Tag Archives: LinkedIn

Social Media: No Need To Get Blogged Down

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“Social Media & Your Business: A Phase or the Future?” enjoyed a solid and receptive turnout on Thursday night at the Oak Park Public Library. About 30 people, mostly business owners, attended and learned a ton from Sherri Lasko of Sunspot Marketing and, I hope, at least a few pounds’ worth from me.

I learned a bunch myself, including this reminder: people are at a loss when it comes to blogging–and it need not be so. We polled the audience and found:

13 were on LinkedIn,
10 were on Facebook,
And four were on Twitter.

The grand tally of folks who blog: zero, zilch, nada, one big, fat goose egg.

As much as I have seen the collective reluctance to blog, I was somewhat astonished that not even one soul raised a hand to claim themselves as being an active citizen of the blogosphere.

Below is a 55-second excerpt of my blog-encouragement, which was a riff off of a tongue-in-cheek hand-out I provided on Blog Schmog: Why You Absolutely, Positively Don’t Have to Blog.

LinkedIn Survey Feature Shows Promise

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With each passing day, it seems, something new emerges in the social-media realm. Or, to be more accurate, a new tweak comes to my attention for the first time.

Two weeks ago, it was my discovery that you can create surveys on LinkedIn, the professional-networking site.

Immediately, I did what I suggest anyone do when they want to see if any given application is worthwhile: I gave the new discovery a test drive by setting up a survey.

Of all things, I created a poll about folks’ use of LinkedIn: “What do you primarily seek from your LinkedIn experience?”

The four choices I offered: Biz/employment opportunities, Receive Recommendations, A Social Outlet, and Innovative Ideas. (LinkedIn rotates the order in which those choices appear, by the way, to ensure I’m not steering people in any overwhelming fashion.)

So far, here are the results. As of this morning, 78 people had replied–certainly almost, if not, all from my own network, though you can enable, as I did, anyone on LinkedIn to answer your survey.

LinkedIn does all the work of categorizing the responses by gender, age, job title, job function and company size. In addition, 14 people have chimed in with supplemental comments.

As embryonic as the process has been for me, already I can see a variety of benefits flowing out of these surveys. Among them:

1. The collection of original data, tailored to your needs, for business or personal purposes.

2. Opening up a dialogue revolving around common interests.

3. Establishing your expertise, via the content contained in the questions as well as via your interpretation and commentary of the data flowing from the questions.

4. Expanding your network. Over the past two weeks, I have experienced a rise in the number of people seeking to LinkIn with me. Part of that increase, I suspect, is attributable to my survey question.

Want to take the survey? Get on LinkedIn, then click on the survey results link.

Time To `De-Link’ a Non-Responsive Contact?

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Last week, I recommended three people who had recently LinkedIn with me, bringing the tally of folks I’ve endorsed to nearly 50. For me, the quality of my contacts is much more important than the quantity.

In fact, I’m mulling whether to drop one individual from my LinkedIn roster after he did not respond to an introduction–as well as a follow-up e-mail–that I made on behalf of another one of my LinkedIn contacts.

What gives? What would you do?

In an Inside Edge PR post from last year, I outlined my philosophy of why I write recommendations for as many of my LinkedIn contacts as possible. In another post, I shared some of the how.

Lastly, for a look at the recommendations I’ve made on LinkedIn, go here.

Marching Out On a Social Media Note

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It’s been a social-media kind of day here at Inside Edge PR international headquarters.

Walked a block down the street to Marion Street Cheese Market, where I shared some pointers on how to navigate on Facebook, LinkedIn and the like, at “Social Networking Sites–Are You Connected?”

Shared photos and some text with Triblocal.com,as well as with Helen Karakoudas at the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest.

Later in the day, I learned from my social-media mentor, Sherri Lasko, that creating a Facebook Fan page is a piece of cake.

So now, as of 11 p.m., the Inside Edge PR fan base tally is on the verge of breaking into double-digits. For those scoring at home, that means seven people other than me and my wife have taken the plunge.

By the way, if you’re curious, or even interested, in becoming a fan, the best suggestion I can give for finding the Inside Edge PR fan page is to log into Facebook and type “Inside Edge PR” into the search box.

I am confident that within a few days, I’ll have learned another, much more efficient route. And that brings to mind one of the inelegant messages I shared with those who jammed inside MSCM this morning: this social-media world is a continual journey of learning something, trying it out, seeing if it works, then moving on to the next thing.

Stay tuned for what tomorrow brings.

A Bounce-Back PR Tale, In More Ways Than One

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Whenever I agree to represent a business, it must pass my “newsroom vet litmus test.”

In other words, if I were writing for a newspaper or magazine and someone pitched the story to me, would I be genuinely interested in at least digging into story suggestions about this company?

In September, after a client, Robust Promotions of Villa Park, found me via my LinkedIn account, I knew in short order that the answer, in terms of its news potential, was a resounding “yes!”

So I was more than a little baffled by the media’s luke-warm response to the firm’s story, which teems with relevance and newsworthiness.

Over the past few years, Robust Promotions has helped nearly 100 restaurant chains boost sales via repeat business by creating innovative scratch-to-win cards.

Talk about a local small business making good–and playing a key role in helping numerous other businesses survive and even thrive amid these trying times. Fortunately, the Chicago Tribune’s online user-generated adjunct website, Triblocal has emerged with a weekly print edition in 10 zones spanning 50 communities throughout the region.

This development has given more than a few of my releases a second bite at the media-coverage apple. This time around, the story got picked up. You can read about the piece on Triblocal’s Villa Park community page. As of this writing, some 80 people have clicked on the story.

Or, if you are one of the roughly 13,000 Trib print edition subscribers in Elmhurst, Lombard or Villa Park, it’s on page 5 of the March 19-25 Triblocal print edition.

Any Chicago-area business or group that is not factoring in the increasingly aggressive Triblocal into its media-outreach strategy, both online and in print, is squandering its external communications potential.