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LinkedIn

7 Tips for Optimizing Your LinkedIn Brand

by Daria Steigman on August 18, 2010

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Brand | Independent Thinking | Steigman Communications, LLCIn keeping with the time constraints of busy, always on-the-go workers, MarketingProfs has created a new “Take 10” series: short, 10-minute presentations with actionable takeaways. I was smart enough to take 10 minutes out the other day to get a LinkedIn 101 refresher course from Jason Alba.

Alba offered four “do it once” tips for setting up your profile and six “do regularly” tips for keeping your brand front and center on LinkedIn. The highlights of his “do regularly” advice:

  • Pose a Question to your network at least once a month.
  • Answer Questions whenever you have a few minutes of downtime.
  • Join LinkedIn Groups Discussions, which let you reach an audience beyond your first degree network (or start a Groups discussion of your own).
  • Use Advanced Search to find prospects.
  • Use Company Search to gain competitive intelligence on your prospects and your competition.
  • Update Your Status at least weekly. (I’d actually recommend doing this more often as long you have something relevant to share—be it a useful link, a blog post, information about that killer conference you’re headed to, and so forth.)

I’d add one final “do regularly” tip: Read status updates from your network. You can do that easily by pulling in the RSS feed of all your contacts’ status updates. This is a great tool for keeping up with who has changed jobs, is sharing good news, or otherwise has something worth commenting on. I tend to skim the updates (there will be a lot), looking less at who’s connecting with whom and more at who’s sharing news. See something interesting? Click through, leave a quick comment, and become instantly top of mind.

Photo by Mario Sundar (Flickr).

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You’re Using Social Media, But is Your Audience Listening?

by Daria Steigman on June 10, 2010


Independent Thinking | Steigman Communications, llc

I wrote here about the secret to a great client relationship (hint: it’s about how you communicate). Now I want to talk about a related issue: understanding how your audience is listening.

For example:

  • Have you ever had someone say, “Well, I tweeted about that”?
    Okay, but I didn’t see your random tweet at a random-to-me time in a sea of tweets from the 500+ people I’m following.
  • Have you ever had someone tell you they posted the event to their LinkedIn Group?
    Great, except I get a weekly digest and your event was three days ago.

  • Have you ever had multiple people send you Facebook notifications for the same event, even though you’re on the organization’s distribution list and so have obviously received at least one event invitation (and possibly signed up already)?
    Gee, now you’re spamming me.

Here’s the problem: When you do this, you’re making assumptions about my behavior and how I use various social media channels. Get it right, and we’re cool. Get it wrong, and your message is lost. You become irrelevant. Or worse, I unfollow, unlink, or unfriend you.

Whether you’re asking directly, monitoring online behavior, or accessing analytics, it’s important to understand how people consume information.

What strategies do you use to understand how your audience is listening?

Note: This post originally appeared on IABC’s Communication World blog.

Photo by cogdogblog (Flickr).

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What Book Has Influenced Your Career?

by Daria Steigman on June 1, 2010

Daria Steigman | Independent Thinking | Steigman Communications, llcThere’s a LinkedIn discussion going on right now in one of my groups about the books that have made you the person you are today. While I knew many people would cite inspiration texts, philosophers, and business gurus, I had to stop and think whether there were any media that resonated that much. I scanned all the books on my shelves. Nothing popped out.

Then I realized there is one documentary and one poem that did make a difference:

  • I saw Harvest of Shame when I was 13 (props to an amazing teacher), and it made me want to do something to help migrant workers. Ten years later, when I knew I needed a graduate degree to break out of my dead-end job, I chose labor relations.
  • Wordsworth’s The World Is Too Much With Us is 14 lines long, and it turned my 17-year-old self upside down. I came to college planning to study economics and business so that I could live and work overseas. But then I found poetry and my passion. And that took me into that dead-end job, which took me to labor relations–and eventually to that blowtorch that helped shape who I am today.

The rest of my library? Some really great stuff that’s made me an educated woman and/or given me great ideas and insights. But made me who I am? That’s a much smaller list.

What about you? What media have helped forge your path?

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What’s in Your Toolbox?

by Daria Steigman on April 28, 2010

Business Productivity Toolbox

[Note: This post originally appeared on IABC's Communication World blog.]

I was checking my e-mail, tweeting with friends, and reading through a backlog of blog posts last Friday while soaring across the United States at 35,000 feet. It was a great way to feel connected after a week of airplanes, hotels, and day-long meetings. But then I came back, and my Internet service provider had a major outage—leaving me offline and disconnected for several hours on Monday.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the tweets or my e-mail that I missed. It was Google. And Dictionary.com. I was working on a report for a client, and I’m so used to being able to fact check, decipher acronyms, and check for precise word usage that the productivity snag was making me really cranky, really fast.

That got me thinking about the tools I take for granted that help me as a multitasking communications pro, business owner, and blogger.

Here are seven programs and tools that help me to be productive every day:

  1. Google has become my backup business hub. Plus I can sync my Droid so that I can access Gmail, my contacts, and my calendar on the go.
  2. Google Reader is indispensible. Without a good aggregator, it would be impossible to keep up with 10-15 blogs, let alone the 100+ I read regularly.
  3. Ever since I loaded that first beta version of Google Chrome, I’ve been hooked by the speed and simplicity of the browser. I’m particularly fond of the bookmark sync feature since I typically use two computers (one desktop, one netbook).
  4. TweetDeck is my Twitter desktop client of choice. The Groups feature is invaluable; I also run Facebook and LinkedIn feeds. I typically monitor the notifications window at the bottom of my screen, and pop in periodically to chat during the day.
  5. Evernote enables me to capture random ideas for blog posts and other notes and access them wherever and whenever I want.
  6. Post-it Notes, Sticky Notes, and 1 dry erase board. I’m big on both to-do lists and capturing ideas and potential innovations. I use my dry erase board as a visual reminder of projects and deadlines and as a place to aggregate blog post ideas for Communication World, Workshifting, and this blog. I use the Sticky Notes program (which sits on my desktop) for nagging items. Post-it Notes is for one-off items, from checking on the status of an invoice to a phone call I need to return.
  7. My Droid, with its crisp big screen and Android operating system, is rapidly becoming an invaluable business tool. Plus it has amazing turn-by-turn GPS navigation.

What’s in your toolbox?

Photo by Ali Edwards (Flickr).

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Second Look: LinkedIn, Doing Good, and Putting Your Social Media House In Order

by Daria Steigman on April 20, 2010

Social Media Channels in PlaceEach week I’m highlighting 3 or 4 posts, surveys, and other news that I have read and/or tweeted about that you may not have seen. As the name implies, I think they deserve a second look.

  • 6 Reasons to be a Good Company: The always thought-provoking Umair Haque poses the question: Why is doing good in our self interest? The answer involves a laddered approach that starts with information and moves up to rulemaking and self-correction. Good post with examples of companies that are walking the walk.
  • 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn: Solid advice for small business owners, including keeping in touch and tracking your competition.
  • Everything has its Place: My friend John Taylor has a terrific post about social media channels and what goes where.

Photo by waywuwei (Flickr).

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