Every business owner I’ve ever talked to is like an impatient fisherman.

They want to know the best place to catch a fish. Somewhere where you don’t stand around for hours but can drop your line in and haul in a fresh one right away.

If you wanted the best place to catch a fish, you could always… drop your line in at the local fish hatchery, except for the fact that’s illegal.

Fortunately in marketing, there is one completely legal place to fish that is stocked with ideal clients, decision makers, people with money who want to buy.

What I’m talking about is LinkedIn.

With over 135 million members, chances are good that your target customers are there on LinkedIn waiting for you to connect with them. Here are some strategies for getting in touch with the people who could become your customers:

1. LinkedIn’s advance search lets you target people, groups, and companies. Here you can type in a search term [skill, certification, industry, company, etc.]. Then, check the filters [location, company size, seniority, etc.] for a more defined search. You’ll see results that include a photo, title, and connection to you—something you can’t get on any other network.

2. Check out LinkedIn’s skills section. Here you can research skills and search terms. You’ll find related terms, people and groups who best match the skill.

3. Make a list of your target companies, go directly to the company site and locate someone you’d like to connect with. Then check to see what LinkedIn groups they belong to, join one of them and send them an invitation based on your common membership. This commonality will increase the odds of your invitation being accepted.

4. It’s easy for any company to set up a LinkedIn company page, taking only about 15 minutes. Invite customers to leave recommendations on the products and services page on your LinkedIn company page.

5. Add LinkedIn’s blog application to your personal profile to pull in company blog updates. Install the SlideShare application into your personal profile. Upload a PowerPoint about your company’s services and the presentation will appear on your profile.

6. Make a list of people you want to stay in touch with and follow their updates, leaving comments, and engaging in conversation. When you send your invitations, let people know why you want to connect and thank them for their consideration. And when you accept an invitation, offer to answer questions or exchange ideas about your area of expertise. Ask them a question to get a conversation going, just as you would at a networking event.

7. You can also add value by selecting articles to share that match your area of influence. Need help finding them? Check out LinkedIn Today. It presents the top shared news by industry which you can click and share with your connections. It’s that easy.

8. Something else that makes connecting easy is the feature that allows you to ask and answer questions on LinkedIn. This handy section, located under the “more” tab, gives you insights into what people think about the topics you’re interested in. You simply select the category and send a request to people you’d like to hear from. You can use the answers to contribute to a research project, a white paper, or a blog post.

9. Answering questions (also located under the “more” tab) on LinkedIn is a proven strategy for positioning you or your business as the go-to resource in your niche. Like most marketing tactics, the more strategic your answering efforts, the better your results. Just browse the categories and select a few that you want to watch.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

A friend of mine recently boasted to me about how many Facebook fans his local business has hundreds of fans.

“How many of those fans live in your area?” I asked.

“Uhh, about 20% of them,” he said.

“Are your fans targeted prospects or are they random people?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. Many business owners are focused on getting X amount of fans because it’s the “cool” thing to do and don’t care about getting fans that are real prospects. “Cool”, however, doesn’t translate into sales…

Your business has a Facebook page and based on the amount of fans, statuses, and comments you conclude that you are, in fact, a social media king (or queen). You are “doing” social media. However, have you ever thought about whether or not your efforts are resulting in anything meaningful (as in sales).

Your Facebook status updates are likely to get buried under your fans other posts. Furthermore, most Facebook “fans” of small businesses aren’t even local, according to Business Insider. Gathering local Facebook fans may, over time, result in fans that will convert to customers because you’ve built a relationship with them. Here’s how to make sure that that actually happens…

Build a Targeted Fan Base
The number of fans may give you an ego boost, but it means nothing if those fans don’t actually care about your business. To make targeted local fans like your Facebook page, offer something for free. For example, if you’re a contractor in Boston, give away free customized 3D renderings of home renovations to Bostonians who are looking to renovate. Advertise this free offer in local direct mail and Facebook campaigns.

Use HomeStyler to create the 3D renderings at no cost to you. You now have a fan base of people who are looking to remodel their homes in the Boston area. Of course, you can get untargeted fans, but keep in mind that 1 targeted fan is worth more than 1000 fans who have no interest in your product or service.

Don’t Be Overly Promotional
When people like something on Facebook, they expect that liked page to give them something of value in return. If you’re a celebrity or a corporation you can afford to talk as much about yourself as you want because you already have a ton of social proof.

As a small business, you don’t have that kind of luxury and should, instead, post infrequent updates that give your followers some value. For example, if you own an optometrist page, post links to articles about eye care. Occasionally, post promotional articles of your business so you won’t annoy followers who already have cluttered news feeds.

Engage in Other Forms of Marketing
Facebook may be the “cool” thing to do, but rather than being the main source of your marketing efforts, make it compliment whatever marketing you already do. Build targeted traffic to your website (through SEO or PPC) and ask those targeted visitors to like you on the social networking site.

If you run television advertisements, tell people to like you on Facebook so that they can receive a discount or freebie. Ask your employees to tell customers to like your business on Facebook and place signs in your storefront, advertising your Facebook presence.

Measure the Effectiveness of Your Facebook Efforts
Getting a fan base for your local business is likely to involve an investment in the form of discounts and giveaways, which come at a cost. You can measure the effectiveness of your Facebook campaign by having your customers fill out surveys, which ask them about their Facebook usage.

If, over time, you notice a relationship between paying customers and Facebook usage, you know your social media efforts are paying off. If there isn’t a correlation it’s most likely because you are not getting a targeted fan base.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Everyone knows the answer to attracting more clients, retaining them and increasing sales – but you’re not using it.

The simple secret to more sales is so basic that you apply it every day in your life, but hardly anyone uses it in business but they could simply by…Focusing on the one bond that keeps both your marriage intact and your customers buying from you.

What am I talking about?

It’s building and maintaining relationships and in the world of digital marketing online communities are one highly effective but mostly neglected tool that can easily make you stand out from your competition.

Here are 5 reasons to build your own.

1. You can replace printed communication. Most associations and industrial B2B organizations used to rely on printed material to communicate to their customers, supporters, distributors and vendors. This could get really expensive. Online communities will allow you to stay connected and communicate non-public information quickly and easily.

2. Easily collect market research information. An online community is a relatively engaged and captive audience. If you’ve been doing paper surveys or other cumbersome ways to collect data – you can simply ask your community questions and they will answer or you can launch online surveys to them via the community.

3. Deliver training and other information. Online communities are ideal spaces for communicating product updates and insider information. You can make training available and not only that, allow the community to help each other.

4. Stand out from the competition. Customers love online communities – it’s an added resources and if you’re part of an organization that still communicates the old fashioned way – an online community offers real competitive advantage.

5. Online communities can be a revenue generator. You can actually create special areas inside of your online community where you can charge a fee to get access to certain kinds of information or training. Another option is to sell advertising. Vendors will jump at the chance to have visibility to your targeted audience.

Which online community sites to consider
Choosing an online site a lot like choosing a house. They all do pretty much the same thing it just depends on which features you prefer and what trade-offs you’re willing to make.

Ning: Ning has been the online community of choice for a very long time. And then in 2010, they started making massive cuts and took features that were free and put them under the paid version. Ning has three paid plans. For just $2.95 per month, you can have a community of 150 people. The next plan level is $24.95 and the highest is $59.95.

Spruz: When Ning changed their revenue model lots of people fled the platform and their destination was Spruz. Spruz touts many of the same features as Ning and then some. What really sets Spruz apart from Ning is the ability to create and host a complete, functional website quickly, easily, and completely free.

Social Go: While the other sites are fairly focused on building your online community, SocialGo is more focused on building your web site and social community. SocialGo seems to be focused on a more cohesive and full experience.

BuddyPress: If you already have a WordPress blog, then you might consider BuddyPress. This is a WordPress plugin that easily integrates inside your existing WordPress web site. This only works with self-hosted WordPress installations and may require some technical tweaking.

How to choose an online community platform
The best thing to do is to make a list of features that you would like or functions you’d like your group to be able to do. Then start comparing platforms against your wants and needs. You can do a test drive with just about any platform out there for free and I would recommend that you do that.

At the end of that process, you’ll be able to make a commitment. An online community platform is a terrific first step in participating in social media without really putting yourself or your community completely out in the public eye.

An online community will increase the engagement of your audience with your organization. So expect to see more loyal customers and more profits as a result.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

A friend of mine, who wanted to grow his small business, had recently signed up with LinkedIn. He was excited to start, after hearing me go on and on about it.

But, once he logged on, not only was he overwhelmed with all of his options, but he was downright confused…With over 130 million users, LinkedIn is a vast resource of potential clients, referral partners, employers, investors and more. So how do you get your name out to everyone and establish your brand successfully? Here are six ways you can get known on LInkedIn.

1.  Posting in Group Discussions

When it comes to exposure, the bigger the group the better. Also, the closer the group profile is to your target market the better as well. Remember–you can join up to 50 groups on LinkedIn. And as you might have guessed, my recommendation is that you find 50 great groups and join them for increased exposure, search ability, and information sharing.

Some of these groups are what LinkedIn refers to as open, and thus the discussions will also be available in a Google search, so you just might pick up some exposure that way as well.

2.  Answers

Ask or answer a question here, and the whole LinkedIn world may see and hear what you have to say. You can search for questions by topic or industry and also set up an RSS to send you new questions that are posted in your area of interest.

When it comes to broad exposure, this is one of the best resources on LinkedIn. I personally answer at least five questions a day, and ask ten a month (the limit).

3.  Posting your own Company Status Updates and “liking” or “sharing” other companies’ Status Updates

Your Company Status Updates go to your company followers. I have just started getting followers to my company page. Think about the exposure Hewlett-Packard gets when they send out a Company Status Update; they have 373,000 followers who may see that update.

To get exposure, make sure you have a company page, attract followers, and make regular Status Updates. When you “like” or “share” another company’s Status Update, the update appears in the Status Update feed of your entire network, and this is another great way for you to gain exposure.

4.  Posting your own personal Status Updates and “liking” or “sharing” your connections’ Status Updates

Posts you make will go out to your first level connections in your network.  So the more connections you have, the more exposure you get. This is a great reason to be an open networker. I have almost 10,000 connections and I’m shooting for the max which is 30,000.

5.  Sharing information on applications like SlideShare, Blog Link, and Portfolio Display

When you choose to have any of these applications loaded onto your LinkedIn account, you are then directed to the actual website of the application to set up an account. Upon completion of the setup, you are then part of their site, and any presentations or information you post will be available to their users–giving you that additional exposure.
6.  ”Liking” or commenting on group discussions

This is a very easy way to gain exposure without having gone through the effort of finding the information or asking the question. Comments on group discussions appear in the discussion feed. The amount of exposure will depend on the number of members in the group.

In summary, every day you are active on LinkedIn, the more exposure you will get. My daily activity on the site has led to many opportunities for new business and creating referral partners. Set aside time every day to work on your LinkedIn exposure and you too will see results.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Sure you can connect with family on Facebook and reply to friends on Twitter.

But there’s only one social network that allows you to connect with both friends and family, while also meeting prospects and potential clients. 

Use these ten tips for setting yourself up to beat out your competition.

1. Find a job on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the place where you can find professionals on social media. Yes, Facebook can be great for graduates and Twitter for media but LinkedIn reaches people who haven’t got time for lots of social networks. A lawyer, banker or accountant will check their LinkedIn profile periodically but very seldom would they even have a Twitter account. So from a mere reach perspective LinkedIn is your best bet.

This means most recruiters and HR departments are using LinkedIn to find candidates already. So you can actually be found via one of their searches, or you can actively network your way to opportunities within companies. And you can of course have a look at the Jobs section to make it really easy on yourself.

2. Scan what people are saying about a company or topic
A little known feature of LinkedIn is what’s called LinkedIn Signal. It’s basically a search tool for status updates on LinkedIn. You can search for your company name, your field or location or even a combination of them all. LinkedIn will tell you who is talking about the keyword, including people up to 3 degrees away from you. Signal is located under ‘News’ in the main toolbar.

3. Stand out over your competitors
How do you stand out? By being useful to your network and by sharing interesting and valuable information; and by not selling your products and services all the time. Your network probably knows what you do and they are likely to let you know when they have a referral for you, so it’s better to get mindshare – creating daily awareness and staying visible.

4. Create a good daily LinkedIn routine
Most active LinkedIn users have a LinkedIn browser window open all day but they mainly use LinkedIn as a database. I would make a habit of sharing an interesting piece of content every day, checking out the events section for relevant networking events, engaging with other users in Groups and generally keeping an eye on the homefeed to keep my finger on the pulse. This only takes a few minutes every day. I would also answer questions every day in your field.

5. Run a successful group on LinkedIn
There are over a million groups on LinkedIn, many of these were set up by recruiters. If you look at what makes a group successful it’s all about creating a strong community. One idea is that when it’s set up, make it ‘exclusive’ in some way – graphic designers in Denver for example. This just makes more of them want to join. Assign a team to run the group and to seed conversation, moderate discussions and share interesting content.

The number one gripe people have with groups is that they get too much spam emails so make sure you vet all members, only send relevant email updates and do not tolerate any blatant promotions from members.

6. Use your company page to attract customers
The LinkedIn company page is your company’s number one branding tool on LinkedIn. There are lots of things you can do here such as write up a description of the company, add contact details, insert your Twitter feed, link your blog posts to the page, add your products and services, ask for company recommendations and check out the visitor statistics. Prospects are likely to check out your company page so make sure it represents your brand fully.

7. Include the essentials on your profile
There are four essentials on an individual’s LinkedIn profile; they are your picture, headline, summary and keywords.

Your picture should look professional and reflect your brand. People like dealing with faces as opposed to just text – studies show you get 30% more clicks in search results when you have a picture.

The headline (along with your name and picture) is what comes up in search results and based on this the user will decide whether to click on you or the competitor. Make sure the headline talks about what you do and not who you are. ‘Logistics expert’ works better than Owner, ABC Company.

Your summary is where people go to see what you are all about and what your track record in the industry is. If you get someone to take time to check this out you will want to add contact details at the end and not leave them hanging.

Finally, you have to get the right keywords on your profile or you will not come up in any searches. Yes, you might come up in searches for your name but let’s face it if someone already knows your name you already have a foot in the door. It’s better to come up in the search for “logistics” or “graphic design.”

8. Connect with people outside of your network
There are lots of ways of connecting with people outside of your network. You can join the same group as this person which allows you to connect directly most of the time. You can do an introduction through a common connection. This can take a bit of time but usually works. If you have a premium account you can send an inMail or you can actually buy inMail credits in a free account for $10 each.

The best way to connect is actually outside of LinkedIn. Set up a call and pick up the phone and call the person, or if you don’t have the number you can probably guess the email address and try that. It’s all about being creative and just because you found someone on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you have to approach them through LinkedIn.

9. Upgrade your account when you are ready
This depends on how you are using LinkedIn. Many people don’t use inMails, Profile organizer or require additional search results. If you do pay for an account make sure you make the most of it. I have the premium account and I find it’s worth it.

10. Use applications to attract business
You can use SlideShare to share presentations of your company or about specials or promotions you have on at the moment. You can use the Amazon Reading list to show off your extra-curricular interests.

Use TripIt if you travel a lot and actually want people to contact you to have a coffee in various locations. You can use Google Docs to get video on your profile and if you blog you should definitely integrate the Blog Link application. Remember that every time you make any changes to your application, your network gets notified which is usually a good thing.

LinkedIn can help you achieve all your professional goals. If you need assistance, please get in touch with me about my one-on-one training, seminars and webinars.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

There’s a perfect way to achieve your professional goals,whether you’re looking for clients, partners, job opportunities, advisors, or investors.

If you’re familiar with social networks you probably already have an active account. And if you don’t, you should set one up immediately to reap the benefits.

LinkedIn is the third largest social networking site, but it’s the largest one…

made of professionals looking to connect.

Here are ten ways that power users get the most out of the world’s largest professional network.

1. Boost your LinkedIn profile SEO

To get better ranking make sure to insert relevant keywords in your headline, in your job title (past and present) in your summary and your specialties. Use keywords such as industry, location, company names (if that’s allowed) and even names of people. Bring it down to a micro level with versions of software and specific skills.

2. Use searches to find anyone on LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, you can only see the people that are three degrees away from you or members of the same group. One of the secrets on LinkedIn is that you are able to see every public profile via search engines such as Google. LinkedIn makes sure these profiles are indexed in Google as they want to be the first search results for people’s names.

You can use this by entering a Boolean search string searching every LinkedIn user. This typically renders quite a lot of results so throw in more keywords in the search to narrow it down to a nice shortlist.

3. Advertise for free on LinkedIn

Anyone can advertise on LinkedIn but some might balk at the high ad prices. One way of doing it for free is of course your status update; another way is to post it into groups. These are in theory good ways but the trouble is that most people see those updates as ads and tend to ignore them.

One more creative way is to use a SlideShare or the Google app where you put your presentation on your profile and share it with your network. This will actually get clicks and if it’s done well it could go viral.

4. Take advantage of the events section

The events section is one of the most underutilized sections of LinkedIn. We all attend events and so do your customers. Search for these events on LinkedIn and you’ll be able to see who is coming so that you can plan your conversations way ahead of the event. The attendee list is sometimes a great place for identifying buyers. If ten people are attending a LinkedIn meetup I would expect a few of them to be interested in some training.

Whether it’s your breakfast briefing on new regulations or networking drinks you are hosting – be sure to list these in the LinkedIn Events section. When you list an event, your entire network gets notified. You can then share it again to anyone in your network by LinkedIn messages. Every time someone clicks ‘attending’ or ‘interested’ – their networks get notified as well. Events is one of the best places to build up some buzz around your company.

5. Categorize connections and send group emails

Another underutilized feature of LinkedIn is the ability to tag people. This means you can categorize your connections according to company, position, location, where you met or whatever you choose.

When doing some sales calls, you can tag everyone you speak to. When your next sales session comes up you’ll have an instant shortlist and you are able to send a group email to everyone in that category to get it out quickly.

6. Connect with people in Groups

Another secret on LinkedIn is that Groups normally allow you to contact and connect with anyone directly on LinkedIn. Sometimes you find a perfect prospect but have no way of contacting them. What you can do is see what groups they are a member of and join one of these. From there you can either invite the person to your network directly or you can look them up in the group and send a message.

7. Be open to connecting with many people

LinkedIn is all about connections and the more you have the better visibility your profile will have and more people you will be able to search for. But it’s also about quality connections. It’s worth identifying the so called ‘super connectors’ in your field and start connecting with them – if they have 1,000 relevant connections that will save you a lot of work.

In general, connect with business contacts of all levels. Juniors become seniors within companies; they move companies and remember you.

8. Integrate Twitter and LinkedIn

If you tweet, or if your company tweets, you might want to integrate Twitter and LinkedIn. This is done through an application called Tweets. It’s fairly straightforward to install but the important thing here are the settings.

We have all seen users with more than ten updates on LinkedIn per day and these updates typically come from Twitter and probably do more harm to your brand than anything else. What you want to do is this: To share tweets on LinkedIn use the hashtag #in inside Twitter. This allows you to selectively share on LinkedIn as opposed to blanketing your network with conversational updates.

9. Take advantage of Recommendations

The recommendation engine on LinkedIn is one of the keys to LinkedIn’s success. Whereas you used to get recommendations on a website, these recommendations are fully transparent and people can click their way through to scrutinize who wrote the recommendation.

Given that people check out recommenders, try to focus on quality recommendations from C-level executives, former bosses, satisfied clients, and well-known colleagues.

10. Hide people from your homefeed

Whether someone is plugging their own services every day or tweeting on LinkedIn too much, you can easily hide these people from your home feed. Just go to the right of their update and there is a little grey text reading “Hide” – click that and you won’t see this person on your feed again. You can un-hide them later if you so please.

If someone is even more annoying, you can remove them as a connection altogether on the My Contacts page and click ‘remove connections’. They will not be notified that you have deleted them from your network.

Make the most out of LinkedIn and you will find all the opportunities you are seeking. Please get in touch with me about one-on-one LinkedIn training, or my LinkedIn seminars and webinars.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

With more than 120 million users, LinkedIn is the most popular social network for professionals as well as one of the top social networks overall. On LinkedIn, you can find more customers, locate referral partners, contact a mentor, raise your visibility, and so much more.

Use these ten tips as way to make the most out LinkedIn. It’s more than just a networking tool – it’s a business tool and if you leverage it right… you can find tons of new business.

1. Claim your vanity URL.

Make your profile look more professional and easier to share by claiming your LinkedIn vanity URL. Instead of a URL with a million confusing numbers at the end, it will provide you with great branding. For example, my public profile URL is http://www.linkedin.com/in/linkedinspeaker. Got to Profile > Edit Profile and in the information box click edit by your public profile; then click “customize your public profile URL” down on the right-hand side.

2. Make your blog/website links customer focused.

Instead of using the default “My Website”-type anchor text links in your LinkedIn profile, you can change the anchor text to make those links more appealing to people who view your profile. So if you want to increase clicks on the website links you can display on your profile, change the link’s anchor text to something more value oriented than the standard options LinkedIn provides. For example, if you want to include a link to your blog, rather than choosing LinkedIn’s standard “Blog” anchor text, customize it to include keywords that indicate what your blog is about to offer value, such as “Free Marketing Tips.” Each profile can display up to 3 website links like this, and they can be customized by editing your profile, clicking edit on your website links, and selecting “Other” in the drop-down menu to customize the anchor text.

3. Search engine optimize your profile.

You can also optimize your profile to get found by people searching LinkedIn for key terms with which you want to be associated. Add these keywords to various sections of your profile such as your headline or summary.

4. Take advantage of “Saved Searches.”

LinkedIn allows you to create up to 3 saved searches in the free account. After conducting a search, clicking the “Save This Search” option allows you to save a search and easily run it again later. You can also choose to receive weekly or monthly reminders via email once new members in the network match your saved search criteria. Just click on the “Saved Searches” tab on the Advanced Search options page and select one of your saved searches to run again.

5. Track what people are saying.

Signal is a helpful page on LinkedIn that allows you to track what people are saying about any topic you want to track. It follows people’s updates and gives you the results in real time. Go to News > Signal and enter your search.

6. Use applications.

Browse the Application Directory, and consider adding the
SlideShare application or linking your blog to showcase your presentations and blog articles on your profile. The Events application is also a great way to see what events your connections are attending and find other popular industry events to attend.

7. Use OpenLink to send messages to people to whom you’re not connected.

LinkedIn only allows you to send messages to people with which you share a first degree connection, but did you know some people let you send them messages anyway, even if you’re not connected? The ability to be part of the OpenLink network is only available to premium account holders, but it allows them to be available for messaging by any other LinkedIn member if they choose to be. OpenLink members will appear with an icon that looks like a small ring of dots next to their name in search results and on their profile.

8. Check in on “Network Updates.”

Found on your LinkedIn homepage, Network
Updates are kind of like your Facebook news feed. Check these periodically for a quick snapshot of what your connections are up to and sharing.

9. Be identifiable.

Find out who’s checking out your profile by allowing others to see who you are if you view theirs. When you click the information under “Who’s Viewed My Profile” on your profile page, you’ll be able to view users who have looked at your profile, stats on your profile’s number of views, and its appearances in search recently.

10. Export connections.

Want to transfer your LinkedIn connections to another contact management system? LinkedIn enables you to easily export your connections. Just click on Contacts > My Connections and then scroll down and click “Export Connections.” You have the option of either exporting as a .CSV or .VCF file.

That’s all for today’s tips. Look for Part II of this series on the most powerful LinkedIn
ideas.

About the Author: Dan Sherman is a LinkedIn Expert, Coach and Trainer. He provides seminars, webinars, and one-on-one coaching on building your business and creating a worldwide brand with LinkedIn. His website is www.DanShermanCoaching.com.
Connect with Dan on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/linkedinspeaker.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Now that I consider myself a somewhat experienced member of the Twitter community, I have spent a little time reflecting on all that I’ve learned since joining the group approximately one year ago.

With credit (and apologies) to Robert Fulghum, the author of All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, here’s what I’ve learned:• Share everything – Not a day passes that I don’t learn something while on Twitter. When you come across a great quote, fact or article retweet it! In a recent blog post, Peggy Fitzpatrick recently shared the 12 Most Clever Tools On Twitter. This excellent post received 65 comments, 203 tweets and 103 retweets. Now that’s sharing!

• Play fair – It’s not just about you; it’s about the community. Don’t just post things about yourself and your business. Answer questions, share advice and be helpful.

• Don’t hit people - Twitter is not the place to have public battles. I recently made the difficult decision to “unfollow” two prominent members of the Twitter community who felt it was appropriate to have a week-long, back-and-forth “spat” for all of the Twitter community to witness.

• Don’t take things that aren’t yours – If the article, quote or tip you’re sharing wasn’t originally yours, give credit to the original author; don’t plagiarize. In addition, if you publish one of those “daily” blogs don’t credit someone who retweeted an article as the “original” author. This happens to me frequently. I see my name and photo next to an article that I didn’t write and only retweeted. This makes me feel very uncomfortable. Take the time to find the original author and give them the credit. I don’t want it.

• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody – Refer back to “don’t hit people.”

• Flush – Every now and then go through your list of followers and “unfollow” the spammers and those who haven’t tweeted in weeks.

• Take a nap every afternoon – Some of you seem to be on Twitter 24/7. Take a break!

• Be aware of wonder – Take time to appreciate what you’ve learned and the connections, and even friendships, you’ve made.

• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

You’ve probably already heard the fact that LinkedIn has over 120 million members, making it the largest professional networking site.

With an average household income over $100K, the users of LinkedIn are the movers and shakers you want to get to know and who have the money to buy what you are selling.Here are the next 10 tips in this series.

1. Easily find email contacts on LinkedIn. Speaking of connections, the LinkedIn Companion for Firefox is a great plug-in that helps you identify the LinkedIn profiles of people who are emailing you. It also enables you to easily access other LinkedIn features via your browser.

2. Leverage the power of LinkedIn Groups. Did you know that if you’re a member of the same group as another user, you can bypass the need to be a first degree connection in order to message them? In addition, group members are also able to view the profiles of other members of the same group without being connected. You can be a member of 50 groups, so join more groups to enable more messaging and profile viewership capabilities.

3. Take advantage of advanced search options. LinkedIn’s Advanced Search feature provides a much richer search experience. For example, say you want to find out if you’re connected to anyone that works at a specific company. Type the company name in the company field in Advanced Search, then sort the results by “Relationship” to see if you have any first or second degree connections to any employees.

4. Link your Twitter account to LinkedIn. Share your LinkedIn status updates on Twitter, and vice versa. Just go to Profile > Edit Profile and look for the Twitter account section to add your personal Twitter handle.

5. Quickly turn your LinkedIn profile into a resume. LinkedIn enables you to turn your profile into a resume-friendly format in seconds with its Resume Builder tool. Just choose a resume template, edit it, and export it as a PDF that you can print, email, and share.

6. Add a video to your Company Page. Make your Company Page more interactive by adding video. To do so, visit your Company Page as a page admin, click your Products tab and, under the “Admin Tools” drop-down menu, click “Add a product or service.”

This enables you to create a new entry that features your video. You can also add a video to any existing product/service pages you’ve set up previously. Currently, LinkedIn only supports videos that have been uploaded to YouTube.

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

8. Extend the life of your questions. After a week, the opportunity closes for your network to answer questions that are posed in the Answers feature of LinkedIn. To extend the life of the questions you ask and enable more time for users to provide answers, go to More > Answers > My Q&A. Click on the question you’d like to revive, and click “re-open this question to answers,” which will open it up again for 7 more days.

9. Share questions or your answers to others’ questions. Besides the ability to ask questions, LinkedIn Answers also offers a great opportunity for users to share their expertise and thought leadership as well as link to content they’ve created that helps to answer others’ questions. Have you provided a helpful answer to another’s question lately? When you’re on the question’s page, click “Share This” beneath the question. You then have the option to share the question via LinkedIn message with up to 200 of your connections, bookmark it on Delicious, or grab the permalink to share in other ways. I use this to update my status when I want to share a great question.

10. Use LinkedIn Today to keep track of industry news. LinkedIn Today is an awesome feature that provides you with the most popular stories that are shared on LinkedIn. Use it to stay on top of news occurring about marketing, the internet, computer software, etc. You can also sign up for email summary notifications of LinkedIn Today news.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

By now, everyone has heard those Twitter success stories – those small businesses around the country (and globe!) who have hopped on Twitter and found the perfect way to reach their audience. It seems to come natural to them and whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it right.

But what about the people who aren’t having any luck at all? Surely they’re doing something different from those who are pulling in tons of customers and making lots more sales, right?When you use Twitter to build your brand you’re opening up doors to possibilities that hadn’t existed before the Twitter platform.

With this method you have the ability to send you followers short, value filled messages and “tweets” that will help them to start to see you and your company as an expert in that field.

The mistake that’s often made by marketers when they first begin to use Twitter for their marketing efforts is they look at this platform as a way to drive sales to their website rather than use it as a way to brand their business.

If you’re reading this now and you don’t see a difference, you might be using your Twitter account wrong, also.

Here’s the difference, if your company sells designer handbags for example, at least 10 of your tweets should be about designer handbags. Things such as the materials used, information about the designer, the history, the vision, etc.

Now, if you are offering a discount for a limited time, you can offer that on your Twitter page but you don’t want every one of your tweets to be about the promotion. No one will be interested if all of your tweets are about the promotion. This would be considered trying to drive sales to your business rather than using the Twitter platform to drive brand awareness to your company.

The key to building your brand is to provide your followers with the type of information they might find to be of value to them. As they begin to see you and your company as the authority figure when it comes to designer bags when you do mention that you are going to be having a sale more of your followers are going to want to purchase from you.

This is the power of using Twitter to build your brand.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..