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If you are an individual or company looking for new qualified leads, look no further than the largest professional network; LinkedIn. Many of you are on LinkedIn, have an account set-up, and have entered your experience, education, website, etc. What a lot of people don’t know is how to use LinkedIn to generate targeted leads on a daily basis. 

There are many different things one can do on LinkedIn to better brand themselves and their respected company. What I want to focus on is LinkedIn groups and how you can use them to your advantage.

Did you know, 80% of members belong to at least one group and 50% are active on them? With 135 million users, there are more than 67 million waiting for you to join the conversation and connect. Here is how you make LinkedIn groups your gold mine of leads!

• Join groups in which your target audience resides. For example, if you want to promote a new tool or product that you developed, join the eMarketer Association and start a discussion about your product. Ask people to check out what you have done and review it!
• To build off joining targeted groups, in order to generate leads and meet new people, you have to get in the action, discuss, ask people to connect, etc. Simply joining a group and posting a discussion will not get you what you want. Join other people’s discussions and make intelligent comments.  You never know who will be searching for you to connect! Yes it takes time, but this should and needs to be part of your marketing strategy. Also, don’t forget, anytime you comment, also end with a link to your site or wherever you want them to go.
• Many of the big time marketing and social media groups have discussions already posted asking people to share their Facebook, Twitter, and blog. Here is where a lot of the gold is. When you post in these discussions and share your sites, people will like and follow you back. Many will even write on your wall, tweet @ you and drop in a nice message. This is where you capitalize, engage and comment back, start to build a relationship, share a link to your site, etc. If you can get them to go to your site and do something that you want, doesn’t that qualify as a lead?
• If you have the LinkedIn plug-in installed on your blog, anytime you generate a new blog post, you can click on the LinkedIn share button and then share it will all of your groups you are associated with. If you belong to 10 groups and there are 100 people in each group that is 1000 people that will hopefully see your blog post and share. Remember, solid content produces results when shared in targeted places.
• Lastly, if you are joining groups that you feel will help you become better educated, stay current on the industry, learn about your target audience, etc. take time to get to know some of the people in the groups you belong to and invite them to connect, maybe even have a phone conversation or coffee? You never know what conversation you can spark up or how you can help each other succeed!

If you have any other advice or tips on how to better utilize LinkedIn, please feel free to share!

When you at the top of your industry, it is tough to get knocked off your perch. Since 2004, Facebook has dominated the market of social media and networking. Whether we like it or not, they constantly come out with new changes and upgrades that allow them to continue to be the best. Currently, they have over 800 million users which is amazing. But when you are the Lion of the jungle and doing well, people are always going to try and beat you at your own game; isn’t that the definition of perfect competition which we strive for here in the United States?

Most recently, two companies are in the process of trying to steal market share from Facebook; Google + and Unthink. As many of you know, Google integrated a social network into its interface. Their goal; steal users from Facebook and build its own social networking empire. The funny thing is, Google + might as well be dead right now. Yes, Google + was the fastest growing website in the history but it has almost become a vast wasteland. Google did a great job of generating excitement and getting people to sign up, but once people joined, they really didn’t do much with it. Why you ask? Three reasons: First it wasn’t any better than Facebook. Secondly, I can do everything on Facebook that I can on Google + except for a few minor things such as circles and hangouts but Facebook answered that bell quickly. Lastly, all my friends and family are on Facebook. They really don’t want to learn another social network that does the same thing except for some of the tech savvy people.

Unthink is the newest social network that launched several weeks ago which is trying to bring down Facebook. What Unthink strives to be is everything Facebook is not. They try to sell you that they are different because they will never use your information for marketing purposes and you can manage content you don’t like easier. It will probably be neat for a while, but eventually people will come back to Facebook. Why? Because Facebook is the ultimate social network. They took what Myspace was and made it 1000 times better. They dominate in users, market share, innovation, etc. People truly don’t want another Facebook.

The point I am trying to make is this. Google +, Unthink, and anyone else that tries to bring down Facebook; good luck. There are too many social networks and we don’t have time for them all. We are set on Facebook because it does everything we want out of a social network. The lesson to be learned is this. If you want to be successful in the arena of social networks, you need to do two things. One, come up with a product that can be integrated into Facebook. A new music software that just hit the market is Spotify. They integrated their music app into Facebook and it is taking off like Wildfire. Secondly, you can’t duplicate Facebook and make minor changes to it and call it something new. It may be cool at first because it is new, but people will come back to Facebook. So my question is this? What is the new big thing in technology that can generate 800 million users that isn’t a social network? The industry of social networks is one big bloody red ocean. You can’t beat Facebook, but you can either join them or create something completely new and innovative. What do you predict is the next big thing in the social technology arena? I would love to hear your comments. Thanks.

-Rob D

A few weeks ago we explored the lure, or to put it bluntly, the obsession, with online social networking.  As most know, this phenomenon was originally targeted towards teenagers and young adults, but as the usage of social media increased, so did the age group of its users.  Meaning: middle aged and older adults have hopped on the bandwagon, and at increasingly high amount at that.  But why?  If the concept was initially intended for a younger crowd, how would it appeal to adults?  And of course, the most important question, what does this mean for marketers?

Its been shown that sixty-five percent of all U.S. adults are now using social networking sites, which is up from sixty-one percent last year, and an astonishing five percent in 2005.  As we discussed in our previous blog, social sites are direct, instant, and very personal.  You can feel connected to someone without their physical presence. Those characteristics may shed light on the cause for the increased and continual use of social networking.

In our previous blog we also referenced Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which details a specific set of human needs.  We found Facebook, and other social sites, have tapped into a human desire to belong and to feel important. It seems Maslow’s Hierarchy does not age-discriminate. All humans possess these primitive needs which we perpetually seek to fulfill.

Social sites provide the perfect platform to achieve belonging and relevance.  More specifically, adult social networking users are much more likely to reconnect with people from their past.  These renewed connections can allow for a powerful support network when nearing retirement or embarking on a new career. In a Pew September 2009 survey, about half of all social networking users ages 50 and older said they had been contacted by someone from their past who found them online. Overall, 64% of social networking users have searched for information about someone from their past, compared with 30% of non-users.

Social media has certainly caught on with adults, and consequentially provides a great opportunity for businesses who target the 30+ age group, to develop a presence within this large community. Businesses owners need to take note of this change.  We can no longer assume the older generations will not be reached utilizing this this new marketing tool.  Most of the social media growth over the past year came from Americans over the age of 30, with seniors accounting for the bulk of it.  This significant statistic that can and will impact your business.  Of course, any new wave of technology can be overwhelming.  So it’s important to do your research, and understand the motivation behind your customers’ use of this technology in order to make a difference with them.