be found than to find“.

1) It’s just a whole lot more fun to pick up the phone and have someone on the other end go on about all the great things they have read, seen and heard about your products and services.

2) (And I think this is a really big point) Prospects that come to you by way of your information machine, that have logically progressed down a path of education, are probably ten times more likely to be ideal and equally more likely to close than those that you go out and try to convince to buy from you. In fact, your marketing system can be one of the greatest ways to qualify leads – if a lead won’t go down your education path, that might be a red flag that they won’t be an ideal customer either.

What other ways do you recommend people get visibility and credibility using social media?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Visibility + Credibility = Profitability is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Is it Worth It?

I have to say that using Twitter was not high on my list for a long while, but I finally dove in to see what this social media tool was all about. But since joining the service and selecting a few folks I wanted to follow (right now I’m following only about 20 people who’s blogs I read regularly), I find I’m really seeing a lot of value in this social network from the business perspective.

For those reading who have not heard of Twitter:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? (from the Twitter FAQ).

In 140 characters or less, you can send thoughts, observations, ideas, questions and other topics around you to your “followers”. These posts are called “tweets”.

The service is free. If you don’t have text messaging in your mobile phone plan, you could spend a bit of coin following those you want to keep tabs on. You can also follow using a web browser and Google Talk. Better yet, you can get a Google Gadget for your iGoogle page as well.

As you can see to the left, I have also inserted one of the Twitter badges to display the tweets of those that I am following, including my own. So every once in a while, you will spot my face among the notables tweeting regularly. But rather than just post my tweets here, I though visitors would enjoy to see what others are doing as well.

I have also installed the Twitter Updater WordPress plugin so that all new posts automatically get broadcasted to my followers.

Mike Sansone (who I’m following and vice versa), wrote an interesting post on Twitter on the day I signed up and started poking around (was that fate?). Check out his post on why he uses Twitter. 

What have I found interesting and valuable?

• Most of those you follow, follow you back – this makes you feel welcome into the community. These folks don’t know me and I certainly didn’t expect people to follow me right away as they don’t know me at all. So if you think you can lurk for a while, you can’t. Those of you who did follow back, I hope my life and daily tweets are as interesting to you as yours are to me.
• I get constant updates from people on what’s happening in social media. I can quickly scan the information and decide what is important and what is not. There are many things I’ve gleened over the past week that I would not have heard about had I not been following the buzz. And I just implemented a Yahoo Pipes feed as Mike suggested to keep those tweets that contain a URL to something I may want to find again later.
• It keeps me connected at all times. Whether I’m out at an event, in the car, or at my desk, I can keep informed and catch a few morsels of what others are doing.

On the down side, I don’t know how folks who follow hundreds, or in some cases thousands of people, can really absorb all of the information they get. I would assume they tune into certain folks and tune out others. Only following a handful of people to get started, I find myself already doing that. 

But the most valuable aspect of Twitter for me is that I’m getting to know many people who I would never have come in contact with personally (and hopefully they are getting know me as well). This media brings the world closer and connects people from everywhere with a common interest. To me, it’s almost not what you say, but the fact you are saying it to me, regardless of where I am.

So is it worth it? I would say absolutely. 

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

My First Week’s Experiences on Twitter is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

As a service professionals, we are challenged to provide proof of our expertise. We do that through articles, blogs, free consultations and speaking engagements. All of these exercises help us build our personal brand reputation as an expert in our field.

However, Drew McLellan has struck a nerve in his post Why Do We Keep Giving Away the Milk? How much free advice is too much?

Getting paid for our services is why we’re in business. But all consultants, coaches, mentors and pretty much most service professionals get drawn into the “hey can I run one by you over coffee” conversation time and time again.

And that’s OK … to a point! I like coffee as much as the next person, but it does not pay the bills.

Of course, there are exceptions – a person who gives you great referrals, collaborates and helps you.

As you can see, there is really no black and white answer to this dilemma. Take a hard nose approach and it could hurt your business. Give away too much information and it could hurt your business!

I’m certainly not going to repeat the advice being given on Drew’s post at the MPDaily Fix so head on over and join the discussion, but here’s my view:

• I give advice to most who ask. My belief is that most aren’t out to pick our brains dry. If they are, they should be easy to notice as they most likely have gained that type of reputation anyway. I usually sit down with someone one to one, discuss their situation and offer advice. You see, if that person knows as much as you do about what you do (in my case marketing), then they will never hire you anyway. If they truly have a need, your discussion will lead them to the next step where they will hire you.
• I never provide implementation details as part of the discussion. Ideas can be found everywhere on the Internet. But how to implement the idea is really what you get paid for. Keep the conversation on ideas and you should be OK. If you find yourself getting into how to implement the solution, then you’ve gone too far.

It never is easy to know when enough is enough. We all have a lot to do to work on and in our businesses so it will grow.

As those looking for advice, be considerate of those you are asking. If someone is that good that you keep going to them for advice, try to provide a great referal. I know that if someone sends me a paying client, then all the free advice is more than worth it in my opinion!

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

How Much is Too Much? is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.