Taking Advantage of LinkedIn: Events and Status Updates

Hosting a corporate event?  Do you have big news within your company that you’d like to share? LinkedIn can be a great resource for promoting events or news within your online professional community.

To create corporate events or share status updates, you’ll need a personal profile and/or a company page. To set these up, follow our “how-to” guides here. If you’ve already got an established follower/connection base on LinkedIn, great! Take advantage of this network by spreading the word about the goings on within your corporate world.

LinkedIn events are simple enough to set up. After you’ve signed in to your LinkedIn account, find the “More” link located on the top toolbar.

Click to open the dropdown menu, and then select “Events” to access the LinkedIn Events page. You’ll find a section entitled “Events You May Be Interested In,” which may include events that your colleagues or connections are participating in or hosting. On the right hand side of the page, underneath the search bar, you’ll find a link to “Create Your Event on LinkedIn.”

Click this button and follow the prompts to create your event. You can upload a photo, provide details and a brief description, and “share” this event with all of your LinkedIn connections in the form of a status update. Much like Facebook events, your connections and followers can RSVP to your event via LinkedIn.

LinkedIn also offers a shortened URL for your event page, which will make it even easier to promote and market your meeting, webinar, party, open house, etc. You’ll find the button to shorten the URL on the lower right hand side of your event home page (you’ll be directed here in the final stage of the event set-up). Use this shortened URL in your email blasts, tweets, etc. to request RSVP’s and to promote your corporate functions.

Find our corporate LinkedIn page here and stay tuned for updates. We’d love to link up!

LinkedIn102: Building a Company Profile

Once you’ve got a personal LinkedIn page (see Blog Post #5 for information on how to set this up), you may want to add your company’s profile to the site. Be sure to use the “search” feature at the top of your home page to check if your company already has a page before you go through the process of creating one!

There are several reasons you might want to set up your company’s profile on LinkedIn. First and foremost, LinkedIn is a valuable resource if you are trying to attract new talent to your company or if you are looking to hire. It can also be a great source for locating new clients and suppliers, etc., as people often search through their LinkedIn contacts when looking for a product or service. Additionally, once your company profile is live, LinkedIn will actually collect and combine info about your company from around the site. For example, LinkedIn will automatically calculate information such as your company’s median age (as per the company’s activity on LinkedIn) and detect other companies with whom yours is well connected.

To set up your company or business on LinkedIn, visit the “Companies” menu and hit “Add Company.” You must provide your work email address and company name in order to initiate this set-up process.

Once you have confirmed your work email (LinkedIn will send a message to your email account), you can enter basic company info such as a brief description, number of employees, industry, etc. You will also be able to add a company logo (highly recommended), locations, website, and a feed for your company’s blog, if applicable. It is also possible to link your Twitter feed to your LinkedIn account. Find a step-by-step tutorial on how to do this here.

If you want to get really fancy, LinkedIn also offers a product for premium, paid accounts called “Custom Company Profiles.” This feature allows you to add information such as corporate videos, interactive polls and more. Generally speaking, this feature is more applicable for larger companies and corporations. For a small business, a basic LinkedIn company profile will generally suffice.

Visit Instant Social Media on LinkedIn here, or by clicking the “LinkedIn” icon at the top of this email.

Last but certainly not least, HAPPY HOLIDAYS to all of our fans, friends & followers! We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and a fantastic New Year!

Stay In The Loop: Get Linked Up on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most popular professional networking site, boasting over 100 million users worldwide, and one of the top four social media platforms, along with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

LinkedIn is simple to manage and doesn’t require the time commitments for Facebook or Twitter. Once you’ve completed your profile with a photo, your work and education experience, and basic personal information, there is very little maintenance required other than seeking out connections. Simply sign up at www.linkedin.com, confirm your email, and begin filling out your work experience. You can directly upload your resume from a word document to make this process easier. Be sure to include your company website, Facebook page, etc. under the “Websites” section of your profile. Choose a professional photo for your profile picture. Then, begin seeking out connections via the “search” feature.

LinkedIn IS:
-A great way to seek out professional connections, ask for recommendations, find potential employers or employees, find interns, etc.

-The go-to online source for professional networking.

LinkedIn IS NOT:
-The place to post photos of your dog, family, or what you made for dinner. Keep this kind of info limited to Facebook and Twitter.

A word to the wise: If you link your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, all of your tweets will appear on your connections’ newsfeeds on LinkedIn. In short, if you plan on linking these sites, make sure you are only tweeting things you’d want your boss to read!

To link your Twitter account to LinkedIn, go to www.linkedin.com/twitter and click the “Get Started” button. You will be directed through the steps of this process. Note that you must have “public” settings on your Twitter account (and not “locked” or “private” settings for your tweets) for this feature to work.

Next week, we will be touching on some of the changes that are coming to Facebook and the new “Timeline” profile design that will be rolling out in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Social Media and Why Your Business Needs It

Welcome to Instant Social University, your go-to guide for all things social media! Class is officially in session. Consider this first post your “syllabus,” touching on the topics that we will be covering throughout the course of this blog.

Have you noticed the influx of “thumbs up” Facebook icons that have popped up everywhere lately? On your restaurant menus, at the grocery store, on local and national news stations, even in your attorney or realtor’s office? How many times have you heard the phrase “’Like’ us on Facebook!” or “Follow us on Twitter!” in the past several months? These are just a few signs of the pervasiveness of social media.

   

Social media has become much more than a mere fad amongst college students. It is a new way of communicating, socializing, and – more and more – conducting business.  Facebook now has over 870 million users, a staggering figure. This online community has enormous potential for your business, brand, and ultimately your bottom line. But to take advantage of all the benefits that Facebook and other social media sites have to offer, you’ve got to learn to walk before you can run.

In this blog, we will be covering the basics of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as how your business can utilize Foursquare, Yelp, YouTube, Google+, blogging, etc. We will also be providing updates on what’s new in the world of social media, the latest and greatest toys, gadgets and apps that will keep you connected, tricks of the trade, secrets on how to grow your Facebook & Twitter Fans and Followers, how to successfully manage an online Facebook ad campaign and more. ISU is your resource for how to get the ball rolling and for maximizing your social media efforts.

It wouldn’t be “Back to School” without homework, so take a few moments to answer these questions, or at least give them some thought:

• What is my business/team’s ultimate goal through social media? Do we want to simply increase brand recognition or create a community?

• Which social media sites am I most interested in? Which resources work best for my particular business/company?

• How much time am I willing to dedicate to my social media campaign? Do I need to hire a professional (like ISM) to handle it?

Make sure to check out this blog as well as our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/InstantSocialMediaCo. And feel free to ask us any questions via comment, post, or email stephanie@instantsocialmediaco.com. Our next post will deal with the basics of Facebook in “Facebook 101.” Until next week, class dismissed!