Using the relevant keywords that your market may search with is important when completing the various sections on your profile. Using the right keywords lets new contacts find you easily.

Some top tips for optimisation

Your public URL edit this to show your name or business (rather than a number) then when people search the main search engines your LinkedIn profile will show in the results.

Website listings in this section of your profile you can list up to 3 URLs. Choose ‘other’ option when setting up these links. Use descriptive keywords and relevant terms to result in more opportunities for higher ranking in the search engines.

Twitter – You are allowed more than one twitter account so provide links to them here giving people other ways to connect with you.

Visibility – ensure your complete LinkedIn profile is publicly visible to everyone. You need other professionals to be able to contact you at anytime, if you are invisible it will be very difficult to build your network.

LinkedIn Applications

To build an influential and vibrant LinkedIn profile there are many applications available to help. Have a look around and choose the appliccations that are best suited to you and your brand.

Slideshare

This app allows you to upload presentations and visually show your expertise. Video and audio can also be embedded into a presentation which can be an effective way to make your profile stickier.

Amazon – Reading list

This is an opportunity to review and show your latest reads, sharing your passions and interests with people. Similarly, when you are searching for connections and introductions on LinkedIn you can gain insight into others passions and interests, if they too have this app installed.

Travel and Events

Allows you to share with your connections where you are travelling and what events you are attending and can lead to opportunities to connect face-to-face with other LinkedIn members.

Wordpress or Blog Link

These applications allow you to pull blog posts into your profile. When you have taken time to create a blog, this is a good way to share your content.

Polls

The polls application allows you to conduct research either within your own network, or to a targeted audience of professional people. Polls can help you understand your audience, but do ensure your survey is easy to understand, and questions are interesting so you have a good response rate.

With 135 million users and a target audience of business professionals on LinkedIn, if you haven’t a fully functioning profile you are missing out on some incredible opportunities. Over the next few weeks we will cover settting up your profile to obtain the best from your LinkedIn presence for you and your business.

LinkedIn Profile

Your profile needs to be completed fully – it is the foundation on which you will begin to build your influence.
A profile will showcase your talents,experience,background, interests, expertise and passions. Additionally you will appear competent in the use of the LinkedIn Network.

A fully completed a profile may lead to new networking/business oppportunities. Without it people do not know enough about you and you cannot move on to the next phase, to grow your influence and build your business.

Professional Image – First impressions count – it is essential to upload an image that will atttract connections.
This is your best opportunity to make a great first impression, and it is essential to attracting connections.

Headline – 120 characters at the top of your profile are there to describe what you do. Use brief but descriptive keywords to create a compelling headline, so professionals in your sphere can find you.

Position – complete your current position and at least two more previous positions that you have held

Summary section – Using the third person, this section lets you expand your description of who you are and how you help people.

Recommendations – for LinkedIn to class your profile as completed you will need at least three recommendations.
Give before you receive. If you first give a recommendation then you may ask for one.
This can then be displayed on your profile

Specialities section – use customer-focused keywords in this section, then when people are searching you will show in the results. To find these keywords, consider what words and phrases people in your target market might use to find someone with your background, experience and service you offer.

Interests & Group Associations - in these sections each of the terms will be hyper-linked, thus taking you to users with the same interests in the network.

This week I found one of the benefits of using Twitter as a customer. I had recently decided to move my phone number to GiffGaff as it seemed like it would work better for me. For the last few years I have paid for two phones on T-Mobile on their 30 day rolling tariff. Initially it has worked very well. At the beginning of the year my old phone decided to be more trouble than it was worth and my OH bought me another phone, a very nice LG and bought it from T-Mobile. Now I suppose I should have realised that any phone bought from T-Mobile will be locked to the network, but silly me, I thought that as I had bought it off contract that wouldn’t be the case.

Anyway, thinking that GiffGaff’s offers will work better for us, I decided to finish the rolling contracts, keep the numbers and move to GiffGaff. The winner for them has to be that calls between GiffGaffers are free, together with the ‘no contract’, ‘change your mind each month if you want to’ deal.

Now I find myself in a complete tizz, my number has been ported out to my GiffGaff number and when the new Sim is put in the phone we have USIM locked. So backwards and forwards between various numbers, GiffGaffers being very helpful, T-Mobile saying £15 please and 28 days to release the phone. Arrrghh!!!

And so to Twitter, after getting the usual email automated responses from T-Mobile, saying we may take 7 days to answer your query, just shout ‘help’ on Twitter and we are off. It remains to be seen whether anything gets sorted but at least T-Mobile responded within minutes and not days.

You feel that someone is listening and not just fobbing you off, but that may come later. Wish me luck!

So what does that tell you about Social Media? That if it is going to work for your business, it’s good to talk and listen to your customers. Twitter is quick at getting results, no business wants it to be broadcast across the internet that people are unhappy with their service. Handled correctly, social media, can nip things in the bud and customers know they have your attention because you have answered them with something other than an automated response.

It would be nice if things didn’t always happen this way, but with plethora of technology, folk can’t be expected to understand how it all works and companies must handle that knowledge with care, likewise their customers.

For help with anything techy email us, twitter @tamarabaranova, or just plain pick up the phone and talk to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

Are you admin for pages on Facebook? Facebook are advising you to back up your old page insights in preparation for them being phased out from December 15th.

From then the social network will no longer collect data from the old page insights and insights as we know it, will disappear completely on February 15th 2012.

On the old page insights they advise you to back up your information as this will be deleted on February 15th but your data from December 15th will be collected in the new improved insights.

Have you also noticed…. on your personal Facebook page how you can fine tune what you see or what people see of you? If you are tired of seeing what everyone is listening to and reading, change the settings. You now have multiple choices for handling this overload of information in your news feed, by hide,delete,unsubscribe,unfriend, report or block options. The button to the right of a post drops down to give you all these options and a much calmer way to handle the regular (far to regular) postings of some. You can then still decide to visit their feed when you choose rather than your page be overloaded.

You can click to view all updates, or most or only important ones too, so again you can refine individually, what you see according to how much you want to see of friends. Further changes can be made on a friends’ profile where the subscribe button allows you to customise even more precisely. Options are here too, to add friends to particular lists; Places of work,schools,residences and family relationships.

How to hide yourself away…on chat. The follow on from all this privacy and hiding of other people’s posts, leads me to this option. On the chat screen there is a small settings button which gives you the option of, to chat or not to chat, primarily you can see who’s on line and they can see you are available to chat. If you want to refine this, limited availability can be optimised and you can restrict who can communicate with you at any point in time, alternating between your various lists.

Do you need any help with all the things that Facebook keep changing? Email us or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594 to find out how to optimise your pages

QRC – Quick Response Code is a type of barcode and was created by Toyota for the automotive industry in 1994. The idea was to be able to track vehicles through the various parts of the manufacturing process.

The most popular type of QRC are two-dimensional and allow the contents to be decoded fast. Their use is gradually being taken on board by major brands and allows companies to ‘sell’ to a mobile customer base with the ability to scan the codes from smart phones (with camera).

How could you use a QRC in your business?

If your product requires installation, a code on your packaging that plays a video of installation instructions. Overcomes the problem of the manual not being in the box and so much easier to see how it’s done than just reading how to install.

Business cards with the code can import all your contact information.

Roadside advertising contains a code to take you to further information about the advert, a trailer for a film, product information for car or cooker.

QRC on an appliance – when your machine goes wrong you have a code on it that leads to the manual on line. How easy is that when you have no idea where you put the manual and you bought it so long ago.

In store signs carrying codes that can be stored or sent to friends; to tweet, view a video about the product, share.

Apps – a code that takes you to the app download, so easy and fast, no need to spend time searching for the download.

Advertising – code that gives you the time, the date, the place. Where a product is produced, who by and when, so much more information than can be mentioned in a normal advert.

QRC can easily take your customers to a more comprehensive description of your products.

Can you think how you can use QRC in your business?

If you have an idea how you could use QRC, get in touch and we can help you put your ideas into reality. Email us, or speak to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.