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How To Get More Engagement On LinkedIn Company Pages

Posted by in Internet, Social Media / No Comments

You may have seen that HP recently crossed 1 million followers on LinkedIn, the first company to hit this milestone. You may even be one of them. If you’re not already following a company on LinkedIn, what are you waiting for?

More the merrier

You can follow up to 2.8 million companies on LinkedIn, so why limit yourself to just one or two? Follow companies that span across more than 140 industries, from Bentley Motors to Treasury Wine Estates. Simply go to the search box at the top right of LinkedIn and type in the name of an industry, specialty, company size, or company location. Another way to find companies to follow is to look at what companies your colleagues, future customers, partners or  boss are following, so the next time you meet or end up in the elevator together, you have something other than the weather to talk about.

Stay in the know

So you’re following a company. Now what? Make sure to take a look at the people you know who are also following the company and use it as a way to set up a coffee date. This is a great way to keep in touch as well as seek out potential business or job opportunities. You can also check out active job openings the company has listed either for yourself or to share with your peers who may be looking to make a jump. And don’t forget to check out the news and product updates the company posts, as this information can be a great way to stay ahead of important trends impacting the industries you care about, and provide inside information about a company’s culture or new products in the works.

Sharing is caring

Now that you have access to all this great information about companies you care about, how can you use it to show off your expertise? Perhaps a company you follow just launched a brand new product that has huge impact on your sector or has just released a whitepaper about controversial research. These are great pieces of info to share with your network, so you can be seen as someone with expertise and interest in your chosen industries and topics. Or perhaps you’re just a huge fan of a company and their services. Tell your peers why you love the company and their products. Sharing great companies and products is an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge, and it builds good will with your professional connections who value your opinion as a trusted resource.

We’re growing the number of companies you can follow on LinkedIn every day and we are always looking for more ways to help you find useful and relevant content from companies you care about.

So find some Companies to follow on LinkedIn – we’re confident you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the new jobs, information, insights and opportunities that you and your network will discover in the process. For those of you who are managing a LinkedIn Company Page, check out some tips and tricks.

First published on the LinkedIn blog.

Facebook Likes Reveal Many Things About Your Persona

Posted by in Internet, Social Media / No Comments

Do you like your fries straight or curly? The answer may reveal more about you than you think.

According to a Cambridge University study published Monday looking at how much what people “like” on Facebook can reveal about who they are, people who openly declare their affinity for curly fries on Facebook tend to have higher IQs.

Click by click, Facebook users are building a surprisingly nuanced picture of themselves, even without filling out their social networking profiles. Researchers published the article online at the Proceedings for the National Academy of the Sciences, showing off how they were able to figure out traits such as gender, personality type, political views and sexual orientation of individuals based on what 58,000 Facebook users decided to “like” on sites around the Web.

All of the information in the study, the report said, was in the public domain.

Researchers found that they could, for example, correctly guess a man’s sexual orientation 88 percent of the time by analyzing the kinds of TV shows and movies he liked. It also found that few gay men — less than 5 percent in the study — identify with groups that openly declare their sexual orientation, so a man’s preference for “Britney Spears” or “Desperate Housewives” was more useful in predictions.

Similarly, the researchers also found that they could figure out if a Facebook user used drugs with about 65 percent accuracy based on their expressed public preferences.

The study even included “like” predictors that could tell whether users’ parents had separated when they were young vs. whether they had not.

Researchers told the British paper that they hope this study raises users’ awareness about the kind of information they may not realize they’re sharing with a wider audience.

In some cases, the study said, this data could be beneficial to help improve marketing recommendations or in psychology research. But the study also raised concerns that it’s too easy to gather telling data about users without obtaining their permission.

“One can imagine situations in which such predictions, even if incorrect, could pose a threat to an individual’s well-being, freedom or even life,” researchers said in the study’s conclusion.

Facebook users can change the privacy settings on what they’ve liked through the sites settings to keep their fry — or any other kind of preference — out of the public’s reach.

Prezi Introduces Voiceovers And Sound Into Interactive Presentations

Posted by in Internet, Social Media / No Comments

If you dont know about prezi, then you should and if you are familiar then you are in for a surprise as now you can upload voiceovers or audio clips and associate them with your path points, or add background music to play throughout your entire presentation. Check out how to make your prezis even more engaging:

Prezi Audio Introduction

Try it out today and let us know your feedback.

How To Increase Traffic On Your Blog/Website Through Facebook

Posted by in Internet, Social Media / No Comments

One of the main priorities of Facebook Page owners is to drive traffic back to their business website/blog.  I know this is obvious– but I mention it because there’s an interesting problem that Pages face regarding link-type posts on Facebook.

Simply put, link posts don’t perform nearly as well as other types of posts on Facebook.  In fact, some research has shown that photo-type posts garner as much as 20x more engagement.  The graph below from TrackSocial gives a good visual for the disparity in engagement between different post types on Facebook.

Source: TrackSocial Blog

Source: TrackSocial Blog

And yes, I am aware that Facebook is making link preview images bigger on the Newsfeed.  And yes, that will probably improve engagement for link-type posts.  But at the same time, let’s be real.  This change isn’t going to overcome the 20-1 engagement ratio cited above.  Maybe photos will only be 10x better for engagement than links after this change– but the problem remains.  Keep in mind,engagement doesn’t only mean likes, comments, and shares– it’s also means [link] clicks.

Creatively Overcoming the Problem

Desperate to increase traffic from the links they post on Facebook, Page owners have ‘hacked up’ a new way of posting to improve performance.  This new way seems to have gained popularity over the past few months, as everyone from big brands to the top minds in social media are using it.  Check it out below:

Posting Links as Images

Posting Links as Images

The ‘hack’ is simple– post a link as an image [from the article] and include the link in the body of the post.  By doing this, Pages benefit from the increased weight factor of Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm (because people freaking love photos) which leads to more reach, more engagement, and ultimately more link clicks.

It’s important to note here that in this case, the photos are not hyper-linked.  In other words, clicking on the photo will not lead a user to your website– but instead to a larger version of the image (as Facebook typically does with images).

While the concept here is incredibly simple and effective, the process is an absolute nightmare.  Here’s the breakdown.

  1. Paste link into post box on Facebook.
  2. Click the ‘x’ to remove the link preview.
  3. Click back to the article in another tab.
  4. Find the image you’d like to use and save it to your computer.
  5. Click back to Facebook.
  6. Click to upload an image.
  7. Find the image on your computer and select it.
  8. Type in the article title manually, along with any other post message.
  9. You’re finally done! Click Post!

I’m excited to share an easier way to do this through PostRocket (try it out now!).  This is what we call SmartLink.  It makes this process so incredibly simple.  When you paste a link into your post box in PostRocket, this is what you see:

PostRocket Link Post

PostRocket Link Post

Between the post box and the link preview, you’ll notice a small section that says ‘Format Post Type’ which is followed by a switch.  The switch can be toggled with a simple click– changing the post type from a link to a photo.  The picture below shows what happens when you click on the switch:

SmartLink Switch Activated

SmartLink Switch Activated

Let me point out a few key things in the picture above that happen as a result of clicking the SmartLink switch.  First, the text in the post box changes– the title of the article is automatically inserted before the link.  Then, the images from the article are shown in a carousel.  You can use any image from the article as the photo for your post, or click to upload your own image [in situations where the article doesn't have any great images].  Note here that you can also click on the photo to add text on it and even add a filter.

Other notes regarding SmartLink

  • We purposely do not use link shorteners in SmartLink, as studies have shown they have a lower CTR (click-thru rate) than full URLS, as many people are hesitant to click them.
  • We don’t recommend using SmartLink for YouTube links.  When these are posted as links, they give the user the ability to play the video on Facebook.  This is a much better experience than posting a photo of the video and forcing the user to click-thru to Youtube to watch the video.

First published on PostRocket

Google Helps Webmasters Who’s Websites Are Hacked With Steps To Recover

Posted by in Internet, Security, Social Media / No Comments

    If you’re a site owner and you see:

    Unfortunately, it’s likely your site was hacked.

    Every day, cybercriminals compromise thousands of websites. Hacks are often invisible to users, yet remain harmful to anyone viewing the page — including the site owner. For example, unbeknownst to the site owner, the hacker may have infected their site with harmful code which in turn can record keystrokes on visitors’ computers, stealing login credentials for online banking or financial transactions.

    In this first step, we explain how and why hacks happen, and review options for recovery.

    Step 1: Watch the overview

     

    • How and why sites are hacked

    • Process to recover a site and remove the user-facing warning label

    • Time-to-recovery depends on extent of damage and technical skill of administrator

    • Two options:

        • Do it yourself

        • Get help from specialists

          After watching the overview video, you’ve completed the first step.

          We recommend that all site owners unfamiliar with website security complete this step as well as Step 2: Contact your hoster and build a support team.

          Step 2 is next in the recovery process.

          In step 2, you’ll learn where to find technical assistance as well as contact your hoster and weigh options to recover your hacked site.

          1 Watch the overview (completed) Beginner

          2 Contact your hoster and build a support team Beginner

          3 Quarantine your site Intermediate

          4 Touch base with Webmaster Tools Intermediate

          5 Assess the damage (hacked with spam) or Assess the damage (hacked with malware) Advanced

          6 Identify the vulnerability Advanced

          7 Clean and maintain your site Advanced

          8 Request a review Intermediate

        How Tweets From Twitter Increase Traffic And Sales 10x [Study]

        Posted by in Advertising, Internet, Social Media / No Comments

        For B2B marketers, lead generation is often both a top priority and a top challenge. We know from previous studies that Tweets influence consumer shopping behavior, but how do they affect the busy business decision maker? We specifically wanted to understand how a Tweet influences the B2B tech audience, so Twitter partnered with Compete (@Compete) for this “Tweets in Action: Mobile/Tech” study and found that exposure to Tweets drives site traffic, increases brand search and influences conversion.

        Background and methodology

        Compete observed the site visitation behavior of more than 6,000 US users to 400+ B2B tech sites from mid-November through December of last year. The study looked at three different groups of users to understand the impact of their exposure to Tweets. The test group consisted of people who saw at least one Tweet from a B2B tech company. The control groups were made up of similar sets of users who did not see a B2B tech Tweet. One was comprised of Twitter users and the other was representative of the average Internet user.

        Key findings from the study

        1. Twitter users who see Tweets from B2B tech brands are more likely to visit the sites of these brands.

        The study found that Twitter users visit B2B tech brand sites at a higher rate (59%) compared to average Internet users (40%), illustrating the strong presence of a B2B audience on Twitter. 

        Advertiser takeaway: Twitter is a great place to connect with business decision makers at all levels of the funnel as they use Twitter to learn, research, and connect with their interests on an ongoing basis. 

        2. Twitter users who see B2B tech brand Tweets are more likely to search for these brands online.

        Twitter users search for B2B tech brands at a significantly higher rate (30%) compared to average Internet users (12%). In other words, Tweet exposure has a positive influence on brand consideration. 

        Advertiser takeaway: Make it as easy as possible for users to find what they’re looking for on your site. Include deep links to relevant content in your Tweets, whether it be a product demo, your latest and greatest whitepaper or an upcoming event sign-up page.

        3. Twitter users exposed to B2B tech brand Tweets are more likely to convert.

        The impact of Tweet exposure is even more noteworthy on lead generation than site visitation, suggesting a correlation between Tweet exposure and lead quality. Twitter users visit a B2B tech company’s site with a higher likelihood to convert. While 4% of average Internet users completed sign-up on a B2B tech site, Twitter users converted at more than double the rate (11%).

        Advertiser takeaway: Tweet exposure not only increases site traffic and influences brand consideration, it also drives leads for B2B tech companies. In addition to offering educational resources to your audience, consider including specific calls-to-action with incentives to encourage sign-up.  

        Business decision makers are engaging on Twitter. B2B customers and thought leaders use Twitter to discover information and share content. This offers B2B marketers a unique opportunity to connect with this audience, build relationships and influence their decisions – all in real time. 

        How Facebook’s New Graph Search Can Help In Solving Big Data Problems [Infographic]

        Posted by in Infographics, Software, Technology / No Comments

        Facebook Graph Search is predicted to change the way people search online. With the amount of data Facebook users create every second, it is easy to understand the need for a tool that can crawl and index information in real time. In this infographic, learn how Facebook is using Graph Search as a way to break into the Big Data space and what it means for marketers.

        It’s from Lattice Engines about Facebook’s new Graph Search and how it’s being used as their Big Data Solution.

        Why Graph Search Is Facebook’s Big Data Solution Infographic