The Research Playbook

Archive for November, 2010

Most of the talk about Twitter and LinkedIn revolves around how each can benefit you and how to ramp up each of these social media sites. This is all good.

What to Do

However, thinking about these two sites (and other media) independently underutilizes the power you have in your hands. Any champion fighter will tell you the jab is a great weapon and that you can dominate your opponent with a strong right cross. Furthermore, they will tell you one with out the other is not nearly as powerful as the combination – the proverbial One-Two Punch.

Think of Twitter as left jabs and LinkedIn as your right hand power punch [reverse these if you are a southpaw]. You want to pepper your audience with continual Twitter messages [jabs] and hit them with a powerful profile and strong presence [right cross] from LinkedIn. 

Okay, round over, enough with the boxing metaphor, you get the point I’m sure.

Twitter <–> LinkedIn

Using these two sites in combination by connecting them is worth the effort. In addition, this two-site structure is a great platform to promote a blog and of course your website. Each has its own virtues, but when you think of them as connected and use them that way the benefit is more than the sum of the parts.

How to Do It    

At this point my guess is you are asking the question; “How exactly do I do this?”

The answer to that question is reasonably complex. However, there are a few simple things you can and should do. Let’s walk through one set of steps toward the process of connecting these social media assets.

Obviously if you don’t have a Twitter or LinkedIn account login to one or both sites and set up accounts. If you’re not sure about best practices for setting up these accounts email me and we will be happy to guide you.

Assuming you have a Twitter and a LinkedIn account start by connecting them together. This is simple. First, edit your profile to include your Twitter account(s), yes you can have more than one, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

You will find a link on your profile where you add your website(s) and once on the correct page there will be an invitation to use a hyperlink to add a Twitter account. Follow the easy instructions.

Unless you have a reason for hiding it, select make it visible to “everyone’ and share all tweets. Selecting the rich link display option is optional, but there seems no reason not to.

Check –  ”Yes, share all tweets”

Don’t Check –  ”Share only tweets that contain #in”

Tweet display

Check – “Show rich link display where possible (picture, page title, and short description).”

Now your Twitter account is visible on your profile and you will have the option to send Network Activity updates as tweets.

Go to your LinkedIn home page and scroll down to the:

Network Activity   Dialogue Box

When you update your LinkedIn activity, you can send it as a tweet [Remember to keep it to 140 characters, LinkedIn will remind you so don’t worry about it]. All you have to do is check the box next to the Twitter icon. If you send a message, you would prefer Twitter not to broadcast as a tweet, simply un-check the box. Remember to re-check the box the next time you update your LinkedIn activity.

Stay tuned for more information on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The lifeblood of any business is a continuing stream of customers. Local businesses have a special challenge because the available marketing has defined geographic limits. For example a company that builds and installs fences is likely to have market with a radius of 50 miles or perhaps 100 miles. Beyond that the cost of doing business is too high unless the company adds locations, which would then have a radius of business.

Today the marketing opportunities for local businesses are changing. The once powerful yellow pages is no longer a viable approach – what did you do with the last yellow pages book delivered to your front door? Like you, I promptly placed in the recycle bind.

Local search is and will continue to replace the paper-based approaches of the past – this is not news. What is news is the various ways that innovative small businesses are using internet marketing and in particular social media marketing.

Moreover, the competition for ranking high in local search is heating up. The world is very quickly splitting into “have” and “have not” businesses, that is, those that have an viable social media strategy and those that, well simply don’t. Playing catch up will be hard and it will get harder with every passing month.

If you are a local and/or small business the time to act is now – actually it was yesterday, so don’t wait until tomorrow.