LinkedIn has a store, where you can buy branded merchandise. Up for sale include mugs, shirts, luggage tags and even reusable grocery shopping bags. For me, I’ve got my eye on the lapel pin for in-person networking.

The LinkedIn blog is frequently updated with all the new and cool enhancements on the network. Writers use the content here for their own blog posts. And for those of you who like to comment on blog posts, the structure here publishes your profile URL, which is a unique twist, and may help you with optimization.

A fairly new feature is the ability to reorder the elements on your profile. Via simple drag and drop, you can move the pieces of your profile around to best highlight your skills, expertise or experiences and stand out from the crowd.

I launched my first DirectAds campaign earlier this week, and the results seem promising. The targeting is robust, but the $10/day minimum is pretty high when compared to Google and Facebook ($1/day or so). More to come on the results of my campaign.

LinkedIn also makes it very easy for you to promote your profile with badges. When logged in to your account, the badges are automatically updated to include your profile URL.

I hope you find these features useful to your networking goals on Linked In, and I welcome your comments, and connection requests.

Photo credit by ilco.

During the presentation, a number of questions arose about pay-per-click, how websites are optimized and what works best for client development. One of the things I recommended was to create local business profiles, on places like Google Local, Superpages, etc.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time, and didn’t get to my series of slides on social marketing. I had an idea I wanted to share: could you use social for local? Since all major search engines included social media elements for just about any given search, I thought there might be an angle lawyers and other professional service providers could take. I came up with the following rule and super simple plan:

Rule
Never alter your Name, Address or Phone number (NAP) from platform to platform. It’s hard enough to rank for popular phrases, why complicate things?

Plan

• Create local profiles on Google Local, Yahoo Local and Best of the Web. Be consistent with your NAP!
• Once you sign up on Twitter, occasionally tweet your NAP. And while you’re at it, make sure your Name, Address and Phone Number are listed clearly on all social media profile pages.
• Add your social media profiles as links on your local profiles. Couldn’t hurt.

What do you think? This three step plan is easy to implement, and should pay dividends down the road.

• Linda Glasgow, of Lewis King — thank you for the opportunity to speak!
• Marsha Wilson, the executive director of the Knoxville Bar Association
• Marc Upchurch, of Kramer Rayson, LLP
• David Kristy, an attorney with Butler, Vines & Babb, PLLC
• Randall Miller, Executive Director of Woolf, McClane
• Pam McMahan of Wimberly Lawson

Photo credit by robhoward.

These do’s and don’ts establish good starting points for your online activities:

Do’s

• Consider social marketing as another tool in your client development kit. Along with your website, social marketing is an easy to use, intuitive way to build trust and create potential referrals.
• Quickly remove or “untag” photo’s posted on Facebook that might cause a few eyebrows to wrinkle.
• Use social networking sites to build contacts, answer questions and exchange information. LinkedIn and Martindale-Hubbell Connected are the two obvious choices here.
• Let common sense prevail over your 1st Amendment rights before posting or publishing.
• Use social networking, ethically, for information in litigation. Most users have little or no privacy settings set up, so it’s wide open. Happy hunting to all family & divorce lawyers.

Don’ts

• Don’t avoid it because you think it’s just another online fad. Social media and social marketing are here to stay. Just ask Facebook’s 400-million+ plus members.
• Before posting, think “do I want this information out there, forever?” Don’t put anything on any of your profiles you wouldn’t want potential clients, judges or opposing counsel to see.
• Reconsider before you use social marketing or social networking sites to complain about judges, juries or venues. Just because you can call a jurist “clueless” doesn’t mean you have to publish it for the world to see. This scenario actually happened to a lawyer in Illinois! See this article from the NY Times for more examples.
• And never, ever pretext or employ deceptive “friending” strategies to gain information on a defendant or client.

Social marketing and networking is a fun, exciting way to practice client development. Join, contribute and be part of the conversation!

Image credit by kentoh.

First, and without question, your profile should be 100% complete. School, work, past work and other relevant information assists others searching for contacts, and helps build your own network. Next, add a profile photo. Your picture triggers recognition and makes networkers feel like they are connecting to a real person. Then optimize your summary section with relevant keywords. Use Google’s Keyword Tool or Wordtracker for your research. This particular section of your profile is often indexed fully by major search engines.

Potential SEO Benefits?
Take a look at this screenshot, which is a portion of my public LinkedIn profile. There is speculation (and some confirmation) the items in this section helps with organic search engine optimization.

• Add your website, link to your blog and link to your company. Make sure you further “edit” each by giving it a name other than the defaults provided by LinkedIn. As you can see from my list, I’m hyperlinking phrases such as “Marketing Blog” and “Consulting Services”.
• If you’re on Twitter, be sure to add your Twitter profile, and connect the accounts together. Under your profile, click on Edit and look for your Twitter settings. You could also try this link when logged in to LinkedIn.
• Always choose a real name or variation on your name over the default format LinkedIn provides for you. This certainly feeds your organic name optimization and enhances your online reputation. As you can see, my profile link is my full name “brianjfarrell”.

Connecting with Twitter
This image below shows my Twitter settings — my account name (@findtheclient), my privacy settings, and the most important section, whether or not all or select Tweets should show on my profile. When I first set this up, I sent all Tweets to LinkedIn. Since I’m on Twitter often, this amounted to sometimes a dozen or more updates in a single day. When friends said they couldn’t keep up with me, I changed this to show only Tweets with the “#in” hashtag. Much better results, and I can leave up new blog posts or polls for a longer period of time.

Build Your Connections
Once you’ve done the above, it’s time to build your network. Start with people you know, such as co-workers, clients and colleagues. Also look for connections by company name, under the “Companies” tab. Once you’ve built up this initial base of connections, ask for and make recommendations. But before you do this, read as many as you can. You’ll quickly see what makes up a good (or bad) recommendation. It also helps to personalize your request for a recommendation rather then sending out the canned form letter provided by LinkedIn.

Finally, updated your status often, since it appears on LinkedIn as well as in network updates to your connections. Updates should be considered a professional status, not what you’re eating for lunch. And if you haven’t done so, let’s connect on LinkedIn!

But, before writing one word, think about the focus of your blog. Ultimately, you’d like your blog to build word of mouth marketing and your social following, so carefully tune your content toward the people, and work, you’d like to do. For example, I set up this blog to provide marketing information and advice to professional service providers (attorneys, lawyers, doctors, and the like).

So Who’s Reading This Stuff?
Although I’m targeting professionals, it’s likely their support staff, spouse or business advisors are the ones reading this blog. So my content is mostly professional, with a lighter tone. The material comes from my real life experiences and appointments, so often, I’m answering a question or addressing something that came up in a real client setting. The blog is my ongoing seminar to clients, prospective clients and potential referral partners.

Benefits of Blogging
Your blog is a very effective way to raise visibility, both online and offline. It also strengthens your online reputation, and positions you as an accessible, helpful resource on your specific topic or niche. If you write valuable posts, and share within your social network, you’ll likely attract new fans, new comments and new leads.

From a technical perspective, blogs beat websites because they have a built in feed. Every time you post a piece of content, your blog sends notice to search engines alerting them to the new material (unlike your traditional website, which often has to wait for the search engines to come back, and hopefully find your new page). The more you post, the more active and attractive your blog becomes to search engines. I should mention that quality matters more than quantity — a blog full of relevant information is much better than hundreds of random posts.

The best part about blogging is potential for engagement with your audience. Real success comes from creating conversations with your readers. Not only do I read every comment (and also thank publicly and privately for their contributions), I often send requests to connect on LinkedIn and when appropriate, meet in real life.

Social marketing, and blogging in general, isn’t about the technology you use (I prefer and use WordPress, but just about any solution will do). It’s about engaging people, clients and prospects – and building relationships with them.

Photo credit from the Chandos portrait, as found on Wikipedia.

Twitter
How do you cultivate relationships in 140 characters or less? Not sure it can be done, but I’m going to focus more on @ replies and direct messages with new and existing followers. Second, to create more fun and interaction, I’m going to add polls, quotes and other things of interest more frequently. I don’t have the biggest following, but of the people I follow who do, it’s an endless barrage of self-promotion, MLM offers and the like. I’d rather tweet the same interesting post 3-4 times a day than blast out marketing messages. Third, and maybe this should have been first, I’m going to focus on Twitter lists targeting my geographic area, monitoring for tweet-ups and participating in real world networking. It’s much easier to connect with someone when you meet face to face.

Facebook
Right now, my blog posts automatically feed to Facebook, and I’ve installed the Selective Tweets application so I can tag choice tweets to appear on Facebook. This passive approach hasn’t created much interaction, other than lots of “likes” on my posts. Instead, I plan to offer exclusive material to my Facebook fans. Also, and being really careful not to abuse, send messages and content to them directly via the messaging center on the fan page. An ideal outcome would be a combined tweet-up and Facebook meet-up in the Lehigh Valley (where I live).

LinkedIn
I used to feed my Tweets directly to LinkedIn as status updates, until a close friend told me he couldn’t keep up with me anymore. If he felt that way, I imagine many others did as well. So I’ve changed the application to only accept tweets with the #in hashtag. This way, I can be much more selective, and when linking to a recent article or post I’ve written, can leave it on LinkedIn as a status update for a day or so to get maximum viewership. Going beyond a commitment to write more recommendations, I plan to answer more questions and be more than a lurker on the groups I belong to. Finally, instead of waiting for an introduction, I’m going to turn the tables and introduce people to my network.

Blogging
This goes beyond my own blog, and maybe should be labeled “commenting on blogs”. Every blogger out there, regardless of fame or perceived fame, is driven hugely by their ego. I’ve always wondered who’s reading my blog, and the only proof I have, beyond what Google Analytics tells me, are the comments made. I can assure you, I will read each and every comment that comes in. Even some of the ones Askimet marks as spam. I’d venture to guess other bloggers do the same thing. So, I’ve reached a simple conclusion — the best way to engage with someone is to leave thoughtful, meaningful comments on his or her blog. It’s also proof you’re reading the material, and regular comments on blogs are a sure sign you value and appreciate the writer’s hard work. I doubt this will go unnoticed. If you have only limited time in your day for social marketing, I’d focus 95% of my efforts on entering thoughtful comments on blogs. It’s that powerful.

So there you have my two month plan. Lots of writing, reading and typing. Buying coffee for fans and friends who want to meet in real life. And truly enjoying social marketing. Will you join me?

Photo credit by eduardtrag.

Local Listings
The practice of law, or any other service, is typically a combination of a problem + a location (e.g. “divorce lawyer in Dallas”), so claim your listing on Google’s Local Business Center and on Yahoo Local.

Ratings & Reviews
Ask current clients to rate and review your practice on Yelp. This site has grown beyond just reviews on restaurants, and organizes businesses in more than 20 categories, such as Local Services, Professional Services, and Real Estate. If you’re not part of the conversation, how do you know what’s being said? Simple instructions are found on Yelp’s Business Owners Guide.

Networking
When asked, nearly all service providers like to say they get business “by referral” so put your networking on steroids and join LinkedIn. The best ways to use this site, beyond simple networking, are by joining groups and answering questions. But don’t neglect your network! Writing unsolicited recommendations is the best way to get more of your own. And if you’re a lawyer or an attorney, join Martindale-Hubbell Connected, which is a professional network is designed exclusively for legal professionals.

Build your marketing plan from these three foundational elements, and you’ll be well on your way to growing your service-based business in 2010.

Why Spend Money Now?
Obviously, marketing when others aren’t gives you an advantage. Your clients still have leaky pipes, need legal assistance or accounting services regardless of the state of the economy (remember, service providers are problem solvers in nearly all cases). Some businesses are even recession-resistant, e.g. accident and injury lawyers, auditing services, food services, etc. Not to mention the incredible deals you’ll get from other businesses! Your marketing dollars will go much further during bad times, so take advantage of it and gain market share.

Document and look at your current marketing plan. It’s important to examine each item in terms of value so you can focus and hone in on low-risk, high-reward campaigns. This is also the time to test new things, such as inbound marketing (and if you’re doing this, time to refine and get even better results).

Consider These Inbound Marketing Activities
First, a definition: inbound marketing is an online strategy which places information about your business in front of people already looking for what it is you sell. It simply means creating content and talking about it. Inbound marketing turns strangers into friends, friends into clients and clients into salespeople. Hard to beat this positioning!

Here are some inbound marketing tasks you can do to gain more market share:

• Get listed on business directories and Internet yellow pages. Each provides implied credibility and can deliver leads fast. There are too many to list, but identify those appropriate for your industry. For example, Lawyers.com is a directory of lawyers and law firms, OutFishing.com is a directory of fishing guides, and the SuperPages is an Internet yellow pages directory.
• Optimize your website (you have one, right??). Since most professional service businesses are not ‘bought’ online, make sure your content and information is designed to generate leads. Continue to add new and relevant content and information to your website on a regular basis.
• Leverage social marketing. Consider launching a blog or using a service like Twitter to stay in front of potential clients. And don’t ignore social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. The profiles and pages are free and deliver very qualified leads. The key with social marketing, and social networking in particular, is to remember that everyone knows why you’re there, so don’t be too obvious or overly promotional with your sales pitches.
• For the creative side in you, grab your video camera or buy an inexpensive Flip HD camera, and record short, informational movies and clips about your business. The quality of the production isn’t nearly as important as the quality of the content. So show off your office, your staff, a how-to video, or even something as simple as a 30-60 second recording explaining why you’re in the business you’re in. Be genuine!

It’s easy to list these items and never take action, so consider working with a specialist or a marketing consultant who “gets” inbound marketing; one who understands the challenges professional services providers face. New clients are already online and looking for someone like you to solve a problem they have. Regardless of where you market, help them find you with inbound marketing.

Hosts Manny Rechani and Todd Cohen put on a great show, with food provided by The Grand Colonial restaurant.

David Newman, of Do It Marketing, presented his “(Humorously) Navigating the WORLD of Social Media” presentation, a funny, yet instructional set of slides on social marketing. David walked us through his ideas on social marketing, which centered around blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. For many, overcoming the inertia to create great content is steep, but to quote David, “done is better than perfect”. So for those of you on the social marketing fence, get going!

What is social marketing?
Social marketing is the indirect spread of a website’s products, services, information, and opinions through channels and networks formed by various social groups a/k/a “virtual friends”. The foundation of these social friendships is built on a type of “web trust”, as group members gain popularity by expanding on, debating, support and providing contributions to current topics. And because group members may belong to and hold similar discussions within multiple groups and networks, the viral growth of a topic (or product or company) becomes explosive.

Social Marketing: Out With the Old, In With the New
With social sites doing the marketing, the days of soft selling are out and social marketing is in. Consumers have spoken, and no one wants to hear from strangers about a product or service, or how a company can change the world with its new, revolutionary idea, or how much lower and better a price or product is. When generated by members of the social media websites, your message changes from marketing noise into a viral, marketing “buzz”.

A Few Tools of Social Marketing: Blogs, Tags and Sharing
Blogs, short for weblogs, are online commentaries and journals of free speech. Blogs have been very popular over the last few years, especially in the political and high-tech arena. Today’s companies use them to discuss relevant topics, promote and review their products and to answer questions posed by consumers. Loved by search engines, linked to by other websites and read by faithful followers, blogs are becoming even more popular as an online marketing tool.

And with blogs, come tags – the author’s labeling of a blog post (or any web page) with relevant keywords (tags) to help those searching find the page. Used with blog indexing systems like Technorati, tags are an alternative traffic generator bringing in both traffic and inbound links to tagged pages.

Once a blog entry has been tagged, others looking for topics related to the tagged keywords will be lead to click through. If a visitor finds thinks the information in the blog entry needs to be shared, tools like those provided by Stumbleupon, Digg, and Del.icio.us provide ways to tell others of the new find. As more people “stumble upon”, “digg” or find the entry to be “del.icio.us” the more likely the blog will enter into the world of mega-social medias like Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. where it’s popularity will continue to grow.

Conclusion
Social marketing is fast becoming an inexpensive way to gain visibility, build a network of followers and to get the word out on products, services and expertise. When used properly, social marketing’s very nature will create a wealth of inbound links, increase visibility and promote the Internet buzz for a company or organization. The realized effects tend to be an increase in search engine rank, brand trust and the power to influence others online.

With social marketing, hard sells become obsolete and softsells are seen as welcomed suggestions; visitors become advocates, and supporters become your sales teams. It’s becoming the most efficient and effective way to harness the power of the web.