Before you invite someone to connect on LinkedIn

1. Get a photo; it's difficult to connect with an invisible person.

2. Add some content to your profile. One line about your current job just isn't enough.

3.    If you haven't met, say why you want to connect and unless it's meaningful, don't try and connect.  Nb none of these reasons count:

• We're in the same group so I thought it would be good to connect (this is not a reason and I'm suspicious you might just want my contact list)
• We know some of the same people (and why does this mean we should connect?)

WARNING

If you don't say why and the person that you're trying to connect with doesn't know you, they may select the 'I don't know Fred Bloggs' and if they click this button, along with 3 others, LinkedIn assumes (and they might be right) that you're building a network without knowing the people, so it will start to

• Ask you for your password more often
• Ask for the email address of the next and the next and the next person with who you wish to connect....

TIP

Always give the person a 'get out clause' in case they don't want to connect or in case it's against their company policy. This can be as simple as 'if you don't want to connect at this time, or you're too busy that's ok too'

4. If the person does connect, send a message immediately. Say "it's good to be connected because...."

5. Tag the person. Create a tag in your contacts so if you need to contact all your suppliers, network friends, people with a specific link, so can do so in one go.
 

I’ve been writing and talking about QR codes for a while.  Click on this link for more details on QR codes, what they are, how to get them and how to use them.

There is a new potential downside as the number of companies using these bar codes on their products increases.

I recently spotted a Quick Response code on the back of a note book I was looking at.

My reaction is to scan this, I used ‘ Red Laser’ and it showed me where I could buy the item cheaper. At this stage I could instantly buy online as the cheapest source was Amazon, I have an Amazon app on my phone and am always signed in, so it’s easy to buy with one click. That was a lost sale to Selfridges.

What do you think? Good idea or bad idea? Does your phone have a QR app? Has your company used QR codes?
 

Email marketing is often perceived as being free. That’s not strictly true as it takes time to organise and manage.


I am often asked

•    How do we go about email marketing?
•    What are the rules?
•    How do we build our mailing list?
•    Should we buy lists?

I have added a presentation to slideshare which shares the key issues you need to consider. From the Process of Email Marketing to Frequency of email.

Click here to launch the presentation.

In January I held my own Foursquare experiment and I checked-in everywhere I visited for four weeks. This gave me both the user's perspective and better understanding for its potential for business. Click here to read the user's perspective.

Reasons for the experiment were
•  People were talking about Foursquare, but I didn't know anyone that was using it
•  The 'check-in to Foursquare here' sticker just wasn't visible in the places I was spending money (consumer and business)
•  Facebook launched 'Deals' in the USA and I predicted it would arrive in the UK by the end of January to mid February (it arrived on 31 January)
•  I'm in marketing and love to know about the latest applications for business

Just in case you're not familiar with Foursquare, you visit a venue (shop, restaurant, bar, office) and check-in using a smart phone. The most loyal customer (measured by volume of check-ins) is promoted to the Mayor and in theory gains a reward such as a free coffee, free pizza on Wednesdays or 10% off.

 
So where is foursquare now?
The friends who started using it quickly tired of logging into a new application, plus Facebook. Their friends equally tired of seeing constant check-ins, and the novelty of being the mayor with no reward soon faded.

It's about numbers
30 million people in the UK actively use Facebook every month (source: David Parfect, UK Sales Manager, Facebook, March 2011) of which 50% do so on a daily basis and the average Facebook user has 135 friends.

If I pop to the hairdressers, drop in to Waitrose supermarket on the way home, collect some dry cleaning or grab a pizza for friends and on arrival check in on Facebook, I can share with my 100 friends and 4 make a comment, the check-in is potentially seen by up to 540 people and I have fewer friends than the average user. If I do not use Facebook, only those directly involved with the transaction (shop staff) are aware.

Word of mouth marketing is recognised as a powerful way to promote products and services. Social media marketing delivers word of mouth, but on a much larger scale.

On Foursquare, so few of my friends were using it that my check-ins were only seen by 5 or 6 people. When I connected my Facebook and Foursquare accounts, my friends became bored as there was little commentary, just 'Annmarie has just checked-in to Debenhams in Oxford Street'. I could add comments, but it wasn't easy and I could even check-in without getting out of my car, or when walking in the area. In fact until recently I was the mayor of Dominos Pizza in a district of Birmingham although I'd never gone into the store. This isn't about brand loyalty, it's about playing a game.


It's about content
By contrast a check-in via Facebook is richer. When you check-in to a venue there is a good chance that it's already populated with more information, about its history, what's on offer or local data, such as a recent visit to Wolverhampton Wanderers where the entire history of the club was visible.

Foursquare was being trialled by advanced thinking companies like Debenhams and now it seems, along with Alton Towers, Argos, Yo Sushi and Mazda, they're also using (possibly switching?) Facebook Deals.

It's about engaging the companies
Facebook Deals is making it easy for companies to connect, take advantage of offers and is keen to expand its UK case study base. Foursquare's profile amongst the business community is much lower. I speak to groups of businesses on a regular basis and few have heard of Foursquare. Equally I am the mayor of a small sandwich shop in Warwickshire and they are oblivious to the potential benefits and impact on their business.

If you contact Foursquare to amend a venue location, the registration process is not straightforward. Part of this involves waiting for a code to arrive in the mail from the USA. Overall as a business user, Foursquare is clunky.

It's about Ease of Use
Facebook Deals uses an open API (application programming interface) so developers can integrate it into their applications. This makes it easy to use and simple to integrate into existing business processes.

Worldwide Foursquare has 7.5 million users, Facebook has 500 million. Those on Facebook are already familiar with how it works, experienced in downloading games, sending messages to friends and uploading photos, there is nothing for users to learn with Facebook. No new tools, no new profiles to upload, no statuses to change.

 
It's about business branding
Foursquare doesn't provide much of a company page, its just about the location with few other details. Facebook has already established company pages which evolved earlier this year (Click here for info on the changes) to enable businesses to use an open programming language to develop and enrich their pages.

Facebook has been around for 7 years, Foursquare for 2, but Facebook has come of age and understands how to attract business users.

Do you Facebook and / or Foursquare? What's your view? Can Foursquare make that leap into 2012 or will it stay in the little league? Let me know what you think! Best answer will win a copy of Quick Win Digital Marketing!

Several people have asked me how to remove or change their listing with Google Places. A very nice person from their Dublin office called me yesterday - they now have 250 staff working in the Google Maps / Places team alone!

Two main options

GOOGLE PLACES OPTION 1 – TAKE CONTROL

• Go to Google Places
• Select your venue
• Claim the place
• Verify
• and change / remove as you want ;) which includes
• Below address details will be a check box under 'Service areas and location settings' - select 'yes, this business serves customers at their location' - this means only your town and contact number (and web address) will appear.

GOOGLE PLACES OPTION 2 – REQUEST HELP

• Go to Google Places
• Select your venue
• Report a problem – this goes into the Google Maps team’s system and they do deal with these, but they are getting so many change requests worldwide.

Are you using Google Places as a business or as a consumer, or both? What do you think of Google Places?

Twitter Pages - what's your view?

Recently I have explored Twitter backgrounds. They are only really useful where people are using Twitter.com as their Twitter client.

This started as I had a new profile photo and wanted to replace the older image on my current Twitter page so decided to take the plunge and pay $163 for a professional background from Tweetpages as they were recommended in "Twitter Power" by Joel Comm. But sadly my experience was not good and the wheels really did fall off the process. The $163 is probably going to be refunded (promised but not confirmed yet) and if they do finalise my design, I'm donating this to charity.

The turnaround time is normally 3 to 5 business days and if they have high traffic it's 5 to 7 business days. I ordered on Saturday 29 Jan and was hoping for a result by Wed 2 Feb; I'm an optimist and there was nothing on the website about high traffic at the moment; so I hoped for 3 business days.

Sadly, the tweetpages team had the flu. On Monday 30 Jan they sent me a message:

I was just checking on a few emails before I ate my chicken soup and took my Nyquil.

My son got the Flu... gave it to my wife... then she gave it to me.

So... we're stuck in the "Flu Shuffle" at the moment - Ugh!

I'm not in front of my schedule at the moment... but we were scheduling for next week (thursday) or (friday).

However, since I was out Friday... I may not be a day behind (which would then be the following Monday).

I, again, will double check all this and will re-connect after the weekend.

So I thought I would get this on Monday 7 Feb. I didn't get any email, so chased it through their website contact form on 10^th Feb and got the following message

Greetings Annmarie,

We're such lugheads for the delay!

We finalized your design late yesterday and now have the Video Proof uploaded and ready!

This email was apparently delivered on the 7^th, which meant I received it within their timeframe of high traffic max, 7 business days. But sadly I didn't receive the email on the 7^th, no idea why, but I didn't receive it. I chased on the 10^th via the website to send an urgent request. To be fair, Matt from Tweetpages responded pretty quickly at this stage and took time to prove he'd sent the earlier email to me.

Added to this, the tweetpages that arrived weren't what I wanted as they were modelled on my website, which was too heavy a look for my Twitter page (I'd asked for a clean, professional and not totally purple image). They promised to work on them until I was happy and did create several new options. I sort of liked a couple of these, but at this stage I picked one and felt embarrassed that I was seeming to complain too much as they'd had the flu. Plus I'd spent far too much time on the process. I did that terrible client thing when someone asks if it's all ok and you say yes! I actually said I loved one of the designs that was a bit excessive, but I just wanted this finished and fast.

Anyway, then I confirmed I'd like the JPGs to install myself I'd stated this on the booking form (you don't get a copy which isn't helpful) plus by this stage I'd lost some trust and didn't want to share my Twitter account details.

So, one week later, I'm still waiting.

I can only assume that they are having email issues as they get emails via the web page, but others don't always arrive. Or they have another bug?

So I've gone for a DIY approach which I'm not mad on, but as I'd had a new photo done, I wanted to update all my online profiles. I have to say this was partly influenced by other designs Tweetpages created ;)

To help you with your Twitter pages - if you feel it's worth a custom page, I looked around at a few other twitter pages and have created this list that you might find useful if you're considering a new Twitter background page.

http://www.twitbacks.com/

Plenty of personalisation options and can URLs to Website, LinkedIn, bookmarking and blog.

$4.99 to remove twitbacks logo

$4.99 to personalise background colours

http://www.twitterbackgrounds.org/

Large images and no space to add company or personal details, but quite funky.

http://www.twitrbackgrounds.com/

Twitter Background Creator can be trialled free and installed for $9.99. You can upload up to 4 pictures in your favourite design. I thought this looked quite good, but the links to the $9.99 option were not existent when I tried this.

They also sell custom backgrounds for $89 with a guaranteed 3 day turnaround which sounds impressive. Might give them a try.

http://viuu.co.uk/

Can browse by colour as well as collections which is useful if you're looking for a specific colour. Most options are simply large images with an instant download. Lots of rock and pop themes, plenty of arty options too.

Free of charge, but no space to add company or personal details

http://www.twitter-images.com/

Free images and for $25 you can have their logo removed.

A custom option is offered for $79.

DIY Twitter Pages

There is always the DIY option where you create your own and work on a width of 1040px and to ensure it's 100% viewable on all types of screens. That's just a slim 41px on each side.

What's your experience? Have you opted for DIY, a paid-for service or something else. Please share! How did it work, what did you like and dislike?

Foursquare is a mash-up between an online loyalty card and geo-social networking tool. It's in the category of Location Based Services (LBS).

Users access Foursquare from their smartphone and when they arrive at a specific destination, they 'check in'. In theory organisations can reward regular customers (the most loyal customer becomes 'the mayor') and encourage potential customers to share their wallet, with a range of special offers.

I was slightly sceptical and decided to adopt foursquare for a month to understand how it works, the user's perspective and the benefits for businesses. This post looks at the User perspective.

Signing up is easy, the usual user name and password and As soon as I'd signed up and checked-in to my first venue I received my first badge, the Newbie.

The awarding of badges adds to the competitive element of foursquare. You realise it's not just badges and mayorships but points too. My only friends using foursquare are male as my female friends are concerned with the potential for stalking. The male friends using Foursquare are competitive and keen to

• Get more points
• Check-in to more venues
• Win more badges
• Gain new mayorships
• Oust the current mayor
• Leave tips about venues

To become Mayor you need to be the most frequent visitor within 30 days. If you make more visits than the current mayor they are ousted and everyone knows, as emails and updates appear, sharing the news. You can visit a venue more than once in a day but points are only awarded for a single daily check-in. It's essential to have a photo to become mayor, even if it's a meaningless image.

The competitive element means that some users

• Create duplicate venues so they can become mayor
• Check-in when passing the venue, rather than stopping there
• Check-in to many venues at the same time as 'points mean prizes'

Foursquare allows you to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts to share updates. This lets users update their social media accounts whilst on the move. The downside is that if you're busy bagging venues, you're constantly updating all your accounts whilst checking-in, regardless of whether you've actually stopped. My friends quickly became frustrated seeing my updates as 'checked-in to abc venue'. Some said it was boring as there was no commentary attached and there was no real dialogue. Others said nothing, but stopped following me on Twitter and removed my updates from Facebook. More context can be added to a venue with a 'shout' but few seem to use this function.

I got around this by checking-in 'off the grid' but the downside is that this doesn't gain any points or badges. Then I realised I could check-in share with friends on Foursquare but remove sharing with Facebook and Twitter.

Many of the foursquare badges are unavailable in the UK. It's very USA centric and focuses mainly on cities. This means venues in smaller locations in the UK are added by a few brave souls trying to encourage early adoption. It also means that I'm mayor of a couple of venues that have never heard of Foursquare.

If you check-in at too many venues too quickly a message appears telling you 'whoa! No points for rapid fire check-ins, stay a while'.

There are also strange venues. People's houses, beds and sitting rooms are classified as venues. One of my friends has created 'stuck in traffic outside...' as a venue. I'm not sure I want to check-in to someone's house if I don't know them.

On the practical side, there are challenges. Exploring venues in the area is dependent upon the availability of Internet access. Without this, it simply doesn't function. Sometimes there is a delay between checking-in and gaining points, so a warning message appears 'ok we've got you at ... but your phone thinks you're a bit too far away, so no points or badges this time.' opening Foursquare on an iPhone uses up lots of battery. Nearly one per cent every time you re-load places or check-in. Some venues are in the wrong location and my phone this I'm too far way when I'm in the reception area.

There is a scary side too. You can see how many others are at the venue and others can see you too.

As a user I won't continue with Foursquare. Too few rewards outside big cities, friends unhappy about the constant sharing of where I am and a degree of concern about sharing my constant whereabouts.

Added to this Facebook Deals has now been launched….

There are a growing number of websites where free press releases can be submitted. The main business model is to offer a free, but upgradable service.

These are some of the e-Pr websites I've found and they are all members only sites that you need to join before submitting a press release

Foursquare is the ultimate in mobile loyalty cards. Forget loading the wallet with more plastic, just carry your mobile phone and every time you ‘check in’ to a venue you collect points.

And what’s more, gain public recognition as the most frequent visitors are promoted to Mayor which brings additional benefits from free coffee to discounts and special offers.

Some people are saying that Foursquare is where Twitter was two years’ ago. Just before tipping point, I’m not so sure. Twitter didn’t have the Facebook goliath waiting in the wings ready to launch an equivalent type of location based service. Facebook is now trialling ‘Deals’ in the USA, launched just a few weeks ago and it’s very clever.

Facebook Deals is similar to Foursquare but with an extended product offer. Firstly it encourages you to join up with your friends for a deal (Friends deal). The altruistic out there can check-in and get the business to donate to charity (Charity deals) of if you’re after a bargain; the Individual deals promote offers, such as the Gap jeans promotion in the US. And there’s the reward card, Loyalty deals, for money off, free coffees and the like.

Sounds similar to Foursquare?
What are you using Foursquare of Facebook? And will Foursquare create new deals to fight back?
 

Websites provide customers with access to your company 24/7. Today a website is an intrinsic element of a company’s marketing mix and it’s essential to get it right. These are our 7 top tips for upgrading your website.

1. Decide your objectives

    * What do you want to get out of your website?
    * To generate leads
    * To reassure existing customers
    * To check stock
    * To enable customers to buy online?
    * Before you review your website, decide what you need.


2. Prepare your content

    * Getting noticed in a crowded world has become more challenging and fighting your way up the search engine ladder can be tough.
    * It starts with great content.
    * Content that’s relevant and recent:
    * relevant to people searching for your products or services
    * recent enough to attract the search engines.


3. Less is more

    * Too much information on a website can lead a potential customer to make a negative decision about your business instead of picking up the telephone and calling you.
    * Look at alternatives to lengthy text articles.
    * Can you add a YouTube video?
    * Or a PowerPoint presentation?
    * Or a series of great photos?


4. Looking good

    * Design matters when we encounter so many brands on a daily basis but ease of use is more important!
    * A great looking site that is difficult to navigate is likely to lose more visitors than a less attractive, but easy to use site.


5. Don’t forget the construction

    * Many sites use flash or other plug-ins, but this isn’t available for Apple iPad and mobile phone users.
    * Sites using this technology may need a re-think.


6. Make sites search engine friendly

    * There are many simple tasks from creating good ALT tags and adding appropriate Title text, to updating content and finding suitable sites with which to connect.
    * Get the construction right from the start.


7. Link it all together

    * If you’re using YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter or blogs, don’t forget to tell your visitors to explore these sites too!








 

To organise a 'landing page' for your company's Facebook page, follow these steps:

Writing for digital media is not like writing for traditional presses. There is no longer time to create a great introduction paragraph and add more detail, it is necessary to grab the reader’s attention in 3 seconds, which means the headline must engage the reader instantly.

It is personal

Social media is personal, it is a conversation between you and your fans / connections / viewers and anyone else that may be listening.

Most updates / tweets / posts are written in the first person (singular or plural). The third person does not work in digital media.

It is acceptable to say “we are having a promotion this afternoon” if representing a company. It is not great to issue posts / tweets etc like “The ABC Company is having a promotion this afternoon”.

Better still would be “I’m getting ready for a promotion at the ABC Company this afternoon”.

Short and sweet

LinkedIn and Twitter allow 140 characters (including spaces and punctuation) which includes your Twitter identity when someone is repeating (re-tweeting) what you have said.

This means writing short statements to tempt the reader to click on a link for more has become the norm.

Facebook conventions dictate short and sweet although there are no limits on post sizes. The average person posts a sentence or two at most.

Shorten links

When adding a link to a media release it can take up far too many characters. There are various websites which will reduce the size of a link, free of charge, so that http://www.evonomie.net/content.php/info_id/497 which is 47 characters becomes:

http://bit.ly/aAPxsj  - using bit.ly
http://tiny.cc/jql1x - using tiny.cc – used by The Times
http://alturl.com/qhabk - using short URL

Facts, figures and questions

Providing statistics, numbers, fascinating facts and questions generates better responses than direct statements. People are reading the posts / tweets / updates at their desk and a question like “have you visited the world’s best airport lounges” is more appealing than “new study on airport facilities”.

Punctuation and spelling

Punctuation has changed too. In social media it is not uncommon to see

• No punctuation at all – to reduce the number of characters
• Use of smiley faces :) to indicate positive messages
• Abbreviations that may be more common in text messages

For clients using social media spelling is important, if part of the brand image, but once the tweet or update is posted, it is difficult to retract.

If you issue something with an error, re-issue with the correct spelling. Better still, make another more useful statement.

 
Repurpose your content

Whenever you create a press release, write an article, say something, make sure it’s on LinkedIn (share with Twitter), on your blog, website news area and Facebook. Use the information, use it again and once more for good measure. For example a news item about a new partner at a law firm could have several different headings:

• Jane Smith joins Birmingham LLP
• Birmingham LLP announce promotions
• Have you read about the local woman being promoted?

Resources

http://bit.ly
http://www.tiny.cc
http://www.shorturl.com 

Using The Social Media Balance Sheet™ tool to measure social media presence – for sector and competitor research

Social Media Metrics have to date mainly focused on the view of their effectiveness from inside the company. At Evonomie we’ve been looking for a while for an external qualitative method to measure companies’ online activities as part of a strategic review.

Internal or in-company quantitative methods are in abundance and focus on activity, surveys and return on investment (ROI). These are certainly valid metrics and there is a comprehensive list in Jim Sterne’s book Social Media Metrics. The real question when conducting research is how can you capture the metrics if you’re outside the company? You don’t have access to their analytics so need to make a judgement on what’s important and whether the information is available.

Benefits of benchmarking competitor use of social media

Reasons we want to measure the social media activity from an external perspective include:

• The review competitors’ activity, their strengths and weaknesses
• To understand where and how the market segment is using social media
• To identify opportunities
• To identify threats
• To review new markets companies may consider moving into

There are advantages of The Social Media Balance Sheet™ from an internal perspective too:

• Once completed, it provides a benchmark and can be reviewed for ongoing comparative analysis of the market sector and / or key competitors
• It is a tool for in house brand managers to ensure no brand creep is taking place
• It is a great way to explain to staff how and why it’s essential to maintain key brand messages

Methodology

We needed a methodology that would provide a ‘one page snapshot’ of what was happening with several companies and after trial and error we’ve developed The Social Media Balance Sheet™.  This provides a summary of the key issues. I’ve shared this here along with the rationale as to why these areas were considered important.

We have been reviewing the top 10 UK FTSE 100 companies’ activities and their social media approach. So far we’ve reviewed:

• Lloyds Banking Group PLC
• Vodafone Group Plc
• Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC
• BP Plc
• National Grid Plc
• Barclays PLC
• BT Group PLC
• Income & Growth VCT
• HSBC Holdings PLC
• Prudential Plc

Initial results of benchmarking

Our initial conclusions as to the social media being actively used (i.e. within the last 2 months) show that Facebook and Twitter are the most popular vehicles for these companies. As you might expect, a telecoms company, Vodafone, is using the most social media tools.

Within this group of 10 we discovered that blogs and photo sharing sites were not popular. This may be as blogging requires more effort from the company and is less interactive and engaging than Facebook. Equally photo sharing sites represent a challenge for service businesses as I’m not sure I would stand in my bank and take photos! Five of the companies reviewed were in financial services and these companies are lowest users of social media.

The summary shown below illustrates which social media tools these FTSE companies are currently using (nb this is subject to change within any hour!)

Vodafone Group Plc uses Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

The Royal Bank of Scotland PLC uses Facebook and Twitter

National Grid Plc uses Facebook and YouTube

BT Group PLC has a blog and uses Twitter

HSBC Holdings PLC has a blog and uses Twitter

Lloyds Banking Group Plc uses Facebook

Barclays PLC uses Twitter for a competition and for its stockbroking arm

BP Plc (in the UK) uses Photo Sharing tools

Prudential plc and Income Growth VCT plc do not use any social media tools.

We were surprised that the adoption of social media as part of an overall marketing strategy was so low within this group. Over the next 5 years social media tools will change our business models yet these giant corporations are largely ignoring its potential.

Notably, BP, which has recently been in the news a great deal in the UK and US and yet their social media presence is restricted to the US only. A Sunday paper reported that BP had hired Brunswick (specialist financial PR company) to help with PR. Will this have an impact on their social media?

One of the challenges is that failure to adopt social media may result in others (detractors, campaigners) taking your share of the voice and controlling your message.

Ignoring the power of LinkedIn to drive new business and build relationships is missing a big opportunity for companies small and large alike.

LinkedIn is the first place many larger businesses check out potential suppliers and new hires. Using LinkedIn makes you more visible to existing and potential clients as well as your peers. These reach and growth figures are undeniable:

• LinkedIn has over 65 million members in over 200 countries.
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.

Our ten practical tips are aimed at helping you to get more out of LinkedIn.

1 – Complete your profile

Improve how people can find and connect to you by adding past places you have worked, details of your higher and further education (leave out schooling  before 18), activities and professional memberships.

You have 1895 characters to create your LinkedIn profile. Do include:

• BACKGROUND
• HOW WE CAN HELP YOUR COMPANY
• CONNECT WITH ME AND MY COMPANY

To make elements of your profile stand out use block capitals and plenty of spaces between sections.

2 – Add a photo

A photo is a great visual prompt to remind your contacts who you are. Profiles with photos look less interesting and without a photo you become a grey head and shoulders. People sometimes ask “I had a professional shot taken a few years ago is that ok?” Yes it is! Ensure the photo is decent if not recent. A decent photo can be used in many social networking spaces whereas a recent photo of you on the beach may not be what your clients want to see.

Photos can be up to 4MB in size and need to be common file formats such as JPG, GIF, and PNG. You can preview your photo before saving and sharing with your contacts.

Once your photo is in place, it’s part of your personal brand, so stick with the same image, rather than changing on a regular basis!

3 – Professional Headline

You can use up to 120 characters in your Professional Headline. Most people’s headline is ‘Owner, ABC Ltd’ and if I’m searching through several hundred contacts, that doesn’t stand out, whereas ‘Dave Chaffey, Expert Digital Marketer – Consultant, Author and Speaker’ jumps right out from the page.

Find your Professional Headline at the top of your profile directly below your name.

4 – Get recommended

LinkedIn makes it so easy to seek recommendations. These are mini case studies that will get reviewed and are a great way to showcase your talents.

Every six months seek newer recommendations from different people. This builds up the number of recommendations which features in your public profile as well as keeping your profile fresh. Simply click on the profile / recommendations / request recommendations button.

If you’re not happy with a recommendation, you can always choose not to display it in your profile!

5 – Make recommendations

Where you are happy with a service, product being sold, company or person, do make recommendations. This only needs to be a short paragraph about their best qualities.

If someone recommends you, wait a month before returning the favour. Otherwise on the updates page it looks like you were obliged to make the recommendation.

6 – Join groups

Joining groups gives you access to a wider pool of contacts, allows you to display group membership on your profile and enables you to network with a more targeted group of people. Some groups are very sales orientated, others require membership or professional qualifications and their focus tends to be different.

The great feature about groups is that you can belong to the same group as someone without being connected to them. This means you can see what your competitors are involved with (and they can see your activity) but they can’t access your connections.

You can currently join up to 50 groups in different categories: alumni, corporate, conference, networking, non profit and professional.

There are over 500,000 groups on LinkedIn and if you can’t find the group you’re looking for, you can always start your own!

June 2010 update: Linked In has enhanced the interface for Linked In Groups. This blog post explains the updates to Linked In Groups. The post and video explains how active contributors can benefit and they are rewarded and highlighted more within the new system.

7 – Ask and / or answer questions

Inside the LinkedIn community you can ask and answer questions. If you’re exploring new markets or wanting to know the latest software tool in a specific industry, you can ask questions and within a few hours the answers will appear.

Answer questions to share your knowledge or expertise or to recommend others to help.

Even better, Google seems to love LinkedIn questions and finds them within a few hours.

8 – Update your status

LinkedIn status updates are a maximum of 141 characters. Use this to talk about your new blog posts, share what you’re reading or comment about your day.

Think about your updates – LinkedIn is a professional network not Facebook!

You can add your Twitter account to LinkedIn, so that when you post a LinkedIn update it tweets at the same time.

9 – Build connections

LinkedIn is not a business card competition! If you add connections to your network, each person can see your connections, unless you hide your connections, which isn’t in the spirit of the network – unless you’re a recruiter.

You can build the number of your connections by:

• Finding people in your address book that are already on LinkedIn and importing these contacts.
• Sending invitations to people you’ve met at an event – it’s a great way to stay in touch and find out more about someone.
• Using the ‘company search’ tool to find colleagues or reconnect with people you’ve worked with in the past.
• Sometimes you may find your connections know someone you’d like to meet. You can ask for an introduction, in the same way you would do at a face to face networking event.

Think carefully about adding connections and only click the ‘add connection’ button if you’re happy to share your address book with that person.

10 – Personalise emails

LinkedIn provides a range of template emails to add someone to your network and request recommendations. It’s a good idea to personalise these templates and say why you’d like to be connected to someone, rather than sending the ‘I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn’ email. If it’s someone you haven’t met for a while, this breaks the ice and you’re more likely to generate a positive response.

And finally, treat LinkedIn the same way as you would face to face networking. You need to work at it to get results. 

Social media is a dynamic form of communication. Instant, short and sometimes worthy of sharing. I’ve found 5 social media graphics that merit sharing.

For beginners - The Do's and Don’ts of Social Media for Business

Easy to view one pager by Michael Schulz that addresses the key issues. Great use of cartoons.

Getting your colleagues involved - Building a Company with Social Media
Created by Elliance this simple graphic shows the different functions in an organisation and how they can use social media.

How social media grew - The Boom of Social Sites
Focus editors created a timeline starting in 1995 with classmates.com. It’s a couple of years old and it would be great to see a revised version, especially as the numbers for Twitter, Facebook and MySpace have changed some much.

Internet usage - State of the Internet Explained In One Giant Infographic
Samuel Axon via Mashable’s diagram shows who uses the Internet, how often and where.

Market sizes - The 2010 Social Networking Map
Ethan Bloch at Flowtown created this map which indicates the power of different social media platforms. This is a favourite of mine. A great way to convert disbelievers and puts social media into perspective.

Twitter is about answering the question ‘what are you doing’ in less than 140 characters. That’s about 12 words. In this article I suggest 10 quick wins to get you started in Twitter or to review your current approach. I hope these wins work for you whether you’re a business or personal tweeter or both.

Before we get to my 10 quick wins, here’s a quick refresher of some of the Twitter commands since I find that many small and medium businesses are still picking up on Twitter.

Twitter jargon buster

• Tweet – a post, message or update on Twitter
• @username + message – an open tweet that can be seen by your followers and by @username’s followers
• DM username – a private tweet that can only be seen by username
• #hashtag - a Twitter keyword. Adding # makes the word searchable.
• RT – repeating a Tweet, known as a ReTweet

Ten Quick Wins to create a Twitter strategy

1 – Decide your objectives

Twitter can become time consuming and many people initially didn’t get the point. There are many companies now using Twitter successfully and their common denominator is that they have clear objectives.

Starting your Twitter journey or if you are already using Twitter but don’t feel it’s working, decide what you want out of it. Here are some ideas to consider:

• Promote key messages
• Build brand awareness
• Drive traffic to your website
• Promote special offers
• Respond to customer queries
• Provide advice and tips
• Share news
• Build community
• Raise funds
• Generate sponsorship
• Customer services
• Product demos
• Recruit new staff
• Research your market

Once you have decided your objectives, you can then plan how this will be achieved.

2 – Agree your identity

Business or personal? If your objective is to generate business, it’s better to adopt a business identity. If you have several people inside your company who will tweet, a common format needs to be agreed, such as Evonomie_Jo or Evonomie_Am. This enables followers to know that this is a company tweet, but the individual is identifiable. Alternatively, adopt the company name and in the biography (see below) identify the tweeters.

One of the challenges with Twitter is that user names are limited to 15 characters. If your company name is longer, you may need to think carefully about how to present your brand. Once you have agreed your Twitter identity, don’t change it as you could lose and confuse followers.

3 – Protect your brand

Twitter and other social media requires a square logo. If you have a rectangular logo and upload this to Twitter, it will crop the sides, damaging your visual identity.

Get your designer to prepare ‘social media ready’ logos that are sized for Twitter at 700k.

Once your brand is established, don’t change the visual identity or your photo without good reason!

If you don’t add a photo you will retain the default Twitter bird as your visual identity which will not distinguish any of your tweets from other users of Twitter.

If someone else is using your brand name you can apply to Twitter to get the account suspended and eventually transferred. This does take a long time, so register new brands early.

4 – Prepare your bio

Your bio or biography is 160 characters about you or your company. A short sentence about what you do. It is searchable and important to focus on a few essential keywords as a bio is the first place potential followers review. Bizarrely, many people don’t complete their bio at all!

Your bio can be read by followers and non followers alike so ensure that it reflects your Twitter objectives. If the identity is for a company make sure this follows your normal brand rules. If it’s a personal bio, check that it doesn’t infringe any company brand guidelines.

5 – Agree update responsibility

There are 90 million Twitter accounts but only 18 million are active. If you are going to register a Twitter profile, make sure that the account is updated, in line with your objectives. This may be once a day or twice a week, or every hour, but to retain a Twitter account, build followers and achieve your objectives it needs some activity.

Twitter considers an account as inactive if it hasn’t been logged into or updated in over 6 months. These accounts may be automatically removed from Twitter.

6 – Decide Twitter management

Updating Twitter is best done in house. If you need external help, Twitter may not be right for your company. Twitter is often given to junior staff, which is fine, as long as they are given clear guidelines on the company’s brand values and ‘tone of voice’. For example in November an airline was tweeting about a ‘scary competition’ they meant Halloween, but airlines should never use the word ‘scary’ in their marketing communications!

If you are a professional or business user and use LinkedIn, you can simply add Twitter to your LinkedIn account and when adding a ‘status update’ in LinkedIn, you can check the box to automatically tweet at the same time.

7 – Organise landing pages

Your bio includes a web page link. Instead of sending all traffic to your home page, organise a separate page for your Twitter followers. This will enable

• Easier analysis of how visitors found your site and the actions they took [Editor's note: Like this - hadn't thought of it = DFA, Design for Analytics]
• Your twitter followers to get all the information they need about you, in more than 160 characters, in one place.

8 – Use free software

Twitter.com is the most basic way to use Twitter. It doesn’t spell-check, allow you to schedule posts or to group your favourites.

There are many great free software tools including:

We use Tweetdeck and Hootsuite for the PC and iPhone. We also have Echofon on the iPhone which is a cut down version of Twittter online.

9 – Share the news

Once you have started tweeting, make sure your existing customers are aware. This helps to grow your follower base and to keep you ‘front of mind’. Make sure the Twitter logo and your @username are on your

• Website
• Emails
• Business cards
• Blogs
• LinkedIn profile

10 – Get Interactive

To make Twitter work and to achieve your objectives you need to invest some time to tweet.

• Re-purpose (re-use) existing content
• ReTweet interesting Tweets
• Recommend interesting Tweeters – ‘Follow Friday’ #FF is set up to do this
• Tweet about useful and interesting information, sharing your breakfast menu is not that fascinating – unless you own a Bed & Breakfast establishment!
• Tweet on a regular basis – this could be daily or weekly, but a Twitter account with few tweets won’t attract many followers.

And finally, set up alerts via www.google.com/alerts and tweetbeep.com to monitor your brand online and measure the impact of Twitter.

I’ve adapted this post from my book Quick Win Digital Marketing. For answers to digital marketing questions see Quick Win Digital Marketing by Annmarie Hanlon and Joanna Akins (Book available from Oak Tree Press and App available from iTunes store).

HP Labs’ Social Computing Lab has carried out a study to find out what makes a tweet influential. 

The research involved analysing 22 million tweets.

You can read the findings in the press release here or view an interview with Dr Bernardo A Huberman, Director of HP Lab’s Social Computing Lab. 
 

Private members sites, also known as private sales sites offer those who have joined (usually free) the chance to buy products and clothing at knock-down prices. These are normally selected luxury products and / or branded items that are available for a short period, usually between two and four days.

Members usually receive an email informing them when a new range of items is being added to the website along with when the sale starts and when it will end to encourage people to buy quickly.

The most well-known sites are:

• Vente-privee.com
• Secretsales.com
• Brandalley.co.uk
• Cocosa.com
• Achica.com
  

Service businesses face special challenges and can be difficult to demonstrate. If you’re using any form of social media, such as blogging, the blogs can be less engaging as it’s mainly words, no images.

This October, for one session only, we’re organising a full day’s cartooning workshop. Everyone says they can’t draw (including me) but this one day session will show you the mechanics.

Coming soon.

This is a cartoon designed by our Designer, Pete Bartlam for our 2010 New Year Card.
 

Apple has opened a ‘try before you buy’ section in its App Store. The app must already have a free version / lite version to appear.

You can now Gift an App so if you see a great App that a friend or colleague would like, you can send it to them.

It has been made legal to jailbreak your iPhone. This means that you can run other Apps on it.

We mentioned some virtual products in a previous blog post. Tissot provides an augmented reality feature developed by Holition.

It’s a feature for customers to see what a Tissot watch will look like on.

The idea is to download a paper wristband, put it on a show it to your webcam. This will then connect to a system to show the customer on their screen what they look like wearing it.

Visit Tissot.

 Virtual tools are being used more by companies who are trying to find ways to sell products and services. Here are 5 virtual tools:

1. Virtual makeup - mirror www.ezface.com. If you have ever wanted to see what makeup will suit your face without buying it you can upload your photo at ezface.com and trial products. Brands of makeup available to trial virtually include Covergirl, L’Oreal and Maybelline. If you don’t want to upload your own photo you can try it using the photo already there. Try eye shadow, eye liner, eye pencil, lip liner, lip gloss, mascara, foundation, blush, powder and nail polish!

2. Virtual Mannequin 3M has developed a virtual mannequin which it says is perfect for anywhere where customer communication is required such as in museums and cinemas. It is ‘virtual person’ projected onto an acrylic cut out, with sound and graphics, who can talk about anything you want it to for as long as you want – 24 hours, 7 days a week if you like . See it in action here.

3. Virtual recruitment – L’Oréal has launched a game called Reveal that gives students and graduates the opportunity to work as a Management Trainee virtually in different departments of an organisation carrying out different tasks.

4. Virtual glasses – Glasses Direct provides an online area to upload your photo and try on different pairs of glasses.

5. Virtual World - There is also a virtual world called Second Life where users create a virtual representation of themselves and can buy and build land and property including virtual products such as cars, clothing and trainers.
 

Answering Questions in LinkedIn gets you involved in conversations with group members on LinkedIn. This is good to highlight your expertise, create awareness for your company and appear in Google search results.

Can I automatically add text / footer to the bottom of every blog article?
Yes, you will need to login to your blog.

Click into Settings

Formatting

Add your text in. If you want to add links hyperlinks in, you will need to create a blog post, create the text then click on the HTML tab, copy and paste into your settings, formatting area.

Docstoc.com is an online space to share and download professional documents. You can also sell and buy documents. There are a huge variety of documents including legal templates, spreadsheets, guides and more.
You create a profile.

To sell document you need to create a seller account at www.docstock.com/sell/register.
Seller FAQs are at www.docstoc.com/sell/faq
No fees for the first 60 days but thereafter sales are split 50/50.
Payments are issued within 30 days of the last day of each month when its $100 or more – if not this amount is carried over until this sum is reached.
Can be paid by PayPal or by cheque.

A ‘like’ button can be added to all documents so these can be shared on Facebook.
Users get a 7-day money back guarantee.

Hide people’s tweets using TweetDeck

Click on the settings icons.

Choose Global Filter and you can hide tweets from specific people, tweets containing certain words or from sources such as Facebook.

Type in people’s Twitter name separated by a comma and click on Save settings. These will disappear from your All Friends column. If you want to add more filters or edit your current ones, just go back to settings in TweetDeck and amend, add or delete existing filters.

Schedule updates

Click on the clock icon next to the Send button. You will need to create a TweetDeck account if you don’t already have one.

Update sites from TweetDeck

Updates sites direct from TweetDeck including Google Buzz and Foursquare. (TweetDeck also updates Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn).

Creating additional columns for Mentions

If you are looking after more than one Twitter account, ensure that you have added the account so it will show that the top of TweetDeck next to From: You can then add a column to view Mentions for that Twitter account. Click on the + sign to add a new column, select the Twitter icon next to Using Account and choose the required account from the drop down menu. Next click on Core under Add column: and choose Mentions. A new column will appear on TweetDeck.

I've noticed some companies are assigning a tab as their welcome on their Facebook page - how do I do this?

The idea of using a custom tab as a landing page for new visitors is to explain to them the purpose of your Facebook page and why they should 'like' it.

This is simple to do:

• Login to your Facebook Page
• Edit wall settings
• Drop down menu to select the tab you want potential fans to arrive at. Your existing fans will always arrive at your wall.

This facility was removed sometime ago by Facebook and there was a lot of complaints on the Developer Forum. This was consequently changed back again very quickly!

Facebook was only going to provide the facility to those with 10,000+ fans  or "the page admin must work with their ads account manager"

The post was on the Facebook developer's forum on 19th May 2010 and read:

Hello all,

We apologize for not messaging this earlier. Facebook recently made a change requiring that Pages be authenticated before enabling the ability to set a landing tab beyond Wall or Info. To be eligible for authentication, a Page must have greater than 10k fans or the Page admin must work with their ads account manager. If you are already working with an account representative, please contact that representative to begin the authentication process. If you do not work with an account representative, you can use this contact form to inquire about working with an account representative.

Also, for advertisers who don’t have a representative or 10k fans, and want to run ads and land users on a specific tab, you can still do so with standard Facebook ads by making their Destination URL as the URL incl. your tab. Unfortunately, this currently will not work with "Fan" ads. Thanks, Matt Trainer

Can I add a new tab to my company's Facebook page?

Yes, you can. This means that you can rename the tab and add in content using HMTL or Facebook Markup Language (FMBL).

1. Login to Facebook and search for the Static FBML app.
2. Click the drop down menu to select the page you want to add the app to.
3. Go to your Company Page and click on Edit Page.

You can now scroll down to edit the FBML tab you have just created and rename it. To add content use HTML oR FBML. More information can be found on the Facebook developer's area.

If you want to add more FBML tabs, this can be done by clicking on the link ADD ANOTHER FBML PAGE (which is found at the bottom of the Edit Page of any of your FBML pages).
 

If you have over 25 fans on your Facebook Page you can get your own URL. This is useful for adding to business cards, email signatures and makes it easier to tell others as you do not have to read out a string of numbers. Our Facebook page for example is http://www.facebook.com/evonomie.

To set up your own Facebook Page URL go to http://www.facebook.com/username and sign in to Facebook. You will see a note telling you that you can have a username for your Facebook profile. Further down the page it will say “set a username for your Pages.” There may be a drop down menu next to Page Name. Select your Page and enter in your desired username. Click on check availability.

You can now go ahead and confirm your chosen URL and this should now be set up. Please note that will not be able to make any changes to this URL once it has been set up.

Organising an event? Eventbrite makes it easy to create an event online, promote it, register delegates and take payment.

It is free to use for free events and takes a small payment if the event is a paid for event. You create a pay for people to register, send invitations to your contacts and then take payment.

It's really easy to use. See www.eventbrite.com to create your event. 

The Direct Marketing Association’s Digital Tracker published in May 2010 shows that:

• 60% of the 1,800+ consumers that took part in the study preferred receiving emails that contained money off, followed by 18% who liked free delivery.
• The top three industries that consumers believe are good at promotion are travel and tourism, retail and food with Tesco being the best brand at emailing.

More results can been seen on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/bryanmiller/dma-digital-tracking-study-may-2010

What are the key stages in web design?

Recently we've been looking at the whole process of web design and what’s involved.

We don’t offer web design and often recommend great web companies for clients. It's more than just design and development.

Looking at the key stages, we think they’re here.

If we’ve missed anything, let me know!

Are you thinking of studying for a digital marketing qualification or attending a digital marketing course?

Here are some options.

The Diploma in Digital Marketing which is assessed by Assignments and can be studied for by Distance Learning.

The modules covered are:

• Digital Marketing Essentials
• Digital Marketing Planning
• Marketing & Consumer Behaviour (double unit). If you already have the Chartered Institute of Marketing Professional Diploma, you are exempt from the Marketing & Consumer Behaviour module.

There is also the CAM Diploma in Managing Digital Media which includes:

• Integrating Digital Media and Branding
• Implementing Digital Campaigns

For more details see the Oxford College of Marketing website http://www.oxfordcollegeofmarketing.com/cam-digital-marketing.html.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing’s short courses including:

• Digital Marketing - 3 days
• Digital Marketing Masterclass - 2 days
• Digital Metrics and Analytics - 1 day

See the CIM website and the list of courses http://www.cim.co.uk/tandq/training/courseAtoZ.aspx

Evonomie holds social media courses. Our most popular is the Quick Win Digital Marketing Course based on our book Quick Win Digital Marketing by Annmarie Hanlon and Joanna Akins. It covers Social Networking for Business, is half a day and shares secrets on digital marketing tools and how they can generate business for you.

For more information, contact Evonomie using the email evolve@evonomie.net.
 

Can I add a new tab to my company's Facebook page?

Yes, you can. This means that you can rename the tab and add in content using HMTL or Facebook Markup Language (FMBL).

1. Login to Facebook and search for the Static FBML app.
2. Just under the logo for the Static FBML app there is a menu item "Add to my Page"
3. Click the drop down menu to select the page you want to add the app to.
4. Go to your Company Page and click on Edit Page.

You can now scroll down to edit the FBML tab you have just created and rename it. To add content use HTML oR FBML. More information can be found on the Facebook developer's area.

If you want to add more FBML tabs, this can be done by clicking on the link ADD ANOTHER FBML PAGE (which is found at the bottom of the Edit Page of any of your FBML pages).

Once you have added in the new title and content for this page, go back to your home page and click on the + mark where you will see your added tab. Move this across to the preferred place. You will see that other tabs move along out of sight but can be accessed by clicking on the >> button.
 

Did you know? Funding is available for businesses within the West Midlands area who want to diversify? This means help is available to

• launch an existing product / service to a new market / customer OR
• launch a new product / service to an existing market / customer  

The financial support available is towards consultancy and is usually funded 50/50 so Business Link will pay half.

We are a marketing consultancy based in Lichfield and can help you to diversify. We are experts in digital marketing and research and have been established for over 20 years.

If you want to know more, contact Evonomie on 01543 258522 or email evolve@evonomie.net

THIS FUNDING IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

Thanks for attending and to all those who came up and asked questions afterwards!

For your copy of the presentation click on this link in Slideshare. Don't forget to Tweet / share in LinkedIn ;)

These links might also be useful:

LINKEDIN

Quick Wins for LinkedIn - http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/online-pr-social-media/10-tips-on-using-linked-in-for-marketing-businesses/

LinkedIn Essentials

Status Updates on LinkedIn

TWITTER

Quick Wins for Twitter - http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/online-pr-social-media/quick-wins-twitter-for-businesses-9382/

If you need help with a social media policy, you could start by looking at Free Social Media Policy

General marketing quick wins

Any questions, do contact me via LinkedIn or our website.
 

A survey by YouGov and Croner shows that more than 1 in 10 people under the age of 35 has made a derogatory comment about their boss on Facebook. 11 per cent over under 35 year olds and four per cent of 45+ had also posted similar.

Did you know that http://youropenbook.org provides a facility to search Facebook updates?

The founder wanted to highlight Facebook’s privacy issues.
 

DeviceFidelity has developed In2PayTM which allows Apple iPhone users to make contactless transactions by using a microSD based app and In2Pay case.

The iPhone fits into the In2Pay case and works with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G. Payments can be made by waving the iPhone in front of a contactless payment terminal.

DeviceFidelity and Visa worked together to develop the use of Visa PayWave and In2Pay which has now been extended to the iPhone.

"Visa is working to bring the security and convenience of digital currency to mobile users around the world," said Dave Wentker, Head of Mobile Contactless Payments at Visa Inc. "Our collaboration with DeviceFidelity can extend the reach of Visa mobile payments to millions of iPhone users."

It can be password protected and if you lose your mobile your account can be deactivated.

The product will be tested during the second quarter of this year.

For more information see:

http://www.devicefidelity.com 
http://corporate.visa.com
Watch the video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrX8ELi04Tw&feature=player_embedded
 

What happens if I click on the Share button in Blogger?

You are reading this article and you might decide it would be of interest to your Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections or your Facebook friends / fans.

Here is what happens if sharing to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. You need to click the Share button and scroll down to the application you want eg Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.

To Share on Twitter

It asks you to log into your Twitter account.
It pastes in the name of the page eg B2B Marketing: [addings in the bit.ly link to your eg blog article] and adds via @addthis.

To Share on LinkedIn

It shows an image at the top and just shares the blog URL. You can also add a message, post just to a group or groups or send to individuals.

To Share on Facebook

First of all, you need to make sure that only the blog article you want to share is showing so you will need to click on the Title first eg Sharing Blog Articles.

Alternatively, you can click on the Recommend button below the article to recommend to your friends on Facebook.

It will ask you to log in to your account.

You can add in a status update and a thumbnail below (which you can remove). It did not actually work for us in Internet Explorer. It selected an earlier blog article? We tried it in Firefox and it worked fine has then randomly selected a blog article - the one two blogs down from the one I want to share!
 

A status update on LinkedIn is a way of sharing news with your connections or making an announcement.

Here are a few ideas for status updates

• Tell people what you are working on eg I'm researching the housing market
• Promote your expertise eg My book Quick Win Digital Marketing is now available to buy writing see Oak Tree Press
• Promote events / open days /new services or products eg Just launched new range of t-shirts for the summer
• Ask opinions or advice from your connections
• Add promotions eg free webinar on how to create a great LinkedIn profile, book now!
• Post your tweet by adding #in to it and it will appear in your LinkedIn status
• Let your connections know that your latest newsletter is available and add a link to its location on your website
• Share great websites eg http://www.quickwinmarketing.com/
  

Do you need a social media policy?

Policytool.net can generate one for you.

There are 12 questions which ask:

• Your full legal company name
• The name that your company is commonly known as (if different)
• Who can use your social media policy - everybody or just specific individuals
• Whether employees need to get permission before using social media (if yes, the person who can give permission needs to be entered)
• Whether employees can use your company as a user name without approval (and the name of the person who needs to give permission)
• If there are any well-known employees who should follow this policy for personal use
• Any ethical standards employees need to follow?
• If you provide any in-house assistance with social media accounts and settings
• Whether profiles need to be consistent with the company's website or publications
• Do corporate photos need to be used for profile pictures?
• Do employees need to use a disclaimer to say their comments are not on behalf of the company
• Do you want to add any tips for the successful use of social media?
• A social media policy is then generated for you.
• Visit http://socialmedia.policytool.net/ and follow the instructions.
  

Using LinkedIn? Here are some quick wins to get the best out of LinkedIn:

• Add a photo
• Add a description of your job in the title not just your name.If you do not want others to see you have looked at their profile, you need to untick a box in your Privacy Settings, Profile Views
• Claim your vanity URL eg uk.linkedin.com/in/joannaakins
• Add a company profile
• Add your website and other online areas to your profile
• Share relevant content to your Twitter account or Facebook Company Page
  

LinkedIn has added a ‘follow company’ feature. This means that you can keep tabs on company news, new hires and other information at your favourite companies.

• Simply find the company on LinkedIn and click on ‘follow company’.
• To see all company updates go to More / Companies. All updates from your featured companies show in a timeline.
• This is not an anonymous feature as the company profiles show the names of those following.
  

Facebook's Gross National Happiness is a chart that shows you the days of the year that people are most happy!

It is a Facebook application presented as a graph that will track people's status updates by counting whether the update is positive or negative. This would include, amongst others, such words as 'happy', 'yay', 'awesome' and unhappy words include 'sad', 'doubt' and 'tragic'.

The Gross National Happy Index was launched in October 2009 but has recently included the UK.

The happiest days are Christmas, New Year and Valentine's Day and Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Evernote is a place to save all your notes, list of to dos, thoughts, photos, reminders and anything else you want to keep in one place.

You will need to register first.

When you create a new note, a WYSIWYG editor shows where you can type text, include links and attach files including photos.

If you are using LinkedIn these hints will help improve your profile and the results you get from professional networking.

1. Complete your profile
2. Add a photo
3. Organise a professional headline
4. Get recommended
5. Make recommendations
6. Join groups
7. Ask / answer questions
8. Update your status
9. Build connections
10. Personalise emails

See Smart Insights for details on these 10 ways to use LinkedIn for business and professionals

The Times 100 is a good source of information for marketing students and lecturers.

It provides:

Case studies
Revision theory
Quizzes
The Times 100 can be found on Twitter so you can be alerted when new material is available on the website or you can sign up to receive details by email.

Here are a few of the case studies

Asos - the product life cycle and online fashion

Ikea - SWOT analysis and sustainable business planning

Parcelforce - using the marketing mix to drive change

If you want to keep up to date with the latest market news or major company news stories visit Reuters at http://uk.reuters.com/

Reuters provides:

• The latest market statistics eg FTSE 100 index, NASDAQ.
• Company news including the latest share price for the FTSE 100 companies along with share price charts, latest news, company profile which includes a financial synopsis, number of employees and analyst research (you have to pay for this research).
• View news stories on large companies.
• You can add companies to your portfolio so at a glance you can see latest share prices.

What is Foursquare?

First of all, you need to know some terms:

The 'Mayor' - a person who visits a location eg restaurant, store, etc the most frequently over a 30 days period.

Check-in - use your mobile's GPS to log in to foursquare and post your location or there is an app for iPhones.

Foursquare is a location based program where users can post their location along with other information, eg I am at The Restaurant, offer on 2 meals for the price of 1.

When you are at a location such as a shop, restaurant, you 'check-in' to that place by using internet access on your mobile phone.

If you are the most frequent visitor within a timeframe of 30 days to The Restaurant, you will be crowned Mayor of that place.

Debenhams has been using foursquare and Twitter to let people know they can drop in for a free coffee on a Friday if they check-in to Debenhams Oxford Street on foursquare.

By offering freebies or offers to the 'Mayor' it encourages people to go to the store, shop, restaurant etc to claim points and become the Mayor.

If the location you are checking-in to is not already listed on foursquare, you can add it.

Benefits

• Retailers will be able to see who is visiting their premises most frequently.
• Retailers can increase the number of people visiting their premises by offering offers encouraging check-ins.
• Your friends on foursquare will see where you are and you can meet up with them or they simply learn about places you regularly visit - word of mouth marketing.
• Potential downsides

Pleaserobme.com highlighted the dangers using foursquare and Twitter by providing details of your location.

Those using Facebook should also be aware that posting you're away on holiday is not a good idea.

Twitter launched a new service yesterday called Promoted Tweets.

The promoted tweets are being trialled using a number of partners to begin with such as Starbucks. Promoted tweets will appear at the top of the real-time search results page eg search for coffee and you will see the Starbucks promoted tweet.

Promoted tweets will look like a normal tweet but display "Promoted by [company name]" at the bottom of it. It will still have all the functionality of a regular tweet eg retweeting.

More information is due to be announced today and tomorrow at the Twitter Developer Conference. Follow @chirp on Twitter for news from the conference.