A connection is made with that person, but what next?

More often than not, the answer is unfortunately nothing.

Have a quick think and work out if you feel like you are missing an opportunity here.  If it is someone you could do business with and they have connected with you have you followed up with a message suggesting you meet up for a coffee?

One message could turn someone you would have otherwise harmlessly moved toward the LinkedIn ether never to be heard from again in to a potential business opportunity.

What other opportunities are out there for you?  If you have a long list of connections that are relevant to you then your news feed should be a long opportunity to create dialogue and to interact with those people.  Have you commented on their articles?  Have you congratulated them on a new piece of work, a job promotion perhaps?

Business relationships thrive on dialogue and LinkedIn is another opportunity for you to get contact points with your business network.  Don’t let them go quietly in the night, never to be heard from again.

For more information on how we can help you with LinkedIn training please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post How many of your LinkedIn connections actually connect with you? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

The process had credibility; it was from people you knew and it was in their own words.  Yes, it did take time but that only added merit to the endorsement; that someone had taken the time to put down in words just how good you were to work with.

These recommendations remain but are now also accompanied by ‘skills and expertise’; key words that reflect your areas of expertise.  People can visit your profile and with one click endorse your knowledge of a specific area.  LinkedIn has even gone so far as to encourage you to endorse with ‘Can you endorse XX for any of these services’ promotion boxes at the top of profile pages you visit.

But have they made it too easy? Yes, too easy! I have heard numerous occasions of endorsements being made for areas the person has no involvement with or from endorsers the recipient has never even done work with.  A logical explanation may be that it is now far too easy to ‘endorse’ a skill and indeed, with some endorsed by more than 100 for a skill that there are too many making too many endorsements to be all of the same quality and value.

In all reality some may well just be that good but their recommendations would have reflected this before the ‘skills and expertise’ section were added.

In a world in which time is precious it was understandable that LinkedIn would look to refine the original recommendation process and streamline some of its faults.  But what has been left is potentially a system devalued by its own ease and quickness.

For more information on our LinkedIn training and how we can help you gain more from LinkedIn please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

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Now this will obviously depend on what industry you are in and as a result which your connections work in; marketing and business development professionals understandably tend to be a little more savvy than others.

If you aren’t using this functionality you are potentially missing a trick.  Here are a few tips when posting updates:

Avoid overkill

Once you’ve started to post updates make sure you don’t go overboard; nobody wants their entire news feed consumed by one individual.  Focus on the quality of what you are sharing and the relevance to your connections.  It’s likely that a large number of your connections will share common business interests so stick to what is going to interest them.  By doing this you’ll get higher levels of interaction and dialogue.

Don’t make it all about you

It’s fine to promote yourself and what’s going on at your business but don’t make it all about you.  When you are sharing content think about getting a balance of 40% of your posts being about you and your company and 60% on other relevant information.  Sharing links that are going to be of interest to your connections will add value; only talking about yourself can be potentially off-putting.

Get involved with other peoples content

This point overlaps with the point above; can you expect people to like and comment on your posts in droves if you never reciprocate?

If you read something from your connection that is of interest then like it.

If there is a comment to be made then make it.

It’s a lonely world without dialogue and you’ll foster better online relationships if you’re interacting.

Avoid the mundane

Don’t succumb to the pressure of having to post something for the sake of posting it!  If you are going through a baron spell on your blog writing or haven’t seen anything that is going to resonate with your connections then don’t post because you feel you have to.  Wait until you have written a gem or have found something of real interest and then post that – wait and it will come!

For more information about how we can help you make more from your LinkedIn presence or provide you with training please give us a call or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post LinkedIn: Who’s viewed your updates? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

You find yourself searching for any excuse; a quick shuffle toward the food buffet, that imaginary person across the room you just need to catch up with that very second or the emergency lavatory stop.  If there is any way you can get away from the conversation you are finding it.

Take a think about the people that only wants to talk about themselves and translate it into your social media accounts.  What is it you talk about? Is it all about you?  If it is then look back on that social occasion and what you thought about that person.

The point I am making is that social media gives you a great outlet for your content, for what you are doing and the time or what you are working on, but don’t let that be the only thing you are talking about.  People won’t engage with you if all you talk or tweet about is yourself.

If you find someone else’s content and it is interesting then share it, re-tweet it, plus one it or like it.  Comment on other peoples tweets and posts.  If you engage with other people on their own content then they are far more likely to engage with your own.

A general rule of thumb for your content is to have 40% about you, your company and the content you are producing and the other 60% on content topics that are not your own.  This can include interesting information you come across related to your industry or sector.

Don’t let yourself be the person that everyone is shuffling away from at the social media get together.

For more information on how we can help you build and improve your social media presence, including training on all social media platforms, please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

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The blog (which you can read by clicking here if you missed it first time round) suggested that if you use it correctly as a support tool, syndication can be useful in effectively streamlining your efforts.

It did however make the case that using syndication as a shortcut or as an alternative to building dialogue would lessen and not increase the fruits of your social media labours.

Another point we wanted to cover off today is in relation to syndicating tweets on to social networks that are clearly destined for Twitter.

Tweets are by definition tweets.  They will often be written in a style constrained by the 140-character limit or in a tone of voice that is appropriate for the network and your followers.  Compare this to, for example LinkedIn; a network much more professional in nature and where there is no character limit on posts (this is not us condoning the writing of laboriously long LinkedIn updates!).

LinkedIn also has no use of hashtags, which are almost symbolic of Twitter and the tweets made on that platform.

When you see a tweet you will know it is a tweet.

We therefore go back to the point we made in our blog post ‘is syndication a friend or foe of social media’ and examine whether the time you are saving by syndicating content is outweighed by the loss in benefit of the action you are taking.

To post separately on to LinkedIn does take more time, all-be-it quite a small amount of time.  However, if you want to get a message across how much more impact will it give you if you have crafted it for the appropriate audience?

Can you expect something that you have tweeted and syndicated to LinkedIn to have the same impact as writing an update specifically for your business connections?

We think the answer here more often than not would be a no.

The time saved by syndicating from your Twitter account to your LinkedIn account is outweighed by the loss in impact.

It will appear as a tweet that has found its way on to LinkedIn.

This is why we suggest that you take the time to write separate LinkedIn updates rather than syndicating tweets across.  You will be spending a bit more time, but in tern you will also be gaining more from it.

For more information on how we can help your social media presence through training, management or support please do give us a call or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Are Twitter and LinkedIn natural partners? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

With this comes an element of time.  If you wanted to go for a drink with someone in real life you’d need to invest the time in going to the pub, sitting down and having a chat.  The same also applies to social media; if you want to truly interact with people you have to invest the time in building dialogue through whatever platform you are using.

This is where the syndication comes in.  Platforms like Hootsuite will allow you to schedule tweets or ping them to other networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook.  The obvious positive of doing this is to free the time you spend each day on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on.  You can schedule you tweets, select which networks they are going to and sit back while you focus on other things.

Now the downside…

Many people use this as a replacement and not a supportive tool to their social media activity.  You’ll probably have them too, people that have the same sales tweet going out repeatedly day after day.  Whilst social media should provide you with additional avenues from which to promote your products and services you’ll be doing the potential benefits you can gain a disservice by using this methodology.

Lets draw an equivalent comparison to direct marketing.  This type of syndication would be akin to a direct mail campaign where you sent the same piece of marketing material to the same householders time and time again.  Would you expect to gain results from this? You might get one or two leads but by and large there will be a growing level of apathy or even irritation to your marketing methodology.

The same principles apply to social media.  It’s also worth bearing in mind that if you’ve scheduled all of your tweets in you won’t be reacting to, commenting on and showing an interest in others.

Ever been to a party or a dinner with someone who only wants to talk about themselves? How long were you willing to listen to that person.

We’ve touched on reacting to tweets above and it’s also vital you are able to respond to questions, queries and comments that arise from your own posts.  Are you able to do this as efficiently if they’re scheduled in?  Do you even know when they are going out? Perhaps or probably not.

At MiHi Digital a key focus of our social media work is always to ensure that people are making the most of their time and the value they gain from that time is being maximised.

Syndication can add value when you are using it to support activity.  It is however, not a substitute to time.

For more information on how we can help you gain more from the time you spend on social media please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

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