LinkedIn is, in my opinion, the most important business-oriented social network on the web. Eric wrote a bit about LinkedIn two years ago in our May, 2007 newsletter about social media, noting that its answers and recommendations functionality were valuable tools for sharing expertise and networking. Since then, LinkedIn has continued to expand its capabilities, some of which I will discuss below. While Facebook and Twitter have been more in the limelight, LinkedIn has been quietly refined and shaped into a very impressive platform. (If you'd like to connect with me on LinkedIn, here's a link to my LinkedIn profile.)
LinkedIn Groups
We decided to set up a LinkedIn group back in December, both to connect people in and around our network of agencies and developers and to start discussions through which we could share our expertise in web development. Because we've clearly positioned ourselves as a web development firm that helps advertising agencies build better websites for their clients, we named our group "Web Development for Advertising Agencies." Leaving our actual name, Newfangled, out of the group's name was intentional: while we consider the time we devote to the group part of our investment in marketing for Newfangled, we believe that freely sharing our expertise in a group set up to not only serve us will ultimately benefit us in addition to everyone else involved. An educated prospect always makes a better client. We invited some clients and contacts to join the group and began adding discussions and news items to make sure there was some worthwhile content available to those who joined right away. Since then, our group's roster has increased to over 200 members and continues to grow.
We also added a call to action to our website (shown to the left) inviting users to join the group. If you haven't already, go ahead and click it to join today- we'd love to have you among our members.
In the screenshot below, you'll see how LinkedIn has created a well-designed landing page for its groups, showing recent discussions and news items (on the left), as well as a quick synopsis of the last week of activity (on the right). Most of the discussions and news items are still coming from us, rather than other members, but just like any group, we expect that at least some current lurkers will eventually convert to active members.
Below is a screenshot of an individual discussion that I started prior to writing our January newsletter on how to use Google Analytics. Anyone who has joined the group will get an alert when a new discussion is started, and then can respond to it by posting to the thread if they want to. Like I do with LinkedIn's answers and polls functionality (more on those later), I like to use discussions as an initial approach to my newsletter writing. By asking a question like the one below, I can quickly get a sense for how the people in our network (likely readers of our newsletter) feel about a particular topic and shape my writing to be more helpful to them.
Setting up a group like this is not something that you're going to be able to measure the value of, at least not very precisely, until you actually sign a new client from among its members. But that aside, it's better to consider your LinkedIn group as you might an opportunity to attend or sponsor a conference; the benefits of being among a large group of industry practitioners are many, even if you're not there to sell something. So, in choosing its name, you should be implicitly positioning and narrowing the focus of your group so that after your initial invitations, it appropriately curates its own membership. Our goal is to work with agencies, so naming our group "Web Development for Advertising Agencies" was intended to help to keep the membership from being disproportionately comprised of competitors rather than potential clients.
LinkedIn Q & A
As I mentioned earlier, I like to tap in to my LinkedIn network to gather information and make an "initial approach" to my upcoming newsletters. One of the best ways I have found to do this has been to use LinkedIn's 'Answers' section to submit a question that can be viewed and answered by any user. You can add an explanation to expand upon your question, categorize it, and then send it to up to 200 people in your network. I've gotten in the habit of doing this before each newsletter I write, and the answers I receive serve as a decent barometer for the public sentiment toward whatever concept I have asked about. In preparation for this month's newsletter, for example, I asked What social media tools is your firm using and how have they been effective marketing tools? In the screenshot below, you can see how your question will appear to LinkedIn users and how the various responses you might get will cascade in the thread. Of course, preparing for writing newsletters is not the only reason I might ask a question on LinkedIn. (I've been interested in internet privacy issues lately, so I used a question on LinkedIn to get a sense for what other people thought about the ethics of website user tracking even though I don't have any plans to write a newsletter on that subject just yet.)
By the way, did you know that your LinkedIn question's page is indexable by search engines? This is a great opportunity to continue to build your authority on those subjects that matter to your firm and point back to your website. For example, after posting my question, Is tracking visitors to your website ethical?, I created a blog post linking to it and made sure that I promoted the question on various other channels, including Facebook, StumbleUpon, Undrln, Tumblr, etc. One of our employees also linked to it on Reddit. The benefit of all of this is that if I search for that question, my question and links to it dominate the search results page (see image to the left). I do realize that few users will search for my question verbatim, but if I generalize the search to something like "website tracking ethics," my question still comes up fairly high on the first page.
You can also create polls with LinkedIn and categorize and send them to people in your network. As you can see from the screenshot below, they're very simple to set up. Just like the answers functionality, this would be another great opportunity to get information from your network in advance of any writing you might do. The poll shown below, which asks Which social network presents the most real value to your company? is still open, so feel free to submit your answer too. I was impressed with some of the visual reports that let you see the poll results from different perspectives. For example, if I want to re-organize the results visually by the job title, job function, company size, age or gender of the respondents, I can do that. After the first day of this poll being open, I wrote a blog post about using LinkeIn polls. Though the numbers have changed quite a bit since, LinkedIn is still, by far, valued at the top.
Sharing Website Content on LinkedIn
I've already written quite a bit about how to use LinkedIn as a satellite platform to your website, but it's also very important to make sure that you provide a means for your readers to share your content on LinkedIn. We've built in a general sharing tool that sits beneath all of our blog and newsletter content that lets our readers easily share our content on a variety of different social networks. LinkedIn provides some really nice sharing code, which, when implemented, links to the pop-up screen shown below. What I really appreciate is that if I share an article among one group that I'm a part of on LinkedIn, I can easily re-share it with a different group without having to repeat the entire sharing process.
Advertising on LinkedIn
In a sense, simply using LinkedIn in the ways I've described so far is already potential free advertising, but you can also set up paid, targeted advertising on LinkedIn. In the screenshot below, I'm showing the advertisement setup screen, which allows you to target your audience by various means, including company size, job function, industry, and seniority. As you can see, we've set up our ad to appear to management-level users working for mid-sized (11-50) companies in administrative, new business or creative roles. As you narrow your selection, LinkedIn displays a counter inline that shows how large your audience potentially is. In this case, our targeted ad could potentially be seen by 240,321 different LinkedIn users.
Referral Traffic from LinkedIn
In general, it's better to measure success as far as traffic is concerned by potency, not volume. For instance, we get many more visitors from search engines like Google to our blog posts than from specific social networks, but as a group, that traffic has a fairly high bounce rate. This is something I've discussed in previous newsletters, specifically in How to Use Google Analytics, but suffice it to say that for some companies, having a high bounce rate for some content isn't the end of the world. However, for certain sources of traffic, particularly LinkedIn, I would expect to have fewer visitors but a lower bounce rate among them. As you can see from the screenshot below, we received 163 unique visits over the course of one month from LinkedIn users. This is not a huge number by any means, but notice that the average time on site is almost 4 minutes. Also, the average number of pages each visitor sees is over 3, and the bounce rate is under 50%. Not bad! What we see here is a smaller, more focused audience.
Next, we'll take a closer look at Facebook.
Chris, you wrote "we believe that freely sharing our expertise in a group set up to not only serve us will ultimately benefit us in addition to everyone else involved." So, do you consider this marketing or not? It seems like a touchy-feely way of avoiding saying that your group is a marketing ploy.
Alan, Good question. For the record, I think the entire quote is instructive: But I think your question does speak to an ambiguity, or at least a blurring of the lines, between marketing and education. As I went on to say, an educated prospect always makes a better client. This is essentially our marketing philosophy which shapes every tactic we employ: newsletter writing, blogging, everything we do on LinkedIn (asking and answering questions, polling, group discussions, etc.), our monthly webinars, and conference attendance and public speaking. In every case, we are actively giving away valuable knowledge because we believe that such an education reinforces our expertise to a prospect and better qualifies them for working with us.
So in short, I'm not at all shy about calling this marketing, but it's not the same kind of marketing that may have a pejorative connotation for some out there (myself included).
Thanks for your comment,
Chris
Thanks for your question Alan. I'm sure it is one that many people have thought to ask. To clarify, nothing we do is a ploy, which is defined as a tactic intended to embarrass or frustrate. While we don't have marketing ploys, we do have a marketing plan.
Is our LinkedIn group part of our marketing plan? Absolutely. Additionally, our newsletters, webinars, blog posts and speaking engagements are all, 100% part of our marketing plan. In fact, these efforts encompass our entire marketing effort. Marketing isn't a bad word to us, though, and in our case it is actually synonymous with education. We market by prolifically writing about topics we know our prospects are interested in, and it serves both Newfangled and our readership very well.
About the Facebook referral traffic: It sounds like you saying that Facebook is a good place to promote content because it generates a lot of traffic, so why do you like LinkedIn better?
Richard, Yes, promoting content Facebook has generated a lot of traffic to our site, and as you can see from the Google Analytics graph, the sessions are mostly on the deeper side. What I think gives LinkedIn an edge in the context of my evaluation is it's focus on business use, as well as some of the specific tools it has that Facebook does not: Q&A, polls, etc. While Facebook does have a groups equivalent, it's not nearly as powerful, nor does it have as good a user interface.
Thanks for reading,
Chris
Chris, This is a very even, level-headed approach, which I appreciate coming on the heels of so much social media euphoria. I hope that we can all start settling in to this new mode of operating and get back to work!
@Alan, This isn't exactly new, you know. The newfangled approach to marketing (pun intended!) is just where it's at now. It's sad that you'd assume something untoward is going on.
Hi Chris and everyone else:
Like everyone else, I receive a boat load of spam and email with the sole intention of marketing without much payback. But as an active web and graphic designer, I have always found the Newfangled newsletters to be extremely informative and helpful while working in the trenches. Yes, it certainly makes a favorable impression of Newfangled. Yes, it certainly gives me usable information. Yes, it is an effective marketing tool. I wish other companies would follow their lead.
@Peter Bryant, Thanks for saying that, and I hope so too!
@Maggie B, I wish we could take the credit for this approach, but it has really coalesced for us based upon many things: Direct input from people we trust in the industry, books we've read, and a general sense that things we've been doing for a while now and ideas we value are becoming more valuable to others. One interesting point is the concept of multiples, which Malcolm Gladwell discusses in a column he wrote recently in the New Yorker called "In the Air." Here's a pertinent quote: In our case, I wouldn't want to inflate the importance of what we're doing by directly comparing it to the kinds of discoveries that Gladwell mentions. But, the general point applies: Sometimes significant ideas occur in multiple places simultaneously, and can best be attributed to the zeitgeist rather than one innovator. I think that is partially what's happening in our industry. That said, there are important figures that have been at the forefront as mouthpieces for these ideas: Levine, Locke, Searls, and Weinberger, who wrote The Cluetrain Manifesto, as well as David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. I'm sure there are many others that can be credited...
@Glen Ruga, I'm so glad to hear that you've benefited from our marketing/education! Keep in touch.
Chris,
This is a very informative newsletter, as always, but I'm not sure it's a practical guide to social media. Using these tools to generate traffic to your site is not social. It's marketing, which you've cleared up in the comments above.
You've given links to "connect" with you on these platforms, but if connecting with you means that you are just going to be linking me to your site and asking me questions for your newsletter, then it doesn't sound like a great relationship.
Your screenshot and explanation of Mark's Twitter feed was the closest you got to really explaining social media. And while it is definitely important to gather statistics on the traffic from these sites, and to know how to do it, it comes second to building valuable relationships online.
Of the three tools explained here, Twitter is probably the most powerful of them all, because of it's ability to spread information the fastest. First within your own network before it quickly enters others. Just ask Blair Enns how many people came to his site yesterday after @SwissMiss and @JasonSantaMaria linked to his manifesto. (They have over 16,000 followers collectively.)
I think a practical guide to social media may need more emphasis on relationships, and actual ways to connect with folks who are interested in your service.
I hope this comment helps add to, not criticize the time and effort your put in to this great newsletter.
Cheers!
Able,
You may have noticed the blog post I wrote about this newsletter in which I quoted the Wikipedia definition of social media, which is as follows: In general, I would characterize every recommendation I made in this newsletter as being motivated by sharing and discussing information, so I'm confused as to why you think this newsletter misses the mark when it comes to social media. You said in your comment that "Using these tools to generate traffic to your site is not social. It's marketing, which you've cleared up in the comments above." Correct, this newsletter is a marketing effort, written primarily to an audience of creative agencies- the very market that we are positioned to serve. The entire point here is to advise our partners and potential partners as to how to use social media for marketing, and as I mentioned above, thus to educate their clients and potential clients.
Incidentally, you seem to suggest that using social media to drive traffic to one's site is anti-social, but then you say that Blair Enns is benefiting from "true" social behavior after a couple of popular tweeters posted links to his site, ostensibly driving large bursts of traffic his way. So is traffic generation bad or not? Either way, the point isn't the traffic itself, but that all those people heading to read Blair's manifesto are going to benefit from the information on his site. So it seems that social media is working, both for Blair and the users that followed the link to his site.
Lastly, and I think this is the real point, there are many different kinds of relationships, so saying that social media is about "relationships" is pretty unfocused. I use social media very differently at work from the way I might in my personal life, though sometimes they intertwine. But the nature of the relationships we're trying to build at Newfangled using social media are mutually beneficial business relationships, where the offering of our expertise is put through the conduits provided by LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as our own website. You say, "it doesn't sound like a great relationship," but I totally disagree. Every month, we get more and more people signing up for our newsletter because they want in on this relationship. Sure, we're not getting together for beers, but I'm assuming that's not the kind of relationship people are after when they sign up for our newsletter, register for a webinar, participate in one of our LinkedIn discussions, answer a LinkedIn question, or even become a client.
Chris
Very helpful stuff here. Just wanted to point out, as far as the comment stream is moving, that social media is great for frienship, but it's also great for promotion. Nothing wrong with that- plus, clicking a link is a willing act.
@AbleParris, sorry, but you're the one who doesn't get it. @ChrisButler pretty much covered what i wanted to say by pointing out where you contradict yourself. I just want to add that either you have no idea what business relationships are, or you didn't read the newsletter.
@ChrisButler, thanks for the link to the "multiples" article- tre cool. What about social fatigue? Did you read the 6 pixels of separation article aobut that?
@AbleParris, you said, "if connecting with you means that you are just going to be linking me to your site and asking me questions for your newsletter, then it doesn't sound like a great relationship." Sounds like a fantastic relationship to me. I mean, have you ever read any of this stuff? Most people try to charge for it and call themselves social media consultants, but Newfangled gives it away. Oh, I guess you're right in one sense- for those that don't reciprocate in any way, it's not such a hot relationship for Newfangled.
@Maggie B, yes and yes.
@JT, You're right, clicking is a willing act, so one should be able to make an inference about actual interest in their content based upon the number of referrals from outposts like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. With that in mind, I think the value of information is a strong foundation for certain online relationships. I wouldn't necessarily call them transactional since most information providers don't receive equivalent amounts of information from the people who receive from them (think about the most popular blog you read).
@Sean, I assume you mean the 6 Pixel article titled When It Comes To Online Social Networks, Maybe We Have It All Wrong. Some good stuff there. Have you seen the diagram created by Andrew Shuttleworth that details the flow of information on social networks that he uses? It's incredibly detailed and really shows how information is the main thing that drives most online relationships.
@Maggie B, et all, It seems that the crux of this is that online relationships are just as diverse and complex as offline ones. Think of all the people you interact with in your life: family, friends, co-workers, clients, healthcare providers, legal counsel, entertainers, the vast myriad of service providers and vendors. With each, you have a different relationship. With some, the relationship is supported by money, meaning either you get paid to offer something, or you are paying to receive something. Even in those relationships, they can become fairly familiar, but they do tend to stay in a certain "compartment."
Chris,
Thanks for taking the time to write out such a thoughtful response. It's great to have a place to discuss this stuff. I'll try to keep this brief. I'm really not trying to argue, and your blog post and your last comment do a great job explaining most what I was trying to say.
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To the others responding to my comment:
I commented here assuming certain things, and that was a mistake.
I was employed by Newfangled for 2 years, and did some contract work with them before that. I have been friends with Chris for almost 7 years. My comment may have come across as an attack, but I hope that it did not. I have a lot of respect for Newfangled, and continue to learn a lot from them, especially Chris. I see what he shares on Facebook, Google Reader, Delicious, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Tumblr. It's awesome, and it's helpful.
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What I think what I am really responding to is the comment you added in parenthesis on the first page regarding a position "Social Media Manager," and your reference to Twitter as "pseudo-conversation." You said, "I, for one, wouldn't want my role to be based upon a tool."
I don't think the position is based on a tool. That person is the face of the company answering questions and offering expertise to those who are willing to listen. They are the ones that clear up misunderstanding about the company brand. That position is based upon relationships. In fact, you are probably that role at Newfangled, and you are doing a great job at it. The Newfangled blog and newsletter are top notch.
To clear things up, the Blair Enns comment should have been a side note. (It's hard to see the entire comment when they get long as I type in this little box.) I brought it up mainly because you are admittedly on the fence about Twitter, and I think it's a good example.
I have nothing against using social media to leverage traffic to your site, especially by offering something valuable to people. I do it, too. But I don't think that buying ads on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are how to use social media. The WebDev group, however, is genius. To engage with people directly, sharing your expertise. That is what builds trust, and trust with an audience creates a successful brand.
Able,
I think what I was getting at with the "I...wouldn't want my role to be based upon a tool" comment was elaborated on in my follow up blog post, where I went on to write, Perhaps this is just an issue of semantics. You are right in everything you wrote about what that role would look like, and yes, many of those things are part of my role, just as they are for Mark O'Brien and anyone else at Newfangled who posts to our blog, or uses other social media tools to communicate with clients or talk about Newfangled. I think I take issue with the actual title itself, since I'm expecting that all things "social media" will be standard web practices and not need a special name of their own. Chris Brogan has made this point before, perhaps much more clearly than I have, so check out his post titled Getting Back to Your Desk.
In regard to advertising on social networks, I agree with you in that running ads is not essentially "social." However, I do think they bear mention in this newsletter precisely because they are a legitimate and effective way to use functionality offered by these social networks to increase awareness of a company's products or services. Given the purpose of this newsletter, I'd be remiss in not discussing this opportunity, however, I, like you, am not the most enthusiastic about them in general. I'd much rather interact with people directly through things like our LinkedIn group, blog posts, commenting on other blogs, etc.
One final point on the "polarizing" effect of Twitter. I wouldn't say I'm a hater, but I'm definitely not the most gung-ho about it either, as you know. But one thing occurred to me that I think is worth discussing- it makes a lot of sense to me that Twitter would be much more valuable to someone who is self-employed (like you) than someone who is not (like me). Twitter is, as you say, very powerful "because of it's ability to spread information the fastest," and you are obviously running with that technology. Given my role, I'm much less mobile than you and find it difficult to "tweet" regularly, so the tool itself is just not optimal for me at this point. That may change, though, who knows.
Thanks for the dialogue,
Chris
Interesting dialogue here- shows that we're not really settled on social media and how to use it.
Most people who set up a Twitter account only post once, which goes to show that it's mostly hype behind that tool.
Yes, I agree with you Chris. I have recently read a post from blog that Dell has actually sold over million bucks from the leads in their twitter account. I perfectly agree with this. Dell has actually did SMO to the extreme end. They opened twitter account 2 years back and now money is rolling.
I know the fact that for huge companies with huge customer base social media can be a powerful tool if they have a strong SMO strategies. But I always had a question on how Social Media is going to affect medium and small scale industries. They hardly have any customers and they are in hunt for customers. Can any one say how a small scale company find new customers from social media websites. If they attempt to do so, is it a spam. Please explain this concept.
Thanks
@Anonymous, True.
@Dave, I've heard this too. I wonder how long that will continue to be true.
@Tiny Laptop, I think it could work just as well for smaller companies. The activity and scope of reach will be smaller, but the connections will still work.
@Car Hire, Yep, LinkedIn is good.
Chris, I need your help. Some one has taken my name in LinkedIn. How do I create a user name now. I missed that and it is hurting a lot. Many of my clients connect to that person and not me.
Also can you write an article on this how to solve this issue. Thanks Chris.
@Mark, I don't think I understand your issue completely - I'd say most people share their name with others... and I don't recall ever connecting with someone by a username. Create your profile, fill out as much detail as you can and their shouldn't be any issues in people finding you - unless someone is pretending to be you which I suppose is a completely different issues altogether...
@Mark, I'm not sure what I can do to help you there, unfortunately. I'd imagine that many people have this issue on LinkedIn, although I'm pretty sure that LinkedIn allows many 'john smiths' to sign up provided they have unique email addresses and passwords to show that they are different people. Then it becomes up to other info (company name, location) to differentiate you from the others.