Here are answers to some of the five questions we get most often about using LinkedIn.

Q: I Have a profile—why isn’t anything happening?
A: One of the most common issues businesses raise with LinkedIn is value. What can LinkedIn really offer? Why is it worthwhile to maintain a profile and/or be active in the community? And, for many users, after signing up and getting a profile, then what?

The answer is that with LinkedIn as with anything else, you get back what you put into the network. So in order to see the best connections and help from the site, complete your profile; give and get recommendations; link up with people you know; and then, be active. LinkedIn offers many ways to get involved, from LinkedIn Groups to LinkedIn Answers to job postings.

Q: Is LinkedIn only good for recruiters and job seekers?
A: It’s true that for companies doing recruiting, LinkedIn is a great place to search through candidates and gain information before ever having to place a call, and that for candidates it’s a good place for building connections and seeing job listings—but that’s not all LinkedIn offers.

For one thing, LinkedIn is valuable for building your personal brand: when someone Googles your name, your LinkedIn profile or page will show up early in search results. Also, it’s an easy way to network, with a wide range of potential clients and business associates just a few links away, waiting for you to reach out and ask for introductions. What’s more, with today’s society of more transient employees, where people change jobs multiple times in their career, LinkedIn draws a wide range of users, even those not immediately looking for job changes.

Q: How can I use LinkedIn to generate sales leads?
A: Many of us have heard that LinkedIn represents an invaluable resource for lead generation— a recent study by Hubspot of over 5,000 B2B and B2C businesses found it’s as much as 277% more effective at bringing in leads than Facebook and Twitter. So, how do you generate leads on LinkedIn? Turns out there are many ways to gather leads from this business network:

• Make Quality Connections: Putting time and effort into building your network will reap great rewards over time.
• Word-of-Mouth Referrals: Ask satisfied clients to write you recommendations for your LinkedIn profile, broadcasting your value to your and their networks.
• Answer Questions: Use the forums on LinkedIn to answer questions in your industry. This exposes you not only to the question askers but also to anyone who searches for similar info through LinkedIn’s advanced Answers search.
• Post Relevant Content & CTAs: If you find your connections respond well to blog posts or articles, keep posting them to draw interest. Likewise, look for ways to include calls-to-action in your updates.

Q: How can I connect with my target audience or promote my company?
A: Beyond connecting with people you already know, how do you find and network with people in your target audience? Consider LinkedIn Groups. Find groups related to your industry or specialization, and join the discussions. As a member, you will also be able to search through members lists for people you’d like to reach out to and then send them connection requests.

In terms of promoting your business, you can set up a company page, get listed in the service provider directory and, if desired, use LinkedIn Ads to advertise to targeted users.

Q: After I connect, what’s next?
A: Think of LinkedIn like any other networking event–building connections is only the first step. It’s good to come home with business cards after a trade show, but it’s more important The next step is using those connections to share content, leave comments, send private messages and, in whatever ways you can, engage with other users.

Guest Author – Shanna Mallon is a writer for Straight North, a Chicago Web designer specializing in B2B clients. She writes for diverse companies, from the makers of a cut resistant glove to specialists in all in one credit card processing.

Facebook is a tricky beast and one that you must spend the required time and effort to get the desired results. You can’t really “wing it” as your fans are counting on you to deliver good information, entertainment and or useful tips. Whatever your niche and whatever it is you offer, when you set up a Facebook fan page, this page will now represent you and your business. So it’s important to dedicate the time required to make your fans happy and keep them loyal. So, let’s take a look at four good loyalty apps for Facebook pages.

1. Punch Tab
This is perhaps the most well known of the Facebook loyalty apps, perhaps because it is FREE. But just because it’s free, does not mean it’s flimsy or feature-poor. In fact, it has a number of very cool features that enable fan participation and foster continued loyalty. What is it? Essentially PunchTab.com has several apps in their portfolio including giveaways, loyalty program, badges and achievements plus two other apps aimed at large agencies. With the Loyalty program app you’re able to turn your site or blog into a Facebook liking machine, via the various actions that users can take with the app. When you install Punch Tab on your site, you then are able to reward your users with gift cards or other similar type goodies when a certain action is completed. However this is not a one time action, but continuous – which means they keep coming back for more. The app is FREE to use up to 10,000 users.

2. Wildfire
For those who want a bit more flexibility in their social media campaigns, Wildfire might be the best option for you. With Wildfire Apps you get to choose from various loyalty oriented apps and pay an interesting model of $5 per promotion and .99 per day the app is run on your site. So for example, if you run a giveaway using the Wildfire app, you would pay .99 per day for however many days you run the giveaway. These are top notch apps which allow you to increase your fan base, engage users and have fun all at the same time. For loyalty related efforts, we suggest you try the trivia and quizzes app or the group deals app.

3. North Social
This is a Chicago based Facebook apps powerhouse, that carries everything from giveaway apps to contest apps and the viral wave to an exclusive fan offers loyalty app. However, these are not free–there’s a monthly fee involved in using North Social. Pricing starts at $19.99 a month for access to all 19 apps (as of this writing) for one page and up to 1,000 fans. They have a great selection of cool and smart apps for every imaginable scenario including videos, Twitter, donating, volunteering, maps, deal share, photo showcase and more. This might be a good option for the smaller business or website owner as it’s strictly a one off monthly fee with no long term contracts and no set up fee.

4. Lujure
For those who need to spruce up their Facebook pages before engaging in an all out Facebook loyalty campaign. Take a look at Lujure.com, a website that enables Facebook page users an easy and quick solution to the ultimate business fan page. With Lujure, you can create custom tabs which can lead to giveaways, an FAQ page, a contact page or your special in house loyalty program. It’s all drag and drop, no code knowledge is needed and the service is FREE for one custom tab and one page, otherwise it starts at $30 for more pages and more custom tabs. A great way to make your page inviting, exciting and engaging.

READER QUESTION:
What tools do you use for increasing Facebook loyalty or engaging your users? Share with me below in the comment area.

Guest Author – Missy Diaz writes for an online reputation management blog.

1. Develop a Comprehensive Strategy for Long-term Success
Without a comprehensive plan your content marketing efforts are doomed to failure. Beyond doing the necessary keyword research it’s important to think about the style and tone of your content. Will it be serious or lighthearted? Written in the first or third person? Whatever you choose, it should be consistent. Developing a consistent voice will help keep your audience returning.

You also should be thinking about how today’s content ties into next week’s. One of the more effective ways to get users returning to your blog is to create a series of articles around a given subject. For instance, if your audience is comprised of entrepreneurs you could create a three part series on “How to Launch a Successful Business in 90 Days.”

2. Controversy is OK, Take Risks
A client of ours has an audience comprised mostly of Wall Street executives. When they started their blog they began writing on exactly the topics you’d think Wall Street types would be interested in; earnings reports, stock tips, mergers and acquisitions etc. After six months and little traction they decided to change course. Their blog now features articles on Wall Street gossip, fashion and scandals. As a result, leads have increased significantly, site traffic has improved by over %1,000 and they’ve created a cult following. Now, this doesn’t mean you should run to the keyboard and start writing trashy content. Rather, you should strive to be different and always be testing new content ideas. 

3. Backlink to Older Content
Your old content can either sit there doing nothing, or it can get to work. You’ll get the most for your time and money when you make old articles and video clips stay on the job for weeks or months rather than hours or days. Backlinking is one of the easiest ways to do this. Backlinking simply means that you include links in your new content so that readers can find older content just by clicking a word or phrase. For instance, if you’re writing a blog post about the recession, link to articles that you published last year (or even way back in 2008 when the recession began). Doing this will help improve SEO and increase the amount of time users spend on your site.

4. Find Your Audience Before They Find You
If you wait for an audience to come to you, chances are you’re going to be waiting awhile. There’s a website, blog or group for every niche so there’s no excuse for not becoming a member of these communities. You can find these groups by searching on Google, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Once you find an applicable group it’s best to spend a few days just observing. Whatever you do, don’t start spamming users with your content. It’s ok to provide links to relevant information but without first becoming a trusted member of the community, you’ll be seen as an outsider and won’t get much traction. Another great way to find your audience is to answer questions on Q&A sites such as Quora and Yahoo! Answers. On these sites it’s more acceptable to provide direct links to your content as long as it applies to the question you’re answering. And as a bonus, links from these sites can provide SEO value.

Follow these four simple content marketing strategies, and you’re sure to boost your content marketing efforts.

Guest Author – Andrew Page is the Founder of ContentSpree.com, a freelance writing marketplace where small businesses go to hire professional freelance writers for writing projects that span from creative to technical.   

Do—Stay Current on Industry News
No matter if you have been doing SEO since the beginning of it’s inception, or just started today, you have to stay current on new trends. Google is fickle, and what was an industry best-practice may not be the next. Read, read, read. You’ll be happy you did. Some great blogs to follow are SEOMoz, SearchEngineLand and Search Engine Journal.

Don’t—Buy Links
Ever, ever EVER! Buying links to boost your rankings is known as a black hat tactic. Black hat SEO tactics are SEO practices that can trick Google into thinking your site is relevant in certain areas, even though it doesn’t add value to the user. Most reputable businesses don’t practice this, however it can be tempting to dabble in black hat tactics every now and then. Just say no to the apple.

Do—Research Your Keywords
When deciding what keywords to optimize your website make sure you are choosing words that are relevant for searchers. Sometimes industry jargon won’t be the same as keywords you want to optimize your site. Google provides a great free tool to search and give you keywords ideas—you can find it here.

Don’t—Write Just for the Search Engines
You will hear a lot that content is king. This is true, nothing is better than high valuable content. At the end of the day that is what gets shared, liked and tweeted. If you want good quality content, you can’t always write for the search engine. There is such as a thing as over optimization. Instead, write great content, the rest will follow.

Do—Research Your Competitors
SEO is an extension for many online marketing plans. As such, you need to identify your SEO competition and see what they are doing. What keywords are they using? How is their site laid out? The point of this research isn’t to copy your competitors, but to see what works and what doesn’t in your niche. Remember at the end of the day, what works for one site might not work as well for another. SEO is a test and study what works for your site.

The main thing to remember is SEO is an ever-changing industry. There are a lot of jobs out there—so make sure you are up for the challenge. SEO is a great part of the online marketing industry.  Many believe SEO is an art and a science. If you are someone who likes being analytical, but also creative this is a great career path for you.

Guest Author – Abby Evans is an avid blogger who writes on everything from how to find jobs in Toronto to outlining the principals of how to write a killer blog post.

1. Harnessing the Power of Social Media
Perhaps the best option is starting a few social media accounts on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Without a doubt, small businesses that are looking to connect with the community need to give this a shot. Tweeting weekly deals or taking customer feedback through wall posts can produce great results. More fans and followers can translate into more sales or support for the business. Of course, a business owner needs to ensure they know how to utilize social media the right way.

2. Using Company or Other Vehicles
The average small business employs at least one or two vehicles and possibly more. Advertisements can be affixed to these vehicles with ease and without breaking the bank. Obviously, some people are going to respond to catchy ads they see while driving. Plus, this advertising strategy can be employed on any vehicle whether it is affiliated with the company or not. More driving equals more exposure although a person should not change their driving habits because that does not guarantee more sales or clients.

3. Reviews Submitted Online by Customers
In this day and age, numerous consumer review sites are available across the Internet. A business should ask its happy customers to give the store positive reviews on these websites. Doing so can help drive more traffic as others become interested in what the business has to offer. However, a person needs to realize that negative reviews will come now and then. Undoubtedly, these reviews need to be taken as constructive criticism rather than malice. Such reviews are vital for small and large companies in many ways and do not cost a penny.

4. Creating a Free Website
Luckily, multiple free website creators are available online. A business owner that cannot afford to maintain a paid site can create a free one in minutes. It is still important to keep quality in mind and get all the major details onto each page. When done successfully, these sites can draw more customers to a business by making it more visible to the rest of the community. In most cases, the owner will eventually want to move to a paid and hosted site though.

5. Simple In-Store Advertisements
It does not cost a business owner any major money to post advertisements and marketing material within their own store. More often than not, this can be a great way to let customers know about upcoming sales and promotions. From there, the customers will want to pay close attention to the ads inside the business. Any passersby will see these materials and might be enticed to enter the store and make a purchase too. For obvious reasons, no store owner is going to complain about that.

6. Attempting a Small Grassroots Campaign
This tactic is usually seen in politics, but it can work for businesses too. Basically, those involved with the small business can post fliers around town to advertise the store. Also, small pins or other items can be handed out to raise awareness. Pulling off this feat successfully by bringing in more customers is not always easy, but those that succeed will see the benefits and results right away.

7. Offering Great Customer Service From Day One
Customers love one thing above all else in most situations: great service. A small business that treats everyone with hospitality and care will see a loyal base develop right away. Of course, breeding such a great environment will draw in repeat customers and positive word-of-mouth will draw in new ones. Any store that lacks strong customer service will wind up crashing fairly quickly. Keeping this in mind is vital for success.

In any case, plenty of other free small business marketing methods exist. Any owner should try out a few of these tactics and see how things turn out.

Guest Author – Matt Becker is a freelance writer for SBA.com, an independently owned and operated website with no government affiliation.

Email Addresses Not on the Company’s Domain
If you have a website up and running, which most businesses do, make sure you have an email address off your website’s domain. It will make you look unprofessional, even amateurish, if you are corresponding with business contacts or clients but have an email address listed at a @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, or (even worse) @aol.com address. Setting up an email account on your domain is easy and relatively inexpensive, depending on the hosting service you use. The only time it is acceptable to have an email address on a free emailing service is when you are first building your website. Even then, as soon as you are able to, switch your email account to one off your domain name.

Including “Sent From” Messaging at the Bottom of Emails
Most smartphones and tablets will default to featuring a message at the end of sent emails that lets the recipient know where the email came from (“Sent from my iPad” or “Sent from my Blackberry”). Your business contacts don’t need to know where your email is coming from. Make sure you change this setting in your email options and choose a more professional email signature.

Featuring Outdated Information on Your Website
Depending on whether your website features a content management system, it might be difficult for you to update your website’s content on a regular basis. However, that doesn’t mean you should feature outdated information or descriptions of events that have long since passed. About once a month, have a member of your team survey your website and ensure all the content is up to date. If you notice anything on your site that is no longer applicable, such as deals that have expired or information about events that have come and gone, change the web page’s content to replace the outdated information with current information. You don’t have to change all the content on your site, just anything that has gone stale.

Broken Links or Incorrect Information in Email Signatures
Your email signature has the power to take your business contacts directly to specific pages of your website, so make sure your signature is accurate and up to date. It also represents a strong branding opportunity for your business if it is implemented properly. If you work in sales, feature a direct link to your request for proposal page or any other page prospects might be interested in. Also make sure that you include links to any relevant forms of communication for your business: Facebook brand pages, Twitter profiles, LinkedIn pages, and a link to your website. Also double check that all the links in your signature point back to the right places.

Stuffing Keywords Into Your Website’s Content
If you’re familiar with the best practices of search engine optimization, you’ll know that keywords are an important part of a good SEO strategy. What isn’t good for SEO is stuffing your keywords into your body content to the point it doesn’t make sense to the average site visitor. Even worse, some business owners try to hide keywords onto web pages to mask them from visitors but make them visible to search engines. This is a huge mistake and will actually get you penalized by search engines. Incorporate your prized keywords carefully and make sure they actually make sense in the context of where you’ve included them. Your website should always keep the end user in mind, not search engines, so make sure your information makes sense.

Guest Author – Amy Moczynski manages the digital marketing for 352 Media Group’s small business division, which offers custom web design and digital marketing services. 

• It takes a substantial monthly ad budget to generate enough conversions to move the dial.
• In some niches, keywords are too expensive for small firms to compete.
• In other niches, search volume is too low to generate ROI.

If you’re looking for an advertising model with a higher probability of success, look to one of the best-kept secrets in Internet marketing: Remarketing.

How Remarketing Works

Remarketing is a form of advertising based on two rock-solid principles:

1. Your best sales prospects are people who have already visited your website.
2. The most efficient ad campaign targets your best sales prospects.

This is how remarketing works:

When visitors come to your site but don’t convert (e.g. Fail to place an order or download a PDF), a cookie is dropped in their browser that adds them to your remarketing list for a given period of time. When visitors subsequently visit websites within the remarketing ad network, they will see an ad for your company.

Simple, isn’t it? And effective too. Studies suggest that remarketing can increase conversion by at least 50% versus traditional pay-per-click advertising.

Why Remarketing Works

Not every visitor who comes to your site is ready to take action. In fact, for most sites, the vast majority of visitors are in research mode rather than purchase mode. Think about your own online behavior. What percentage of sites do you visit with the express intention of buying or providing your contact information for follow up?

Remarketing strengthens brand awareness. Remarketing ads give visitors a gentle reminder that they visited your site. These reminders increase the likelihood they will remember you when they are ready to take action.

Remarketing is better recieved. Since many visitors to your site are favorably disposed to your brand – being either existing customers or qualified shoppers – they will not be nearly as resistant to your paid advertising as complete strangers.

Putting Together a Remarketing Campaign

There are several remarketing services that offer full remarketing campaign support; Google recently added a remarketing service to its AdWords platform as well.

Remarketing can be simple or complex depending on how broadly or narrowly you segment visitors. General ads can be served to all site visitors, or ads with specific calls to action can be served to visitors who come to a particular are of the site or who exhibit a particular onsite behavior. The components of a remarketing campaign include:

• Devising a strategy
• Creating ads in a variety of sizes, with calls to action corresponding to visitor segmentation (if any)
• Tracking results to determine the most effective ads
• Continual refinement of the remarketing campaign

On the creative end, it’s important to know the sizes of all ads that will be displayed. Some advertisers display extremely small images, which limits your ability to describe a call-to-action or even include your logo. Larger ads can accommodate a more detailed message and powerful branding. However, even those small and simple ads can be very effective.

Who Should Use Remarketing?

Every small business with an eCommerce site should investigate remarketing carefully, because an incremental increase in conversions can have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. Small firms with lead generation sites can capitalize on remarketing as well, particularly ones with high-value products and services, and/or customers that have high lifetime value. Either type of firm should explore remarketing when the cost of a traditional AdWords program is prohibitive.

Guest Author – Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago, IL web development company. It specializes in B2B, with clients that do everything from processing credit cards for small business to manufacturing video broadcast equipment. 

Image Source: Smash Magazine

You might not know it, but you’ve probably already used a site that employs A/B testing. You might have also unknowingly participated in an A/B test yourself and contributed to that site’s design optimization in the process.

A/B testing is nothing new in the Internet marketing scene. In fact, it has already been around and in use for the past couple of years. Many people prefer it versus the other methods of testing because of its relative convenience and its simplicity.

What is A/B Testing?

Defined, A/B testing is a method that allows webmasters, web designers, and email marketers to test out two versions of their website or email copy in order to optimize it, increase sales, and improve conversion rates. It is recommended that only one element is varied per test. This is so that the cause for the varied results obtained can be attributed to that single, varied element.

However, some people vary a number of elements at a time in order to decrease the number of A/B tests to be conducted. This is advantageous because it lets webmasters deploy an optimized website design in a shorter span of time. The downside is that the reason for the varied responses can no longer be pinpointed to a single element.

How to Conduct an A/B Test

Step 1: Make a list of the elements you can test.
Take your website apart and list down all of its elements. From this list, focus on the elements that can be varied or improved. It might be helpful to have more than one person create this list to make sure that no elements are left out.

Step 2: Choose an element to test.
Rank the elements listed in Step One according to priority. This will serve as your guide to determine what elements to test and which one should be tested first. The elements you should prioritize should be the ones that will have the biggest impact on your site based on sales or whatever is your gauge for measuring success on your site.

Step 3: Create two versions of the element.
It is in this step where you design your A/B test. Once you’ve decided which element to test, create two versions of it. For example, if you’re choosing to test out the type of “submit” button for your forms, create two buttons that are different and clearly distinct from the other.

Step 4: Carry out the A/B test.
You can use tools like the ones listed at the end of this article, or do it yourself by installing a script and using an analytics tool on your server that will monitor the results from the test.

Step 5: Gather data and interpret test results.
Using the data gathered from your test, determine which variation was able to give you the best results. For example, you can choose to gauge success based on the number of clicks a campaign got or the number of sales that each version of the site made.

Tools to Use for A/B Testing

There a number of tools that you can use to conduct A/B tests. Some of these are the following:

Google Webmaster Tools. This is a free tool provided by Google that can be accessed online. It allows webmasters to perform a number of scans and tests on their site to optimize site design and increase conversion rates in the process.

Visual Website Optimizer. An affordable and intuitive tool that allows you to conduct A/B and multivariant tests.

Guest Author – Ruben Corbo is a freelance writer and writes for a number of online marketing websites including those that help online businesses improve A/B testing techniques to increase sales conversions. When Ruben is not writing he’s producing or composing music for short films or other visual arts.

1. DON’T wait until your launch to start using social media.
I can’t tell you how many inquiries our agency gets along these lines: “Hi, we’re launching a new product next week and want you to set us up a Facebook page to promote it.” Nope. It takes months, sometimes a year or more, to build a following on social media that you can market to. You have to build your community first, and then market.

2. DO have an incredible, mind-blowing offer.
You may be as excited as all get-out about your new product, but people outside your company couldn’t care less. It’s a serious mistake to think features and benefits alone will sell your new product – you have to give people a reason to take action now. Blogs and Facebook are especially effective for promoting special offers, but Twitter works, too. Proven offers include time-sensitive and generous discounts, free trials, rebates, gifts, and extended warranty options.

3. DO integrate social media with your other promotional activity.
Sending an email blast? Include a link to your Facebook page where people can see scores of photos of your new product. Creating a PDF brochure about your new service? Design in a blurb encouraging customers to follow you on Twitter, where they can learn more about its exciting features and value.

4. DO add the personal touch to your social promotion.
Alert influential bloggers and social media connections about your launch via email, Twitter direct message, etc. Ask for their support by retweeting your launch announcements, mentioning the product in a blog post, or commenting on your blog post announcing the new item. Perhaps you can even offer the product to bloggers at no charge, in return for a review of the product on their blog. In social media, there’s an underlying spirit of cooperation, but you still have to ask.

5. DON’T get personal with people you don’t know.
When doing #4 above, be careful not to approach people you don’t know or barely know as if they were lifelong friends. That type of phoniness goes over like a lead balloon in general, and like a lead zeppelin in social media. The good news is, high profile social media people may be willing to help you, especially if you approach them in a professional manner and give them legitimate reasons why it makes sense for them to lend support.

6. Don’t promote something old as if it were new.
Social media is all about authenticity. If your new product is really an old product in a new wrapper, there’s a good chance social media participants will call you on it. If your launch generates negative conversation, it can damage your brand. Remember: when people do Google searches for your company or your “new” product, they will see social media content in the results – including negative Yelp reviews, blog posts with negative comments, etc.

7. DO encourage social sharing, gently.
When people place an online order for your new product, add a feature to the thank-you/order confirmation page that allows them to tweet or publish a Facebook comment about their new purchase. Offer people a small incentive to leave a comment on your blog about the new product, such as a coffee mug or a tee shirt. Too much of this can backfire, as it could be viewed as manipulative. However, when kept low-key and entertaining, a consistent drive for social media sharing can produce a prodigious word-of-mouth effect.

Guest Author – Brad Shorr is Director of Content and Social Media for Straight North, one of the best Chicago marketing agencies out there for small and midsized firms.  They’ve been doing lots of work with niche automotive clients recently, including a small firm that does rebuilt Volvo transmissions and another that specializes in hydraulic motor parts.  Be sure to follow Brad on Twitter.