Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Marketing. Web-to-Print. Warehouse Management.
LinkedIn: From a Connection Collector to a Sales Generator
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on Thursday, December 1, 2011 
at 7:05 AM 
in 
When people talk about how they are using social media in the marketing efforts, Facebook and Twitter are often the first answers given.
Sure, they might be on LinkedIn. But they may currently only view it as a way for them to “collect people” – i.e. to amass connections.
If that sounds similar to how LinkedIn is utilized in your business, here is one idea for converting that connection data into a way to build relationships and generate sales.
Connections and Job Status
When someone experiences a change in their employment status, LinkedIn is often the very first social network that they update. Depending on our relationship with that person, taking action on that information can be valuable to them… and us.
I recently talked to a service provider that told me how he acts on that type of data. Here’s his story:
His company helps clients reach their marketing goals with design, print, direct mail, email, mobile, landing pages, and more.
While they have had success launching campaigns for a number of companies, they sometimes run into trouble because of high-turnover among the marketing departments that they work with. Lately, this has often occurred because of budget constraints, rather than performance. But either way, the path to creating long-term, recurring business with those companies is not always easy when the employees change frequently.
In order to capitalize on the successes that they have helped marketers achieve, this company actively seeks to connect with those folks on social networks. Primarily, they try to do this on LinkedIn.
How LinkedIn Helps Deepen the Relationship
If a once-happy customer experiences a job change, the company still has a connection with them. For example, the company may:
- Use LinkedIn to send a personal note when the job change does occur.
- Offer up a recommendation for the person.
- Refer the person’s profile to companies where there may be a fit.
Along with those one-time actions, they will make an effort to stay in touch with them in the weeks and/or months that follow.
By staying connected and engaged to these folks, they create opportunities to receive future sales and jobs once that person is in place at a new business.
How so? Well, they were already a fan of the services provided by that company. And their appreciation of them will no doubt be deeper because of the conversations and actions that took place during the process of changing jobs. Thus, they may be apt to highly recommend that company’s services to their new employer.
Can it Help You?
Certainly, this effort takes a bit of time and determination on behalf of that service provider! But in their words, “it’s helping me grow my business!”
If you are looking for ways to use social media to create and deepen relationships, paying attention to your LinkedIn connections might be a perfect place to start.
P.S. If you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn, here I am!
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Tags Business, data, employment, engagement, jobs, leads, linkedIn, relationships, social media, tips Should You Care About Google+?
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the chance to spend amount of time with Google+. I absolutely am loving it so far.
In fact, the only thing that I like more than using it is being able to talk about it with Graham Spector of Grow Socially!.
I recently had the chance to record a podcast with Graham in the 21 Concord Street Studios regarding the growing popularity of Google+. I hope that you enjoy it.
Right click and save this link, or stream here.
- Grow Socially Podcast: Why Google Plus Matters to Marketers
- Subscribe to Grow Socially’s podcast and listen on iTunes!
- Follow Graham on Twitter
- Follow Jason on Twitter
Get Your Employees On Twitter
No business would survive if it were not filled with dedicated, persevering employees who understand the mission of the company. Regardless of the industry, they are the backbone of any successful business.
When it comes to social media marketing companies, however, employees have a slightly different role. They are very visible and engage in their own social media circles, which can at times be very large. Your employees can all be brand ambassadors. Have your employees get on Twitter and engage with industry professionals, potential clients, and other businesses.
The more engagement your employees participate in, the higher their number of followers. Twitter is unlike Facebook in that you can just accrue friends because you will already know a good deal of people using it. You have to do a little legwork to get Twitter followers. And if it’s done right, the followers your employees can acquire will be relevant people to your work and they will actively engage in conversation about your industry and new trends. And your employees should be Tweeting links to new blog posts that go up on your company blog, linking to new videos or podcasts, or any new content at all. Use Twitter, and your multiple employee accounts to build a strong network.
With great power, of course, comes great responsibility. And not just for Spiderman. Make sure all of your employees take care of their social media accounts and keep them clean and professional. Understand that irresponsible social media accounts can be very bad PR for your company.
Don’t be afraid to be personal as well! Connect with friends and share personal interests. You may have the same interests as your followers which could act as excellent conversation starters as well!
Twitter can be a very important tool for companies. Having a genuine, unforced interaction between employees, the company and followers can create a positive and connected network. There is value in promotion that isn’t directly from the brand. Having ambassadors to the brand is a successful strategy for you to promote the company and the mission.
Creating Landing Pages That Extend
When designing and building a landing page, we typically have a specific purpose in mind. For example, let’s say that we have a goal of registering 100 people for an Open House event. We may promote it through direct mail, emails, and a banner ad. All of those medias will point to a landing page.
When people hit it, we certainly want them to be able to easily figure out how they can register for the event. We may take steps to ensure that there are not too many distractions on the response form. We may limit how many fields we require, or how many questions we ask of people. These types of decisions can have a positive effect on the percentage of people that do respond to our offer.
However, once someone clicks the Submit button, we can take a slightly different approach. Many times, we may be tempted to simply put up a “Thank You” message and call it good. If so, there is a chance that we are losing out on an opportunity to capitalize on an interested audience.
If we only say “Thank you”, then we have created a dead end. We may have accomplished our specific goal, but we are pretty much guaranteeing that they are going to close the browser or go visit another website. However, by using that Thank You page as a way to further communicate and engage the responder, we may find greater success.
Here are a few possible ideas for how to “extend” a user’s experience with our landing pages:
- Put a link to our corporate website, and a compelling reason to visit it
- Embed a YouTube video that is associated with our company
- Link to our Social Media sites (add the social badge, or simply promote one of them with a big logo and reason to click: “‘Like’ our Facebook page”)
- Encourage people to share what they just did on their social media pages (i.e. “Tweet This: I just RSVP’d for ABC Company’s Open House on the 23rd”)
- Invite them to subscribe to your newsletter
- Are you selling something? Put a link to it.
- Deliver a personalized experience — based on how they responded, display a custom message (in the form of text, pictures, video, or video)
These are just a few possible ideas.
Sure, not everyone will click on the links that we provide on our Thank You pages. But we will never regret putting forth an effort to extend someone’s engagement with our brand.
(If you’ve had success with extending your landing pages, please feel free to leave a comment on this post.)
How Engaged Are You?
eMarketer.com published a chart on the leverage of social media among companies worldwide.
There were 62 participants, and they were able to file those people in 3 categories. I honestly think that if they had interviewed 6,200 participants, they would have found that the same 3 categories could have been used to fit that larger number as well.
Here is a quick look at the categories:
Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008057
If you were involved in social media in 2010, you may be looking back at whether it helped grow your business or brand. No matter what, hopefully you plan on increasing your involvement in the upcoming months.
However, let’s say that you feel social media has not helped you out. Before you write off Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc., as useless time-wasters, take a look at those 3 categories. Then, ask yourself — did I really participate in those channels? Or did I simply have a profile, and occasionally observe?
Perhaps you do consider yourself as a participator… Well, ask yourself if you took actions to integrate social media with your other marketing channels, or into your customer service activities, or sales CRM system?
If we are honest with ourselves, chances are that we will identify ways that we can more effectively use social media as a marketing channel.
