3 Unique Ways to Get Started With Business Podcasting

Do you want to bring podcasting into your marketing mix?

Are you stuck because of concerns about time commitment, lack of knowledge or production challenges?

There are many ways to approach business podcasting without interupting your schedule, budget and skills.

In this article you’ll discover how three businesses started a podcast and what they uniquely did differently.

Use their examples for inspiration to set up your podcast to fit your particular needs, time and budget, and reap the benefits of creating a personal connection with your audience through audio.

Create a Podcast From Anywhere With Limited Equipment

Natalie Sisson, The Suitcase Entrepreneur, provides a great example of how to podcast from anywhere with limited equipment.

Podcasting has helped Natalie's audience feel more connected to her and her brand.

As her business name suggests, Natalie’s passion is helping people create freedom in business and adventure in life. She also has a successful podcast by the same name where she interviews other successful suitcase entrepreneurs who share their secrets about how they’ve found success running their business from anywhere.

Natalie has been doing the podcast for about 14 months now, and in the past 6 months alone she has seen an amazing spike (100%) in her download numbers, and sometimes even 200% more downloads each month.

Not only has her podcast built her reputation as a thought leader in her industry, it has also allowed her to connect on a deeper level with her audienceand spread her brand message all at the same time.

What’s great about Natalie’s strategy is that it doesn’t take up all of her time. It allows her to still concentrate on the core of her business.

Here’s how Natalie does it:

• 2 episodes per month (will be moving to 4 episodes per month soon due to popular demand)
• Uses Skype and Ecamm Call Recorder, along with her noise-reducingLogitech Headset
• Hires an editor in the Philippines who adds her intro, music and then edits the audio for clarity
• Has a team member do a draft write-up of the show notes, which she polishes off herself
• Once the episode is uploaded to her media host Libsyn, Natalie is on cruise control until it goes live, at which point she’ll promote it via one of her email lists, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and her Pinterest podcast board

Natalie’s techniques and her approach to production show that you don’t have to have an expensive OR an extensive setup in a studio to record and publish a podcast.

All you need to do is focus on what you want to share with your audience, and then have a more technical person put your audio together for you. It’s a very easy way to get started podcasting with little investment and time commitment.

Create a High-Quality Podcast for More Business

The The Kickass Life with David Wood podcast and producer Michael O’Neal show how you can create a quality show and build a large audience.

Michael says that the podcast has helped them see some fantastic growth all over the world.

David records both inside and outside of his studio, with frequent episodes with varying content.

Michael O’Neal partnered with David Wood on The Kickass Life podcast to create a double team of greatness. After 15 months of production, Michael and David have their routine down pat.

After starting a podcast to gain a broader audience (which worked by the way), David and Michael have seen fantastic growth all over the world. The Kickass Life is downloaded in 171 countries!

While David and Michael have recorded shows in about 15 different countries with the help of a Zoom H4N Digital Recorder (or iPhone with Bossjock), they aren’t quite as location-independent as Natalie is.

The Kickass Life’s headquarters is in David’s hometown in Canada. They have a fully equipped studio setup, which is where most of the magic happens.

Here’s how David and Michael do it:

• 3 podcasts per week: 1 interview show, 1 solo show and 1 listener Q&A
• When not in the comfort of his fully equipped recording studio in Canada, David uses the Zoom H4N Digital Recorder or iPhone with Bossjock to record
• Michael is the full-time producer for The Kickass Life, and so each time David records a show, Michael goes in and adds the intro, outro and any ads they might be running, all with the help of GarageBand
• No edits necessary: Michael discloses that none of the content within their shows is actually edited (for authenticity’s sake)
• David and Michael both take great pride in the quality of their audio content. That said, they’re also big believers that good content without a strong delivery mechanism doesn’t work. That’s why they’ve worked hard tocreate a great website, an attractive logo and good promotion for the podcast through social media.

David and Michael take it a step further than Natalie. They do a moderate amount of travel in order to record episodes, and also spend a good amount of time recording from the comforts of a fully equipped studio.

This option requires more commitment and investment, but it can also deliver more value to your business. And you can also find the right partnership to make it easier to fit your needs.

Create a Full Podcast Production Team

Jonathan Fields, Good Life Project™ podcast is a great example of podcasting without cutting corners.

Jonathan admits that he's always known that the longer format was tailor-made for audio… It was just a matter of time until he made the jump to podcasting.

Here’s a guy who doesn’t mess around. Jonathan started his podcast a mere 3 months ago, but he’s been in the business of delivering content for much longer. His team actually started with a broadcast-quality weekly web series, which is all video-based content.

Today, Jonathan’s podcast is the audio version of those videos, which he’s kicked into an accelerated 3 podcasts per week schedule to try to catch up to the live web shows. He has simultaneously begun recording audio-only interviews that will be exclusive to the podcast, which will air 2-3 times per week.

On a quest to explore how to live a good life, Jonathan continues with the interview format. He has very much enjoyed everything he is learning from his podcasting experience, including the relationships he’s developed with some of his guests.

Thanks to podcasting, Jonathan’s brand and his reputation have been presented to a whole new audience, which has helped build a sizeable following.

Here’s how Jonathan does it:

• 3 episodes per week, which are the audio version of his already-existing video web series (Jonathan has a team of professionals who spend between 1 and 2 hours converting these files).
• All video interviews are done in person with a professional crew on location, using a 3-camera shoot. While most shoots take place in NYC, they’ve been traveling more as of late to both San Francisco and Boulder and are looking to take the web series international in 2014.
• All of his audio-only interviews provide him with a lot more flexibility. He either uses a Zoom H2N to record or Skype, depending on where he is.
• Jonathan has a team of people who are on the edits, including a separate editor for video and audio.
• With production value as his core focus, Jonathan cuts no corners in the process.

As you can see, Jonathan is taking podcasting to a whole new level, incorporating his video web series, in addition to his soon-to-come audio-only interviews, to the podcast that he plans to take to a totally different level in 2014.

With a similar type of podcasting strategy, you’ll obviously want to look closely at the different levels of skills, commitment and investment required.

The Path to Podcasting

While these 3 big hitters all sound like they’ve had it together since the beginning, that certainly didn’t come without setbacks and a whole lot of practice.

What did these guys do when they got stuck or when they were feeling like what they were doing might not work?

Here’s their best advice for anyone thinking about hosting their own podcast:

Check out these great tips from the pros.

Natalie Sisson:

You have to be yourself. As Oscar Wilde points out, “Everyone else is taken.” And really believe in your unique special gift.

Continue to home in on what that is—are you funny, sarcastic, on point, thoughtful, energetic, whip-smart, silly—what is it that you offer that sets you apart?

Then, amp that up and use it to your benefit as your key point of difference.

Focus on the listeners and what they want and deliver more and more of it.

Michael O’Neal:

Don’t worry about being awful at the beginning. Everybody is. Every master was once a disaster.

The most important part of podcasting is to actually DO it.

Get a nice logo and website, get a few shows in the can, and LAUNCH.

Jonathan Fields:

It takes time to develop your lens and your voice. And the only way to do that is to dive in.

You’ll cringe at your earlier work, but that’s okay, because it’s a necessary step along the way to putting into the world that thing that’s in your head and doing it on the level your capable of.

There is no shortcut, just do the work and start today.

In addition to these tips, remember to connect with others who are in the same situation as you are, or who have been in that situation already and who can help you when you’re feeling stuck.

Check out different mastermind communities and groups within Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Be sure to connect with like-minded individuals who have the skills and knowledge to help you succeed.

Over to You

Whether you’re like Natalie Sisson of The Suitcase Entrepreneur, an on-the-go businesswoman who doesn’t necessarily have a ton of time to spend in a studio; or Michael O’Neal, producer of The Kickass Life with David Wood, who are double-teaming their podcast in order to divide and conquer; or Jonathan Fields of Good Life Project™, a podcast aficionado who will only produce a show with top-notch audio quality and prime editing—there’s a strategy that will work for you, the time you have and your business.

Setting up your podcast doesn’t have to be daunting. Look for the right setup for your business and your strengths.

Use podcasting to reach a broad worldwide audience, create an intimate connection with your listeners, establish authority and credibility in your niche andgrow your business and brand.

What do you think? Which one of these strategies sounds like it would work best for you and what you want to do? Please leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Twitter Direct Message - Recommendations from Magic Recs

Twitter is experimenting with a new feature which sends direct messages to Twitter users giving them new recommendations on who to follow. The Twitter account, called Magic Recs (@MagicRecs), has introduced itself by stating:  “This is a Twitter experiment. Follow me to receive instant, personalized recommendations for users and content via direct message.” How valuable could this feature be to your business? How might it change the way that Twitter is currently operating?

Although it has not been officially announced by Twitter, the CEO Dick Costolo has recommended in his own tweets that Twitter users should follow Magic Recs as a way to expand their followers, implying that it would be a beneficial addition to you Twitter account as a way to find new followers. The account has also been verified as an authentic account and currently has over 17,000 followers. Although this figure is growing, it is still only a fraction of the total 550 million Twitter users, suggesting that it is still an experiment but has the potential to be widely used in the future.

This could act as a valuable feature for companies hoping to expand their Twitter following, as the feature is able to identify relevant accounts which are gaining in popularity for whatever reasons. This aids companies in their account discovery by sending members Direct Message recommendations based on what the individual is already following on their own Twitter account.

The Twitter experiment also gives an interesting insight into the way that this social media platform is heading - it now allows you to receive a Direct Message from any follower, a fact which was tweeted by Magic Recs in May. This appears to be the first instance where users have been able to send a Direct Message to another user even if the account isn’t following them. One of the principles of sending a Direct Message on Twitter previously rested on the fact that you could only send a Direct Message to a Twitter user who is following you, as this would help to cut down on spam and unwanted messages from other Twitter accounts. However, this new development in that you can now send a Direct Message to any follower has changed this and could affect the way that Twitter is used in the future. No longer are Twitter Messages just used for personal and private conversations between friends, or customer service accounts which need personal details to be shared, they can now be used to send marketing related messages as a form of brand promotion. This could be beneficial for businesses hoping to increase their brand awareness, and gain a new follower base but it relies on Twitter users being receptive to impersonal and promotional messages being sent to their accounts.

Image www.ictville.com

Is the ability to send Direct Messages and recommendations to any follower a positive thing for general twitter users? A negative aspect of the ability to send Direct Messages to any follower is that it takes away from your account privacy. This feature will now allow impersonal messages to be sent to your Twitter account, which may not always be wanted and may lead to annoying spam messages filling your Twitter inbox. Furthermore, the recommendations which are sent out by Magic Recs may also impinge upon ones privacy by looking into exactly who you are following and sharing information about followers. The site does however ask for feedback in order to make their recommendations as effective as possible suggesting a simple reply of #good or #bad in response to their recommendations, implying they are hoping to make it as beneficial to the user as possible.

What do you think?

Will you try out Magic Recs as a way of finding of new recommendations to follow? How do you think this development will affect the use of Twitter in the future?

5 Steps To Reach Customers Through Social Media

Half of the world’s population has registered themselves on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Furthermore, there are desktop and mobile based chat applications such as WhatsApp, Google Talk, Facebook Messenger, Skype, etc., which also share the same population of registered users as compared to social networking sites. Therefore, connecting your business through social media sites with the customers could be a productive idea, which is expected to deliver lucrative results as well as separates your business from the competitors.

Here are the three steps that help in locating the customers on social media sites.

Step 1: Ask your customers directly

Asking consumers for their particular likes, dislikes and demands related to the products and services has been the most profitable idea adapted by all business-entities. As a result, several companies have set up their own customer care department to resolve queries and get reviews from the consumers through calls, chat, and emails.

So, reach the consumers through above-mentioned mediums and ask whether they use social media channels or not. If the answer is yes, then ask whether they will mind if you connect with them on such networking sites. Also, ask them about the channel(s) on which they spend most of their time. Is it Facebook, Pinterest, or LinkedIn?

Following this step helps in advertising products and services directly to the consumers. In addition, the customers also get the feel as if they are valued and like to share their thoughts, information and demands related to products or services provided by the company.

Step 2: Use alert services to know frequently used social media channel

There are various alert services available online. However, Google Alert is one of the reputed and reliable services used by several users around the globe. Google Alerts could be a beneficial idea to know about the media channels highly used by the consumers. For example, set up a Google Alert and choose the ‘topic or subject’ as a search query on the alert. The results will show articles, blogs and news, which are relevant to your business. In addition, you will also come to know about the channels frequently used by the customers.

This step helps in knowing the consumers’ demands and choices as well as informs which social networking sites require more focus.

Step 3: Deep dive into social media search

Search consumers on specific channels using its inbuilt search function. Every media channel has its own search bar where users type-in the names or email addresses to find someone. So, you can also take the advantage of search function available on a social networking website to find users. Pull up a short list of existing customers from the database and search them on various media channels such as Facebook, Pinterest, etc. This strategy helps in discovering customers’ interests related to the products through their timeline (if mentioned).

Today, the latest Google + Communities Search, LinkedIn Search, Twitter’s Advanced Search and newly developed Facebook Graph Search will help you search consumers within specific geographical locations easily.

Step 4: Develop or use the social apps

The emerging technology has given several types of chat apps that are automatically available to the social groups, industries or markets. The businesses can develop their own apps or can use the existing apps for communicating with their customers. From a school going kid to an old age citizen, everyone uses the smartphones and tablets. They are curious to know about any new development-taking place in the market. Calling or inquiring about the latest products or services might be a tedious procedure for the users. So, better invite the customers to have a web based chat, which is handy and simple.

Step 5: Create videos for social networking sites

Human mind picks up 67% of the instructions easily if provided with a video, and 23% of instructions if provided with images and pictures, and rest through the content. Therefore, if the businesses start sharing their videos related to their products and services, it will have a positive impact on the target audience. Moreover, the comments and likings marked on the videos will help you notice the customers’ likes and dislikes.

Well! All the above-steps might seem quite easy to follow, but if someone tries them alone, then the solutions achieved might not provide complete satisfaction. Hence, many of the companies have begun to invest in social media marketing. It is one of the most fruitful ways to obtain lucrative results from the market. This helps companies connect with the customers on personal grounds and deeply analyses their demands and requirements.

The expert social media marketing consultants provide various solutions that help in building brand reputation, enhancing online visibility, diverting more traffic to the website, and lastly deliver better revenue.

Therefore, your business should not be restricted or programmed to just manufacturing quality products or to provide reliable services to the customers. You have to reach consumers personally and ask them how they feel about the products and services you provide, as well as their future expectations from your company.

8 Things We'd Change About Twitter

Twitter, the second most popular social site in the world, intends to go public on a near-approaching date. That means that if you plan to buy any shares, you'll have a negligible say in the direction the company takes in the future.

We'd like to take this chance to put in our 140 characters. Okay, more like 600 words, in this case.

Though an excellent resource for news, jokes and information, Twitter is imperfect. Below, we've listed eight areas the site could improve upon before and after its IPO.


Do you agree with our list? What would you change about Twitter? Make your case in the comments below.
1. Get rid of conversation lines.


Image: Screenshot, Twitter



Conversation lines, Twitter's late August update, have faced a hugely negative response from users and the press. Twitter likely added the feature as a navigation improvement for newcomers, but it feels like a fundamental shift in the network's purpose.

We'd like to see Twitter put a lid on this experiment and return to the unobtrusive "View Conversation" button.
2. Scheduled tweets.

While users can schedule tweets through third party services like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, we don't see why Twitter doesn't allow for it on-site.
3. Show platforms again.

Twitter no longer displays the platforms from which users posted their tweets. This feature was useful as a platform discovery tool — seeing what tools popular accounts used to manage their social presences. We'd like to see it again.
4. Access drafts on desktop.

Drafts: because sometimes the world just isn't ready for your hilarious tweet — yet. The ability to save drafts and access them later is one of the best features of Twitter's mobile app. For some reason, though, drafts are inaccessible on the desktop version. We'd like to see an on-site desktop drafts feature in the future.
5. Bring back Instagram-friendly Twitter cards.


Image: Screenshot, Twitter



Remember when Instagrams automatically displayed when you expanded a tweet? We miss that.

While the cut-off purportedly had nothing to do with Facebook's purchase of Instagram, Twitter was the only site on which photo displaying was disabled. We'd like the companies to make up, reinstate this feature and beautify our feeds as soon as possible.
6. Search by location.

Twitter's search function has improved exponentially since the company acquired Summize in 2008. However, there is still room for more innovation. One possible path? Allow users to perform location-based searches. If you're looking for local information, location-based searches would eliminate the need for lengthy, bizarre "event hashtags."
7. Chronology over curation.

Twitter search results, by default, filter by "top" posts. We're fine with curation as an option, but the huge benefit of Twitter is seeing information chronologically in real time. We want Twitter to make the chronological "all" filter the default choice.
8. Update "Trends."

Twitter's "Trends" tool may boast a ton of locations, but it is not at all user-friendly. The only way to view trending topics from different locations is to manually select them individually, each time, from a pop-up screen. We'd like a place for trends in settings, which allows you to select multiple, custom locations at once. That way, we don't have to continuously switch back and forth.

Image: Flickr, Garrett Heath

How to Build a LinkedIn Marketing Plan that Delivers Ongoing Results

Are you happy with how you are using LinkedIn?

LinkedIn offers companies multiple marketing opportunities, but which ones are right for your business?

In this article I’ll show you five different ways to use LinkedIn to market your business.
How do you do start?

You’ll want to develop a comprehensive and consistent LinkedIn marketing plan for your business to achieve long-term, sustainable success.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a large corporate brand or a small business, you can build a comprehensive LinkedIn marketing strategy on a scale that suits your needs and objectives.


Social Media Examiner strategy on LinkedIn includes updating the business page regularly.

In order to have success with LinkedIn, you’ll need to make a long-term commitment to your plan. A strategy that delivers results requires ongoing management, monitoring, analysis, and adjustments.

Remember to assess your resources first and determine what you’re willing to commit with regard to people, time and dollars. An ongoing commitment to your strategy ensures you stay on track toward achieving your company goals.

Here are 5 LinkedIn marketing ideas your business can integrate into your comprehensive marketing program.
#1: Build a Robust Company Page on LinkedIn

To create a business presence on LinkedIn and gain access to additional features that enhance your visibility, you must build a LinkedIn company page.

Think of your LinkedIn company page as an extension of your business website within LinkedIn and use it to display compelling graphics, add products and services, even include job opportunities.

Invite existing employees, clients or customers, vendors and partners to follow your page, and showcase it to relevant LinkedIn members and encourage them to follow by using LinkedIn’s paid targeted advertising.

If it’s appropriate and/or allowable, ask key clients or customers to recommend your products and services on your LinkedIn company page. These recommendations show up on your page for everyone to see, and serve as powerful testimonials for your business.

Filling your LinkedIn company page with compelling and interesting status updates about your industry or business requires ongoing management, but it’s the most effective way to grow followers for your page and increase your company’s visibility. As you grow your following, remember to segment your members and target them with more relevant updates.

HubSpot, a marketing software company for medium-sized businesses, has amassed a company page following of over 40,000 people on LinkedIn as well as 272 product recommendations from members. Those are some powerful stats.

Each time HubSpot shares an update on its LinkedIn company page, it has the potential to engage over 40,000 people who further amplify the company’s visibility on LinkedIn!


HubSpot has built a powerful and active LinkedIn company page.

For further reading on LinkedIn company pages, check out these articles:
A step-by-step guide on how to optimize your LinkedIn company page
Learn about 5 creative ways companies are using LinkedIn pages

As you launch and grow your visibility, LinkedIn company page stats provide you with valuable insights about your followers, engagement, clicks and more!


An example of LinkedIn company page engagement insights.

It doesn’t matter if you have a small business or you represent a large corporate brand, a LinkedIn company page is a critical digital asset for your business and serves as the anchor of your LinkedIn foundation.
#2: Launch a LinkedIn Group Based on Your Company or Industry

LinkedIn groups are still going strong and are another component of a comprehensive strategy that helps position your company as an industry thought leader.

The most successful groups focus on gaining relevant members with common goals, and they are managed very well. To implement a successful LinkedIn group strategy, assign the role of primary group manager/moderator to someone who pre-approves discussion posts, asks great questions and determines which members get accepted into the group.


Social Media Examiner created a dynamic community on LinkedIn with the Social Media Marketing Networking Club.

When you launch your LinkedIn group, be sure to get the word out organically to employees, clients and customers, vendors, partners and influencers in your industry. Identify top influencers and have them serve as group ambassadors to help recruit members and to lead interesting discussions to keep your group active.

Self-service ads are also available from LinkedIn as a paid strategy for increasing visibility of your group and growing your membership numbers.

With a LinkedIn group, you have the ability to message your members once a week. These messages go directly to their email inboxes and are a great way todeliver special promotions or campaigns to them.

To position yourself as an industry thought leader to your members, foster a healthy community within your LinkedIn group through engaging discussions and add value by offering up compelling content your company creates.

A company that has done a fantastic job with their LinkedIn group (launched in partnership with LinkedIn) is Citi. They’ve successfully launched a Professional Women’s Network Group on LinkedIn. Although they do have a marketing partnership with LinkedIn, it doesn’t mean you’ll need to play at this level, but you can certainly model your group after Citi’s or any of the other LinkedIn corporate-sponsored groups.

Watch this video to learn more about Citi’s experience with LinkedIn groups and how the community is thriving.



Examples of other corporate LinkedIn groups include: Intuit (small business group),Staples (small business network) and Capital One (business traveler network).

To help you keep track of member demographics, growth and activity, stats are available for all public LinkedIn groups.


An example of the LinkedIn group stats overview.
#3: Create an “All Hands on Deck” Ongoing Thought Leadership Program

Although you’ll need to designate specific company employees or partners to help implement and maintain your comprehensive LinkedIn marketing strategy, getting all employees involved and on the same page is critical to success.

Your company’s position on LinkedIn starts at the top and when the business owner(s) or executives buy into the strategy, it sets the example for the entire company.


The success of your LinkedIn page also depends on how well your employees use LinkedIn's features. Image source: iStockPhoto.

When everyone from your company is involved on LinkedIn, it creates an extended network that amplifies your company’s presence and industry thought leadership.

Get your employees and stakeholders excited about LinkedIn and make the experience meaningful for them by attaching it to their professional goals.

Provide them with training on how to build a robust LinkedIn profile, how to represent your firm on the network and how to utilize LinkedIn to achieve their business goals. Teach them the benefits of expanding their own professional networks.

Then help your employees and stakeholders become active on LinkedIn. Provide them with an ongoing supply of interesting, compelling thought leadership content from your company. Consider allowing your team members to edit the content to suit their personal style when they share it with their respective networks.

Imagine…100 or even 1000 of your employees sharing content produced by your company 2-3 times per week! Talk about massive impact on growing the reach of your business!
#4: Leverage Paid LinkedIn Content Ads and Sponsored Updates

While LinkedIn social ads grow company page followers and group membership, there are additional ads run on LinkedIn that drive clicks to your website, or preferably to a specified landing page.


Be sure to check out the options LinkedIn has to offer you.

LinkedIn does partner with larger brands on sponsored programs, but for most businesses, these programs are beyond the typical marketing budget. If you’d like torun social ad campaigns to increase your company page followers, group members or even drive offsite traffic and lead conversions, you’re most likely better off using the self-service tools LinkedIn makes available to companies on the network.

As you develop and run ad campaigns or sponsored updates on LinkedIn, make sure you test to see which ads are most efficient and effective for your business.

Link to a LinkedIn Ads Post?

You’ve probably noticed numerous banner ads on LinkedIn that are designed to have members click through to company websites. Unfortunately, many times there’s no specific call to action on the landing page the ad leads to, which is a waste of ad dollars!

Make sure the landing page attached to your banner or text ad includes a relevant offer with clear instructions on what people should do to access your offer.

Janus Investments did a great job with this in one of their recent LinkedIn ads. The ad was clear on the benefit they were offering, and upon clicking through and landing on the page, the offer was simple to access.


Janus Investments LinkedIn banner ad.


Janus Investments LinkedIn ad landing page.

Paid Company-Sponsored Updates

Company-sponsored updates are only run by company pages, and are designed to boost visibility with your company page followers and others on the network.

Sponsored updates appear in LinkedIn member homepage news feeds and look like any other native update, except they’re marked as “Sponsored.” Although they’re fairly new, they’re showing some promising results.


Example of a company-sponsored update in the LinkedIn homepage news feed.

Learn more about how to take advantage of LinkedIn sponsored updates for your own company page.
#5: Monitor, Track, Adjust

Before you begin to build out your comprehensive LinkedIn marketing strategy,decide what your business goals are. The success of your comprehensive LinkedIn marketing strategy is measured by whether you achieve your goals.

By implementing the above strategies together, you’ll be able to:
Increase your company’s position as a strategic thought leader in your industry
Grow company awareness, engagement and reach
Generate qualified leads for your business

Beyond these benefits, it’s important to define specific metrics for measurement of your strategy that are consistent with your company goals.

Are you looking to achieve greater brand visibility (impressions) with your target markets, engage with existing and potential customers (likes, comments, shares), increase external website traffic (clicks), convert new leads (opt-ins) or all of the above? Once you get clear on your goals, define and measure the metrics that are consistent with those goals.

While LinkedIn provides insights and statistics for company pages, groups and paid advertising, tracking your efforts through your own website analytics program is essential. The traffic referred to your site from LinkedIn, new leads generated and new clients or customers are the ultimate measure of the impact to your bottom line.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is a very powerful platform for growing the reach of your business and attracting new clients or customers. It also presents a terrific opportunity to stay top of mind with employees, customers, vendors, partners and industry influencers.

The time to launch your LinkedIn company marketing strategy is now, and a comprehensive approach helps you maximize the business benefits. If you’re unable tolaunch the fully comprehensive approach outlined above, make a plan toimplement each strategy in phases.

What do you think? Do you have a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy?Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

How to Schedule a Facebook Post

Another Facebook platform change? Actually there are a lot of recent changes Facebook has implemented. If you’re a Community Manager, Page owner, Brand or Business on Facebook, then you no doubt have noticed some of these changes. Below is the first article in a series that reviews recent Facebook changes along with information on how to use the new features.

Finally –The Ability to Schedule Facebook Posts

One of the biggest frustrations with the Facebook platform for Community Managers was the inability to schedule posts directly from Facebook. To get around this, many used tools like HootSuite, Social Oomph or BuddyMedia –all of which allow you to pre-schedule Facebook content (though some charge fees) and its been reported that using a third party tool to schedule Facebook content can have a negative impact on your Facebook Edgerank (the likelihood of your post showing up in your Fan’s news stream).

Recently, Facebook added the ability to pre or post schedule posts…and it’s free!

How to Schedule a Facebook Post:

Scheduling posts is easy, once you know where to go.

1.  On your Page (or Profile), click in the content area to enter a post.

2. You will see a small clock appear just below the post area  in the lower left hand corner.

3.  Click on the clock. Select the year, month, date and time for your post to publish.

4.  Click schedule.

You can schedule a post up to 6 months in advance in 15-minute intervals according toFacebook.

You can even go back in time: If you choose a date in the past, the post will appear immediately at the appropriate place on your Page’s timeline. All times correspond to the current time zone you’re in.

How to View or Manage your Scheduled Facebook Posts:

You can view any scheduled posts by clicking on the Admin Panel.

1. Click on Edit Page in the Admin Panel.

2.  Select “Use Activity Log” from the drop down menu.

3.  Your scheduled posts will appear at the top. From there you can change the time, publish now, reschedule your post or delete it. Unfortunately you cannot edit the post; you will have to delete it and start over.

Is this a useful feature to you? Have you scheduled any content back in time?

14 Social Media Tools Used by Marketing Pros

Are you looking for social media tools to get more out of your marketing?

Are you wondering what tools marketing pros are using successfully?

We asked fourteen well-known marketers to share the latest social media tools they’ve been using.

Discover how you can use these tools to help you to get more out of your social media marketing.
#1: Mention


Todd Wheatland

Mention was developed as a user-friendly replacement for Google Alerts. They’re a textbook example of how to build a platform by doing one thing better than anyone else.

As well as being an absolute joy to use, it captures so many more, ahem, ‘mentions’ online than any other platform I’ve used that it’s become my #1 go-to social mention reference tool.

There are many clever things behind the way Mention is set up. They’ve taken the Apple approach to clean and simple UI to give you great functionality as a default and the power to modify settings to really hone in on what’s important to your circumstances.


Mention provides clean and simple functionality.

Apart from doing a fantastic job of identifying online mentions, some of my favorite features are:
Simple controls to turn specific sources off—but still be able to monitor them in the spam folder in case you mis-classify something.
Default alert emails that take you straight to source, rather than forcing an extra step by taking you to the Mention platform.




You can see how many online mentions you have in the left-hand column.

Of course, with success, they’re quickly adding features—including an enterprise-level offering—that will make them seem increasingly like a lot of the more established players in the social tools space. So far though, they’ve done a great job of maintaining simplicity and delivering on their core offering.

Todd Wheatland, head of thought leadership at Kelly Services.
#2: Addvocate


Jay Baer

My favorite new social media tool is Addvocate. I like it so much, I invested in the company and joined their board.

Addvocate solves a very common problem in social media, which is the need to decentralize your messengers. Almost always, the employees in your company have more social connections (combined) than the company does for its official social media outposts.

Thus, smart companies need to find ways to ask employees to occasionally share relevant information on their personal accounts. Amber Naslund and I wrote about this in The NOW Revolution, and recommended a “message of the day” email that is sent to all social media–active employees.

Addvocate takes that concept and makes it much, much better. Employees install a simple browser plugin that enables them to receive content recommendations from a centralized marketing team, while also enabling them to recommend content to the marketing team and to one another. The marketing team then gets detailed statistics showing which employees are sharing content on social, how many clicks and engagement actions each employee is generating, etc.


Addvocate enables you to share content with colleagues.

It’s an incredibly easy-to-use, remarkably inexpensive (just a few dollars per month) social media tool that removes the pain of teamwork and content sharing/distribution. I use it constantly to share potential topics for inclusion in our daily email newsletter.

Jay Baer, founder of Convince & Convert.
#3: Swayy


Jamie Turner

The best new tool I’ve seen in many months is called Swayy. It’s a platform that drops interesting content into a dashboard where you can scan or read the most interesting articles.

The best feature isn’t the fact that the articles are dropped right in front of your nose. The best feature is the sharing.


Swayy finds you the best content to share with your target audience.

At the bottom of each article, you can click the “share” button and it automatically opens up your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

With the click of a button, you’re able to share articles across multiple platforms. Plus, you can schedule your sharing times well in advance. That way, you’re able to share multiple articles across multiple platforms multiple times a day. Brilliant!

Jamie Turner, founder of the 60 Second Marketer.
#4: eGrabber’s Account-Researcher


Viveka Von Rosen

One of the reasons LinkedIn works so well is that it tells us exactly how we’re related to the people in our network and the best ways of communicating with them (messages, invitations, introductions and InMails, in that order).

LinkedIn’s limitation is with the folks who fall outside of our network; especially if we don’t have $10 for each InMail we want to send. Another limitation is that LinkedIn is increasingly hiding our connections from us. First taking away last name, then whole name and picture altogether!

Let me start by saying eGrabber Account-Researcher is NOT a free tool. You can get a free trial, but it’s so incredibly powerful for researching prospects that it’s absolutely worth the $80 a month fee. Can you eventually find the same info on Google with the right algorithms? Yes. Will it take you hours and hours to yield results that aren’t as comprehensive? Yes. Is your time worth more than that? YES!

Essentially, Account-Researcher gets through LinkedIn’s restrictions to betterresearch and find a prospect’s contact and company information.


Account-Researcher helps you research a prospect.

It cuts prospect research time down to a few minutes and will help you:
Find missing emails and phone numbers of prospects when you have only their name and company.
Quickly qualify a company and build a list of key decision-makers that includes name, title, email, phone and social media footprint.
Get talking points from news, patents, blogs, press releases and other sources for pre-call prospect research.




A quick way to find decision-makers within a company.

LinkedIn isn’t about selling your stuff. It’s about finding and engaging with people, developing that feeling of “knowing, liking and trusting.” And once you’ve established a relationship with the person, you can move to the next stage in the game. The more you know about prospects, the better your chance of getting to that next stage.

The power of LinkedIn is that it helps us connect with real people in real life. We need to go old school. Do searches, do research and then pick up the phone! Account-Researcher makes that MUCH easier.

Viveka von Rosen, author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day, host of #LinkedInChat and co-moderator of LinkedStrategies.
#5: Compfight


Rich Brooks

Photos are a great way to engage people on your blog and draw them into your post. They also grab attention when someone shares your blog post on Facebook or another social media channel. Unfortunately, good photography can cost a lot of money, and with regular blogging, the investment can add up fast. Enter Compfight.

Compfight searches Flickr’s photos that have the appropriate Creative Commons license for Commercial Use.


Compfight is a great tool when searching for an image for a blog post.

Do a quick search for ideas, objects, emotions—whatever will best represent the idea in your blog post. Compfight will even provide you with the HTML code for proper attribution. (Yes, you need to give attribution to the photographer, but that’s a small price to pay!)

If you’re blogging regularly but working on a shoestring budget, be sure to give Compfight a try!

Rich Brooks, president of flyte new media, a web design and Internet marketing company that helps small businesses succeed online.
#6: Tagboard


Kim Garst

Tagboard is my new cool social media tool. To describe it simply, Tagboard is a way to monitor keywords (a.k.a. hashtags) across multiple social media channels.

To monitor conversations that revolve around specific hashtags on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and Vine, Tagboard pulls in content from all of these sites based on a specified hashtag and creates a custom board filled with content from all platforms.

Why Is it Useful?

1. Brand monitoring. It’s useful to anyone who monitors their own brand or other people’s brands as a part of their business. It is especially useful for small business owners who do not want to invest in social media monitoring.

2. Content Curation. It’s a great way to find content around a specific topic. For example, if you want to find out what others are saying about breaking industry news, search by keyword(s) and find articles, conversations, etc. Once you conduct the search, narrow the focus to a single social media platform. In other words, view just tweets with that specific hashtag. You can even reply to the conversations right from within Tagboard!


You can reply to the conversation.

3. Real-time Leads at Your Fingertips! Suppose you’re a realtor in Miami and you’re looking to connect with people who are moving to Miami. Search for real-time conversations that are taking place on multiple social media platforms using targeted keywords such as #MovingToMiami. Connect, share some valuable info and start working on building a relationship that will lead to a potential sale.


Search for real-time conversation around targeted keywords.

Best of all, it’s a free tool! Check it out!

Kim Garst, CEO of Boom Social.
#7: ManageFlitter


Stephanie Sammons

A cool social media tool that has helped me get a better handle on effectively managing my Twitter account is ManageFlitter.

As you’re probably aware, Twitter can be very noisy! A tool that can help you manage your account while growing your following with the right people is very valuable. The ManageFlitter motto is “Work Faster and Smarter with Twitter.”

ManageFlitter integrates with your Twitter account to help you effectively:
Find relevant people to follow and connect with by searching Twitter bios, locations and keywords
Unfollow inactive accounts, spam accounts (you can force them to unfollow you as well) or accounts with no profile images
Schedule and post tweets at optimal times when your followers are most likely to see your updates
Monitor keywords, hashtags, usernames and even websites mentioned on Twitter
Get analytics on your Twitter account

Although some of the above features are paid, you can sign up for a free account and get access to basic features for testing the service. The Pro Plan for more robust individual users is $12/month.


ManageFlitter has several price plans to choose from.

One caveat with ManageFlitter or any Twitter-based tool that can help you manage your account is to understand Twitter’s following rules and best practices. Ultimately you’re responsible for adhering to these rules. ManageFlitter has been working with Twitter for over 3 years and they’ve helped almost 2 million users.

I would recommend using ManageFlitter to build a more relevant following, keep your account cleaned up and prioritize quality over quantity!

Stephanie Sammons, founder and CEO of Wired Advisor.
#8: Socialbakers


Stephanie Shkolnik

Socialbakers has an effective tool called Analytics Pro, which provides an understanding of how your brand stacks up against your competitors, specifically across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube—for now.

The simple interface allows you to input a social media channel and gain insights into engagement rates and channel growth, and understand which contributors from your social communities are most active, providing an opportunity to build relationships and enable continued advocacy.


Check out how your brand compares to others in your niche.

An otherwise painfully manual process, this tool also allows you to see how you’re performing against your competitors to learn which campaigns, content and influencers are driving the most effective conversations.

While Socialbakers is a paid tool, a trial period will impress you and show decision-makers how much more effectively your time will be spent on reporting, gaining insights and informing social strategy.

Stephanie Shkolnik, social media director at Digitaria.
#9: Post Planner


Ian Cleary

Post Planner is a content management tool that runs as an application within Facebook. What’s great about Post Planner is that in addition to providing the ability to schedule content, it also provides fantastic facilities for sourcing and adding content to your queue for later posting.

You can search a database of thousands of status updates on a range of general topics, find content that’s trending in your niche or add Facebook pages, Twitter accounts or blogs and easily add content to your queue from these sources.


You can easily add content to your queue.

It also provides real-time analytics on posts, so you immediately see what’s working and not working.

Post Planner is a time saver, enabling you to plan and manage your Facebook content in advance, rather than doing it off the cuff.

Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial.
#10: Komfo


Neal Schaffer

There are a lot of Facebook page analytic tools and social media dashboards that include Facebook analysis.

A problem with some of these tools is that they try to do so much that it’s hard to gain simple-to-understand, meaningful insight about your Facebook content strategy from them. Others just provide a lot of data, some in better-looking forms than others, without offering any other handholding as to how that data can be utilized to improve your Facebook engagement.

That’s why it was refreshing to discover a new free Facebook page analytics toolfrom Komfo—a company claiming to be “the leading tool provider in the Nordics within the Social Media Marketing space.”

Komfo provides analysis with additional handholding to help you analyze your Facebook content based on the following types of analytics:
Fan Penetration: In essence, this is EdgeRank—a figure that shows what percentage of your fans you’re reaching with each post. If the average EdgeRank on Facebook is said to be 16%, you can easily see an average from your last 30 days’ posts up to a maximum of 100. Of course, you can drill down into each post to see which is working for better or worse.
Viral Amplification: Don’t be fooled by comparing this to the “viral” analytics provided by Facebook Insights. That number only looks at the percentage of People Talking About This compared to your total fan base. While that’s a nice number to know, wouldn’t you like to know the viral reach of each of your posts as compared to its organic reach? This is exactly what this data shows you for each post, with anything over 1.0 being considered “viral” (i.e., more people saw this post in a news feed via viral reach as compared to organic reach).
CTR: Once again, although the total number of click-throughs are provided in Insights as “Engaged Users,” Komfo takes it one step further and gives you a click-through ratio for each post as a percentage of how many people saw the post.
Spam Score: We all know that negative feedback from your fans can have a heavy impact on your EdgeRank. Unfortunately, with the current implementation of Insights, you need to dig deep into seeing the “Engaged Users” for each post to check for mention of negative feedback. Komfo’s tool conveniently shows the ratio of negative feedback as a percentage of total clicks.




Komfo is a great tool to help you analyze your Facebook content.

The tool also includes the “People Talking About This” number, which they call “Stories,” as well as overall Reach. Another welcome feature is the ability to send an email and give others access to your report online without Facebook authorization. This is a nice touch that makes the tool even more useful for large and distributed teams.

Neal Schaffer, founder of Maximize Social Business.
#11: Rignite


Andrea Vahl

An interesting tool I recently discovered is Rignite, which helpsmonitor several social media platforms—including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube—from one place. It was just launched in April and they will be adding features and other social networks.

The best thing about the tool is the team aspect of this product. You can have forums and chats within the tool, and assign tasks to people on the team. So this works well for teams of 3-6 people who are managing the same accounts.

They have tracking and insights incorporated into the dashboard.


You can monitor your fan base within the dashboard.

This tool will become even more valuable as they add some of the features they have planned to help monitor your social media contacts more closely. While the tool works well right now for monitoring and posting to your accounts for a team of people, I think this will be one to watch as it evolves!

Andrea Vahl, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies, uses her improv comedy skills to blog as Grandma Mary, Social Media Edutainer.
#12: SocialOomph


Jeff Bullas

One of the coolest social media marketing tools that I’ve discovered and used is SocialOomph.

The challenge for most bloggers and social media marketers is not just creating the content, but also distributing it. Twitter is a great social media network to assist you with sharing your content to your followers, but having to tweet constantly is time-consuming.

SocialOomph (professional edition, which costs about $25 a month) allows you to not only load and schedule tweets, you can also make them recurring, saving you the onerous and time-consuming task of ongoing scheduling.

Load your tweets once, then set and forget.


SocialOomph is useful for scheduling evergreen content.

SocialOomph lets you load up to 500 unique tweets and the major benefit is that it saves me about 25-30 hours a week, or 100-120 hours per month, of ongoing tweet scheduling!

Jeff Bullas, blogger, author, strategist and speaker.
#13: Zapier


Paul Colligan

Zapier has changed the social media marketing game for me in the most dramatic of ways. This service connects systems in ways once only possible with a massive programming budget.

You can say things across the social networks like “text your email to (503) 405-4415 to get the free video (or just leave a message if you don’t have texting)” and have that sync automatically with whatever email system you’re using (from MailChimp to AWeber) and/or with any CRM you run (from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Salesforce).


You can automate tasks among online services.

Zapier also automatically generates a Google spreadsheet for you that tracks every time a certain keyword is mentioned in Twitter and makes it possible for you toautomatically send selected Facebook Posts to your blog. In addition, when you do a webcast (paid or otherwise) through Eventbrite, all of the information collected is integrated into everything else you’re doing (I leverage everything they offer to make my event as social as possible).

The possibilities are endless, and you should see the running list of integration ideas I have.

At the time I write this, Zapier brags of 233 web services integrated. I’m sure they’ll add more before this piece is published. With Zapier, social is now one big ecosystem, and I’m thrilled to play in it.

Paul Colligan, director of content marketing at Instant Customer.
#14: FixYourFunnel and Mobivity


Beth Hayden

Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to attend a live workshop given by the fabulous Pam Slim (author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, and a world-renowned business coach). At the end of Pam’s talk, she told the audience that she had a handout for us.

Pam surprised me by announcing a phone number and saying “Text your name and email address to that number, and I’ll send you the handout.” I could see people whipping out their phones so they could text her. There were no messy sign-up sheets and people could follow her instructions on the spot—and she got their email addresses right away, so she could follow up with possible leads.

I had never seen anyone utilize text messages for that purpose, and thought it was a great idea, so I followed up with Pam later and asked her how she pulled off this cool process. She recommended two tools: FixYourFunnel (an Infusionsoft-specific tool) and Mobivity.


Utilize text messages for your business.


Avoid messy sign-up sheets and use a text messaging service instead.

As a consultant and author who does regular public speaking and training, I can’t wait to integrate these smart mobile marketing tools into my sales process and see the results I get!

Beth Hayden, author of Pinfluence, a speaker and social media expert.
Who are these social media pros?




The social media marketing experts who contributed to this article are all speaking at the Social Media Success Summit.



Social Media Success Summit 2013 is a live online conference that will empower you to use social media to gain more exposure, increase traffic, cultivate loyal fans and grow your business. More than 45 of the world’s leading social media pros will show you how. The event is spread over four weeks in October.

Join nearly 3,000 fellow marketers at the online mega-conference designed to empower and inspire you with social media marketing tactics—brought to you by Social Media Examiner.
Why should you attend Social Media Success Summit?

You’ll hear from 45+ of the world’s top social media marketing pros as they reveal their newest social media marketing tips and practical, real-world, proven examples.

You’ll be able to take your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, blogging, podcasting and video marketing to an entirely new level.

What do you think? Do you use any of these social media tactics? What’s working well for you today? Please share your thoughts in the box below.