Emerging Sales Success

4 frequently asked questions about LinkedIn

Frank Guzzo — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:19:15 +0000

In June of this year, LinkedIn topped 70 million users worldwide. But, what does this really mean? Why have a LinkedIn profile and how can it help in business? These are typically great questions and often asked by many individuals who have not yet grasped the idea of online marketing and using Social Media as a means to build business and create connections with potential customers. Here are a few common questions about LinkedIn and how to benefit from using this powerful Social Media Platform.

Q. I already have a profile on LinkedIn, but don’t really see any advantage or how it can benefit my business.

A. The key to anything we do online is to be active. LinkedIn gives you the ability to make yourself stand out from the rest of the crowd in several ways.

Create a powerful profile. Complete the profile so the completion bar is over 90% complete. Preferably 100%. Think of answering the question: How can I help you in the summary section?

Get recommended.This is critical. Who would you do business with: someone that has one or no recommendations or someone that has 25 or more recommendations for a job well done?

Build your network. This is imperative as your network is your link to potential customers and gives you the ability to reach out to potentially hundreds, if not thousands of individuals and businesses that can help you build your business. Make sure you include high-level networkers and media companies.

Q. So, I’ve done all of the above. Now what?

A. The key now to be active. This should not take a lot of time if planned correctly.

Join groups. Groups should be of particular interest to you and are relevant to your industry. Join in on the conversation. Respond to a topic or better yet start a discussion.

Answers. Go to the answers section of LinkedIn and respond to a question you feel suits you and you obviously know the answer. Pose a question and see what sort of responses you can get. If you are working on a perplexing project and are looking for a particular resource, you will be amazed at how many people will come forward to assist you. Think this could save you some time?

Post Jobs. Looking to recruit and hire? What better place than to find a qualified candidate. The best part is that you already have a lot of information before you even make a call.

Q. I heard that LinkedIn is only for those looking for employment and recruiters seem to use it a lot.

A. Yes, as I mentioned in my previous answer, LinkedIn is great for posting job opportunities. As a matter of fact, here are the numbers according to HubSpot: In the Business World, people using LinkedIn are – 41% marketing; 70% job-hunting; 80% recruiting.

Q. So, does this mean that if you are not looking to move to another company or change careers that you really do not need a profile on LinkedIn?

A. Absolutely not! The way things change nowadays where companies are merging and opportunities crop up every minute, it would be foolish to not have a powerful profile on LinkedIn. Also keep in mind that your next customer/client will seek you out and review your accomplishments before doing business with you. Have you every Googled someone you were about to meet for business? Well, your LinkedIn profile will show up on the Google search engine results. Also, you no longer need to travel all over the globe to meet potential new clients and business partners. You can get introduced to someone through your network and start the conversation online without ever leaving the office.

The key to any successful online social media platform is to be active. Help others where you can. Join groups, start discussions, respond to questions in the answer section. If your company has a blog, link it to the profile. The same goes for your Twitter account. Personalize the URL address for your profile if the name is still available. There is so much that can be done with LinkedIn and many ways to use this powerful tool in business. I have only touched on a few items and will delve deeper into some of these in future articles. In the mean time, let’s start the conversation.

This chart shows how B2B social media use varies from B2C focused businesses. Owners of small businesses were more likely to use LinkedIn than employees working for a corporation. B2C are much more focused on Facebook and B2B are much more focused on LinkedIn. Also note that B2B companies are utilizing blogs more.

Chart provided by SocialMediaExaminer.com – 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

Frank Guzzo is a speaker/trainer and owner of Emerging Sales Success, a sales and marketing consulting company specializing in social media marketing and focused on building solutions for regional, national and international businesses alike. We keep up with trends, filter the noise and help companies like yours put social media to work. To learn more about us, our services, and how you can use social media marketing to build your brand or to hire Frank as a speaker for your next event, call 1-877-617-7717.

Published on WholeFoods Magazine Online, July 19, 2010.

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do more with the new privacy settings on facebook

Frank Guzzo — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 23:41:09 +0000

Because I am a big stickler when it comes to security online and having seen my friends FaceBook profile hacked, I am always looking for new information on how to protect oneself from the potential dangers of hackers and privacy in general. Because FaceBook is at the 500 million user threshold and everyone we know is on or joining including great grandma, I thought it would be appropriate to give you additional feedback on protecting your privacy on this platform.

The one thing to remember is that if you want to maintain privacy, do not post anything online. Knowing that this just isn’t a reasonable request, you have to find ways to keep up with the changes and also do what is necessary before something happens.

Always remember what I wrote in my previous blog, 5 simple steps to protect yourself from hackers on FaceBook, BE SENSIBLE. We live in a new age where everything is transparent and the old adage of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas no longer applies and what happens in Vegas now stay on YouTube, Viddler, Delicious, Digg and other social sites. So yes, be careful and if you do get that urgent email from a close friend asking for 5,000 dollars sent immediately by wire, call their family first. Or better yet, call your friend as they may still be in bed while this is all happening. You’d be surprised at how many people actually fall for these scams.

Having said all this I want to share a great blog posted by Lori Randal at Social Media Examiner. The information in her blog is very useful and I know will assist in not only making the changes to your privacy setting on FaceBook, but she also shows you how to make the changes needed. I hope you enjoy it.

Frank Guzzo is a speaker/trainer and owner at Emerging Sales Success, a sales and marketing consulting company specializing in social media marketing and focused on building solutions for regional, national and international businesses. We keep up with trends, filter the noise and help companies like yours put social media to work. To learn more about us, our services, and how you can use social media marketing to build your brand or to hire Frank as a speaker for your next event, contact us. 1-877-617-7717

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social media strategy from A – Z

Frank Guzzo — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 05:32:42 +0000

Every now and again I come across a great article worthy of re-posting on my blog. And today this one is no different. I have read through it and it really does cover everything when it comes to Social Media Marketing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I found it to be informative and to the point. The author Tamar Weinberg did a great job here. Enough form me … here is her post form her blog.

Social Media Strategy from A to Z

Frank Guzzo is an international speaker and the owner of Emerging Sales Success, a sales and marketing consulting company specializing in social media marketing and focused on building solutions for regional, national and international businesses alike. We keep up with trends, filter the noise and help companies like yours put social media to work. To learn more about us, our services, and how you can use social media marketing to build your brand or to hire Frank as a speaker for your next event, contact us. 1-877-617-7717

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5 simple steps to protect yourself from hackers on facebook

Frank Guzzo — Fri, 21 May 2010 23:42:35 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for some time now but things just seem to keep getting in the way. So its time to stop procrastinating as I have no excuses left and I just need to do it!

We read so much these days about the benefits of building a following of friends on the social platforms, like LinkedIn, Twitter and FaceBook just to name a few. And by the way, these are probably the most popular platforms out there and you can add MySpace to the popularity list. Yes, there are so many benefits to using these networks to connect with family and friends and for businesses the opportunities are endless.

What we do not hear about are the potential dangers that lurk in the dark corners of some of these platforms and today specifically, I want to address the privacy issues and risks we all assume by creating a profile on FaceBook.

Last week a friend of mine who uses FaceBook strictly to stay in touch with her friends and family had her account hacked. Quite frankly, I don’t know how it happens, but it did happen. Her identity was stolen and somehow the hackers also took control of her yahoo email address even though she had two completely separate passwords for these accounts.

The long and short of that story is that emails were being sent out by the hacker to her friends list imploring them with a very compelling story of how she was stranded in the UK at a hotel and had been robbed. She could not settle her hotel bill and needed money wired immediately to get her home. Now I saw this email in my inbox and it was sent from her Yahoo account which would make it a legitimate email, but I have seen this before and knew immediately that she had been hacked. I later found out that the emails started rolling out around 3 AM pacific.

Hackers will write to your friends using calling them by name and using family members names to get you to believe the story. They are very good at what they do and quite believable.

The sad part to this story was that a couple of her friends started calling the number in the UK to find out how to transfer the money needed to get their friend home. Thankfully they were able to reach my friends husband who was aware of what was going on and stopped them from sending any money. My friend had no way of emailing everyone as she had not control over her regular email account. FaceBook does not have a number to call for these types of emergencies and so we are left with just emailing from a help page. She could not post on her wall that her account had been hacked and so for the hours that this process went on, some serious damage could have been done.

This is a violation of a persons privacy in every way. FaceBook does make a few statements here and there to alert people of the dangers by hackers and lack of privacy on the social platforms. I believe they do not do enough.

There are over 400 million people on FaceBook. And yet a threat this great is rarely ever spoken of in the form of a banner perhaps or safety tips on the side column from FaceBook. They do however give much attention to detail when it comes to adds and custom landing pages and generating revenue, (1 billion projected for 2010) that very little in my opinion is being done to protect the everyday average user.

Here is a great article that gives you some idea of the tactics used by hackers across the globe. http://bit.ly/bbJaPK and although the article is over a year old, it is still valid.

Here are some simple steps you can take to prevent this from happening to you.

Be sensible – If your friend writes asking you to send money, call around and verify that this is actually the case BEFORE you start calling foreign numbers
Limit the amount of information you post about yourself and especially your children. Hackers make themselves seem like regular, normal people but with the intent to hurt you in some way. They COLLECT as much information about you as possible.
Take the initiative and post something on your wall alerting others of the potential dangers of hackers and advising your friends and family to always confirm with you and your family about any suspicious email they get requesting money.
Never share your password with anyone and always where possible add a character at somewhere in your password.
Create an alternate email address within FaceBook so if hackers have taken control of one email you can always have the account reset by using the alternate address.

These are just some simple and very basic steps you can take to protect yourself. There is so much information available online if you do a Google Search.

The bottom line is Social Networking can be fun, but just like most things in life, you need to take precautions to protect yourself from the potential dangers and pitfalls of networking in a community of 400 million users. So have fun, be social and BE SAFE.

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simple question – simple answer – what is social media?

Frank Guzzo — Fri, 07 May 2010 01:26:55 +0000

I guess I am still surprised at how many people I come across that are not familiar with the Social Media Revolution happening. I am still asked what is Social Media. What does it do? At a recent event where Starr Hall was the keynote speaker, she asked the audience if everyone was familiar with social media and so many did not know what it was.

Now most people have heard of FaceBook and Twitter, LinkedIn or MySpace. Most just don’t know how to use them effectively or that they are considered social media platforms.

So in this very simple and basic video put together off the cuff at my desk, I answer the simple question: What is social media?

Enjoy.

Let’s start the conversation

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how to use google and twitter to find your customers

Frank Guzzo — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:27:38 +0000

I get an enormous amount of email daily and much of these are articles and new information on Social Media and how to use the various tools available. There is so much information being posted on a regular basis that sometimes its difficult to filter it down to useful bytes. (like me use of bites/bytes?) Today was no different. I however come across this great article on “How To Use Google and Twitter To Find Your Customers.” I wanted to share this one with you as I feel it will answer some questions about how to use some of the tools that are available and I just personally felt that Eric Tsai did such a great job in explaining this to everyone in terms we can all understand and in a step by step process.

I invite you to read the full article here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Frank Guzzo is the owner of Emerging Sales Success, a sales and marketing consulting company specializing in social media marketing and focused on building solutions for regional, national and international businesses alike. We keep up with trends, filter the noise and help companies like yours put social media to work. To learn more about us, our services, and how you can use social media marketing to build your brand, contact us. 1-877-617-7717 Let’s start the conversation

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find balance in social media marketing – know about do’s and don’ts

Frank Guzzo — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:10:45 +0000

From YouTube to MySpace, Facebook to Twitter and beyond, shared media has taken communicating to a whole new level. Utilizing ‘social media’ for business purposes is a hot trend these days, one that we simply cannot ignore. However, there are those who feel it is far too complicated or time consuming and shy away from Social Media. They know they need to ‘connect’ but do not understand the ins and outs and this way they are actually moving away from a whole new method of interacting with their would be audience and clients.

Once you understand its unique approach and that it’s not about hard sales, the rest is easy. Always remember that you need to be believable, dedicated, repetitive and valuable. Also, keep in mind that repetitive does not mean you need to spam the similar message to the whole world; rather it signifies that you should take some time out of your busy schedule regularly to interact.

Basic dos of social media to tee up your business for massive success

Do make use of future oriented approach: Using social media for business is an integral part of boosting the image and branding for your organization. A future oriented approach will assist you to carve a unique niche at the forefront of your industry. Whatever you publish on different social marketing sites must be tasteful and future oriented so that it cannot come back to haunt you or your business later on.

Participate actively: If you want to ensure you are heard and seen, then, you need to rate entries, post comments and submit quality articles. You need to keep things on positive side, but do not overdo it. It is also a good practice to contribute beneficial comments after you go through something that is interesting.

Submit quality content: In order to be successful in your branding efforts, you should submit the information the targeted audience would like to get acquainted with, and details that would be helpful for them. It is not all about self promotion or marketing. However, you can make use of insights obtained from many years of experience in the relevant field and share the wealth of huge knowledge.

Some basic don’ts of social media marketing

The biggest mistake that most people make when they use social media marketing methods is that they overlook what it is all about, that is, ‘to be social’. Interact with your audience. Develop a relationship and build quality contacts.

Don’t send mixed messages : If you are on multiple platforms, make sure your message and branding are consistent.

Don’t forget to analyze your stats : In order to know how to adjust your campaign you will need to review your statistics on a regular basis to see what is working and what you may need to adjust to optimize your online campaign.

Don’t ‘spam’ on social sites: I shouldn’t have to put this in here but some folks just don’t get it.

Don’t try to do too much all at once: Embarking on a successful Social Media Campaign can be overwhelming to say the least. Take it in small steps. Try things out before wanting to do everything all at once.

Remember you need to build up a list of interested prospects by building up individual relationships. So, keep all this in mind when preparing to conquer social media networks for branding, marketing and boosting up sales and adding wings to your business profile. Also remember that increasing sales through social media is not a magical approach at all. Though all social network sites may proffer free membership programs, free platform or even free enrollment, it takes a great deal of work. If you make the right decisions, keep track of the essentials and make it a long term sales plan, you will certainly be able to improve your standing immensely and as a result will consistently be rewarded for your efforts.

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how social media marketing can build your business profile

Frank Guzzo — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:26:30 +0000

As the popularity of social media keeps on increasing, businesses of all sizes and types are identifying methods in which social network platforms can assist them to better respond, comprehend and grab the attention of targeted audiences. Consequently, organizations are now opting for improving sales through social-media at a quick pace, embracing wikis, social websites, blogs and other strategies to realize their branding or public relations objectives.

Increasing sales through social media sites is really an inexpensive and powerful way to market and promote your business profile. By tapping into the strengths of social-media networks, you can keep a bull’s eye on what is happening around the world.

Businesses Gain Three Major Benefits by Branding Through Social-Media

Awareness: When businesses make efforts to come across and meet future potential prospects on social networks, they can keep themselves well informed of what other individuals are saying regarding their organization. Whatever individuals are saying, good or bad, businesses can be an essential part of the conversation. As they are aware, they can reply to correct the half truths, fix mistakes or even change the circumstances in behavior that help build up strong relationships.
Visibility: When any business sets up a web presence and actively makes use of social marketing tools, it turns out to be more visible to both potential and current customers.
Relevance: On social-media networking websites, the information about various new trends and tools is available readily, as a result businesses can quickly move to modify services and products to cater to the varying needs of targeted audience.

Additional Benefits of Marketing or Branding Through Social Media

Get the message out to a greater audience and faster:

Boosting up sales through social networking sites enables quicker sharing of useful information, along with more extensive coverage. To the contrary, it can take days for a message to reach to end consumers through conventional means. Social-media branding permits the broadcasting of not just an announcement, but video, audio, image and various other content types as well. Because the message geared toward social-media tools contain only pertinent facts, hyperlinks and key highlights to related quotes and statistics, the information can be picked up immediately and published by online journalists and bloggers.

Enhances branding:

Marketing through social media can help businesses gather feedback or input directly from targeted audiences and make use of that information for more powerful reputation management. Gaining insight as to why individuals like or dislike a particular brand is needed to aid in controlling and changing audience’s preferences and perceptions.

Boosts up direct marketing strategies:

SEO is an essential component of lead generation and direct branding strategies, and social network websites have proven their ability to complement search engine optimization initiatives significantly. The different tools such as title tags, frequent usage of common key phrases and jargon, links to some blogs, relevant web content and ticker symbols can dramatically boost search engine ranking.

So, opt for an effective social media approach and help generate a huge boost in website traffic.

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google alerts

Frank Guzzo — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:16:53 +0000

Here is a simple concept and an idea that can save you time and money and perhaps give you an edge over the competition in business. Google Alerts. How many of you are using Google Alerts? What are Google Alerts? Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Why use Google Alerts?

When was the last time you Googled you name? What are people saying about you? Do you know what is floating out there in the cloud about you and your company? Google does all the work for you. All you do is enter a topic or key word in the search bar and set your parameters as to how often you wish to be notified by email of what shows up on the web about your search query.

I use this for all my clients. I encourage them to use on a daily basis. It may seem like a lot of email to manage, however if set up properly you can control how much time you spend reading all the Google Alerts you receive. Since I use Outlook as my mail client it is simple to set up a rule that allows all incoming mail from Google Alerts to go to a specific folder, in this case named Google Alerts and not congest my already overtaxed inbox.

What project are you working on? Have the latest information? Set up a Google Alert. This is something so simple and yet so very few people are using this amazing tool that is available to you absolutely free. Have you ever wondered if you have the latest information on a specific project you are working on or the latest rules, regulations? Using this tool is a way to make sure you always have the most current information readily available and if something negative is ever published about you or your company you can respond to it right away.

A simple tool to make life on the web easier and simpler. If you would like more detail on Google Alerts click here.

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2 positive stories on the impact of social media

Frank Guzzo — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:27:17 +0000

Two great stories came across my desk this morning. Both very different and yet the same. They both spoke of Social Media and how creative one can be to reach their goals and build a brand or drive traffic and build a business. In the first. It was about a 40 year old man who wanted to make a difference. He created a nonprofit organization called 12for12k Challenge. He was going to raise 12,000 dollars per month for twelve months for twelve different charities. How did it work out? Well I’ll let you read the full story but what I wanted to focus on was the fact that Danny Brown had a vision of what he wanted. He had no budget to build this but he had determination and his vision to guide him.

He used the power of social media and not limiting himself to just twitter or facebook. He harnessed the power of video, blogging, ning and Viddler. The end results speaks for itself. Read the full story here written by Casey Hibbard at SocialMedia Examiner

The second story that came across my desk this morning although not as touching and heartfelt as this one about Danny Brown, but powerful none the less as it shows how businesses are using the power of social media. In a study conducted by University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business of 500 businesses, it concluded that nearly one in five small business owners are integrating social media into their business processes and that 45% of those surveyed believed that their social media efforts will pay off financially in 12 months or less.

This is powerful mostly because I have had countless questions about the successes of social media and what to expect as far as ROI. The chart below breaks down some of the statistics collected as part of the study. Read the full story by Jennifer Van Grove posted on Mashable. Are you using Social Media to build your brand? If not, why not?

It is said that knowledge is power. It is only worth something if you use this knowledge to make create a positive change either for yourself or for others. Social Media is a powerful tool that can have a positive impact on your business and brand. If you haven’t started using this effective tool you are missing countless opportunities to connect with your market.

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