As Jason and I spend time coaching clients and prospects on LinkedIn, the first thing we do is educate them on the steps involved in creating a complete profile.

We often refer to this (and all social media infrastructure setup) as “the plumbing” because it’s a necessary step before you can effectively use any social media tool.

So once your LinkedIn profile is complete, what are some of the things you should do next?

Here are  7 LinkedIn Quick Tips to get you headed in the right direction…

LinkedIn Quick Tips

1. MARK YOUR CALENDAR: Ideally, you will spend some time on LinkedIn every week. A good way to remind yourself to do that is by setting up a recurring, weekly calendar appointment for a minimum of 15-30 minutes dedicated to LinkedIn. In fact, cut and paste these LinkedIn Quick Tips right into your calendar entry to remind you what you need to do each week!
2. CONNECT TO PEOPLE: Start connecting to people that you know, trust and respect. There are a few ways to do this and you can see them all by clicking “Contacts” at the top of the page and then  “Add Connections”. And when you send an invitation to someone, be sure to personalize it!
3. RECOMMENDATIONS: Provide recommendations to those “rock stars” you’ve worked with over the years. Be authentic in your recommendations and write them in a way that lets people know why the person is great to work with. For examples of recommendations, take a look at some that Jason and I have written and received on our LinkedIn profiles. (Note: You must be logged into your LinkedIn account to view these.) Mic’s LinkedIn Profile; Jason’s LinkedIn Profile 
4. SEE WHAT YOUR NETWORK IS UP TO: If you click on “Home” at the top of the page when logged into your LinkedIn account, you will see a list of updates from people in your network and groups that you belong to. See what they are saying…see who they are connecting to….see what updates they are making to their profile. You never know what opportunities might come up. If you aren’t paying attention to what people are doing, you’ll miss those opportunities!
5. JOIN, AND PARTICIPATE IN, GROUPS: If you click on “Groups” at the top of the page when logged into LinkedIn, and then click on “Groups Directory”, you will see that there are tons of groups that you can join and participate in. Do searches for groups in your industry or groups that interest you (I am a part of several Jayhawk/KU groups..shocking, I know!) This is another great way for you to connect with like-minded people and share your opinions and expertise.
6. TAKE A LOOK AT WHO’S HIRING: Many people don’t realize that there are jobs posted on LinkedIn. Click on “Jobs” at the top of the page when logged into LinkedIn and take a peek at who’s hiring. That might give you some insight into companies that are growing…or you might know someone that you can refer to a company. Again, if you don’t make a habit of looking, you miss out on those opportunities.
7. FOLLOW COMPANIES THAT ARE CLIENTS OR THAT INTEREST YOU: Using the search box in the upper right hand corner of LinkedIn, search for companies that are your clients, that you are interested in, that you used to work for, etc. Once you’ve found them, you can choose “Follow Company” on their LinkedIn Company Profile Page. For an example, and to follow Blue Gurus, click here:

Those are just a few helpful tips to get you in the habit of proactively using LinkedIn each week.

Have you put these tips into practice? What have you learned? Do you have other tips that have been helpful to you or your business?

Don’t be shy! We’d love to hear from you!

When I first started thinking about a career in Social Media, I found myself spending hours a day for months on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I couldn’t get enough of it and loved all of the minute-by-minute interaction that was happening right before my eyes.

One of the stories that came out of that time is one I share on a regular basis with our clients and prospects:

“The Johnny’s Story.”

Johnny’s  is a bar and grill that started in Lawrence, KS and a place where I spent more than a few evenings when I was a student at KU. They have two locations in Lawrence and six in Kansas City. In fact, there is one that is five minutes from my house at 8262 Mission Road, Prairie Village, Kansas 66208.

I’ve lived in Prairie Village for nearly 5 years and realized a few months ago that I hadn’t been to Johnny’s in years. How did I realize that? I noticed one of my Facebook friends “became a fan” (now, as you know, it’s just called “LIKE”) of the Prairie Village Johnny’s Facebook Page .

So I became a fan too and started seeing updates every day in my Facebook feed….”2-for-1 burgers on Thursdays!!!”…”Join us for Taco Tuesdays!!!”…..”Live music this Friday!!!”….”$2.50 Schooners!!!”…..and on and on. Eventually I found myself thinking “2-for-1 burgers is a good deal”, “I’d love to go hear some live music”, “Mmmmmm, tacos sound good”, and “I need to get over to Johnny’s”.

And I did. Again. And again. And again. And not just by myself. I brought people with me. I started to tell my friends about 2-for-1 burgers on Thursdays. I coordinated a couple of Jayhawk watch parties with my friends. I gathered some people to see live music. In fact, thanks to a recent promotion they mentioned on their Facebook page, I check in on Foursquare  every time I go to Johnny’s now and, (after ordering a couple of drinks), get a free appetizer for doing so! (I’m partial to the mini-burritos.)

Oh, and I post about it on Twitter and Facebook. And I talk to clients and prospects about it every week. And now I feel like I’ve gotten to know the Prairie Village Johnny’s that much better…their persona…their brand…the people that work there….and I like it. I like ALL of it.

So what happens next? People hear me talk about it (and I’m enthusiastic when I do!) and see me post it on Facebook and Twitter and then THEY start thinking “I need to get over to Johnny’s.” And they will. It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow. But they will.

What did Johnny’s do right? They provided me, the consumer, with consistent, relevant information that directly influenced my buying decisions. They shared their personality and their brand with me. They offered specials and incentives for me to come into their establishment…and then, most importantly, they took GREAT care of me (and my friends) when I got there.

The important thing to know is that this isn’t an isolated case between me and Johnny’s. These stories happen EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. This is the power YOU have. As a consumer. As a business. As someone that actively engages your friends, family and customers through social media.

The final thought I want to leave you with is this: When businesses that haven’t engaged in social media are wondering what the ROI (Return on Investment) might be, think about “The Johnny’s Story”. Has Johnny’s done an ROI report on Mic Johnson? NOPE! But have they gotten incredible value out of me? ABSOLUTELY.

Social media works. It worked on me.

Anyone want to go to Johnny’s?

How has social media influenced a buying decision for you, your family or business? We’d love to hear your story.

If you are like me, you have laughed and rolled your eyes at “those” people that spend their time playing social games like Farmville and the most recently launched Frontierville.  If you haven’t heard of these games (gasp!), they are the creation of a company named Zynga.  (Valued at over $1 Billion…)  They build Flash based games that plug in to the Facebook social media network.  In the majority of PC based games, you play against the computer.  The twist on “social gaming” is that you play online with or against your friends.  Also, the people playing don’t have to be playing at the same time.  One person does something in the game in the morning, and their friend can respond when they have time to play that evening.  In other words, it is closer to turn-based games like Risk.

The title of this article is “Frontierville – Waste of Time?”.  I have assumed the answer is YES for so long and realized that I needed to at least play one of these games so that I could have an opinion based on experience.  This hit my radar when my brother Mike asked me to be his Frontierville friend when he was at my house 2 weeks ago.  Apparently, he and his wife Elizabeth both play the game and they were looking for “neighbors”.  The concept is that the more people you invite to be neighbors of the Frontier that you are building, the more perks, resources and awards you get in the game.  So basically they didn’t care if I played or not, they just wanted me to sign up to be a neighbor.  <grin>

Nostalgic Interlude
When I was growing up, I remember that we would get together to play board games for entertainment.  Life, Scrabble and Parcheesi were fun nights for the Terry family.  (I know, might not be the most exciting, but it allowed our family to spend time together.)  I will come back to this…

Back to Today
So here is the deal.  I signed up and learned how to play the game Frontierville.  The game starts with you being plunked down in the middle of a forested area with a wagon, some chickens and a few planted crops.  That’s it.  From then on, you have to chop down trees, clear grass and rocks and work on building a homestead.  I made some progress and was able to build a cabin.  Then my brother Mike and his wife Liz connected to my homestead as neighbors.  They started randomly showing up in the game to help me with my land.  This gave them “points” for helping me and gave me points as well for accepting their help.  So that’s where this game got me.  It was actually a lot of fun to compare homesteads with Mike and Liz.  The whole “Jonesing” for things played itself out virtually as I realized that my homestead wasn’t as nice as Mike and Liz’s.  It made me want to work on it more.  And I did.  It kinda feels like the family playing board games again.  I have enjoyed this little experiment and realized that I was hasty to judge social games as a waste of time.

My Opinion
So my answer to the question of whether Frontierville is a waste of time, I say no.  It is a fun way to stay in touch with my family more frequently.  It doesn’t take a lot of time to “get in and get out” for 10 minutes as a distraction during a busy day.  I enjoy building things, and watching my virtual homestead coming together has been surprisingly rewarding.  My recommendation is that you give Frontierville or something similar a chance before blindly scoffing at the concept.  That said, if you get addicted to things and can’t keep balance in your life, then stay away from Frontierville!

How many of you have ever sent or received a LinkedIn invitation that says “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”?

What did you think about it?

We can tell you what we think about it….DON’T DO IT!

We tend to cringe any time we see the standard default message pop up in our LinkedIn inboxes from someone that wants to connect. In fact, we often joke that the default message might as well be: “Hello. I’m lazy. This invitation isn’t important enough for me to spend the 15-20 seconds it would take to write a personal message telling you who I am, how we know each other, and why I want to connect.”

That said, we understand that there are a lot of people that are new to LinkedIn and are learning the “do’s and dont’s” around using the tool. As we work with clients throughout Kansas City, we’re making sure that people personalize their invitations and stop using the standard default invitation.

Think about it in conversational terms. When you meet someone in person or are talking on the phone, do you use stuffy, boring, impersonal language like “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn?”

Of course you don’t! (At least we hope you don’t!)

So, going forward, when sending LinkedIn invitations, do yourself, the Blue Gurus, and the recipient of your invitation a favor: PERSONALIZE IT!

We would love to hear your horror stories, so feel free to comment!

Useful Links

We spoke at the ACA Professionals Club meeting this morning and one of the important conversations was around just knowing what web sites to pay attention to.  Here is a typical list of the web sites/tools that we use on a regular basis related to social media.

HootSuite.com – This is a social media status aggregator.  You can plug in your credentials for each of the supported sites and update your status in one place that then broadcasts out to all of your sites… specifically LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

NameChk.com – This is a site where you can see where your “name is claimed” on the popular social media sites.  Type in your company name or personal name to see what may already be taken.  If available, we strongly recommend you visit the site and “claim your name” by creating a free account and following whatever process each site has you go through to claim your name.

MailChimp.com – A competitor of Constant Contact (email newsletter delivery system).  We like the price, the features, the integration with Survey Monkey and the professional free templates.

WordPress.org – One of the best web site Content Management Solutions.  Did we mention the code is free?  For a showcase of sites using the WordPress system, go here.

RocketTheme.com – One of our favorite web sites to purchase WordPress themes.  The dynamic menus, layouts and straight forward implementation are strong points to the RocketTheme WordPress themes.

Delicious.com – Save your favorite web bookmarks using this site.  They go with you where you go.  The social component is that you can easily share your sites with others, tag the links for relevance and more.  To see Jason Terry’s list of links, go here.

We would love to hear about your favorite social media sites and tools, so be sure to comment us back on this post for the world to see!

WordPress

We have talked about WordPress before, but it comes up so often that we needed to mention it again.  In the past month, we have had 5 companies hire us to help them create new web sites to replace their dated and static web sites.  (Before and after case studies will be on the web site in the coming months.  For now, visit the official WordPress Showcase.)  Our social media clients are doing this because they see and hear about how we use WordPress and professionally designed themes to create fantastic looking web sites without the equally fantastic price tag.  WordPress is a FREE content management system for creating web sites with a ton of functionality including Blogs, Image Galleries, Polls, SEO Optimization and more.

In an environment where a typical web design proposal weighs in at $5,000 as a starting point, a WordPress based site can be implemented for half that.  Another incredibly important benefit for using WordPress is that someone on your staff can easily update the content on your web site regularly with the built-in Content Management System. All without having to pay someone hourly fees to create a news article or updated staff profile.

Version 3.0 of the WordPress system is due out this month and there are a TON of great new features.  The current Blue Gurus Web Site uses a theme from RocketTheme.com that cost $50.  It took 2 hours to switch from our old WordPress theme to the new one, completely changing and updating the look and feel of our site for the better.  And if we didn’t like it, we could have switched back to the previous theme with the click of a button.

We often buy templates for our clients from ThemeForest.net and RocketTheme.com.  The previous Blue Gurus web site theme was called Display and we bought it at ThemeForest.net for $42.  We would love to hear from you (go ahead and COMMENT!) if you have other WordPress Theme sites that you like.  We have been pleasantly surprised with the developer support of these themes.  The theme sites we use support the ability for you to ask the developers of the themes questions if something isn’t working quite right.  Sometimes, the problem has been on our end.  Sometimes, it was a flaw in the design that the developers fix and update for all to take advantage of.  Either way, getting that support from the theme developer is worth so much more than the cost of the theme itself!

If you have been sitting on a web site for more than 3 or 4 years and you know it is time to create a new site, be sure to give us a call to discuss WordPress options!  We would love to show you the power of this community based content management system that powers hundreds of thousands of web sites!

(WordPress Dashboard Backend)

The question we keep asking is: What are you so afraid of?

Social media is a way to connect with people… customers, prospects, colleagues, old friends, new friends….in a way we’ve never been able to before. If done right, it’s the quickest way to develop a deeper connection with a person or brand. You learn more about a person or company and see if you are interested in taking your relationship to the next level….or finding a partner that better fits your needs.  Spend a few minutes on a profile, or fan page, or reading a blog…and soon after you understand a lot more about the person or company you are engaging with…at least as much as they are willing to share.

Our belief is that the fear comes from the fact that it is virtually impossible to consistently be anything other than your authentic self when engaging social media. If you project something that isn’t who you are…or who your company is….you will get called on it…and quickly. And is that really such a bad thing? 

If you, as a person or an organization, aren’t being true to yourself, then how can you be true to your customers? How can you expect them to believe in you? If you do something wrong, acknowledge it, fix it, and move on. It’s really not as hard as you think. And it’s certainly easier than continuing to try to mask who you really are or who you want people to think you are. Your online brand, as an individual or as an organization, should be a true and honest representation of who you  are. Organizations that embrace this will separate themselves from their competition.

We have not yet met someone that doesn’t want to know the truth about a person or company they are involved with. Most people want to know that the people and companies they interact with actually care about them and are engaging with them from an authentic place.  Social media is blasting through the walls of political correct-stuffiness and forcing people and companies to once again embrace who they are…who their authentic self is….what the company culture really is…..how they really view themselves…how they view their customers….and then projecting that truth to the rest of the world to consume as they wish. It’s a beautiful thing.

Say goodbye to fear and embrace social media as an opportunity for you to wake up each day knowing that what you are putting out there is who you really are… what your company stands for… and people can take it or leave it.  If they do the latter, that’s ok, you probably wouldn’t have had a productive relationship.  Put your fears aside and embrace social media as a way for you to authentically brand yourself or your organization.

The only thing you have to fear is fear itself!  Are you being authentic in your social media engagement? Other thoughts? Tell us what you think!

FourSquare

It seems like new social media applications spring up every day.  FourSquare is the newest application we have been using lately and there are some things we really like about it.  FourSquare is a location based social app that allows you to “check in” at locations you visit.  The grocery store, coffee shop, favorite restaurant or bar, you name it… you can check in there.  When you check in, you can see tips from other people that have visited this location, like what to order, ways to save money, etc.  The interesting twist on this application as compared to other location aware apps is the point system.  You get points for checking in, submitting new locations, etc. and along with those points come badges of accomplishment and you can become “Mayor” of a location if you are the most frequent visitor to that location.

Is this application a waste of time?  For many the answer for now might be yes.  However, it may be worth your time to give this application a spot on your iPhone, Blackberry, or Android based phone.  We love the ability to check reviews of restaurants using the mobile version of Yelp.  We also enjoy finding out what movies are playing when at the local theater.  FourSquare is another application that can provide you with great information for places you have always gone to, or help you discover new places to visit.  There is a local sandwich shop at 119th and Quivira called Gert’s Grille.  We saw someone mention that they had excellent soup in a bread bowl.  It was a cold day.   We tried it and it was excellent. 

If you like to adopt new applications before they are yesterday’s news, we recommend you download this free application for your phone.  Next time you are in a business you frequent often check out the FourSquare tips to see what others have said and maybe even add your own comments to help someone that checks in there after you.

HootSuite.com

We heard about HootSuite a few months ago from a good friend of ours, David Cacioppo, over at emfluence.  HootSuite is a status update aggregator.  What does that mean?  Let’s assume you have an account on LinkedIn, a Facebook Fan Page, and a Twitter account.  Then let’s assume that you would like to be able to update your current status across all 3 social media sites at one time.  HootSuite does that. 

Get your free HootSuite account set up and start doing a better job of updating your social media status across all your social media sites!

Great list of HootSuite features:

• Supports multiple social networks including LinkedIn, Facebook, Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter, WordPress and more
• Supports multiple accounts on each platform.  For example, if you have 2 or 3 different Twitter accounts
• Supports Scheduled Updates.  You can set the date and time for when you want an update to be published
• Supports Team Workflow so that multiple contributors can be managed across many social media platforms
• Track statistics, especially when using the URL shortener that tracks click throughs to points of interest
• Multiple Column View allows you to sort your social networks into friends, search terms, keyword tracking and more

For a full list of features and some demos, visit hootsuite.com/about.

Here is a screenshot of our Social Network setup screen.  All you have to do is type your message into the entry box provided, click on the social networks you want to post to and click Send Now.  The status you entered will be posted to all of the sites that you clicked to post to!  It is that easy!

Google Local Business Center

A friend and client of mine, Karen Maxwell, mentioned Google Local Business Center to me recently.  Millions of people search Google for businesses and it is a good idea to make sure that your business is listed on Google Maps.  I use my iPhone to search for businesses all the time when I am on the move.  I never thought about the fact that I might need to submit my business to Google so that my business shows up in search results!  There is an entire resource center with videos and more on how to do this, and I just registered Blue Gurus.  It took about 5 minutes, and I verified the business listing with my phone, so the Blue Gurus profile will be available in Google Map Searches within 24 hours.  Get started by going to the Google Local Business Center!

My recommendation is that you search for your business on Google Maps (visit maps.google.com).  If you find your business listed, it is most likely that your business information was included in bulk map data that Google bought.  Check the listing for accuracy.  If it is not accurate, you can “claim your business” if you have access to the listed phone number or mailing address in the listing.  By default, your business listing is probably very basic information and by claiming your business on the Google Local Business Center, you can add business hours, contact information, payment options, photos of your business inside and out and more.

Here is how you would go about claiming your business as described by Google:
Some of our listings inevitably will contain incorrect or outdated information. You can easily correct such errors. In Google Maps, click on the listing, then click the “Edit” button at the bottom of the bubble. If you have access to either the phone number or the mailing address in that incorrect listing, click “Claim your business” to claim and then suppress the listing. Otherwise, click the “Remove place” link to suggest that we remove it from the map.

Go get listed today if you haven’t already!