Web Design, Digital & Social Media Marketing in Singapore

LinkedIn made easy

// June 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

photo credits : Binkiexxx

One of the most asked questions from my clients – What’s LinkedIn and how it can benefit my business?

If you use Facebook to connect to friends, you can use LinkedIn to connect to business associates. LinkedIn is a social networking site where an individual creates an online profile of his/her professional resume. With that profile, he/she then connects to someone in LinkedIn and through that network, establish new job opportunities or business opportunities.

Within your network of business contacts, you can recommend or as to be introduced to other contacts. LinkedIn allows users to also create and join groups. Within these groups, users can discuss and share ideas on the specific topics.

Here are some ways that you can use LinkedIn to leverage on your career or business:-

Join groups and get involved in discussions

Participate in discussion within groups that are related to a your industry. It is through this participation that you inherit new ideas and also made yourself known. In your discussion, you have the opportunity to be heard, make relevant references to your blog posts and even use case studies in your business to reinforce a point you are making. If you are doing it right, you will be able to increase the visibility of your business and brand, generate sales leads, drive traffic to your websites and even enhance your SEO efforts.

Set up a company profile

A properly crafted company profile page will open your company to attract potential candidates. Add links to your company’s blog, facebook group, twitter account, etc. Your digital footprint is something that you can leverage on to attract talents, at the same time, give your potential clients a feel of your corporate culture.

You may want to know before jumping in…

There are a few issues you may want to keep in mind before launching a campaign on LinkedIn.

Confidential corporate information – Similar to any online social media networks, the risk corporate information leaking is real. That risk is multiplied if there is a huge number of employees in LinkedIn. You may want to communicate some simple house rules for employees to aid them in understanding what’s considered ‘confidential’.

Poaching – It is known that recruiters use LinkedIn and other professional networking sites to headhunt potential candidates for their assignments. You may also want to know even without LinkedIn, poaching and headhunting still exists.

You are want you posted - Again, like any social networking, you are what you post. Your corporate culture is also reflected based on how you ‘behave’ on LinkedIn. Be mindful that you are being watched by potential employers, clients and more importantly, your BOSS!

Have fun!

Social Media Optimization

// May 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Digital Marketing

photo credit – oneredpanther
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We heard about SEO – Search Engine Optimization all the time. How about ensuring your digital strategy is social media optimized too? SMO should be a natural part of your digital strategy. The challenges that we face in embracing social media as marketing tools is uncertainity in results. Here are some principles that I subscribe to when working with social media.

It starts with 2-way conversation.

Social media is about establishing a relationship. A relationship that is built from conversations – 2 way communications, to be precise. Ask questions, answer questions, share thoughts, discuss, co-create. Relationships are built like this offline too. This is the key difference between traditional media where it is 1-way.

Forget about quantity. Focus on quality.

I am sick of followers on Twitter that follows you, hoping that you will reciprocate and follow back. They are doing this just to increase the number of followers. The question is so what you have 10,000 followers? Can you boost that you can influence them with your thoughts? Sway them into making a buying decision? or simply that you can reach them with whatever messages that you think you want them to hear? That’s using marketing 1.0 methods in a web 2.0 world. It beats to have 10 followers that engages with you on a constant basis that to have 10,000 whom never even care to read about your tweets. Quality please.

Forget about viral

Viral is a natural product of correct content for the correct audience. Having ’share this with someone wouldn’t work if your content does not connect at all. Don’t harp on viral. Work on what your audiences want. Viral will come.

Set realistic goals and take little steps at a time

Social media is not the gateway to reach out to entire online population. Don’t expect phenomenon results like what you read in the papers about how successful Dell has used Twitter to increase sales of their boxes. They probably take much more time in planning, executing and tweaking before it works for them. Take little steps and keep the team motivated.

Be patient & enjoy.