LinkedIn groups have been around for a long time and with over a million of them in existence, users clearly see then as a great way of engaging with other users on the platform. For all their success though, the feature set within the groups has always been pretty limited but the good news is that today they are launching “Polls” which will be a great new tool to create engagement for group admins.
The funny thing about these polls is that they are yet another example of Linkedin creating carbon copies of Facebook features, and they haven’t even really tried to change the design in any meaningful way. I’ve always been surprised at just how active some people are in groups so it is great to see Linkedin start to offer additional tools. Hopefully this will be the first of many because it would be great to see a much richer experience. As Linkedin are saying themselves about the launch:
A key reason our members use LinkedIn Groups is to share insights with like-minded professionals. Voting on polls now provides the same quick convenience of clicking “Like”, but with also the richer point of view of a comment.
We’ve also seen in testing that many members elaborate further on their choice in the familiar comments area that we’ve provided once you vote in a poll.Plus, in open groups, any member of LinkedIn can vote on a poll, just as they can “Like” any discussion or comment in an open group.
You can see people using these for a whole range of reasons, but I think they are especially useful for companies and brands who want to do some very targeted market research within the business community.
You know the feeling when you’re writing up a job application or if you’re in an interview, you want to impress who could be your potential employers so you try and convince them by using desirable terms to improve your chances. Terms like ‘organised’, ‘effective’, and ‘team player’ can be found as we want to get across our talents and abilities. It’s something that we’ve all been guilty of at some point in our lives and it’s something that LinkedIn see on a daily basis.
With that in mind, LinkedIn have decided to round off the year by revealing the most overused buzzwords used by professionals when describing themselves on their profiles. Out of 135 million professional profiles, they found that the most overused buzzword in the US was ‘Creative’ followed by ‘Organisational’ and ‘Effective’.
Internationally, other overused buzzwords include ‘Ereative’ (Australia, Canada, Germany, Netherlands & UK), ‘Dynamic’ (France), ‘Effective’ (India) and ‘Motivated’ (Ireland). So tell us, what buzzwords are you guilty of using to describe yourself? And for those who own businesses, what unique terms have people used when applying for a position?
In the last week, the noise around a possible Facebook IPO has been starting to ramp up with Mark Zuckerberg apparently starting to tell employees that it was going to be happening sooner rather than later. Now one of the early investors in Facebook and the co-founder of Linkedin Reid Hoffman is having his say with some comments that seem to confirm that one of the biggest consumer web IPOs ever is going to happen in the first half of 2012. Hoffman is in the UK on a drive to bring some of the Silicon Valley magic across the Atlantic, and speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, he gives some great insight into the thinking behind taking the social networking giant public
I suspect that Mark Zuckerberg will choose to go public because the company has to put in a lot of financial work in order to make the necessary filings and so he might as well make sure he benefits employees and ultimately the company from the level of work that’s already involved.
Of course, Hoffman is in a great position to be able to speak about taking a social network public having just done so with Linkedin in May of this year. While Facebook have been relatively slow to go public given their spectacular growth and domination, Hoffman does think that the right time to do so is fast approaching:
Going public would benefit Facebook in lots of ways – namely having public currency to do acquisitions. So Mark Zuckerberg might as well get the benefit as well as the cost. Given that logic – I would suspect that some time in first half of next year, he will engage in the IPO process
Having said that, Facebook are pretty much having their hands forced by the fact that they have over 500 shareholders (an automatic trigger in the USA that more or less forces you to go public). While going public will have advantages and make a lot of the employees, founders and investors very rich, it does have its downsides as well.
Up until now, Facebook has been able to operate playing to its own rules with Zuckerberg very much taking the helm of the company and taking lots of risks. As soon as they IPO though, the game will change with all their public finances being made public and the board increasingly having to answer to shareholders and hit targets. All this IPO talk leaking out into the public though is no accident, and is a well planned PR move from Facebook to start getting people ready for the event.
The financials have to be released in April of 2012 and from then on, it’s only a matter of time before the general public can grab a piece of the world’s biggest social network with any IPO likely to be just before the summer of next year. Exciting times ahead if you are a Facebook employee or early investor.
LinkedIn has always prided itself in how it creates connections and networks between fellow professionals in the online world. However, such a process doesn’t happen as smoothly in the real world where it’s very difficult to access even a quarter of the information found on the site on a business card.
So to bridge the gap between networking in the physical and online world, LinkedIn have launched a revamped business card app called CardMunch. The app is designed to help users develop a better idea of other professionals by allowing them access to their LinkedIn profile when they scan their business card.
As LinkedIn say themselves in their latest blog post, millions of business cards are exchanged every day, and with their mobile services growing by 400 per cent year-over-year in page views, the move makes a lot of sense.
The app has been simplified to include just three options: card capture, contact list and LinkedIn profile. Once you scan a card, all the information related in their LinkedIn profile is available to view. So you get to see their career, experience, connections, education and other associated details that they have made available, making the app tempting for those who want this information available to them immediately.
Are Business Cards Still Relevant?
By designing the app in conjunction with business cards instead of aiming to replace them, LinkedIn are bridging the gap between networking in the physical and online worlds. However, there are one or two things that LinkedIn should address if this app is to become popular.
The main one is that while business cards are still widely used, they are slowly losing relevance as more and more things become digitalised. That’s not to say that LinkedIn are wrong to focus their efforts on business cards, but it would have also made sense for them to develop the app with one eye on the future.
An alternative method for getting the same info through smartphones or wireless would have really catered for those who don’t use business cards, or feel that their relevance has diminished over the years. For example, being able to generate a specialised QR code for others to scan and receive the same information would have certainly made the app more appealing for users to download.
The second suggestion, and a very small one at that, would be to expand the notes section to include calendar functionality. While there are already many apps and programs that can do this, it would be a handy feature to have if you were, for example, organising a business meeting with someone you just met or following up on a idea and needed an automatic reminder.
That said, LinkedIn have released a solid app that professionals will definitely find useful. But since it’s the first release, there’s a lot of potential to develop the app further and make it into a must-have for all professionals. The app is available to download for iPhone.
The Digital Marketing Institute is running a training courses entitled “LinkedIn Training for Business Professionals”
LinkedIn Course for Business:
With over 110 million members, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. LinkedIn connects you to your contacts and helps you exchange ideas, knowledge and opportunities with a broad network of professionals. LinkedIn is now seen as a key tool for professionals and those not using the tool to its full potential are missing out.
Date: Wednesday 23rd November
Venue: Dublin City
Cost: 297.00 EUR (247.00 EUR Early Bird)
Contact Digital Marketing Institute at +353 1 2711 888
Overview: This LinkedIn for Business professionals Training Course has been designed to assist professionals to get the most out of their LinkedIn connections. Whether you are just starting out or are a seasoned LinkedIn professional, this training course can help you accelerate your online profile and personal brand.
Module 1: How to Create Your LinkedIn Profile
Topics
Developing a good LinkedIn profile
The difference between a Professional Headline and a Title
Including previous jobs and education.
Adding Twitter and blogging to LinkedIn
Why and how to personalise your Public Profile URL.
How to write your summary
How to add specialities
Why and how to use Applications like WordPress and SlideShare
How to build relationships with other people through your Profile.
Lead generation using LinkedIn
Adding Video
How to position yourself as an expert.
Do's and Don'ts regarding your LinkedIn Profile.
Module 2: Building and Expanding Your LinkedIn Network
Developing your core network
5 quick ways that LinkedIn helps you to build your network.
Using Groups to expand your network with the right people.
Finding the right Groups for you.
Dealing with invites
Case Studies
Asking for Recommendations
Do's and Don'ts regarding building your network.
Module 3: Personal and Company Branding
Differences between personal and company branding on LinkedIn.
How to use your LinkedIn Profile for branding.
Status Updates and Twitter.
Case Studies
Using Groups for personal/company branding
Free tools that saves you time
Do's and Don'ts regarding branding via LinkedIn.
Module 4: Finding New Customers using Your Professional LinkedInNetwork
Why having an great Profile is not enough.
Finding new customers via LinkedIn.
Tools that you can use to find new customers
Strategies for finding and communicating with new customers
Avoiding costly mistakes
Case Studies
Contact Digital Marketing Institute at +353 1 2711 888
Prerequisites are that you have a LinkedIn profile enabled.
Investing in stocks is a risky business at the best of times and investing in social media stocks that have just IPO’d is an even riskier business. Last week Linkedin announced results that blew away expectations but just a week later they are feeling the full force of the market and have lost close to 40% of their overall valuation in just 3 days. The stock which had been trading as high as $112 at the end of last week is in free fall and last night closed at just $73. The company which only went public in May at the price of $45 (this doubled in the first days trading) has seen a huge fluctuation in it’s share price and although many are still making a profit on their initial stake there will be many who bought in last week at a high after seeing all the positive news and have now been stung badly. The alarming thing is that the stock seems to show no signs of stopping the slide and it could be back to the original IPO price if things keep going like this.
It will be interesting to see how investors react to the other IPOs that are on the way now including Groupon, Zynga and ultimately Facebook next year. Many people are in these stocks to make a quick buck because of all the hype around social media and with the markets acting so turbulently investors seem to be pulling their cash out as quickly as they put it in. There has been a lot of talk about a bubble in social media stocks and this could be the start of them getting a pretty sharp dose of reality and coming back to earth.
Many businesses are still unconvinced of how useful LinkedIn will be for them, whether employees should be encouraged to use it or whether there is any real business value in the site. I wanted to put together some essential stats that show just how big LinkedIn has become and why you can’t afford to ignore it. In addition to stats that show the reach of the site such as 100 million users, I wanted to delve a bit deeper to find out more about who’s using it and how.
Tech and finance are the leading sectors
Research compiled in July 2011by Amodiovalerio Verde gives an indepth look at the demographic breakdown of LinkedIn users which is useful for people targeting other individuals or businesses, but most interesting out of this is the breakdown of industry sector. Tech is leading here at 15.3% of users, but interestingly this is followed closely by Finance at 12.9%. This shows that corporate social networking is also making its way into more traditional sectors, while others such as Media are coming in surprisingly low at 3.3%
More than 80% of members are decision makers
This is likely to get a lot of people’s attention, as it shows the potential to generate real business leads and referrals through LinkedIn. In an infographic released by LinkedIn to show the real make-up of LinkedIn members, they revealed that over 80% of members on there are the decision makers in an area of business in their organisation. Focused marketing efforts on LinkedIn can generate real results if you invest time in building relationships, evidenced by the significant amount of key decision makers on the site.
50% of Fortune 100 companies hire through LinkedIn
Showing just how pervasive LinkedIn has become in recruitment, this stat, released just over 10 months ago, finds that over 50% of Fortune 100 companies now use LinkedIn for their recruitment strategy. It demonstrates the value in really using LinkedIn when jobseeking and the level of companies that use this alongside more traditional recruitment methods. In addition, top execs from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn, proving that it’s an invaluable business tool across the board at all levels
62% log in from home
This is an interesting stat, pulled together for the UK specifically. The findings released, revealed that the vast majority of time spent accessing LinkedIn is done from home – at 62%, with 38% logging in from work. This is not necessarily how you would expect LinkedIn to be used and it could suggest that there is a large mix of jobseekers and small business owners on the site, who would typically use it from home. I suspect what’s also at play here is people that are covertly looking for a new job without wanting to be caught at work, so they build out their profile and network at home.
Sales jobs lead the pack
As you might expect, sales is the leading job function on LinkedIn in terms of active members, as shown on the image below. There are 6,080,000 members on LinkedIn that work in sales, followed by academics at 5,277,000 and admin at 5,303k. To put it in the context of LinkedIn’s 100 million total members, over 6% of members are working within sales. As a b2b tool it shows there’s a lot of people on there looking for business in a crowded marketplace. If you want LinkedIn to work for you in terms of generating revenue, you’ll need to work hard on your relationships and community to stand out from the crowd :
LinkedIn created a huge stir when they launched on the stock market at $45 per share. In doing so, they were the first real major social network to IPO and be publicly traded. Now they are set to release their public earnings for the first time, later next week and the expectation on the company is huge. As the first social networking site to release such detailed information following public trading, they will go a large way in proving the strength of the social media market as a viable business industry, or whether we’re in fact in a bubble, as many predict. LinkedIn’s stock has more than doubled since it went public in May – now sitting at $101.03, but do the figures back this up, or has it been massively over-hyped?
Expected loss
According to the Biz Journal, LinkedIn is expected to report a loss in its first earnings released, of 4 cents a share, while revenue is expected to rise to $104.45 million , compared to $93.9 million for the previous quarter that ended in March. Amidst warnings that the expectations on the company are far too high, likely due to the excitement of the first major social network to launch on the stock market, their stock has now been downgraded from’buy’ to ‘neutral’. While the increase in revenue is positive, it’s evident that LinkedIn has a long way to go, and a lot of investment to make, to position itself to meet the expectations set on the company. Being an exciting social network is one thing, but being a serious money-making social network is quite another. It seems the excitement is starting to wear off a bit for LinkedIn, at least for analysts, who see that it has a long way to go to become a truly viable investment.
Ramping up sales
LinkedIn has a big job on its hands now, to prove that a huge userbase can easily translate into revenue. While they are better positioned than many other social networks to do this, as they have an additional revenue stream in premium subscriptions, clearly this isn’t enough to meet the expectations and demands being put on the company. Since they launched on the stock market, we’ve seen them launch a major product that is clearly focused on the valuable recruitment market. Their ‘apply with LinkedIn’ button launched last week and could radically shake up the entire recruitment industry. Right now this is a free product, but there is such a clear route to monetisation there, that it’s highly likely LinkedIn have launched this for free to gain the reach and make it an invaluable product for companies, before turning on the payment.
They’re keeping busy on the products side of the business, also building out the offering within corporate accounts, to incentivise more people to switch over to the paid option. They recently announced the launch of ‘similar profiles’, which is an option clearly aimed at employers, that allows you to view up to 99 profiles that are similar, whether in experience, work history etc.. For recruiters this is a goldmine, as it allows you to easily source potential candidates, with LinkedIn doing a lot of the hard work for you. And it is yet another feature on premium accounts, significantly building out the value here and enticing people to sign up. They are clearly also ramping up their efforts to bring people to the site, as latest figures from Compete (which aren’t completely accurate but a good indication) show the significant increase in unique visitors to the site over the last three months :
It has been a busy few months for LinkedIn on traffic and products side and it’s likely to get even busier, as they set their sights on proving their ability to turn users into money. All eyes are on them at the moment, particularly with the expected IPO of Facebook next year, and the next few months will be crucial in showing that there is real money to be made in social networks.
When I give training courses or speak at events about social media people always ask me what the next new big technology is that they should be embracing to help their business. Over the last couple of years people even jump in with the suggestions asking if it is Foursquare, Google buzz, Quora, Google + or Group messaging. It’s in human nature to always want to be at the forefront of technology and being an early adopter on the next big thing. What I try to explain is that all these technologies come and go in no time and that people are better off sticking to the large established platforms if they really want to grow their business. You don’t have time to be wasting putting energy in to things that might not work so why take a punt with all that energy building a presence on a service that could be a ghost town this time next year.
Pick 3 Of The Big 5
There are 5 main sites or services that are more or less not going to go away any time soon. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube and blogging are about as mainstream as you get. They all have plenty of users, great ad platforms and ways of engaging with a mass market audience instantly. The temptation is to try and do them all and end up not really achieving anything but this is where the 3/5 rule comes in. Pick 3 of the logos below and focus on those platforms for your social media activity and forget about everything else. Even 3 could be pushing it if you want to do it all correctly. Building a following or audience on a blog or Youtube for example takes a lot of time and you will need focus and energy to do it correctly. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Less is more.
Ignore The Hype Except For Stunts
This time last year everyone was shouting from the rooftops about how Foursquare would be the next great thing. They have a tiny user base of 10 million and outside of the USA it’s use is niche at best. Having said that this time last year people were raving about it and developing all sorts of strategies for their businesses. That in my mind is pretty much wasted time. Time that could have been used on 3 of the big 5 above. The one time where new services can be used is to leverage them for a bit of free press or marketing stunts to grab attention. The first checkin in a certain place. First businesses offering deals etc. Beyond that it really is best to ignore the hype, stay focused and only jump on the bandwagon when the service has mainstream usage and you can afford to dedicate some serious time towards it.
The web is littered with services that people have invested time in only for them to die
Most companies have a presence on LinkedIn, with employees connected and an official company page, but many are left wondering how this can work for them, or how their page can best be used. We’ve put together some top tips for making the most of your company page, including some tricks that you might not be aware of! These tips apply to all businesses, no matter how big or small you are, as your LinkedIn page is an important place for keeping employees connected as well as being a source for new business or contacts. If you’ve claimed your business page, people are going to find it, so you want to make sure it’s as up to date as possible, using all the features available within LinkedIn to optimise it.
Add an RSS feed
One of the most frustrating things about a company LinkedIn page is that, unlike Facebook, you can’t post updates onto the page to keep your followers informed of industry news, links you want so share, or the latest news from your company. There is a way around this, through using RSS. If you run a blog for example, you can easily add that content onto your LinkedIn page, which is an easy way to keep the page fresh with new content and give people a reason to follow your company on LinkedIn. You can do this by clicking on ‘Admin Tools’ at the top of the page, then ‘Edit’ :
When you’re in the edit section, just scroll down to company blog RSS feed and add yours in :
Make sure your employees’ profiles are up to date
Within your company page, there is an easy link for users to visit, that takes them to statistics about your employees. For prospective clients, potential employees and stakeholders you obviously want to show your company at its best. Within this screen, anyone can access information such as the level of experience within your company, degrees and previous job functions :
Here you should make sure that employees are keeping their LinkedIn profiles up to date and have put as much information in as possible, as this will reflect directly on your company.
Add video to your services page
While you can’t add video onto the main homepage of your company page on LinkedIn, you can add this within the services section. Next to the description of your services, where you add in text and images to support your service offering, you can simply put in the Youtube url of your video and it will be embedded onto the page directly :
Create targeted audiences
As well as showing your complete company information on your LinkedIn page, you can also create sub-audiences that are unique, for example if you want to target people geographically. This allows you to update the page with more relevant content that might not apply to all your company followers. Here you can also get more detailed in the information you put on, that might only be relevant to a particular group, so you don’t risk putting people off that this information might not be suited to. You can do this by clicking into ‘services’ , ‘edit’ and then ‘create new audience :
Within this screen you can then select filters that apply to your group, such as industry, geography, company size and seniority. Once this is created, you can see a preview of all the pages and sub-pages you’ve created, with information editable specifically within each page, to make it relevant to that audience.
Add a company contact
When you add a new product or service on your page, you have the option to list a contact within the company, that is the best person to receive inquiries or queries. In order to do this, you have to be personally connected to the person from within the profile you’re logged into, and it’s a great way to bring a bit of life to your page and also showcase the people at your organisation. You can do this within the services page by clicking ‘admin tools’ then ‘add a product a or service’. From within this screen you can go through and add the text description and urls, then go onto step 8 to add up to 3 company contacts:
Ask for recommendations
Just as you have recommendations on personal profiles on LinkedIn, recommendations are now also displayed in company pages, through the products and services tabs. This provides an easy way for interested prospects to research how well your products are received and how your company is viewed overall. Every time you receive a recommendation for your company, this will appear on your company page. You can encourage recommendations by requesting these from clients or service providers you use.
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LinkedIn groups have been around for a long time and with over a million of them in existence, users clearly see then as a great way of engaging with other users on the platform. For all their success though, the feature set within the groups has always been pretty limited but the good news is that today they are launching “Polls” which will be a great new tool to create engagement for group admins.
When I give training courses or speak at events about 
