Posts in the Social Media Category

LinkedIn Tips and Tricks

LinkedIn has become a useful site for networking and occasionally even job hunting. With over 100 million members, it’s now something of a knowledge-sharing destination as well, with tools making it possible to pose questions to professionals inside and outside of your network. Here are just are a couple ways to get more out of your activity there.

 

Turning LinkedIn contacts into email contacts.

Did you know that it’s possible to export your LinkedIn connections via email? This useful trick is easy to manage; just log into your LinkedIn account, go to linkedin.com/connections and select your connections. Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click on ‘Export Connections’ on the right. From there you can choose the email account you’d prefer to export to. This trick makes all your connections easy to contact via your preferred email client.

Following companies on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn allows you to “follow” companies in a manner similar to Facebook’s fan pages for businesses. This is a great way to stay informed about interesting developments and opportunities with companies of interest. To follow a company, simply use the ‘More’ tab in your toolbar and select ‘Companies’, then ‘Search Companies. You can enter company names in the search field provided and select the ‘Follow Company’ button when you find the business you’re looking for. Once you are actively following a company, you can view recent hires and other activities.
Do you have a LinkedIn trick to share? Leave it in the comments.

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Foursquare isn’t Just for Humans Anymore

Foursquare has gone to the dogs – at least that’s the case in Germany. Leave it the clever marketing folks to find a way to combine checking in with target marketing. Here’s what’s happening with GranataPet dog food. While out walking, dogs and their owners happen across the company’s smart billboards and are able check in via Foursquare (Fursquare?). This effort is rewarded with the automated dispensing of a dog food sample. Dog is happy and owner is working for GranataPet, as their check-in activity displays to their friends via Foursquare and Facebook. Holy operant conditioning! Color me impressed with this effective use of location-based technologies. Check out the video below for more details. Do you think this idea will work?

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Facebook Questions

Facebook recently rolled out a polling tool that is likely resulting in the appearance of a variety of polls on your wall. The jury is still out on what impact this new offering will have on brand pages, but in case you want to give it a whirl, here’s how you get started.

Go to the upper right corner of any Facebook page you own or administrate and click the Account drop down menu. Select ‘Use Facebook as Page’.

Next, visit the Facebook Questions URL. Now you are ready to poll your fans to acquire feedback on anything and everything relevant (or not?) to your brand. You’ll see a form that looks like this:

Plug in your question and options for answers, and you are ready to go. You can find out more about what your users would like to see on your page, get feedback on products and services, and gain audience insights in a whole new way. Facebook Questions can provide enhanced opportunity for interaction with your fans and may be a learning tool as well, so I’d recommend giving it a try. What do you think? Is it worth a shot?

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Social Business (Cards)

The relevance of including social links (corporate, not personal) on business cards has been a topic of recent interest at GS. Views here are varied, with some suggesting that including social links might lead to information overload. Others see it as a promotion vehicle that enables contacts to choose how they prefer to interact, while illustrating the progressive mindset of a company.

As social media grows to become an integral tool in the communication and marketing plans of companies everywhere, I’m of the opinion that we’ll be seeing more and more corporate cards including social links. Mashable seems to think so too. It’s my hope that QR codes aren’t far behind. What about you? Would you appreciate finding this sort of additional information on the corporate cards that find their way into your hands, or is it all too much annoying visual clutter muddying up otherwise attractive cards?

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