[Updated] 11 Tips to Build Your Personal Brand on Linkedin

LinkedIn can be extremely useful—especially when you’re aware of all the little hidden tricks that don’t get nearly all the exposure that they deserve. It’s great for personal branding and can help you build a powerful presence on the most popular social network for professionals. Here’s eleven tips to help you optimize your Linkedin profile without having to call your techie friends.

1. Completeness. Make sure that every section of your profile has been completed and that there are no blank spaces or obvious gaps. Your LinkedIn profile is your online resume, so treat it with the same level of seriousness you would your normal resume. Here’s what you need to have completed to have an ‘All-Star’ status:

• You need to add your industry and location
• A current position
• Two past positions
• Your education information
• A minimum of 3 skills
• A professional profile picture that represents your industry. This is critical for your Linkedin success! For example, if you are a Creative Director, you might want to have more of an edgier photo as opposed to a CEO, who would want to have on a suit in a traditional pose. Having the same picture on multiple social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ will help build your personal brand.
• At least 50 connections

2. Create Your Vanity URL. When you create your LinkedIn profile, the default URL that you get doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Instead of a URL with a million confusing numbers at the end, you need to create one like this: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lisadougherty. This URL is far more friendly from an SEO point of view and is a vital opportunity to have your profile rank higher in Google and to make it easier for people to find you. Go here and click “customize your public profile URL” on the right hand side.

3. Get Recommendations. It is important to have at least three recommendations from colleagues, management, people you manage, vendors or customers. Recommendations now appear right below your job description for a certain position. Linkedin no longer requires three recommendations anymore to have a complete (or “All-Star”) status but it is still considered a best practice. Recommendations are written for specific roles and show up underneath each position in which they are written. They are very different from Endorsements and serve a different purpose.

4. Get Endorsements. Endorsements are one-click acknowledgments from your network showing that you are being recognized for a certain skill. If you would like to learn more about Endorsements, check out this earlier blog post. The reason endorsements are  important to your profile is for search results. The more endorsements you have for a specific skill, the more likely that you’ll come up in the search results when someone is searching for that skill. For example: I have 59 people who have endorsed me for Social Media Marketing. When a hiring manager or recruiter is searching for people with the skill ‘social media marketing’, it is more likely that I will come up somewhere on the first few pages of the search results.

5. Create “Sexier”  Website/Blog Links. Don’t list the generic “website” but brand it with your company name or blog name to make those links more appealing to people who view your profile. For example, if you want to include a link to your blog, rather than choosing LinkedIn’s standard “Blog” anchor text, customize it to include keywords that indicate what your blog is about like, “Social Media Blog or BrandLove, LLC Blog.”  This will help optimize your profile and drive Google PageRank to your other web properties. Each profile can display up to three website links like this, and they can be customized by editing your profile, clicking edit on your website links, and selecting “other” in the drop-down menu to customize the anchor text.

6. Rearrange Your Profile. LinkedIn enables you to reorder the sections of their profile in any way you prefer. When in edit mode on your profile, hover your mouse over the title of each section. Your mouse will turn into a four-arrowed icon, at which point you can click then drag and drop to another position on your profile.

7. Search Engine Optimize Your Profile. You can also optimize your profile to get found by people searching LinkedIn for key terms with which you want to be associated.  Add these keywords to various sections of your profile such as your summary (up to 2,000 characters), Specialties (up to 500 characters), job title (up to 100 characters), career history and personal interests (up to 1,000 characters.) 
8. Use Keywords in Your Headline. The headline (up to 120 characters) is the first thing people see when they go to your LinkedIn profile. Unless you change it, your headline will appear as your current or last position held. Since this headline will appear in various places on LinkedIn, you want it to be more descriptive. The Linkedin algorithm seems to put a lot of emphasis on the words used in the headline when ranking people, so make sure it includes your USP, benefits your company offers or your geographic location if you serve a specific area.

9. Add Projects. I highly recommend adding a projects section to your profile, especially if you are a Consultant or Freelancer. By adding this section, it will allow you to name your project and input a URL. This then turns the title of the project into a hyperlink, leading the viewer to the project’s website and thus creating an inbound link. You can specifically relate your project to a position that you hold or have held. This can be a great way to show off your expertise in a current or previous position by showing viewers evidence that you know your stuff. The best part is that you can add “Team Members.” If you are connected to your collaborators on Linkedin, you can add them here and their name will appear as a hyperlink to their LinkedIn profile.

10. Join Groups. If there are groups related to your industry or niche then make sure that you join them and, if at all possible, be an active participant in them. This raises your profile to get it noticed by other industry contacts and you’re also adding value to LinkedIn, which in turn, adds value to your own profile. Just remember, if you’re going to participate in group discussions, groups are about COMMUNITY not YOU. You should participate by all means, but to support the community not sell yourself or your services. Did you know? If you’re a member of the same group as another user, you can bypass the need to be a first degree connection in order to message them. In addition, group members are also able to view the profiles of other members of the same group without being connected. Join more groups to enable more messaging and profile viewership capabilities. You can join up to 50 groups.

11. Build Your Network. Once your profile is in good shape, work on building your network. Here are some things to keep in mind: when asking to connect with someone, use “we’ve done business together” rather than “friend.” Be sure to personalize any requests to connect with how you know the person or where you met or who you have in common.  If you do decide to try to connect with someone that may not know you well, be absolutely sure that you defend your network invite in the personal note section, such as saying you just purchased their book or saw them speak at a major conference. If you invite people to your network and they mark your invitation as someone they do not know, you will be banned (temporarily) from inviting new people to your network unless you know their email address.

I would love to hear if  these tips worked for you, questions you may have and any Linkedin related success stories. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you found this article helpful, be sure to follow @BrandLove on Twitter, “Like” BrandLove on Facebook, follow BrandLove on LinkedIn and add BrandLove to your Google+ circles. There are many more tips and tricks on my other social networking sites. Thank you for reading this post and feel free to share it with your friends. Your support is much appreciated!

LinkedIn Feature Update: How To ‘Mention’ People and Companies in Your Status Updates!

LinkedIn has recently announced in a blog post that they are slowly rolling out a new Mentions feature in an effort to cultivate a more engaging experience. Sound familiar? Of course it does because it is very similar to typing in the @ symbol followed by a name on Facebook and having a drop down of friends to choose from and Twitter’s mention feature by using the @ symbol in a tweet.

Using the Mentions feature is a great way to “…start conversations with your network while also enabling you to respond in real-time when someone begins a conversation with you,” according to the LinkedIn blog post. This is also excellent news for sales people and small business owners who utilize LinkedIn for lead generation. Now you can easily start conversations with 1st degree connections by mentioning them instead of just banking on the possibility they’ll see your status update in their sea of network activity.

If you find that you aren’t able to successfully mention someone in an update, you may not have the capability just yet. LinkedIn is still rolling out this feature to English-speaking members first and then bringing it to all global members in the future with the promise of integrating mentions into other parts of the site beyond status updates and home page comments.

How To “Mention” a Company Name or Person in a Status Update or Comment

1. Go to your homepage share box or click comment on someone else’s update.
2. Type “#” and then begin typing a name in the box. You’ll then see a list of potential people or companies you can mention.
3. Click a name you want from the list and continue typing your message.

Note: LinkedIn members outside your network can also be mentioned if they’ve commented on the same update.

After you select someone from the list and finish your update, that person will receive an email and an update letting him or her know you’ve mentioned them. The name will also be linked to a profile or Company Page from your update.

Who sees my update when I mention a connection or company?

When creating an update, select the audience from the Share with field under the share box. For example, you can share with your connections, all LinkedIn members, or all LinkedIn members and your Twitter account (if you’ve set one up).

• Updates containing mentions will be shared just like any other update.
• The member mentioned will receive a notification on linkedin.com and by email.
• The update may be shared with the network of the person being mentioned.

How Do I Remove A Mention?

A mention of your name can be removed by moving your cursor over your name in the update, and then clicking remove. This will remove the link to your profile page and no additional notifications will be received for this update. The person who mentioned you won’t be notified.

How Do I Unsubscribe from Emails About Mentions?

The settings for this email can be changed from the Settings page.

1. Move your cursor over your name at the top of your homepage and select Settings.
2. Click the Communications tab in the bottom left and click Set the frequency of emails.
3. Click Notifications and find the Mentions section.
   • Mentions emails can be set to No Emails to turn them off or to Individual Emails to receive notifications each time you’re mentioned.

A  shout out to Carrie Schochet, Executive Recruiter at the The Overture Group, LLC, for allowing me to use her name and profile as an example for my blog post. Thank you!  The “How To’ section was completed from information in the LinkedIn Help Center.

If you found this article helpful, be sure to follow @BrandLove on Twitter, “Like” BrandLove on Facebook, follow BrandLove on LinkedIn and add BrandLove to your Google+ circles. There are many more tips and tricks on my other social networking sites. Thank you for reading this post and your support is much appreciated!

[Infographic] What Happens in an Internet Minute?

We are all aware that there are billions of people using the internet every day, but what is interesting about this infographic, is which websites are generating huge amounts of traffic. Intel has done a great job of breaking down the information. For example, 640,000 GB of global IP data is transferred every minute.  Not sure what that means? Me either, until I did some research. Most of the traffic is related to photography and movie-sharing services, as Flickr (20 million photo’s viewed), Facebook (6 million Facebook views and 277,000 log ins) and YouTube (1.3 million video views and 30 hours worth of videos are uploaded.)

Additionally, there are 204 million emails sent each minute. Google is recording more than 2 million search queries in 60 seconds. Twitter processes 100,000 new tweets and 320 new Twitter accounts are created. That’s more than five new Twitter users per second. That’s why creating specific lists will help with all the noise in your news feed and you can read the tweets from the people you want. Here’s a previous post to show you how to create a list on Twitter. Sorry, I digress.

Other interesting numbers from Intel’s report reveal that 61,141 hours worth of music are listened on Pandora. My personal favorite social media site, LinkedIn, which generates 100 new accounts in a minute. Unfortunately with the good, comes the bad. Sadly, it appears that 135 botnet infections occur simultaneously with 20 people becoming identity theft victims. Time to invest in some solid anti-virus software if you haven’t already.

Intel expects mobile gadget sales, such as smartphones and tablets, to continue to rise, thus the data transferred in a minute will keep on rising. More than 1,300 new people buy a mobile device each minute, while 47,000 app downloads are being recorded at the same time. Intel says the number of networked devices out there is equal to the world’s population and is expected to double the world’s population by 2015. Crazy. I’m wondering what this means for our future.

For more stats, check out all the amazing things that happen in an internet minute in this informative infographic by Intel.

If you found this article helpful, be sure to follow BrandLove on Twitter, “Like” BrandLove on Facebook and Follow BrandLove on LinkedIn. There are many more tips and tricks on my other social networking sites. Thank you for reading this post and your support is much appreciated!

[Infographic] The LinkedIn Profile–Insight Into the Users of the Professional Networking Powerhouse

Are you surprised that 61% of 500 Americans surveyed by Lab42 chose LinkedIn for professional networking over Facebook at 22%? Probably not. What is surprising to me is that 35% of users check-in daily and 42% update their profile regularly. Only 6% check-in less than once a month. It wasn’t that long ago that professional networking meant printing off your resume, attending job fairs and scheduling coffee dates with old co-workers or friends of friends who could help you land your next dream job. This is not the case anymore. As of January 9, LinkedIn boasts over 200 million members with representation in more than 200 countries and territories. 74 million coming from the United States. Wow.

Check out this infographic by Lab42 to see how these 500 Americans surveyed utilized their profile and to see if they valued LinkedIn as a professional networking too.

If you found this article helpful, be sure to follow me on Twitter, “Like” me on Facebook, follow me on Pinterest, and follow BrandLove, LLC on LinkedIn. I post many more tips and tricks on my other social channels. Thanks for reading my post and I appreciate your support!

New LinkedIn Feature: Add Groups to Company Pages and a How To

A LinkedIn Company Page allows you to learn more about a company you are interested in.  For a business, it’s the opportunity to tell your company’s story, highlight your products and services, share articles, press coverage, career opportunities and drive word of mouth at scale. For millions of professionals, a Company Page is a place to explore companies of interest, get the latest company updates and industry news, research products & services and learn about job opportunities. Any LinkedIn member can follow a company that has set up a Company Page to get updates on key developments.

If your company doesn’t have a LinkedIn Company Page yet and wants to set up a page, first check out the requirements to add a Company Page and read the basics on how to add a Company Page. (You can also contact me for help!) For more detailed information, download LinkedIn’s Guide to your Company Page.

Why Add Featured Groups to Your Company’s Page?

• Gives you the opportunity to showcase staffing organizations or associations’ groups you are a part of or manage.  If you are affiliated with a particular organization, it may build credibility if a potential prospect or candidate sees you display it on your page.
• Highlight a particular specialty your firm has. If you are participating in an industry-specific group (such as Social Media Marketing), it can help draw attention to your expertise in this area.
• A great way to highlight community ties. If your firm prides itself on its community ties and you participate in a specific group for your community, consider adding it as a Featured Group.

Here’s How To Add a Featured Group:

First of all, to add a group to your Company Page, you must be both the Company Page administrator and a member of the group you want to add. You can add up to 3 groups per Company Page.

1. Go to your Company Page.

2. Click Edit at the top of the Home tab.

4. Scroll down to the Featured Groups section.

5. Start typing the name of the group you’d like to add (Please note that your groups will appear in the order in which they are listed while you’re in the edit mode.)

6. Click ‘Publish’ in the top right corner after you add your group (s). Once you have added Featured Groups to your page, it will add the list to your right sidebar in the bottom for visitors to see.

If you found this article helpful, be sure to follow me on Twitter, “Like” me on Facebook, follow me on Pinterest, and follow BrandLove, LLC on LinkedIn. I post many more tips and tricks on my other social channels. Thanks for reading my post and I appreciate your support!

The TOP Social Networks According to Nielsen’s 2012 Social Media Report

Nielsen has just released their 2012 State of Social Media Report report. The report highlights lots of interesting details about the top social networks and where we’re using social media. The report tips a 37 percent increase in the total time spent on social media in the U.S., reaching 121 billion minutes in July, compared to 88 billion in summer 2011. One in three social media users prefer contacting a company via social media vs. calling them by phone.  A term now known as ‘social care’ –customer service via social media.

The ultimate social network, Facebook, remains the most-visited in the U.S., and earned the title of most popular Web brand in the U.S. this year. It reached 152.2 million PC visitors, 78.4 million app users, and 74.3 million mobile Web surfers. That dwarfs social sites in all categories (see graphic below), beating No. 2 Blogger by more than 93.7 million PC users. In the mobile app race, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+, and Pinterest carry the top five spots.

Top networks like Facebook and Twitter have profound staying power in a world where social media options are expanding every day, including breakout star Pinterest, which boasted what Nielsen reported is the largest year-over-year increase — 1,698 percent. It’s now bigger than Google+ and closing in on LinkedIn, which remained static this year. These numbers have made it clear that Pinterest can officially be considered part of the “big four” social networks.

With so many mobile options, it appears nearly a third of people ages 18 to 24 write Facebook comments, send tweets, and perhaps even blog from the comfort of their bathroom. Those ages 25 to 34 are more likely to use social networking in the office.

For all of the celebrity accounts and political usage accrued by social media, it seems that people still focus on connecting with friends and family members. More than 60 percent of people turn on Facebook to keep up with someone they know in real life, while 9 percent initiate LinkedIn contact because of a person’s physical attractiveness, Nielsen reported.

It comes as no surprise, but Nielsen has found that people are spending more and more time on the internet. The main reason for this is the increasing amount of smartphone owners, tablets, handheld music players like the iPod touch, game consoles, Internet-enabled TVs and e-readers with access to the internet 24/7. The overall unique audience using mobile apps increased 85%–7 times more than on the mobile web. PC usage dropped 4%. On top of this, the number of minutes spent on mobile apps increased 120% from 2011.

These numbers are huge. But consider this: social media use accounts for 20% of a user’s time on PCs and 30% on mobile devices. Considering these are both such large chunks of consumers’ internet time and the fact that this internet time is skyrocketing as it is,  time on social media is exploding. Want to know where your consumers are? Social media. Want to know where you should be examining your marketing strategy? Social media. Remember what life was like before social media? It’s hard for me to remember.

If you want to see the full report, go ahead and download Nielsen’s 2012 Social Media Report for yourself. If you found this article helpful, be sure to follow me on Twitter, “Like” me on Facebook, follow me on Pinterest, and follow BrandLove, LLC on LinkedIn. I post many more tips and tricks on my other social channels. Thanks for reading my post and I appreciate your support!

[Infographic] The Ultimate Social Media Image Sizing Cheat Sheet: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest Oh My!

A humongous thank you to Luna Metrics for putting together this awesome and incredibly handy cheat sheet. It is a really helpful tool that you can use when updating graphics on your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest business pages.

As sizing changes are implemented across social networks, Luna Metrics will actively update this sheet – meaning that if you use the embed code at the bottom to share this sheet on your own site, the image will automatically update with changes as they are rolled out. No more out-of-date information.

So, without further adieu, here it is – the ultimate, complete, final social media sizing cheat sheet. You can find a simple text list of the pixel dimensions at the bottom. Save this on your hard drive and never Google ‘Facebook cover photo size’ again.

Here’s The Embedded Code 

<div style=”width:600px;”><div><img width=”600″ height=”7727″ alt=”Social Media Cheat Sheet by LunaMetrics” src=”http://www.lunametrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/The-Ultimate-Complete-Social-Media-Sizing-Cheat-Sheet1.png” style=”border: #FFFFFF 1px solid; padding: 1px;” /></div><div=style=”text-align:right; font-size:11px;margin-right: 5px;”>Designed by <a href=http://www.lunametrics.com>Lunametrics</a></div></div>

Here’s the Information in Table Format

Facebook
Timeline
Profile Picture	160 x 160 px	Must be uploaded at least 180 x 180 px
Cover Photo	851 x 315 px
About Us	255 Characters
App Preview Image	111 x 74 px
Total Length of Apps bar (including gaps)	350 px
Timeline Profile Picture	32 x 32 px
Shared Image	403 x 403 px	Photos can be viewed up to 960 x 720 px in the lightbox and expanded up to 2048 x 2048 px.
Shared Facebook Video	403 x 226
Status Update	63,206 characters
Shared Link Preview	156 x 116 px	Editable, can be set with the og:type meta property
Shared Link Title Tag	Up to 100 characters	Editable, can be set with og:title meta property
Shared Link Metadescription	Varies based on available room
Highlighted Post or Milestone	843 x 403 px
Highlighted Video Post or Milestone	843 x 475 px
News feed
News feed profile picture	50 x 50 px
News Feed Status update	Up to 5 lines of text before Facebook truncates & appends ‘See More’ at the first break after the fifth
Shared Image	Landscape	398 x 296 px
	Portrait	296 x 398 px
	Square	320 x 320 px
News Feed Sponsored Story Profile Picture	32 x 32 px
News Feed Sponsored Story Image	Landscape	358 x 268 px
	Portrait	268 x 358 px
	Square	300 x 300 px
Shared Facebook Video Preview	403 x 226 px
Shared Video Link Preview	130 x 73 px
Shared Link Thumbnail	90 x 90 px
Shared Link Title	Up to 100 Characters	Editable
Shared Link Description	Varies based on Thumbnail & Title Size	Editable
Ads
URL Ad Title	25 Characters
URL Ad Copy	90 Characters
Page Ad Profile Picture	50 x 50 px
Page Ad Title	Page Name
Page Ad Copy	90 Characters
Page Post Ad Profile Picture	32 x 32 px
Page Post Ad Title	Page Name
Page Post Ad Copy	First 90 characters of selected post	First 120 characters if post is text-only
Page Post Ad Image	90 x 118 px
Page Post Ad Video Preview	128 x 72 px
Page Post Ad Link Thumbnail	50 x 50 px
Sponsored Story Fan Picture	50 x 50 px
Sponsored Story Profile Picture	32 x 32 px
Premium Page Post Ad Profile Picture	50 x 50 px
Premium Page Post Ad Video Preview	185 x 104 px
Premium Page Post Ad Image	168 x 128 px
Twitter
Profile
Background Image	90% of visitors see first 78 px of the background
	67% see 204 px
	43% see 247 px
	21% see 284 px
Recent Image Preview	90 x 90
Profile Picture	81 x 81 px	4 px border
Tweet Length	140 Characters
In-stream
Profile Picture	48 x 48 px
Shared Media Tweet Length	140 characters, including link
Shared Link Preview	120 x 120 px	Must be at least 60 x 60 px
Shared Link Title	First 70 characters of twitter:title tag
Shared Link Description	First 200 characters of twitter:description tag
Shared Image	375 x 375 px
Shared Video Preview	435 x 244 px
Video Details	Video Title and first 160 characters of video description
Google+
Company Profile
Cover Photo	890 x 180 px
Profile Picture	250 x 250 px	5 px border
Horizontal Profile and cover photo gap	614 px
Status Update	100,000 Characters	Can include hash tags
Shared Link Thumbnail	150 x 150 px
Shared Video Preview	497 x 279 px
Shared Image	497 x 373 px	Can be uploaded and viewed up to 2048 x 2048 px
YouTube
Branded Channel
Content Container	970 px wide
Mappable Header	970 x 150 px	Can map links off of YouTube
Profile Picture	55 x 55 px
Featured Video	640 x 390 px
Video Thumbnail	288 x 162 px
YouTube Brand Channel Background Size	90% of users see 8 px on either side of the content container	Up to 1 mb in size
	67% see 136 px
	43% see 180 px
	21% see 216 px
Video
Title	Up to 100 characters
User Banner	Up to 170 x 25 px
Video Preview	640 x 390 px
Description	Up to 5000 characters
Tags	Up to 500 characters	Hidden, can be found in page source under “meta:keywords”
Recommended Playlist Details	Playlist Title
Recommended Playlist Large Thumbnail	120 x 67 px
Recommeded Playlist Small Thumbnail	40 x 25 px
Recommended Video Details	Video Title, Author, and Views
Recommended Video Thumbnail	120 x 67 px
LinkedIn
Overview
Horizontal Logo	100 x 60 px
Cover Photo	646 x 220 px
Company Square Logo	50 x 50 px
Company Comment Logo	30 x 30 px
Shared Link Thumbnail	180 x 110 px
Shared Link Details	Shared Link Title and up to 230 characters of description. The description is editable.
Careers
Careers Cover Photo	974 x 238 px
Products and Services
Products and Services Banner Image	646 x 220 px
Product Image	100 x 80 px
Product Details	100 character title and 2000 character description
Pinterest
Profile
Profile Picture	160 x 165 px
About Section	Up to 200 characters
Boards
Board	222 x 207 px
Big Thumbnail	222 x 150 px
Small Thumbnails	55 x 55 px
Pins
Profile Picture	32 x 32 px
Pin Image Preview	192 x scaled height
Pin on board	222 x scaled height
Pin
Profile Picture	49 x 49 px
Pin	600 x infinity

If you found this article helpful, be sure to follow me on Twitter, “Like” me on Facebook, follow me on Pinterest, and follow BrandLove, LLC on LinkedIn. I post many more tips and tricks on my other social channels. Thanks for reading my post and I appreciate your support!

LinkedIn Tip: Signal–A Gem of a Tool for Prospecting and Recruiting

Signal is a feature on LinkedIn that is a gem of a tool for prospecting and recruiting. Signal lets you see and filter updates from LinkedIn professionals who choose to make their updates visible to anyone. Basically, you can see every status update from every person on LinkedIn. Not just your connections or those within a couple degrees of you, but EVERY person on LinkedIn. Why is this so great?  You can then use a targeted keyword search to sort through the statuses to find people talking about topics you want to engage in. You can even sort the results by company, geographic location, industry and many other parameters. This is a great tactic to find and connect with prospects, vendors, partners, employees or employers to build relationships with people that that you would otherwise have no idea are out there because they are not your first level connections. You can also do a search by your name or company name to see if people are talking about you. A great brand check too!

How To Access Signal

You can access it by selecting “Updates” in the master search menu on your profile page under “People” (Search Updates) or by selecting “Signal” in the drop down menu on the “News” tab.

Key Benefits of using Signal

• Browse real-time updates with content summaries and direct links to the full content.
• Filter updates to show only those that you care about.
• Search for keywords, topics, companies or people across the updates stream. (Try your company name and see what comes up!)
• Save your search and check for updates later.
• Find trending links and Industry top headlines.
• See who’s hiring. (Type in ‘hiring’  or ‘jobs’ in the search area)

Overall, LinkedIn Signal is a time-saver and an information goldmine. It’s easy to use, but easily overlooked. Have you used Signal before? If so, how has it helped you? What other ways would you recommend professionals use Signal? Please post your answers in the comments section.

If you found this article helpful, be sure to follow me on Twitter, “Like” me on Facebook, follow me on Pinterest, and follow BrandLove, LLC on LinkedIn. I post many more tips and tricks on my other social channels. Thanks for reading my post and I appreciate your support!

[Infographic] Social Media Drives Revenue

Eventbrite has put together the below infographic from the 2012 social commerce report, providing insight into social media values around the globe. Here’s what they found:

Twitter drives the most traffic of all the major social networks, but it’s Facebook that generates the most revenue. Shares made on Twitter trigger, on average, 33 visits to websites, compared to 14 for Facebook and 10 for LinkedIn. The value of a share across all social networks went from $1.78 in 2010 to $3.23 (an increase of 81%) largely due to Facebook.

Value of a “share” by social network in US dollars:

• Facebook – $4.15 ($2.52 in 2010. An increase of 65%)
• Twitter – $1.85 ($.043 in 2010. An increase of 330%)
• LinkedIn – $0.92 ($0.90 in 2010. An increase of 2%)

If you’re interested in the numbers from the 2010 social commerce report, you can view it here.

Other Highlights:

• Facebook drives the most revenue
• Twitter drives the most traffic
• The revenue worth of a share varies around the world, with Ireland being the marketer’s country of choice on both Twitter and Facebook and France performing best for LinkedIn.

How They Did It

Eventbrite used a custom suite of social analytics tools that they developed. They’re reporting tracks and analyzes not only which sharing options their users leverage, but also where on their site each share action takes place. These tools also tie back into their conversion funnels, so they are able to attribute ticket purchases to the specific social distribution channel that drove them. So, for example, they can compare not just the value created by a Facebook “Like” vs. a tweet, but also the performance of shares initiated before or after a purchase. For the purposes of this report, Eventbrite defines social commerce as transactions that are driven through sharing on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

So despite all the recent talk of social spam and share fatigue – there is real money to be made in adding share buttons on your product and purchase pages. If you haven’t rolled out share buttons on your product and purchase pages, now’s the time to do it.

This infographic from Eventbrite takes a closer look at how social media drives revenue.

If you found this article helpful, be sure to follow me on Twitter, “Like” me on Facebook and follow BrandLove, LLC on LinkedIn. I post many more tips and tricks on my other social channels. Thanks for reading my post and I appreciate your support!

[Infographic] Social Media Cheat Sheet–Top 9 Social Networks for Business

Not surprisingly, the top 9 networks are Pinterest, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare. Depending on your business, you might not take advantage of all, but use at least a few. The research for this infographic was conducted by the SDL Social Media Team and it was created by SDL SM2 and Bizango Business Websites. It provides helpful tips on each of the above mentioned social platforms to help you get a very basic understanding. Great for beginners, but not enough detail for the advanced social media manager.

Here’s how SDL SM2 ranked the Top 9 Social Networks for Small and Medium-sized Businesses based on the following criteria:

• Reach: How Many Members
• Time Investment Required
• Quality of Interaction (from a business perspective)
• Fun (our highly-scientific and proprietary research)

 

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