LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com) isn’t just for job seekers.  Over 120 million members makes LinkedIn the world’s largest professional network; a network your firm could use in a variety of different ways:

• Establishing a Professional Presence: By including information about your firm as a LinkedIn Company Page, users of the social network can learn more about your firm on the medium of their choice and then move to other off-site mediums, such as your website, if they choose.  Additionally, as lawyers in your firm grow their professional profiles, they have the opportunity to add sections that could include slide presentations, blog posts, or other content that would help inform visitors to their professional profile about your firm. 
• Resource & Knowledge Center (Groups): Groups on LinkedIn is a wonderful way for a firm to interact with those in an industry.  Individuals from your firm can ask questions, look through members interested in the same area as your firm, add job postings, and more.
• Social Networking: The lawyers in your firm can network with other users who may seek legal services.  Be careful to abide by any restraints on who you may network with by checking with The Bar Association in your area.  Additionally, your firm can use LinkedIn to network with colleagues, perhaps those in other firms to whom you refer or are referred business.
• Link Building: As the lawyers in your firm build professional profiles, they can post content including links back to your website or blog.  Their connections could read these posts and see the links and choose to link to your content.
• Hiring: LinkedIn, with their built in Job section, is a wonderful way to connect with those looking for opportunities in the field of law.

The LinkedIn Learning Center has a User Guide specifically devoted to helping individual attorneys as well as law firms to take advantage of all of the opportunities LinkedIn has to offer.  If you are interested in growing your social media presence or hearing how MoreVisibility can help you grow on LinkedIn, please request a quote or contact us for more information.

Nearly every large and successful company employs a number of SEO initiatives to stay successful. However, in many cases they can get a large number of conversions simply because of their brand name. On a deeper level, this is symbolic of the fact that these companies have authority – they are leaders in their industry.

You can do a lot to establish trust and authority for your business through the right kind of engagement on almost any social media site. LinkedIn, in particular, is a stellar example that often gets overlooked. Many professionals view the site as a way to keep tabs on their colleagues, but it is probably the best website you can use to increase your clout and authority in your given field.

Obviously, one of the best ways to establish yourself and your business as an authority is to answer the pressing questions in your industry. LinkedIn has the perfect venue for this with their Answers page. On Answers, members can post questions related to any given field of expertise. When you answer a question, your answer may be selected as a “Best Answer,” which is noted on your profile. By consistently answering questions related to your field, you can quickly build authority in your field among your target demographic.

In addition to Answers, you should also be interacting with your profile page by posting relevant company updates. If you author any blogs or press releases for your company, post them to your profile to get them to spread around. If you write prolifically enough on behalf of your industry, you may be able to become a Source on LinkedIn. If LinkedIn selects you to be a source, your writing will appear in LinkedIn Today – which has the potential to vastly multiply your traffic. If you’re interested in being a source, you must contact LinkedIn.

These efforts to build authority require a significant time investment on your part, so they may not be a fit for every company. However, the payoff can be significant.

You can use your LinkedIn profile for much more than managing your professional connections. By starting a LinkedIn Group and engaging your professional community, you can also have a small but solid link building campaign.

LinkedIn Groups are special pages that anyone can set up on LinkedIn. They gather like-minded professionals to discuss their respective industries. LinkedIn Groups foster a lot of interaction among professionals and are a good starting approach to link building.

When you are starting your own group, you must keep in mind that LinkedIn hosts hundreds of thousands of groups. If you want yours to stand out and gain members, you should try to target a niche theme or audience. If your group is too similar to the others pertaining to your business, you may not gain much traction.

When you start a new group, you become the group’s manager – allowing you to do things such as moderating discussion posts or approving new members. More importantly, you also have more control for displaying your links. There are a lot of link building options you have when you’ve started the group, including:

• Putting your website link in the “about this group” section
• Sending a weekly message to the group with a relevant link
• Adding your site to the RSS feed in the News Section
• Creating a discussion and including your link (as the group manager, you have some automatic credibility so you can post your links a little more frequently).

By maintaining an active group that contributes to the professional community, your posted links can get a lot of traffic. Furthermore, if you’ve developed your group to target a specific audience or demographic, you’ll be getting meaningful traffic – and hopefully, higher conversion rates.

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network on the Internet, has over 120 million members as of August 2011.  These individuals are browsing the internet and when they come across good onsite content, they have the same urge many of us do – to share what they have found with others in their network.  A simple snippet of code, typically added to a section of your website near other buttons such as Google’s +1 Button, Twitter’s Tweet Button, and Facebook’s Like or Share Buttons is all that is needed for set-up.  You can build a LinkedIn Share Button through LinkedIn’s Developer Network.  The buttons come in three basic designs: No Count, Vertical Count, and Horizontal Count (example below).  No Count is simply the button without a numerical count of how many people have clicked the button to share the content.  Vertical Count places the numerical bubble count above the button and Horizontal Count places the bubble count to the side of the button.  

http://mashable.com/2011/08/22/khan-academy-kno/

Upon clicking of the LinkedIn Share Button, the count (if shown) will increase by one and a pop-up will appear (if you have pop-ups allowed).

http://blog.linkedin.com/2010/11/30/linkedin-share/

The pop-up box has three options of how you can share the snippet: Post to updates, Post to group(s), and Send to individuals.  The first option, Post to updates, allows you to add a personalized message to the snippet, post to Twitter at the same time you post to LinkedIn, and adjust the visibility of the post (anyone or connections only).  The second option, Post to group(s), auto-completes a group’s name as you type it into the Group(s) field.  If there is a grey lock symbol next to the group name, this signifies that the group is Members Only and that posts will only be visible to members.  If you are posting to an Open Group, note that the post will be visible to everyone on LinkedIn.  After selecting your preferred Group(s), you can also add a subject and details to the post, both of which are optional fields.  The third option, Send to individuals, allows you to share with people who you are not currently connected to by entering their email address in the To: field.  You can also include a personalized message and check a box to disallow the recipient from seeing your name and email address (the default for this box is checked – where those you are sending the post to would see your name and email address).  Once you have decided how you would like to share the snippet of content (and you have the option of using any combination of the three options) you can click the blue “Share” button.

LinkedIn for Business
Thursday June 8, 2011

MoreVisibility’s Twitterchat (#MVCHAT) took place today. The discussion corresponded with MoreVisibility’s live webinar on “Leveraging LinkedIn for Business” with EVP @DanielleLeitch.  LinkedIn has and continues to play a large role in networking and connecting with other professionals. Working the channel as an individual as well as a representative of a company enables you to leverage your professional network in unique ways.  This week’s #MVCHAT highlighted the most important aspects of LinkedIn and explained how companies can optimize their experience and efforts within this growing social media network.

MVCHAT is a weekly 30 minute discussion starting at 3:30 pm (est) covering a variety of online marketing topics. Clients, advertisers, and online marketing enthusiasts are invited to participate in this rapid-fire conversation by following and including #MVCHAT in tweets. Read more about #MVCHAT in the news here.

LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGES

I was invited to attend Connect10, LinkedIn’s annual brand and marketing summit held in NYC this week.  In addition to recapping some of the features rolled out to the platform during 2010, they made a major announcement to introduce a new feature on Company Pages - Services.  Our company was one of a select few to participate in the pilot program for this and is very excited at the possibilities it offers advertisers.

MoreVisibility’s Company Page (you will need to be logged in to see a robust version) on LinkedIn features this new section (as a result of our participation in the pilot for the program) but it is still being rolled out to all companies – so you may or may not have the feature yet.  It appears on your Company page as a third tab, next to Overview and Careers, on your Company Page.  Adjacent to this (on the right) is where you will find the options of adding or editing this area of your page.  You must have a company email address in order to be able to modify the page for that company.

SERVICE/PRODUCT DETAILS PAGE

On the main Services page, you are able to list out your products or services, in addition to designated some as “featured”.  Companies can also segment products or services to specific audiences they select.  This is especially helpful for vertical focused solutions you offer.

To provide more information on each service or product, there is an option to create a Details page for each. Here is where you can elaborate with additional text, video and images which all support that specific product or service.  You can also request recommendations from client on specific products or services, which will be displayed on this page.  This is a great Landing Page to consider, as it offers contact info for your team and individual endorsements by others.

When signed into LinkedIn, please visit our Company Page to see this new feature in action!  We would welcome an opportunity to discuss your company’s strategy to leverage this channel, through paid advertising options and this free Company Page.  Email me or let’s connect through LinkedIn.

This month LinkedIn is revamping the Groups section of their site.  You may already be a member of a group on LinkedIn, but if not, I would highly encourage it.  More than likely, there are groups about your industry or a specific topic that is of interest to you.  LinkedIn’s groups have always been a great way to portray your expertise in a particular area or stay up to date on news topics, but with this recent update I imagine that they will become even more helpful.

The focus of this revamp seems to be to place an emphasis on discussions within groups.  You will now be able to find news and discussions all in one place, making it easier to start discussions around recent news topics.  One of my favorite features is the carousel within the discussions section. This area is a great place to highlight topics, such as blog posts, as MoreVisibility’s group features. Members of the group can then scroll through the different featured topics.

Individuals within these groups can comment on an article, news, or discussion topic.  When they do, a thumbnail image of that member will appear. Simply scrolling over that user’s image will enable you to see their comment.

Other features include an area called Top Influencers This Week.  Following top influencers can help you to stay current with their topics and discussions. You can actually follow any members within a group. This follow feature in particular seems to be very “Twitter-like”.

There is also a Manager’s Choice section, where the Manager of the group can select a discussion topic of their choice to feature. You can also search discussions to find a specific topic that interests you. 

Become a member of a LinkedIn group today to learn about how you can get involved.

COMPLIMENTARY WEBINAR - OFFERED LIVE OR ON-DEMAND
 
Join us: Wednesday, June 16th at 1pm EST (10am PST)
Can’t make the date? Also available on-demand

MoreVisibility and LinkedIn team up to bring you 10 ways to leverage LinkedIn by targeting their 7.9 million business decision-makers.
 
The topics to be covered include:
 

Targeting Decision Makers Utilizing LinkedIn DirectAds
Company Profile Creation & Benefits
Optimizing Your Profile To Attract More Customers
Creating and Answering Questions To Drive Leads
How Polls Can Increase Your Customer Awareness
Joining or Creating Groups To Interact Directly with Group Members
Create and Promote Company Events To Drive More Attendance

Presenters:
LinkedIn: Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager
MoreVisibility: Danielle Leitch, Executive Vice President of Client Strategy
 
Details
This webinar is 45 minutes. On-Demand webinar access will be provided after 06/16/2010

Space is limited. Register Here Now.

I continue to see articles concerning AOL’s slow implosion in the press.  The latest in the salvo concerns the management at AOL consideration of shedding Bebo.  AOL bought Bebo for $850 million two years ago, while they were still a part of Time Warner Inc.  Bebo was an important piece of their transformation plan in which AOL wanted to move away from being a subscription based service for Internet access to a media business generating ad-supported revenue.  When a business with the resources of a Time Warner makes a billion dollar bet and fails to monetize, one must wonder if they performed the proper vetting process or were they simply following the herd.

This is not the first failure in the firm’s acquisitions; Buy.at was recently jettisoned for $17 million after paying $125 million in 2008 for the dgital ad firm.  Will its instant messaging service ICQ be next?  When will the shareholders demand better stewardship from the leaders making these bets?

The small to medium business (SMB) owner would not survive if they followed the herd at each new fork in the technology path.  SMBs must be better shepherds of their funds than the large public companies that they compete against, if they want to survive and flourish.  So how does a SMB determine when to launch a social media campaign and which platform?  Many variables must be considered such as these outlined in a recent blog post.   When you are ready and have performed your due diligence, give us a call and hear how we can help you to make the correct bet.

In the past month LinkedIn has expanded their marketing capabilities in a positive direction for businesses. Previously there were no options available to test more than one ad in the same campaign. Businesses would have to run ads in different campaigns at different times, or compete against their other ads, which in turn had the potential to raise their overall per click (CPC).

LinkedIn’s New Features Include:

1. Capability of creating multiple ads under one group of demographic settings.
2. Ad optimization capabilities, which are automatically performed by LinkedIn based on click thru rates (CTRs).
3. Option to evenly rotate ads.

Creating multiple ads is easy to do and assists in marketing strategies within the channel. Testing a different ad copy with features of the product or service versus an ad with an offer or discount for that specific product or service, can be used in determining what your customers are reacting to and how they are making their final decisions.

It is an easy step-by-step process. First, click on create a new ad campaign, you will be asked to create your ads first (screen shot below). Next, you can just mouse over the ad and a duplicate ad option will appear, or you have an option to click “add an ad variation.”

After creating the ads, click on “next step” and it will walk you through the entire available demographics, verticals, ad bidding options, etc.

To ensure you are properly measuring the success of your efforts, you should be sure to properly code your URLs for tracking in your analytics platform. To code your destination URLS (“Go to URL”) and tag each ad separately so you may clearly see how each ad is performing.