Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Saint Nicholas knows how to reach every person he needs to but does your organization? By using LinkedIn Advertising your company could be getting in touch with just the right people at just the right time!

LinkedIn is obviously a great new resource for businesses to use. It’s a great networking site for business professionals and companies. In many cases, because of its business professional nature, it can be especially useful for companies that operate in the business to business environment. Recently I began to research the possibilities of using LinkedIn Advertising for B2B efforts. At first glance, it certainly seems to be an option worth testing for many B2B’s.

Here is a quick introduction to LinkedIn Advertising:

• Setup

  LinkedIn Advertising is done directly through LinkedIn, and your LinkedIn account. It is made to be very simple to use. To create your ads they have an easy to use template. For each ad created, payment fees are charged by pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-thousand impression (CPM), you set a maximum bid for each click or thousand impressions, and a daily budget can be specified.

  

• Ad Content/Placement:

  In your ad you are given a space for a small image (branded or not), a headline (up to 25 characters), and a 75 word description to catch the attention of the audience. Once launched, the ads can be seen at the right of each LinkedIn page and in a banner at the bottom of each page.

  

• Ad Targeting:

  The number one reason that makes this form of PPC advertising unique is its exceptional ability to target in the B2B environment. Because LinkedIn users list specific professional information tied to their employer and their job duties/titles, LinkedIn allows you to target your ads down to very specific parameters related to professionals. The following is the list of options you have for targeting:

  • Geography – by continent, country, state, even major cities
  • Company – industries, company size, or even by a specific company or list
  • Job Titles – categories, functions, seniority, specific job titles
  • Group – specific LinkedIn groups and networks
  • Gender
  • Age

  These targeting options open up amazing possibilities. For example, if you provide HR services to retailers, you can target your ads towards only certain job titles or departments related to HR. Then, you can narrow targeting to only the retail industry and even to specific retailers you want to reach. If you wanted to only target employees at JC Penny, you could do that. If you specialize your services for only small retailers in Maine or only large retailers in the US and Canada, that can be done as well. The options are abundant and at first glance seem to be extremely useful.

Read more posts from the Internet Marketing Advent Calendar!

Photo credit: olarte.ollie

Today is Sherlock Holmes day! January 6th is widely considered to be the popular detective’s birthday. In honor of this special day, I thought I would name a few of my favorite free tools for being an online detective for your website and maybe even your competitors*.

So grab your magnifying glass and your pipe and let’s start doing some snooping!

6 Free Online Tools for Internet Marketing Detective Work

1. Analytics to ANY bit.ly link – I love using Bit.ly for shortening long URLs. It makes them easier to share and lets you track how many times people click on your link and who shares it. Very cool. I could drool over the analytics involved for hours. What I just learned last week is you can look at the Bit.ly analytics to ANYONE’s links. All you have to do is add a + sign to the end of any Bit.ly link and you can see that link’s data. So how popular is your competition’s links in there tweets? Now you can take a sneak peek. Cool right?
2. Spy Fu for your PPC detective needs – Spy Fu lets you get a little data on what people are spending on keywords for their PPC accounts. You can see who is paying for those terms, view the ads and get a range of what they are paying for those terms. Here is an example if you look up the keyword ‘maine lawyers‘. It gives you a range of information that is pretty useful when deciding what terms you are looking to target in your PPC campaign.
3. Manage Flitter to clean up Twitter accounts – After you have been on Twitter for awhile, you may notice that your dashboard gets a little cluttered. Maybe you followed people in the beginning and then you realize they aren’t what you were looking for. Try using Manage Flitter to clean up your Twitter account. Find out who you are following that isn’t following you back. See which accounts have gone inactive since you first starting following them. Determine who of your followers is quiet and who talks a lot (maybe too much). Your Twitter stream is only as valuable as the people you are following, so this is a good way to get rid of some excess baggage. You can also search your users Tweets and their bios.
4. Who is looking at your profile on LinkedIn? – Many of you already know this one but it is kind of cool (and kind of creepy). On the right hand side of your LinkedIn dashboard there is a box, like I have pictured here to the right. If you click on that blue text, you will get a list of people who have recently looked at your LinkedIn profile. In the free version of LinkedIn, people have to opt-in to have their profile displayed there. If they haven’t opted-in then you will see a description of the person who viewed your profile. For example, if I looked at your LinkedIn profile it might say ‘Someone in a leadership role in the Marketing Department of a Web Services company, in Portland, Maine’. Even just the descriptions give you a good idea of who is poking around in your LinkedIn profile. As LinkedIn becomes more of a qualifier for professionals researching who they are going to do business with, it is helpful to see who is researching you.
5. SEO Book Toolbar for all your ranking needs – This one takes a little more work on your part to download the toolbar and it has lots of features (maybe too many) but the SEO Book Toolbar is pretty cool. I think my favorite feature is the SEO X-Ray that lets you see the SEO elements of any page, inbound and outbound links and meta information. It also has Rank Checker right in the Toolbar, so you can see how your site (or someone else’s) ranks for particular keywords. You can also get some more data in the information tab like the age of the site you are looking at, traffic estimations and more. I also like that you can turn it on and off, if it gets too overwhelming.
6. Seo-browser shows you how a search engine sees your site – SEO Browser is also free but you have to register (just your email address). After you sign up, the program will show you just how a search engine reads your website. Got a giant flash or image header? A search engine can’t see that. It also has some other cool information like page load time, number of words and images (with and without alt text) and other features that search engines consider important. You don’t just have to do your site, you can also take a peek at other sites and compare their results to your own.

That should give you enough evidence to do some serious internet marketing planning. Maybe give you some new ideas or maybe reassure you that things are going pretty well. So I hope you have some fun with some of the tools I mentioned above. Happy Sherlock Holmes Day!

*Please note that if a tool is free, it is because they want you to buy something else or so that they can sell ads. These ideas are for fun and a little data gathering but should not be used as proven fact.

UPDATE 1/24/2011: People must have sneakiness on the brain lately! I wanted to update this post and share with you a post from KISSmetrics – 7 Sneaky Ways to Use Twitter to Spy on Your Competition.

LinkedIn is a powerful business networking tool. If you are one of the many who have heard this before but still don’t “get it”, here is one way to utilize LinkedIn better so it fits into your work day.

Use an RSS Reader to stay on top of LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers are great! You can drill down into the topic your industry is in and find questions people are asking daily. Taking the time to answer some of these questions in and around your industry is a great way to establish yourself as an expert. As you answer questions it also shows up on your LinkedIn profile and in your network’s activity stream. Letting people know you are the go-to in an industry leads to referrals and business.

Many of us are not on LinkedIn all day though. So by the time you remember to check LinkedIn Answers, there are too many to sort through and if you did answer one, you might be the 50th person to give your opinion and it gets lost in the noise.

By subscribing to LinkedIn in your RSS reader you can scan through Questions as they come in. Using a more central location like your RSS reader makes it more timely, easier to scan and alleviates the need to log into LinkedIn multiple times.

Below is a video showing you how you can quickly subscribe to a LinkedIn topic that interests you:

Not a video person? Here is how you subscribe to LinkedIn Answers

• Go to LinkedIn Answers you can either follow this link or pull down the More menu on the LinkedIn Navigation to get there.
• On the right hand side, browse and select a category that interests you.
• If possible, go back to the browse category and drill down to a more specific topic.
• At the bottom of the browse section, click on the Subscribe to new questions in: link.
• Choose your preferred RSS reader

It is no secret that we here at Hall are BIG LinkedIn fans! Me especially.

LinkedIn has been around since 2003. “So what?” you say? Soooo… name another popular social networking site that has been around more than 4 years publicly (and is still being used). Exactly! Only LinkedIn.

If you are wondering why they have stood the test of ‘social media time’, I am going to tell you their secret. They keep updating to provide the functionality that their users want and need. No matter what your business is, this is important. Your product/service/website is not about YOU but about what your customers need.

In the past two weeks LinkedIn has made some big changes and is trying out a few more. Check them out:

Please note – some of these changes are coming, some will be rolled out over the next few days and some are only being tested on certain accounts.

• Coming Soon: LinkedIn for BlackBerry – LinkedIn has had an iPhone application for awhile and just recently updated it. To stereotype a little bit, Blackberry users pride themselves on being serious business men and women. They have no need for silly games, touch screens and applications you can sing into to get the name and artist. They need to conduct business and their smart phones are their bloodline. So it was surprising that the most business friendly social networking site hadn’t lent itself to Blackberry users, until now.

  
  Photo Credit: LinkedIn Blog

  Having LinkedIn at your finger tips is a great way to plan for a meeting, add new connections on the go (before you get back to your office and forget) and more. The new Blackberry app will also work with the Blackberry platform to integrate into your calendar, contacts and messages.

• Twitter Integration – Twitter has become the darling of social media and for those that use it, they tend to be addicted to it. They find a way to integrate Twitter into every moment of their life. Some people consider their Twitter account as an extension of their resume. Now you can Tweet your status and have it appear on LinkedIn and visa versa.
• Following Group Members – Speaking of Twitter… LinkedIn added a new functionality where you can ‘follow’ group members. Think someone is interesting and you want to hear more from them? Then subscribe to follow them and get updates about other content they are posting. Following also lets you get a quick overview of what your personal connections are contributing to groups you are a member of. I think that is pretty handy. Call me crazy but I think my network includes some really smart people so I like seeing what discussions and news they post in different LinkedIn Groups.
• Design Changes – This is only visible to some so if you don’t see it, I swear I am not crazy. LinkedIn is testing some new design elements. The biggest being a new site navigation that, in theory, will let you access more of the site more easily.The redesign effort was started by analysis of how people are using LinkedIn. Brilliant! This reminds me of a news story from the University of Denver a few years ago (details here are vague but the point is crystal clear).The school redesigned a group of classroom buildings but didn’t make any sidewalks. This confused a lot of people. They let the students decide the paths they took to class and then when the grass was worn out, clearly marking the paths students chose, THEN they paved the sidewalks. Why should the construction/school/planning committee decide how students walked to class? The students decided and in-turn the landscaping was preserved once students forged a path. What a concept!

Photo Credit: LinkedIn Blog

LinkedIn is such a great business tool and a perfect social media stepping stone (especially for B2Bs). What makes them a contender in my book is continuing to deliver the functionality that is most important to their users. LinkedIn continues to see rapid growth and I honestly believe it is because they are doing it right. If you want to keep up with any changes from LinkedIn they have a great blog where they announce new things, case studies and more a few times a week.

To learn more about using LinkedIn you can also view our archived webinar on Using LinkedIn for Business.