Keep track of your LinkedIn updates

LinkedIn changes at such a rapid pace that I sometimes notice something different but can’t quite put my finger on what it is or wonder how long I have failed to notice a new feature. I have been interested in who views my profile since starting on LinkedIn and check it regularly so when I also noticed ‘Who’s viewed your updates’ I ways really interested. One of the things that people like about social media is the feedback you get, it’s not just about posting content and forgetting about it, it’s about sharing information and creating discussion.  LinkedIn Notifications will tell you when someone likes, shares or comments on your posts, however, just because you don’t create controversy or discussion it does not mean that you failing: some people are happy to be on social media to browse and read content without comment or controversy. ‘

When I spend time and effort on social media I like to have an indication of how successful and worthwhile it is. On LinkedIn it’s not just about collecting connections, but how you interact with your connections. This means that you should be interested in which updates are being read as well as who is commenting and sharing them.   I also like to monitor who sees my updates as I get satisfaction from the knowledge that people are reading my posts and sharing my content.

‘Whose viewed Your Updates’ allows me to check out just how well my updates are being received by my first-degree connections and beyond

So how does it work.? First of all I noticed the following on my profile for a recent post

then I looked a the data for previous post and show that 38 of my first line connections had viewed it.

so intrigued I looked at other posts and found another that was even more interesting.

This showed how the post had been seen by 409 people, ‘liked’ by 3 and commented on by 2.  By hovering over the relevant areas I could also see who had liked it, who had commented, what they said and how they were connected to me.

So, this feature not only gives you more data about your posts, it also makes the information easier to access and monitor.

Have a look at how your own posts have fared and see what you think, you may be surprised!

 

LinkedIn Profiles, University pages and Why Educators need to understand LinkedIn

Every University, collage and school should have a social media policy, not only to cover safety, security and raise awareness of all the pitfalls and problems of social media, but to promote the positive use of social media to help with job hunting and careers advice.

I also believe that Educators should have sufficient familiarity with LinkedIn  and other social media, together with the implications for career and employment, for their own benefit and to be able to support learners to use it for their studies and career development.

With the introduction of University pages on LinkedIn and the announcement that from September the age limit will be lowered to 13 (in the UK) it made me think again about the way people use the different types of profile. Something which I find annoying is when people don’t understand the difference between personal profiles and Company pages  (read my previous post) , now with new University pages it could get even more confusing.

So I looked at LinkedIn to find what they had to say on the subject.

‘University Pages is the destination on LinkedIn for your school to market itself and build a community. It’s a place to showcase what makes your institution special – academically, socially, and culturally. You can have conversations with the audiences interested in your school, including alumni, current students, parents, prospective students, and even employers, faculty, or donors.

Company Pages is the place for your school to brand itself as an employer. Administrators of Company Pages can share employment opportunities, updates relating to the business, and highlight products and services. Learn more about Company Pages.’

This means that there are now at least three reasons for Universities and higher educationalists to understand LinkedIn; to have effective personal profiles, to have appropriate profiles for their University, School or Collage and to give relevant support and advice to students.

University pages will allow prospective students and parents to  do the same for their education, while gaining valuable working knowledge of LinkedIn. Students (and parents) can use LinkedIn to research careers and employers, network, initiate and participate in discussions, get introductions and even apply for jobs.

Connect with me if you would like more assistance with social media policy or creating a University page

uk.linkedin.com/in/cjonesprofile

5 reasons to have a social media policy

There are many benefits for having a social media policy for your business but here is a quick overview of my top 5!

1) To define your objectives, so that everyone understands the reasons for being on social media.

2)  Establish roles and responsibilities. Who is responsible for posting, monitoring, quality, content etc

3)  Distinguish between personal and business use and set standards for acceptable behaviour.

4)  Set standards for the business and define the on line brand e.g. ‘Templates’ for profiles and updates and which platforms to use

5)  Establish a strategy for how to react when things go wrong so that problems can be dealt with effectively, limiting damage to your business

What would you add?

Why your business needs a Social Media Policy

If you are in business there are many reasons why you might need a social media policy – even if you are not currently using social media.   Just for starters consider the following;

• Social media is here to stay, do not make the mistake of thinking that just because you are not interested in using social media you can just ignore it
• It is increasingly likely that your employees, colleagues and clients will be on social media – and they will expect you to be as well.
• A compelling on-line presence it necessary for most businesses and it takes more than just a website to attain this; social media is an ideal addition to your on-line presence
• If you employ people it is good practice to include social media use in your HR policies, so that you can set expectations for your employees
• Your Social media profile is a public representation of your business brand or ‘persona’; it is vital to ensure that it conveys the right image.
• Social media is a great source of market research and customer service: it is vital to LISTEN.

When drafting your policy think about

• Your strategy – like other areas in business, social media needs a strategy to ensure that your activity contributes towards what you wish to achieve
• Weighing the benefits and risks of engaging with social media, your social media policy can help minimise the risks and enhance the benefits
• Your social media profile – Your social media is a very public face of your business and needs to be carefully cultivated and safeguarded.
• The level of involvement of all parts of your business and differentiating between personal and business use
• goals – How will you measure success?

A social media policy could include include

• Purpose – your social media strategy and how you expect to achieve your goals
• Standards for security, privacy, quality, confidentiality
• Roles and responsibilities, including ownership of profiles and associated data
• Relevant compliance issues – professional and legal
• Expectations for business use. Set guidelines for your social media activities (e.g. processes, who can post, platforms used etc)
  When representing the business specify guidelines for which platforms are required/permitted, how profiles are defined, content posted, quality. frequency
• Expectations for the personal use of social media. You can not stop employees using social media in their personal lives but you can give guidelines as to acceptable behaviour and how this reflects on you and your business/brand
• Review; particularly important due to the pace of change in social media so frequent reviews of all aspects should be written into the policy

Tips for starting on Twitter

If you are thinking of starting on Twitter here are a few things you should consider first  

1. Have a profile picture. People are more willing to follow and engage with those who have a profile picture than a plain ‘egg’ and try to make the picture distinctive. Remember that because twitter is constantly updating your post will probably be only briefly visible amongst a string of other updates. If your picture stands out people will recognise that you have tweeted. Additionally, many people will read their twitter feed on mobiles devises so your profile picture will be very small that will make it more difficult to distinguish it from others.
2. Add a description to your profile. If people have seen your posts they will probably want to know more about you to decide whether or not to follow you so add some information to your profile. It will also give people some idea about what to tweet with you about.
3. Use your characters wisely and although you have a maximum of 140 characters, don’t use them all. If you only use 120 people can retweet you and add comments.
4. When using hashtags don’t use too many (a maximum of three)
5. Be authentic and create good content. If you help and offer advice followers are likely to engage with you and read, retweet or reply to your tweets.
6. Don’t strive for followers, strive for engagement. Ask people questions and respond to other people’s tweets. You will have a greater influence by having a high level of engagement with fewer followers than a large number of disinterested followers.
7. Give credit when using other peoples content, use mentions and retweets.

If you’re struggling on determining how long your tweet should be, what your tweet should contain, hashtags, etc. remember to K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple stupid.)

For more hints on Tips on Social Media Like my Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaCoachingAndTroubleshooting

Share this:

I am proud to announce that I am now a HootSuite Solution Partner.

HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. Key social network integrations include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, plus a suite of social content apps for YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Yammer, Tumblr and more.

In 2013 HootSuite hit 7 million users, including 79 of the Fortune 100 companies. Along with HootSuite’s web platform, 50% of users access the dashboard through their mobiles including iPhone, Android, and iPad. HootSuite also offers localized versions of their dashboard in 14 languages – English, French, Italian, Japanese, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Dutch, Polish, Korean, Russian, and Indonesian.

There are many benefits to HootSuite ProEngage: Optimize your audience engagement by creating search streams, scheduling messages and monitoring all of your social network profiles from one customizable web and mobile dashboard.

Collaborate: Invite clients and colleagues to participate in your social media management. Assign messages for follow up and share streams, helping you increase efficiency.

Analyze: Measure your efforts using over 40 social analytics modules to build and share custom reports. Or select from one of our pre-made templates for quick and easy reporting.

Secure: Share access with team members without compromising security. The team permission levels and advanced sharing options ensure you remain in control of your valuable social profiles and accounts.

Sign up for a 30-day free trial of HootSuite Pro now:

https://hootsuite.com/p_10204?d=pro

How and why to set up a Facebook Business Page

Whilst working with business owners on their social media I often get resistance to using Facebook. Of course Facebook is not for everyone or every business, however, many businesses use Facebook and get great results. So, as businesses that do not use Facebook may be missing out on opportunities, this post is designed to help people take the plunge!

Just some of the reasons to be on Facebook

• Customers are on social media and expect to find you there
• It is a great way to promote your business/brand
• It is a good way to monitor what your clients/customers are saying
• To promote your products/services and offers

So, firstly let’s consider possible starting points

• No existing on line presence or the user does not ‘do’ social media
• Facebook is not appropriate for the business type
• The user does not have a personal Facebook profile
• The user has a personal Facebook page and wishes to keep their personal and business separate

Taking these points in turn

1) Having an on line presence is becoming vital for almost all businesses and social media is an effective means of achieving and supporting this.  Many businesses have a website and social media can used to compliment the website or, in some cases,t o replace it

2) Facebook is particularly good for B2C businesses; it is a great way for small businesses to promote themselves. If your potential customers are not on Facebook it might not be worthwhile using it. For example if you are B2B LinkedIn might be more apropriate

4) it is important (and good practice) to distinguish between personal and business profiles. Facebook requires people to register for a person page before they can create a Business profile. it is easy to create a person profile by signing up here  https://www.facebook.com  You only need an email address and to give your date of birth and whether male or female; all other information is optional.

Once you have  a person profile you can set up your business page – see below. Business pages are separate from your personal page so you do not have to worry about your personal information being open to your  business contacts (although it might be a good idea to check your personal privacy setting)

To help you set up a business page have a look at the video

http://youtu.be/PJutsHB4DUg

A beginners guide to social media for Business

If you are in business you probably know the value of networking face to face and building relationships with customers and colleagues, but do you make use of social media to promote your business. Using social media means that you can network even when you cannot make an event – you do not have to wait until the next event to promote your business. You can use social media to extend your network, cement existing relationships and build your profile, so don’t make the mistake of thinking that Facebook and Twitter are just fun for kids or publicity for celebrities etc. It is true that they CAN be those things, but they are also a great means of staying in touch, getting support from others and maybe even finding a job, building a business or attracting customers!

Combining social media with mobile technology (smartphones etc.) means that you can network virtually anywhere and at any time so don’t miss out and get left behind. Remember, if you are not on social networks and your competitors probably are, when potential clients are looking on social media they will not even know that you exist but they will see your competitors.

There are hundreds of social media platforms, the main ones used by business are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook

In addition to having a ‘personal’ profile on Facebook you can set up a separate business page. This is useful to keep your person and business posts separate and so, even if you don’t use Facebook as a personal, private network, your business can still have a presence on it.

The main difference between personal pages and business pages is that Instead of having friends, business pages have ‘Likes’. When someone likes your page their friends will see that and also whenever you post anything it will update their news feed   You can see what others are doing, raise your own profile and keep a look out for opportunities. In addition, posting, commenting and ‘liking’ other people’s posts will raise your profile further.

You can be as private as you want (ask about security settings if you are really worried) although the more you post, comment and ‘like’ the more visible your business will be to others. If you click on account you can change account setting (your person details) and privacy setting (what information you are willing to share and with whom).  Just a final word about ‘security’ don’t post person details and only accept friend requests from people you know and trust.

Twitter

The first time you go on Twitter you might not be able to understand any of the posts as they do seem to use a foreign language! This is often because there is a 140 character limit on the posts so people use abbreviations and links. I can let you have some guidelines to help decipher the codes if you need it!

Start by following people who will make you laugh or whose opinions you respect. Every day I have a look for posts and know that if there are any they will make me smile and best of all they are usually easy to understand as they are just short funny comments or a simple title and link. You can also follow people or businesses you want to work with, people whose opinions you value, thought leaders or just to keep up with developments in your professional community. Because Twitter is constantly updated you can use it to get immediate feedback and also to spread news and ideas quickly.

LinkedIn

I love LinkedIn! Use it a bit like Facebook and similar rules apply about privacy, but also remember it is about career and professionalism so make sure you give the right impression. A  professional photograph is essential and your profile should be carefully drafted to project the correct image of professional persona.

Did did you know that LinkedIn is fully searchable by Google?

Type in Catherine Jones Training and (at the time of writing)  the top answer is a link to my LinkedIn page. If I had a name other than Jones I might not even need to give the word ‘Training’ I have tried it for some of my colleagues with more unusual names and got them without any further information in the search. If you are on LinkedIn give it a try. It is also worth thinking about that when you put any information on, that will aid peoples searches and what they might use.

So as it is all about business/professionalism/career obviously the focus is different to Facebook.  I would definitely put a photograph on as people are more likely to contact you and unlike Facebook you might what to connect to people you have never met in person so it makes that a little easier.  There is no need to put any updates at all but I find it very useful to follow discussions and contribute if relevant. It is also a great opportunity to make contacts all over the world and discuss common interests. I would recommend joining relevant groups and follow discussions, comment and build relationships.

Google+ and Pinterest are also becoming more influential and will be covered in a later blog

If you would like help with social media find me on social media www.onepageprofile.co.uk/people/catherinejones/

Who Needs Social Media Coaching?

There are 3 types of people who might need a social media coach, they are;

1)  The newbie who has little or no social media presence and want to use it for business

2)  The user who already has a social media presence, although either struggling to see benefits or wanting to improve their performance

3) The veteran, who currently uses social media effectively and understands that as social media is constantly changing and evolving they need to keep up to date to maintain their success.

 

The main thing all three have in common is that they want to use social media more effectively. So, a coach can help accomplish this by delivering a bespoke package designed to help with the following areas as required;

• ·         Drafting a social media policy to ensure that everyone is aware of their responsibilities regarding the use of social media. This can include social media basic awareness and etiquette, responsibilities, security, access, profiles and standards.
• ·         Drafting a social media strategy. Defining how social media complements and supports the rest of the business. This may require training, identifying which platforms to use, setting up accounts and profiles and basics of using the platform, understanding the audience, expectations.
• ·         Developing the processes and drafting the procedures for your businesses social media use
• ·         Goal setting. Defining what it is that you hope to achieve i.e. WHY are you on social media? For example, more sales, new clients, promoting brand awareness etc. How will you define success?
• ·         Monitoring Analytics. Defining and monitoring the analytics by which to measure the performance of the social media platforms against progress to meeting goals
• ·         Progress reviews, comparing analytics against goals to determine success  
• ·         Content development. It is important to understand your audience and what appeals to them and to understanding what to share and which platforms to find your audience
• ·         Keeping up to date with current trends within social media and technology. Social media is constantly changing and evolving so it is important to keep abreast of the latest developments from changes on Facebook, Twitter etc.  Also, what new platforms are out there whether these are relevant to your audience.  
• ·         Developing the habits which will ensure the most effective use of social media to meet your goals.

The level of support will depend on (amongst other things) your starting point, business goals, level of technical expertise and possibly industry/profession.

Can you afford not to have a social media coach?

if you would like to know more contact me 

mailto:catherine@thebizlinks.co.uk?subject=Social Media Coaching

or look at my profile for more information

http://www.onepageprofile.co.uk/people/CatherineJones

or connect with me on LinkedIn

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/cjonesprofile/

Don’t blame Social Media

Many people avoid using social media because they worry about the effects of ‘getting it wrong’

Some time ago I wrote a blog on what was wrong with blame culture and why making mistakes is a good thing. – What’s wrong with Blame Culture?

So when I recently saw the following tweet with a quote attributed to Zig Ziglar it made me think about it again about how this applies to social media.

 ‘Statistics, when customers complain, business owners ought to get excited. The complaining customer represents more business’

Because sometimes it is not just a fear of failure prevents people taking action it is the fear not being perfect – making mistakes, making a fool of themselves etc.

As a social media coach one of the things which makes businesses nervous about putting themselves ‘out there’ is the potential of complaints or negative comments. Even though they understand the need and benefit of social media they worry about such things as

• What if no one follows/likes/connects with me?
• What if I post something stupid?
• What if some one hacks my account and makes me looks bad?
• What about if a customer complains on social media – everyone will see it?

To name a few!

As a coach I have to reassure clients and if required I give them the skills and knowledge to handle things when they do go wrong.

Firstly, I explain that social media is not a numbers game; it is about making real connections i.e. its quality not quantity. By understanding the different platforms and your audience you can define goals and strategies to make the connections which are of value. Think carefully before posting and ask yourself it is appropriate.

Before you hit post

Hacking – it can happen, so you need to understand the security features of your social media, passwords, access etc. If the worse should happen have a response ready and act quickly.

See customer complaints as an opportunity to improve! Your customers will talk about you whether or not you are aware of it. This is valuable feedback, demonstrate that you listening and care about putting things right. DO NOT get involved in a public argument even if the complaint is unreasonable. Respond publicly acknowledging that you have seen the complaint and would like to so resolve, so that everyone will see that you are addressing the issues and give the option to take it offline.  If customers see you responding in a reasonable and professional manner to complaints it will balance the effects of negative comments.

Finally, remember there are no mistakes, just opportunities to learn!

So, now what’s stopping you?