Tag Archives: LinkedIn

Social Media

People Aren’t Helping Us Help Them On Social Media

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Back in March when I wrote what turned out to be my very popular post 31 Big Mistakes People Make Blogging And In Social Media, I broke up the thoughts about blogging and social media to make the article easier to read and understand. Lost of folks liked, commented and shared that post and I thought that was pretty cool.

Rudy's lunch

I shared lunch!

Yet, 3 months later and I’m seeing something that’s making me write another post about 3 things regarding social media that it just feels like I’m seeing more of. The funny thing is that it’s the first 3 things I talked about in that other post, which I intentionally listed as the first 3 because I thought they were important enough to get in as soon as possible when I switched to the social media topic.
Continue reading People Aren’t Helping Us Help Them On Social Media →

Marketing, Social Media

Why It’s Hard To Do Business On LinkedIn

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I have to admit that I have a love/dislike relationship with LinkedIn. It’s not the site’s fault; it’s all mine.

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Jo Chou via Compfight

I mean, I’m the guy who wrote a post talking about ways to use LinkedIn effectively. I’m the guy who wrote a post about marketing on LinkedIn. Heck, I’m the guy who recently wrote a post about writing articles on LinkedIn

It turns out that I’ve written 8 articles specifically about LinkedIn over all these years, and included the site in 96 articles in total. Not all of them have extolled its virtues because, like everything else, not everything is good there; not all the time anyway.

Still, you’d think that after all these years (I was one of the first 600,000 members there; they even send me a letter of thanks lol) I would have a handle on how it works, how to get business there, how to make true connections and the like.

You know what? I haven’t learned anything. Okay, that’s not quite true. I obviously have learned a lot. But I’ve never gotten any business via LinkedIn. I’ve never generated a single thing that would help me make any money. As I start to close in on my 14th year in business, I have to figure this out, and it’s better to do it sooner than later.

What’s the problem? Truthfully, I’m not quite sure.

It’s not that I don’t talk to people, because I have. It’s not that I haven’t had some nice conversations in the groups there because I have.

It’s that I get the wrong people connecting with me there. Rather, the wrong people who connect with me and then send me a message.

Y’all remember my post on Monday on blog commenting? Remember my very first point on that post, where I said “try reading the article?

That’s something it seems that no one who sends me something does… not read my articles, but not read my profile.

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Maybe it’s me, either expecting too much or not wording my profile properly. Either way, the messages I get are either from people who want me to market their product or services as part of what I do, or want to sell me services that I can’t use because I’m a sole proprietor, which they’ve missed from reading my profile.

You know what else? At least half the people who write me put some derivation of the same title, which is “Business Proposition.” Wow, that’s inspiring isn’t it? And in the message they send, they don’t say anything except “I’d like to present a business proposition to you. When would you be available to talk?”

That’s kind of bold, pushy and in a way insulting isn’t it? Those messages always immediately raise the hackles on the back of my neck (linking to the definition for folks not familiar with that term like folks talking to me about MLM stuff (more definition stuff). You know, when they won’t tell you what it is but try to play on your emotions and give you all the platitudes about how much money you can make?

The issue for me is that I don’t want to be pushy. Truthfully, though I’m connected to nearly 1,000 people now (that’s a big jump in the last year), I’m not connected to any of the people I need to talk to that can use my services. Those of you who know me know that I offer lots of different types of services, but my biggest two are leadership and health care finance (linking to something you might not understand, but in case you’re interested…). Through this blog I offer writing services.

The folks I keep hoping to attract and those who can hire me for those types of services. Wouldn’t that be nice? Well, I don’t get those folks.

Instead, I get people who either want me to sell for them or want me to teach them what I know so they can progress without wanting to pay me for it. I used to give up a lot of my time in trying to teach people some of these things, which can get pretty technical, and I realized I was giving up a lot of time and not getting anything back.

Linkedin

Mambembe Arts & Crafts via Compfight

I offer lots of advice on this blog about a lot of things. I offer a lot of other advice on my business blog. I will talk to anyone about business in general, people who are thinking about going out on their own or young people who are graduating and would like a bit of advice here and there.

I don’t mind that kind of thing; heck, that’s who I was looking for when I first went into business on my own, and no one would talk to me. I’ve actually talked to some of those folks on LinkedIn, even locally; that’s been fun.

But business? Nope, nada, zip; not even a request for a speaking gig via LinkedIn.

My fault… all my fault.

What to do… hmmm…

For once, instead of giving advice, I’ll ask for some. My friend Peter says that sometimes we give so much information away in our posts that people aren’t sure what to comment on or what to say.

So, here’s your chance. How do you do LinkedIn? Have you been successful in getting any business there, and if so how did you do it? If you haven’t, what’s holding you back? If you’ve never used LinkedIn don’t even comment on this one; I’ll save you time and effort in saying “I don’t use LinkedIn…” I mean, after those words or anything similar, there’s no purpose in commenting this time around if you ask me.

Meanwhile, I’m going to be thinking about how to rewrite the beginning of my profile because that part must be deficient. At least parts of my page look pretty cool, if I say so myself. 🙂
 

Social Media, Writing

Writing Articles That Gain Attention On LinkedIn

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Back in March I wrote about a personal social media study I did in trying to increase my overall influence online. I mentioned in that post that I’d started writing articles on LinkedIn, and how it had started bringing me some attention.

Ylva Johansson
Socialdemokraterna via Compfight

At this point I have 21 articles there and I’ve started to see a pattern. There are some things that seem to help determine how many eyes are going to see what you’ve written.

I can’t guarantee that every post you write, even if you follow these rules, is going to get seen by more than 1,000 people like this post on getting unstuck did but there seems to be some rules to follow if you want as many people to see your posts as possible.

First, unless you’re a known entity or someone that LinkedIn has determined is a major influencer across the board, list posts seem to get viewed the most. It’s probably for the same reason they work so well on blogs; people like seeing something that they expect is going to have specific points that maybe they can identify with.

Turns out it doesn’t matter if you use an actual number or write it out as a word, but lists work well. Also, it helps if you bold your numbers in the article, whether it’s the word or the actual number (like I’m doing for this post).

Second, although this goes against the grain of how some people think, longer articles seem to get more attention, even if they’re list posts. My longer articles, which also have been list posts, have more numbers than all my other posts, and if you know me you know that I’m not normally about really short posts to begin with. Substance seems to be a big winner, so if you’re writing a long post make sure you have something to say.

Third, short titles don’t work well either. I’ve never really paid much attention to titles on this blog for every post but I’ve noticed that on LinkedIn you’ll get more eyes if your title is long enough to tell people what you’re writing about.

LinkedIn smurfs
Mark Jen via Compfight

Fourth, write articles where you’re offering something to help others. My posts that have helped someone in some fashion have garnered the most attention. Even on a post like this, where I gave 7 ways to tell if you’re a bad leader, got 400 views because there was a perceived value. Actually, there was a major value in this post but if you’re a bad leader you might not have picked up on it. lol

Fifth, it’s smart to have some kind of picture to put at the top of your article. They give you the opportunity to put a picture with the pixel size of 698×400. Just like with blog posts, images seem to help rather than having a big gap without anything there.

I have tons of pictures so I go through them looking for something I think might fit. Since all my pictures are much larger than that I can crop when I need to before resizing.

Sixth, don’t forget to do the spacing like most of us remember to do when we write our blog posts. It helps with readability.

Seventh, when you’ve completed your post LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to add 3 categories to your articles. However, you have to use the categories they give you if you go that route; if it’s not there then you don’t get to do anything.

I’ve found that the articles I’ve written that get the most attention are those that I haven’t categorized. What happens is that if your article is seen by enough people, and that magic number is usually at least 100 people, it’ll decide where to put it so you don’t have to. Truthfully, that works better anyway, and it takes the pressure off you to have to do it.

That’s pretty good stuff to consider if you’re just starting out or have been thinking about doing it. If I get anything more out of it I’ll certainly write about it here.
 

Social Media

4 LinkedIn No-No’s

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LinkedIn is a social media platform specifically for businesses. It offers a way to connect with people who not only could be potential customers and consumers, but people who were in the same industry. Yet, almost every day I see things happening that are irritating to the point that you just want to slap somebody. Okay, that might be a bit over the top, but they make you mad. And some of those people trying to reach out to you which makes it even worse.

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Leon Fishman via Compfight

All of you know the saying “you only get one chance to make a first impression”. Well, there is a of bad first impression. I’m going to name four of them, and hope that none of them are you.

1. Connecting with someone new but not changing the default description. This is probably the most irksome because the default description says that someone has indicated you are a friend. Every once in a while it says I find you a trusted person. The thing is these people don’t know you, and you don’t know them, so who can trust who?

Don’t be a lazy first connector; if you’re looking to meet someone at least right something different, even though you don’t get a lot of space to do it. You’ll be more memorable and people will be more likely to connect with you there.

2. No picture and no flushing out what you do. People trust what they can see and what they can read better than seeing almost nothing. There are some people who join the site and immediately start sending out invitations for people to connect with them without giving people a reason why they should even think about connecting.

Unless I know who you are, if I’ll see a picture I’m not connecting with you. If I go check out your page and all I see are three or four separate lines of things you’ve done in the past without saying anything about it, I’m not connecting. I know some people who will connect with anybody who reaches out to them, but the quality of your connections has to count as much as how many connections you have.

3. Don’t immediately start selling after someone connects with you. I’ll admit that I’m one of those people who look at the profiles of people who want to connect with me. I have found over the years, and I’ve been a member of LinkedIn for nine years, that people whose profiles have nothing to do with anything that I’ve listed on my profile only want to sell me on something or try to get me to help them do business.

Unless they’re local, or I see a number of people that I actually know who are connected with that person, I’m not connecting with that person because I know what’s coming. Trust me, a short introduction saying hello and telling the person you’d like to know more about them goes a lot further in networking that that person then immediately trying to sell them on something.

4. If you join a group with an intention to actually participate, don’t start off introducing who you are and telling people what it is you do. It’s always best to stay on topic, and if people are intrigued by what you have to say it will follow you back to your profile to learn more about you. And if you’ve taken the time to flesh out your profile (see #2) you’ll intrigue people and on their terms.

I’ve written before that every business should be on LinkedIn, but just being there isn’t enough to give you the opportunity for proper business networking. Work on some of the things I mentioned above and you’ll be well on your way.
 

Social Media

4 Reasons Why You Need To Be On LinkedIn

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LinkedIn is a social media site that’s different than the others because its main purpose is for business networking. Almost no matter what you do, being on LinkedIn will help give you a business presence you can’t get anywhere else.

Let me preface the rest of this by saying I’ve been ranting a little bit about it lately because suddenly there are all these fake accounts that keep trying to get me to accept them, which I won’t do. I don’t know if this means it’s less secure than it used to be, and it’s somewhat of an irritant, but for business purposes there’s nothing parallel.

Whether you’re an employee or a business owner of some type, LinkedIn is where you need to be in some fashion. Here are 4 reasons why:

LinkedIn

  1. The networking opportunities. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, LinkedIn gives you a real opportunity to not only meet people locally but people all around the world. If you sell anything your market could be the entire world. You might find a supplier or a buyer or even a job if that’s what you’re looking for. And though LinkedIn isn’t crazy about people marketing their businesses, reaching out to individuals that you feel might help you or that you have something you feel might help them is encouraged; after all, that’s what business networking is all about.

  2. Publicity. Although LinkedIn will help you set things up so they look like a resume, you can pretty much go in different directions to highlight whatever you want to highlight. On my page, for instance, I list my businesses and a couple of positions I’ve had, but I spend a good portion talking about one thing in particular that I market myself for. This gives those who are looking for that particular thing a great opportunity to find me; after all, LinkedIn has a search function for people who are looking for something or someone specific.

  3. Information. Information goes both ways on LinkedIn. You can decide to put out current information on some regular basis or you can decide to just read what others are saying. There’s a timeline like Twitter, but there are also groups like on Facebook. I do a little of both, and you never know just who you might talk to that might push you forward in some fashion.

  4. Backlinks. LinkedIn is one of the top 20 sites in the world as far as traffic goes, so getting a link from that site to your site is a good thing. It allows you to link to more than one site, including a blog, and of course this helps make you just that much more visible online. Frankly, if you have a website this is probably one of the more important things to do to help your SEO processes.