Tag Archives: social media

career

First Impressions Matter

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You know a positive first impression matters, especially in business and your career. Make sure you make a positive first impression with you LinkedIn profile.

The top section of your LinkedIn profile is highlighted in blue. This is your profile headline.

Let’s compare your profile to a newspaper article. When you scan the newspaper, you read the headlines to decide if an article content is worth reading. If the headline looks interesting, you go on to read the rest of the article.

In LinkedIn, readers use the same process to decide whether your profile is worth reading.

Take a few minutes to review your profile header to see if you entice other LinkedIn members to view your profile. Can they tell what your profile is about from reading your headline?

Are you making a positive first impression?

Leave a reply below and let us know what your LinkedIn profile header says and give us a link to your profile.

Social Media

Find Us on Facebook Badge

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How can you create a custom Facebook Badge for your Facebook profile, Facebook photos, Facebook “likes” or Facebook Page? Let Facebook help you.

Membership in Facebook grows every day. Your customers are out there and they want to connect with you. Make it easy for them to find you on Facebook and connect with you there.

Follow the directions on Facebook badge page to create the custom design of your choosing. Your badge can include your name, picture, recent status updates, number of friends and more. You can even customize the shape of your badge – taller or wider based on your preferences and where you plan to place the badge.

Why add the Facebook badge to your website or blog? To make it easy for others to find your Facebook page, find out more about you. They may even add you as a friend.

When they click on the badge, they go directly to your Facebook page.

CyberLife Tutors | Click here to Like our Facebook page!

Social Media

Add Follow Me On Twitter Button

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How can you add a “Follow Me on Twitter” button to your website or blog? You do not have to ask. I have the how to do it answer for you.

First, why put a “Follow Me on Twitter” button to your site? What does it do for you? The answer is a these buttons give your site visitors a one click link to your Twitter profile. Once they visit your Twitter profile, they can read your recent updates and choose to follow you future tweets.

Looking for a cool way to encourage others to follow you on Twitter? Check out the options and create your button at Twitter Buttons. Best of all – they are FREE!

How does it work?

  1. Go to www.twitterbuttons.com
  2. Type in your Twitter user ID
  3. Select the button type you prefer
  4. Select and copy the HTML code
  5. Paste the code into a blog posting or your website

    6. When they click on the badge, they go directly to your Twitter profile page.

    Below are a few of the choices available. Click on one of the icons below and follow me on Twitter.


By: Twitter Buttons


By: Twitter Buttons

Social Media

LinkedIn Customized Profile URL

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Did you know you can customize your LinkedIn profile URL? Every LinkedIn member can create a easily recognizable link directly to their profile in LinkedIn.

When you create a profile in LinkedIn, the system automatically generates a link to your profile. By default, this is a meaningless string of numbers and / or letters. I recommend Linkedin members edit this field and creating a custom URL for their profile.

Create your own LinkedIn customized profile URL

My custom profile URL is http://www.linkedin.com/in/aprilmwilliams. Clicking on this link will take you directly to my profile page in LinkedIn.

Click on my custom URL http://www.linkedin.com/in/aprilmwilliams and connect with me on LinkedIn.

Members can customizable the last part of their URL or the segment after “in”.

http://www.linkedIn/in/<CUSTOMIZE>

Each LinkedIn member profile is unique. If you have a common name, you may have to be creative in your selection. Consider these options:

  • <FirstName LastName>
  • <FirstName Middle Name LastName>
  • <FirstName Middle Initial LastName>
  • Tag line: i.e., WorldsBestLawyer

Add your newly customized LinkedIn profile URL to your email signature and include it in your resume.

Enter a comment below and let us know your customized LinkedIn profile URL.

Social Media

Ford Fiesta Movement Blog Campaign

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Instead of using old marketing techniques, Ford is introducing the new Fiesta to the U.S. with the Fiesta Movement Campaign. During this promotion they are giving the cars to 100 bloggers throughout the country. During the next six months, Ford hopes the bloggers will promote the car to their followers through social networking.

My brother, in the market for a car heard about the campaign. There were a couple cars in the Chicago area but he could not find a way to contact the drivers. He called me for assistance.

I went online and found one of the bloggers Derek PrettyBoy Dow @Oprettyboy1 on Twitter. A few tweets between us and we had an appointment scheduled for my brother to view and sit in the car. Less than twenty four hours elapsed between my brother’s first call to me and his email to all thanking everyone for their help.

Thanks for your help Derek. Search for hashtag #fiestamovement to learn more.

Social Media

Chicago Blackhawks Tweet

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According to a Daily Herald report this week, Chicago’s Blackhawks pro hockey team are tweeting to their fan base. Over 30,000 followers to the @NHLblackhawks use the site to keep up with the latest news. The Blackhawks team is owned by the Wirtz family which turned to Twitter and Facebook as a way of connecting with their younger fans. Their current Facebook fans number over 200,000 and continue to grow.

Rocky Wirtz heads up the organization, infusing new techniques his father William shied away from. The Blackhawks social networking presence connects them with new fans and increases interest in the club.

The Hawks could learn a few things from other Chicago Sports teams. Ozzie Guillen, White Sox manager uses Twitter to communicate. Recent posts include updates on his trip to Six Flags and a remembrance of a good friend who passed away. He tweets to followers in both English and Spanish.

Social Media

Social Networking Classes for Business

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Student feedback for the recent social networking classes in McHenry has been fabulous. We have a whole new set of LinkedIn users, Facebook friends, Twitter Tweeters and bloggers out there.


This four class series ran three times in McHenry at the Shah Illinois Small Business Development (ISBDC) Center.

After the class, students were invited to join our LinkedIn group to share learnings and best practices with each other. If you attended one of my social networking classes and would like to join this group, send me an email and let me know the class you attended.

If you missed on the session in McHenry, you still have time to register for classes in Elgin. Check our events page for the upcoming events.

review

Rock the World with your Online Presence book

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Mike O’Neil knows how to Rock the World with your Online Presence: Your Ticket to a Multi-Platinum LinkedIn Profile 2nd Edition with music and LinkedIn. I picked up new techniques on updating my profile while reading a promotional copy of the book. Mike and his co-author Lori Ruff weave the solid advice on building a strong LinkedIn profile with classic rock songs.

The book walks the reader through each element of a LinkedIn profile starting at the top. Chapter by chapter, you will learn how to maximize the law of attraction to let others find you online. Using screen shots, examples and tips, these authors start with strategy then get to the details. Mike and Lori focus on the hard tactics which make all the difference online.

Their tips on creating an attention getting LinkedIn profile headline include keyword search strategies, number of characters allowed (120) and using market test strategies.

The power of keywords is a feature often overlooked by LinkedIn users. Mike and Lori show you how to enter keywords in the best segments of your profile so they become searchable by others.

This book is about LinkedIn though there is references to integrate LinkedIn with other tools. The importance of status updates is discussed and links to Twitter updates as well. They discuss the recently added LinkedIn status functionality which allows an instant update to your linked Twitter account.

Their suggestions for giving and receiving professional recommendations are right on. With 3-5 sentences, you can get to the point and make your case. They show you how to make it easy for others to recommend your work.

Linkedin regularly changes the user interface or adds new features. To keep the book current, there is a website where updates and additional content are posted.

Check out this book if you are ready to dive in to create a LinkedIn profile that “Rocks the World.”

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Social Media

How Often to Blog

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I am often asked, “How often should I blog?”

Those who study industry trends generally recommend bloggers post new blog entries at least every fourteen days. Why? Posting on a regular schedule keeps your content fresh and interesting.

Where Are You Today Travel Blog

Search engines love blogs for this reason. Google and other sites will visit blogs often to look for new content. The return to learn how often to expect new content from your site. By writing new blog posts on a regular schedule, you will train the search engines to return more often.

There are a few bloggers who post daily or even more often than that. Seth Godin comes to mind. His posts are short, maybe two or three paragraphs on a topic.

Whatever schedule you choose for yourself, be consistent. It is best to under promise and over deliver. If you write an extra message or two, it is a bonus!

Social Media

Duplicate LinkedIn Profiles

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Duplicate LinkedIn profiles are common. This can happen when you create a LinkedIn profile using one address then you receive another LinkedIn invitation to join through a different address. When you click on the link to the LinkedIn website, it does not recognize your email address and you are encouraged to create a profile.
ivan-walsh-linkedin-profile
Creative Commons License photo credit: Ivan Walsh

Why is this a problem? When you build connections and recommendations they are tied to a single profile. Currently, there is no way to merge two different profiles. They are each stand alone entities independent of one another.

Think of a customer or client who looks for you on LinkedIn. If they see two separate profiles, how will they know which one to connect with? The only way to resolve this is to delete one profile. When you do this, you will lose all your connections and recommendations on the deleted profile.

You can prevent this from occurring by updating your LinkedIn profile with all the email addresses you use.