Online Marketing Blog

Your customers want more personalized messaging and content. In fact, 64% believe it’s more important that companies represent them with relevant offers, compared to 36% who don’t want their activity tracked. Given the tools available to block ads, tactics to stop tracking, opt-in nature of communications and social participation, it’s clear that customers who do choose to interact with brands expect a more personalized experience as a result.

The Mass Marketing vs. Personalization infographic from Monetate shares a number of other interesting recommendations and finds, including:

• 94% of companies agree that online personalization is critical to business performance.
• Two of every three companies believe personalizing their website will improve the customer experience and overall success of their business.

LinkedIn has quickly achieved top status as “the” business to business social networking destination.  In fact, less than two years after going public, LinkedIn’s value has risen from $4 billion to over $18 billion.

Not only has LinkedIn’s value increased significantly, but their capabilities and engagement have as well.  The same Wall Street Journal article that included the valuation above also shared the following insight:

• In the most recent quarter LinkedIn’s page views have risen 67%
• LinkedIn’s new “content” features include news aggregation and hosting of expert blog posts

If your company hasn’t quite figured out the secret sauce needed to really make your executives’ LinkedIn profiles shine or how to make meaningful connections, you’re in luck.  Whether you want to increase your brand or individual online visibility, this post shares insights into the 5 elements of an optimized LinkedIn profile.  

We live in a world where shopping, dating, watching new films and networking can all be done online.  In fact, these actions (and many more) have become a part of our everyday life.  Many of us may experience buyers remorse for purchasing something online that wasn’t within budget, a desire to post a bad review after a terrible movie, or have a sense of regret after a bad date.

When it comes to networking for personal and more importantly business use, there are many benefits to be had and pitfalls to be avoided.  If you are able to effectively engage your online community you can experience many advantages including:

• An introduction to someone such as a thought leader you might not otherwise have access to.

Have you found yourself spending more time than usual on LinkedIn within the last couple of months?  I know I have.  Much of that has to do with the recent changes that the company has rolled out which has improved usability and is encouraging users to spend more time actively participating within the platform.

LinkedIn should be viewed as a tool for marketers to connect with other professionals or companies in a meaningful way, not a platform for shouting your marketing message at unsuspecting victims.

For example, you wouldn’t approach a table full of professionals at a networking event that you don’t know and open up with “Buy my B2B marketing automation software! It will save you time and money.” Talk about open mouth and insert foot. I’m sure we can all agree that a first interaction like the one mentioned above would likely squash any chance of having a meaningful interaction with your new connections.

[Note from Lee: I am happy to introduce readers of Online Marketing Blog to our newest contributor, AshleyZ.  A human dynamo for getting things done, Ashley has literally hit the ground running and works for TopRank as a Marketing Manager. She'll be sharing her smarts here and  helping to elevate TopRank's Marketing to more impressive levels of awesome.]

The social web has opened the door to many opportunities for individuals to share their opinions on everything from the weather to politics to the really cute thing their dog just did.  Business social media users however, must take a much more structured approach to sharing information and interacting with their prospects and clients.

LinkedIn officially launched on May 5, 2003 with a total of 4,500 members in the first month. Known mostly as a business social network, LinkedIn has been adopted globally with nearly 2 billion people searches in 2010 and over 90 million users in January 2011. To top it off, a forthcoming IPO will raise even more money for expansion.

Yet amongst many business professionals, LinkedIn seems to fight perception that it is strictly a site to visit when you need a job.

With new features added regularly and all of the Fortune 500 represented, LinkedIn is a valuable source of data and connections that shouldn’t be overlooked. If you’re not a regular LinkedIn user, I encourage you to look beyond the basics and see the opportunities for businesses to showcase their products, advertise in and out of network, and content sharing/syndication.

From Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness.

LinkedIn, however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots of popular sites like YouTube and Facebook are founded on the entertainment side of things. But since its creation, LinkedIn has been geared toward the professional business crowd.

If you haven’t already incorporated LinkedIn into your online marketing mix, consider the latest statistics:

• LinkedIn has more than 60 million members
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members

Get started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy today with these five tips:

Not too long ago I queried a number of online marketing and public relations peers ranging from Aaron Wall, Matt McGee and Neil Patel to Todd Defren, Triss Hussey and Peter Himler about sharing a few of their social media marketing tips. Out of that informal survey in combination with community specific solicitations came posts about marketing with MyBlogLog and Twitter.

However, there are many more social media communities and channels besides MBL and Twitter that I received tips on and from very reputable sources which you’ll find below. Enjoy!

Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications shared two of his own posts from a series on social media: Tips on using Twitter for finding and developing relationships and another post on using Del.icio.us for PR “edgework” or direct interactions with consumers.

When you have all the social media essentials, and you know that you need to be social and active in your social networking communities, how do you effectively leverage that to benefit yourself (and your company)?

The speakers in this session on SMX Social Media Day 2 gave the audience tips and recommendations on how to best use social networking, specifically Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, to make yourself known in the networking world.

Dave McClure of 500Hats spoke first with a fun tutorial on Facebook. Facebook is great for promoting events and for joining groups to share your brands and ideas and products to those interested in your industry. One of the main characteristics of Facebook that Dave focused on was leveraging the news feed in Facebook.