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Tag: linkedin

  • 5 for Friday – Google Changes Its Logo, Apple Buys Beats, Internet Trends Report and More!

    spraypaint5

    1.Google Made the Slightest Change to Its Logo and Users Still Noticed – Mashable

    Google changed its logo and chances are, you probably didn’t even notice. The nerds did, though. Here’s a GIF of the logo, before and after.

    2.Apple Confirms It Will Buy Beats for $3 Billion – Mashable

    Apple confirmed the largest acquisition in company history – they will buy Beats Electronics and Beats Music for a cool $3 billion. No big deal, really.

    3. Lawyers Sue SEO Firm For Violating Google Guidelines – Search Engine Land

    A Michigan law firm is suing its former SEO company for allegedly using “spammy” techniques violating Google’s guidelines. I’ve been with Search Influence since October 2013 and have already seen changes in industry best practices, so it’ll be interesting to see what this means for SEO companies moving forward.

    4. The Most Important Insights From Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet Trends Report – TechCrunch

    TechCrunch breaks down Meeker’s 164 slide report into 52 more digestible nuggets. Here are the 5 I found most interesting:

    • Mobile now accounts for 25% of all web usage
    • Internet advertising grew 16% this year
    • Music streaming is up, sales are down – sales fell in 2013, while streaming grew 32%
    • Photo sharing up 50% over 2013 in just the first half of 2014
    • 84% of mobile owners use their devices while watching TV

    2014InternetTrendsReport

    5. 7 Essential LinkedIn Marketing Stats: When to Post, What to Post and How to Improve – Search Engine Journal

    An interesting read about the third-fastest-growing social network. Don’t believe me? LinkedIn sends nearly four times more people to your homepage than Twitter and Facebook. Combined.

  • 5 For Friday — Links, Stories & Posts For Your Weekend

    Round 1-036 Ways to Use the New LinkedIn Features to Get More Business — Social Media Examiner
    Even your online presence only gets one chance to make a first impression. LinkedIn recently updated its user interface to help users present their accomplishments and skills in a refreshing, new way. This article looks at how to use these new features to your advantage to make stronger connections, create more business, and engage with people with whom you share a common interest.

    Microsoft’s Bing Social Sidebar Gets More Context with Facebook Status Updates, Links, and Comments — The Next Web
    Facebook may have launched its new Graph Search feature this week, but Microsoft is also making some major improvements with the addition of social data to enhance its partnership with Facebook. Moving forward, when you search the web using Bing, you’ll get some Facebook results mixed in; using Facebook’s Graph Search will yield some Bing results.

    11 Obvious A/B Tests You Should Try — QuickSprout
    A/B testing can help you generate leads for your business and, if properly done, can help you create a competitive advantage. Here are some easy tips and tricks to increase your conversion rate.

    YouTube Investment in VEVO Would Strengthen its Top Position in Online Video Rankings — Search Engine Watch
    VEVO is the largest video publisher on YouTube, so it only makes sense that YouTube plans to invest in it for a content partnership. Between rumors of Facebook showing interest in stealing VEVO away from the Google-owned YouTube and its deal with YouTube ending in December, this would be an effective way to help YouTube maintain its more than half-billion views per month.

    23 Reasons to Improve Your Content in 2013 — SEOptimise
    From ranking on Google and Bing to local search and keyword competition, there are a multitude of ways to beat the competition by creating relevant, quality content in the new year. Check out this handy list for a compelling array of reasons to get it in gear and start killing it on the content end in the new year.

  • The New Linkedin Company Pages are Sexy

    Linkedin recently updated their drab design on company pages to a more vivid version, allowing companies to provide additional details on their company beyond a basic summary blurb on capabilities and industry relevance.

    In the past, a Linkedin company page was regarded as a placemarker. It was an area in which companies could stake their claim to the world with a 200 word overview, an employee count and a collaborative area to which the page could post the occasional announcement.

    Before the Twitter/Linkedin API breakup in June, the relevance of a company page was null. It seems that Linkedin is listening to user feedback by allowing companies to now optimize those profiles. The look and feel of the Linkedin company page has evolved to that of a social network for business. The new page allows higher engagement for company followers and interaction, as page administrators now have the option to post updates to “all followers” and a “targeted audience.”

    The company profile now has a very “timeline-y” feel, allowing the positioning of a large cover image for the company representative of the brand. Status updates also hold a greater prominence in the Linkedin stream. This shift has made it easier for companies to feature the products they provide on the page; you can now list each individual product, along with product summary and an image on your “product” overview page.

    In a bird’s eye view, one is able to assess the important key components of the business such as the location, website, size and specialties (keywords) for which the company caters to. The career page is more bold: if you are dishing out the $195 fee to feature a career on your page, it is optimized to come up prominently not only on your page, but also in the location that you are featuring said position in.

    Overall, the updated Linkedin company page design is a winning move to fuel user engagement, connectivity and involve the businesses directly. By taking these strategic steps, Linkedin has positioned themselves as an invaluable source for business networking and mingling.

  • 5 For Friday — Links, Stories & Posts For Your Weekend

    • Ranking the 100 Most InDemand Employers Using LinkedIn Data [INFOGRAPHIC] – LinkedIn

    In pulling professional data from their 175 million users, LinkedIn creates an infographic to display which companies are most attractive to potential job candidates. Software and technology dominating the top 5 positions, with Google taking the lead and Apple placing second. Makes you wonder if job candidates are willing to stick it out in hopes for landing their dream job with the top dogs of tech!

    • 5 Important Post-Penguin Guest Post Prospecting Questions – Search Engine Journal

    With Google’s most recent algorithm update, many have noticed an impact in their SEO efforts and rankings. However, having a well optimized link building approach may include guest posting or blogging. As guest posting is still imperative in SEO, SEJ explains how finding niche blogs, relevant topics, and having quality content can help your SEO in a place of Penguin!

    • 5 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Engagement – Social Media Examiner

    Promoting your brand or company on Facebook allows you to not only to engage with your demographic, but also reach potential customers. Check out Social Media Examiner as they explain the right time to post, best character count for posts, appropriate URL length, and the most engaging content to better interact with your fans!

    • Why the iPod Still Matters to Apple – Mashable

    Apple’s most recent launch of the iPhone 5 has all the Apple lovers flocking to the closest metaphorical orchard. Now the Mac bigwigs are the spotlight on one of its older products. On Wednesday night, Apple launched a new campaign featuring the redesigned iPod. With the iPod initiating the re-positioning of the brand over 11 years ago, Apple won’t be fading this product out anytime soon. Turn it up!

    • What’s The Best Time of Day To Send Emails? [Infographic] – Read Write Web

    Between newsletters, online marketing updates, and the countless emails we receive in a day how can we guarantee the recipient is actually reading our emails? This infographic illustrates when emails are opened the most, and shows at what times throughout the day people are engaging in their emails. Don’t stress if you forgot to send that email out at 5:15 PM — data shows it may be best to wait til tomorrow!

  • Linkedin and Twitter Post Split: The Best Decision for Both

    From the time Twitter uttered those dreaded words to Linkedin — “I want my (API) keys back” — fast forward one month. In its wake, the separation has left the intended higher ad revenues for both, as well as better user engagement for Linkedin.

    An odd couple indeed.

    It was an odd pairing to begin with, a one-off that was a bit out of left field even when Linkedin and Twitter joined forces in late 2009. It was much like that couple in your friends group with different values and nothing in common, but who work… for a time. Linkedin is a B2B paradise with a focus on member engagement, lead generation and advertising. Twitter, on the other hand, is B2C utopia due to the brand awareness and engagement-driving “promoted tweets” feature.

    Linkedin is now being used for what it was initially intended: to build engagement, drive leads and sell their advertising product for companies and job openings. Twitter is now “working on themselves” — and no, this doesn’t mean a yoga membership and a few dates to get over Linkedin. They’re back to the lab and focused on growing their applications.

    All Linkedin posts that were synced to Twitter in the past automatically optimized each post specifically for Twitter. Now, they are completely standard if you share to Twitter. These changes come from Twitter creating more uniform guidelines around API sharing and a more in-depth focus on their own applications and tools. Raven Tool’s Courtney Sieter (who was one of the most engaging and educational speakers of Search Exchange this year) came out with 10 Linkedin Shortcuts for a Post-Twitter World which I found extremely helpful.

    You can still share your Linkedin updates on Twitter, but not the other way around. For some, this is a tragic loss; for other tweeple whose feed represents a birds-eye view of Texts From Last Night’s “Best Ever” category, it’s a hidden blessing (seriously, just un-link your accounts at that point). This severance has also greatly reduced the amount of frivolous and ill-suited posts that used to clog the Linkedin feed.

     

    Pre-breakup Linkedin Engagement Level:

    Now: Chock-full of Goodness!

    Like that one mismatched couple who had their good years, this split seemed sudden at the time; however, they’re just better off doing their own thing. Both companies made the best move possible to not only grow their own revenue and product, but to separately work on custom initiatives important to their users. Since the split Linkedin has had a facelift, redesigning their look and feel to engage users by keeping them on the page longer. Conversely, Twitter makes 90 percent of its revenue in advertising, and it’s time to focus on themselves. Historically, they were giving too much of themselves through third party applications and at the end they had a smaller piece of the pie. For Twitter, it’s time to stop self-sacrificing and be a little selfish for more lucrative results.

  • Twitter Ditches LinkedIn, Says It’s Not Personal

    twitter linkedin split
    I'm a fan.

    “It’s not you. It’s me.” That’s what Twitter proclaimed to LinkedIn this morning, ending a two-year partnership between the micro-blogging giant and the social network site for job seekers. Breakups are hard to do, as the saying goes, but according to LinkedIn, they didn’t even care in the first place.

    “If you had previously synced your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, and selected the option to share Tweets on LinkedIn, those Tweets generated from Twitter will no longer appear on LinkedIn,” says Ryan Rolansky on the official LinkedIn blog. “There will be no other changes to your LinkedIn experience.”

    In other words, you can still post updates to Twitter from LinkedIn, but not the other way around. ‘Cause Twitter totally blocked LinkedIn, bro. So uncool.

    Jokes aside, Twitter has been getting pretty fussy lately. Developers using their application programming interface (API) have their work cut out for them — it’s notoriously tricky to handle — and the initial Spartan interface has gotten more and more tricked-out over recent months. With all these new bells and whistles, Twitter wants its branding to remain as consistent as possible, which is why sites like LinkedIn are getting kicked off the bandwagon.

    While Twitter may seem like an infallible giant to the hyper-focused social media contigent, the truth of the matter is that most people are reading it through a variety of secondary services. If you connect your Twitter stream to Facebook, for example, you can read it all there at the same time as you read about Aunt Margaret and her eighteen cats. So why go to the source site when you can get it all in one place?

    Even though the service became famous for its brilliantly minimalistic-efficient service, the company seems determined to expand. Twitter Cards, a new option that offers partner websites a way to show off more content, seems interesting, but not necessarily what I want out of Twitter as a user. Just give me my feeds in Tweet form, let me post dumb photos, and I’ll be fine. Is the majority of the user base really craving more than that? Or is the thrust of Twitter’s new direction less about what the general consumer wants, and more about how Twitter can serve as a business tool?
     

  • LinkedIn Company Profile Tutorial from Dream Systems Media

    Our colleauge Mat Siltala of Dream Systems Media (Mat was Social before Social was cool) has a nice video tutorial with some great screen shots on how to set up your LinkedIn Company Profile .

    Among the benefits are:

    • One more positive reference for your brand (reputation management)
    • Ability to show your depth with automatic pickup of employees
    • Rich text opportunities

    Mat put together a nice video and has many more screen shots of building the LinkedIn business page on the DSM internet marketing blog. Definitely worth a quick review.

    Here’s the video: