In order for you to use LinkedIn successfully your profile will need to be completed all the way, if it isn’t no one will really know what you can offer them. They won’t be able to access the value of connecting with you. Your profile on LinkedIn.com has every aspect of your business, your education, current and former employment listed. When you open a LinkedIn.com account, fill out a complete profile. Include your education, your experience, and very importantly, a professional profile picture. I suggest having your resume near by for referring to important dates. Or consult with a social media specialist like myself to walk you through your profile and set up a strategy for LinkedIn. Yes, you will want a strategy and by having one you will be able to measure your return. I can not stress the value of your profile on LinkedIn.

You will need and want to use keyword to describe what you do. By using keywords it will make it easier for others to find you in LinkedIn’s search engine. Being found is the whole point! Include links to your website and examples of your work. Include as much as you reasonably can and most importantly, be yourself. Do not try to be incognito on, if you are and do not have a good picture with a completely filled out profile you will not be taken seriously. Would you hand out a blank business card? Think about it, who do you want to do business with? Someone who hides who they are, or someone who is open about who they are? Who are you going to trust?

My suggestion is that you sit down and select 5 people you are willing to write a recommendation for before you ask for them in return. People are very likely to reciprocate with a recommendation for you. Having recommendations will help your complete your profile and make you more interesting to people who are searching profiles for possible business partners. Side note, when you give recommendations and they are accepted they show up on your recommendation’s profile with a link back to you the one who gave the recommendation.

Adding connections to people on LinkedIn is very important. The more impressive your connections the more impressive your profile will be to potential clients or JV partners. As an online business owner LinkedIn.com is one of the most useful of all the “social media” marketing channels that you can use because it is so professional in nature. You will be taken seriously if you make LinkedIn.com the hub of your social media marketing.

I told you I would share my success stories as of late I have two. The first one is a new client I landed through posting, messaging, basically being active in LinkedIn. He was in the process of interviewing other social media specialists in our area and because I was consistently in his face on LinkedIn, not physically of course but on the screen, this prompted him to reach out and set up a meeting.

My second success was responding to an 8 day old post in a LinkedIn group that was looking for a “Social Media Diva” I landed a speaking gig! I’m the only girl, check out my speaker bio. So not just having a profile that is 100% complete but by actively participating in LinkedIn you will find success.

By the way I’m an open networker on LinkedIn, visit my profile and let’s connect:

http://LinkedIn.com./in/yourvirtualgirlfriday

Now the screen cast demo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

•    True Reach: Size of your engaged audience. Klout measures engagement through interaction, whether people add you to a list, etc.

•    Amplification Probability: Measures how likely your followers will act upon your tweets. Will they generate conversation, retweets, etc?

•    Network Influence: This is actual a measure of the influence of your engaged audience. In other words, do your followers have Klout too?

A new feature – Klout Scores are automatically processed every day.

To learn more about Klout’s measurements visit the Understanding the Influence Metric page as the above serves as a very simple summary.
To get started simply enter your Twitter username or someone else’s in the space below “View Your Klout Score”.

You do not have to log into Klout to get your Klout score, but you can sign up for more features if you wish.  When you sign up for an account you can connect to LinkedIn and Facebook.  Make sure you achieve 100% completion on your profile by:

1. Connecting to Twitter
2. Connecting to Facebook
3. Tweet your score
4. Give them your location

I am sure there will be a step 5 soon with LinkedIn being in beta.

So back to the “View Your Klout Score” to get started, click “Go” to get the results:

Next – View and Analyze Your Klout Score

Now you’ll see a page with your Klout Score summary and a list of your “Achievements” check out my @TheLVTweetup score:

From the picture above, you will see that your Klout score is formulated by looking at your True Reach, Amplification and your Network Influence.  The results page also includes your “Achievements” which shows:

• How many lists you are on
• Total reach for a single message
• How many times you’ve been retweeted
• Number of unique individuals who have retweeted you
• Number of unique users who have mentioned you
• Number of unique messages you’ve made that have been retweeted

Review Your Influence Matrix

Scroll down the page and you’ll see information about your Influence Matrix. The first item is an info graphic that shows your Klout Classification and it will look something like this:

Klout has determined I am a “Networker”. You can actually mouseover the graph and it will give a description of the other Classifications including:

Participating / Sharing

• Curator
• Broadcaster
• Syndicator
• Feeder

Creating – Broad

• Taste Maker
• Celebrity
• Thought Leader
• Pundit

Focused – Consistent

• Socializer
• Networker
• Activist
• Specialist

Listening – Casual

• Dabbler
• Conversationalist
• Observer
• Explorer

There is a different classification for each shaded box (as listed above) in the info graphic, for a total of 16 possible Classifications.

Who are the people you influence and those who influence you?  This is measured by retweets, @messages, follows and lists.  You can see an example of this below:

View Your Content Analysis

Up next, you’ll see a Topic Summary of your most influential topics. This is a calculation between topics you tweet about frequently and what topics have the most engagement. It might look something like this:

There is more, but I think this is enough to wet your imagination with the possibilities of measuring your online reach, go check out your Klout Score!

By creating a company page you are allowing LinkedIn to promote the interests of your business. LinkedIn business profiles have the ability to appear in Google search results. You could view it as LinkedIn giving your company a recommendation.

The creation of a page helps build thought leadership and credibilty for your business. How? By valuable recommendations from followers that continually bring new opportunities to build your brand, secure new clients/referrals, and develop/improve your reputation.

Company pages from LinkedIn serve as a provision for business owners to promote their products or services, and the only cost is the time it takes to create the page, or what you pay your Virtual Assistant to create it for you. Shameless plug, or grab my new pdf guide, checklist and video “Discover How  and Why To Create LinkedIn Company Pages“.

With company pages you can enjoy increased traffic to your site when you link your site to your profile and company page.

Some of the basic info you’ll include on your Company Page:

• Company Name
• Logo – Visual Branding
• Business Description – Make it a keyword rich description
• Twitter Username – more link love as this will pull in your recent tweets
• Link to your website and your RSS Feed – increasing traffic to your site as stated above
• Specialties – more opportunities for keywords

In this quote from Jeff  Weiner of LinkedIn when he was interviewed at Web 2.0 Summit 2010 he sums up the power of being connected on LinkedIn.

“LinkedIn connects talent with opportunity at massive scale, scale that was never possible before because we did not have infrastructure that enabled us to connect 100s of millions of people world wide.”- Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn

Make sure to visit Your Virtual Girl Friday’s LinkedIn Company Page and click the follow button.

So are you ShoutWorthy? I see it as another way to give out some Link Love. I did a video of the site just the sign up process I did not compose an actual shout out. But it’s “Easy Peasy” go give out some Shout Love. You can view my ShoutWorthy page, I still need to give it a little more love.

Lets start with how a Blog can keep your website fresh.  When you go to the grocery store you expect fresh new produce right?  Well if your clients visit your unchanging aka static brochure type website they won’t find any new fresh content and soon they will stop visiting your site.  This is one reason so many small business websites fail to perform as desired.

Having a static site is better than not having a site at all, but it is difficult to rank well in the search engines because you are not adding new content.

Search engines are only one part of the equationwhen it comes to web traffic.  Social Media sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter have strategies that can be used to promote and drive traffic to  websites but most of these strategies are dependent on the availability of an RSS feed (Real Simple Syndication).

Do you want a way to build relationships or create conversation with your clients and potential clients?  Blogs are relationship building tools. Blogs invite comments your readers can ask questions, give raving reviews, or even submit a complaint.  Complaints can be a great opportunity for a business owner to provide fabulous customer service.

Do you like referrals, Blogs create that word of mouth action.  Blogging helps local businesses create conversation with clients and stay in the view of their customers.

Do I have to be a geek to blog?  No blogs are easy to use and require no special training.
If you can write an email you can post to a blog. If you can attach a photo to an email, you can include a picture in a blog post.

Blogs are simple to optimize for search engines. When your blog is set up right it has built in search engine optimization features that help guide you as you add new content to incorporate the local terms (keywords) that will help your site rank well in search engines.

I look forward to helping you become part of the blogosphere!  My choice in blogging platforms is “WordPress.org”

Remember those commercials (ok I’m totally carbon dating myself here) where one person would be eating peanut butter out of the jar and then another would be eating a chocolate bar?  Then some how they became clutzy and the chocolate ended up in the peanut butter.   There was the moment of annoyance and then the moment of divine sweet discovery.  The Taste-sensation your taste buds experienced when the combo hit them..

Well,  Linkedin AKA the Chocolate has ended up in the Peanut Butter AKA Twitter!

Did I tell you I love Chocolate and Peanut butter everything.  Ok let’s get down to business because when it comes to my chocolate and peanut butter I don’t play.

Here are the Features:

1. Make your Twitter account visible on your profile
2. Use #in or #li to share posts from Twitter to your LinkedIn status
3. Add the Tweets app to share your Twitter activity on your profile

Linkedin has a great blog post on how to do put your chocolate in your peanut butter.  Plus if you are not following Linkedin on Twitter I suggest you do.  Linkedin is so much more then just a digital resume as alot of people assume.  But that’s several other blog posts….

Here are a few questions to think about: Are you actively engaging your network? Are you a community builder, someone relationship oriented? Are you avoiding aggressive marketing tactics? Is you profile memorable? Have you established a regular schedule for participating? Are you presenting your self in a professional and personable way? Are you a “Social Leper” (a taker, all about you) or a Social Magnet (sharing your expertise, adding great content, and writing recommendations)? Are you spreading yourself to thin, trying to participate in every social network there is?

If you are actively engaging your network, then you are a contributing to your community and are a quite possibly a “Social Magnet.” By avoiding aggressive marketing tactics you are drawing people to you with your magnetic personality.

To make sure you are not spreading yourself to thin I would recommend reading
Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day