LinkedIn Announces Company Pages

Today LinkedIn announced plans to add Company Pages to the popular social networking site for business contacts. The new tool will be a tool for companies to promoted their products, services and associated recommendations.

According to a press release on the LinkedIn site, the Company Pages will be a place where companies can “attract new customers” by showcasing products, services and recommendations. Once recommendations and endorsements are posted, they become visable to all of the poster's contacts.

“Company Pages take product and service recommendations to another level, allowing professionals to benefit from the considered perspectives of those whom they trust and relate to the most – the people they know,” said Jeff Weiner, chief executive officer of LinkedIn. “By displaying their strongest recommendations to prospective customers and employees on LinkedIn, businesses can use Company Pages to accelerate growth and trust in their brands.”

The Company Pages feature seems to be very similar to Facebook Pages and Twitter. Site members can choose to “follow” any company they wish, by adding that company’s updates to their main feed.


The Company Pages will offically be introduced tomorrow at “LinkedIn Connect: 10″ in New York City. Ina dvance of the event tomorrow, 40companies have already developed Company Pages on LinkedIn, including Microsoft, HP, Volkswagen, and Dell.

According to HP’s Chief Marketing Officer Michael Mendenhall: “LinkedIn is a pioneer in harnessing the power of social media and brands can benefit tremendously from participating in this networking of leading professionals.”

With over 80 million users, LinkedIn is the largest business focused social networking site. For all of us in the AEC industry, the Company Pages will become another tool for our So Me marketing efforts.


LinkedIn Company Pages Announcement
LinkedIn Company Pages Learning Center

Marketing With LinkedIn

By now you have heard of Linked In, but how can you effectively use LinkedIn as a business-to-business marketing tool? The obvious benefit is for connecting with your colleagues and business contacts,but that is just the beginning.

For those not familiar with LinkedIn, it is a professional profile and social networking site. LinkedIn claims to have over 40 million members in over 200 countries, that represent 170 different industries, including every Fortune 500 company. According to LinkedIn, 46% of their members are business decision makers, with an average age of 41, and an average income of $109,000. From a marketing and sales perspective, LinkedIn provides a unique opportunity to:

· Connect with your business colleagues
· Identify new prospects
· Build your company and personal brand
· Improve your search engine optimization (SEO)
· Establish yourself as a thought leader
· Follow companies
· Share content, resources and information

Marketing is about connecting, communicating and building relationships. LinkedIn can be an effective tool for connecting with specific people with whom you are trying to communicate.

Building your profile. The goal of being on LinkedIn is connecting with people. With that in mind, take the time to fully develop your profile. Your goal is to maximize your visibility and connectability on LinkedIn. You can achieve this by including detailed information about your professional history, educational history and affiliations. Providing specifics, including company names, titles, professional designations, school names, activities and organization names helps people find you.

Building your network. Once you get started, building your network is relatively easy. To get started on LinkedIn, search for a few business associates and colleagues, invite them into your network. Before you invite them, be sure to review their profile and see how they prefer to be contacted. Some people may only want to be contacted for specific reasons. LinkedIn has an interesting feature that allows you to see people in your network, your friends network and your friend’s friends network. So in reality, you are only 3 degrees away from millions of people. For example, I currently have 118 contacts in my network (1st degree), my friends have 24,000 contacts (2nd degree), those contacts have 2.1 million contacts (3rd degree). Checkout who your friends know and expand your network. Then search groups. Then look at your customers and target customers. The term LION, refers to LinkedIn Open Networks. These are “power” networkers” that basically accept all LinkedIn invitations. You can also visit TopLinked.com to find more LIONs. The top LIONs on TopLinked.com currently have over 45,000 connections. An advantage of being linked with a LION is that you become a degree closer to many more people.

Getting into groups. Joining a LinkedIn group is extremely easy. There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn ranging from trade groups, professional associations, charities, alumni groups, and special interest groups. Joining these groups will expose you to a whole range of people who share a common interest. Once you join the group, review the members, check their profiles, and connect with those people where you have a business relationship. Once you join a group, you can display the group’s logo on your profile page.

Beyond the basic membership. While basic membership in LinkedIn is free, there are Premium Memberships available for a nominal monthly fee that offers enhanced features, such as the ability to connect directly with other members that are not in your network. With the free Basic membership there are monthly limits to the number of Invitations, InMails, and OpenLink Messages you can use. The Premium Memberships, which still has limits, range for $24.95 to $49.95 per month.

Take advantage of the tools and applications. There are a number of tools on LinkedIn that can be very useful. The “Search” tool allows you to search people, jobs, answers, companies, and groups. It can be a very powerful tool for finding and connecting with people. The “Jobs” tool allows you to post open positions on LinkedIn. “Answers” is a forum to ask and answer questions. The benefit of the Answers tool is that is goes beyond your network. This can be a useful tool to find answers to questions, but more importantly an opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise. The “Services” page is a great way to find links to people offering services in a specific specialty or geographic area. There are also a number of applications that you can use through your LinkedIn profile such as SlideShare, Word Press, Tripit, Box.net, and others.

Following Companies- LinkedIn recently introduced a "Follow Company" tool. This is a great way to follow companies with whom you have a relationship. You can also use LinkedIn to track prospects, customers, vendors and others.

Sharing with LinkedIn- There are a number of tools and plugins available, such as SlideShare, Box.net, Company Buzz, Amazon Reading List and others that facilitate sharing. Start simple by posting a few PowerPoints by utilizing SlideShare.

Communicating thru LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great tool for communicating with business associates. Updates can be easy sent out. You can also help build your personal brand by participating in discussions and responding to posts.

Marketing with LinkedIn. Social networks have helped changed the way companies market. LinkedIn offers a number of opportunities to market your business and promote your personal brand. You can use LinkedIn to announce new products or services, provide links to news articles about your company, or start discussions about specific topics relevant to your business. You can also use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your blog. Many of my colleagues use Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs to cross promote. You can also list your self in the Services section. LinkedIn profiles also have been appearing higher and high in search engine results pages (SERPs). In fact LinkedIn has a high page rank in Google. Also consider including your LinkedIn public profile address on your e-mail signature and blog posts.

Advertising on LinkedIn. The people at LinkedIn has started to harness the power of the network for advertising. LinkedIn currently offers two levels of advertising, general ads for larger campaigns, and DirectAds for smaller, focused campaigns. LinkedIn offer advertisers to use their Precision Targeting Tool to reach: “Run of Professionals,” which is all members, “inCrowds,” which could be Executives, Sales Professionals, Finance Professionals, etc, or very specific audiences. Using LinkedIn for advertising can be very powerful since you can specifically target people based on industry, job function, geography, seniority and any number of criteria. LinkedIn current ad rates range from $12 to $76 per thousand.

Consider the risks. Using LinkedIn is not void of risks. Employers and supervisors that have a large number of people on LinkedIn run the risk of too much company information being revealed. For example, projects your people are working on, titles and roles of people in your company, and financial information. Companies need to be proactive about developing guidelines for how your people should use LinkedIn. Also remember that what you post on LinkedIn or and social networking site, can live on the Internet for an indefinite period of time. Since it was founded in 2003, LinkedIn is a head hunters dream. Recruiters regularly use LinkedIn to identify and connect with potential candidates for positions.

Other professional networks. LinkedIn is not the only professional networking site. There are a number of other sites that offer a variety of features, such as: Plaxo, Jigsaw and Spoke. Recently, Google has started offering individual profiles that are appearing in search results. You may want to consider joining these networks in addition to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is not a replacement of other marketing activity, but should be an extension of your marketing and sales efforts. As a business-to-business tool, LinkedIn offers you the ability to highly target select segments and individuals. If you would like assistance getting started with LinkedIn, email me at BGallagher@LeadingWithMarketing.com

B-to-B Applications of Twitter

Social media has gained a significant foothold in business-to-business marketing. The use of Twitter as a business marketing tool has grown significantly. Twitter is a web-based social messaging tool that allows users to post a message to update their followers.

Like other social networking tools, Twitter began as a way for people to keep-up with each other. Forrester Research reported that over 7 million people are using Twitter. As a social networking tool, Twitter ranks just behind Facebook and MySpace. But what is significant from a marketer’s perspective, Twitter has quickly gained acceptance as a marketing tool. While this doesn’t seem like cutting edge, it is an easy and effective way for marketers to reach their target audiences and engage their customers. Known as “tweets,” Twitter postings typically are short messages, and conversations, about topics, products, and companies. People can sign-up to be “followers” of people and companies.

For marketers, Twitter can serve as an effective tool to deliver messages to your target audience as well as a vehicle to engage in a dialogue. As you start to use web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, remember that this is a tool to help build and enhance a relationship. It is not just another way to put out a press release.

Marketers also must follow conversations and trends on Twitter. Odds are someone on Twitter is saying something about your company, your competitors, your services, or products. Marketers must follow the dialogue and also help monitor their company’s on-line reputation.

In business-to-business marketing, there is a misnomer that business buy from businesses. However, it is people in those businesses making decisions, thus people at business buy from people at other businesses. Tools such as Twitter can be effective methods to engage prospective customers and current clients. Twitter, in my opinion, can have even more value in the business-to-business world than in the business-to-consumer world. This is because it allows users to "Tweet" very specific, and some times very technical, messages about their products or services.

How are AEC firms using Twitter to deliver messages to their audiences?

• Updates about products and services
• Current projects or application
• Project status updates
• Providing information from events and trade shows
• Announcements
• Technical information

There are numerous opportunities to leverage Twitter to communicate information to your customers and prospects

Web 2.0 Opportunities For Construction

The term Web 2.0 refers to the second generation web services and communities that enable communication and collaboration. The evolution of these tools and services offers unique opportunities for firms in the construction industry. A planned approach to embrace and leverage these tools can lead to enhanced communication flow and business efficiency.

In a traditional marketing framework, marketers would define the four P’s of marketing: price, place, promotions, and product. Companies would work with ad agencies and PR firms to develop and deliver a marketing message through a variety of controlled marketing mediums, such as advertising, direct mail, trade shows, collateral, etc. However, Web 2.0, or social media marketing, dramatically changes the marketing landscape. The essence of Web 2.0 is peer to peer communication and collaboration. The use of the 2.0 desigation is similar to number designations use by software firms.

Web 2.0 harnesses the the power of the internet to connect people to communicate and collaborate. As this technology evolves, successful marketers will need to market the way the Internet works. Web 2.0 tools provide an excellent forum for engaging customers by involving them.

Specific examples of new or improved technologies on the web include social and professional networking, RSS feeds or syndication, weblogs (blogs), wikis, podcasts, and other methods of enhancing communication. These advancements allow users of the Internet to do more than just retrieve information. Users can now participate and contribute to the information. Thus the evolution from Web 1.0 of an information source to Web 2.0 as being a participatory web. In the recent Web 1.0 model, a company’s website was another, yet different, marketing vehicle. Marketers controlled the message. With the new Web 2.0 tools, create, edit, shape and control the messages.

Social Networking- Social networking site have exploded over the last few years. Sites such as MySpace.com and FaceBook.com have become extremely popular with all generations. On the business-side, professional sites such as Linkedin.com offer the same features in a professional context. A social network consists of individuals that are tied together based on common interests, affiliations, values or other relationship. These web-based forums provide opportunities for communication, sharing and networking. Building social/business networks, networking, recruiting.

Syndication- sharing or content from multiple sources across multiple sites. RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) allows publishers or information providers to syndicate information and push it out to other sites, RSS readers, or aggregators. RSS readers are tools that allow to view the content. Users can subscribe to the feeds by entering the link feed into their readers on their desktop. Most RSS feeds utilize XML. Increasingly, RSS content is helping web pages with search engine rankings. Syndicate everything that might be useful, interesting or informative. Such as project reports, technical articles, project updates, technology, product news.

Blogs- Blog is short for weblog, blogs are essentially online journals. Bloggers typically provide information, primarily text, although images, videos and web links can be added about certain subjects or topics. A key feature of blogs is the ability of a reader to post a comment. While blogs have been around since the 1990’s, the popularity of blogs has increased significantly. More and more search engine results pages (SERP) are returning blog posts. Create newsfeeds for your blogs. Set-up a blog to post and distribute press releases. Set-up a blog for current employees to talk about your company- recruiting tool. Allow customers to share feedback and insight about your company, product or service. Blogs are not void of risks, as there maybe negative comments and posts. Blogs can also be used for internal communication. For example, blogs can be used for communication from leaders on important topics such as, safety, project status, financial updates, and other company news.

Wikis- the term “wiki” refers to software or a webpage that allows users to create, edit and link content. Essentially, wikis allow for content to be written collaboratively. The most popular wiki is wikipedia.com, which contains millions of entries in dozens of language. Wikis have also become popular for collaboration and knowledge management inside of companies. Like other Web 2.0 tools, wiki entries are returning in SERPs. Take a proactive approach to adding non-commercial, relevant content to entries that are informative. While wikipedia posts are policed and monitored, they can include references to projects, technology, and other information.

PodCasts/On-Line Video- Consider developing Podcasts and videos about your company. Broadcasts can include broadcasts about product applications, completed projects, your safety philosophy, and interviews with employees and customers. Consider developing a regular program or establishing a YouTube channel.

So what are the implications of web 2.0 on the construction business? Companies that can embrace the power of communication and participation to create value will be the winners.

Getting started
Different rules apply for web 2.0. community has different rules, community users typically don’t respond to marketing or advertising messages. Strong editorial content that promotes a product or service can be highly valued, where as overt advertisement are rejected. Authenticity is highly valued in the web 2.0 world. Developing and implementing a web 2.0 strategy take diligence, commitment and effort. Content needs to be consistently created and managed. Social marketing is a form of viral marketing. Interesting things spread more quickly.

Creating a Web 2.0 Marketing Plan- Developing a plan along with your traditional marketing plan. Consider working with a expert or consultant to get started. To get started, participate in social networking as a consumer. By participating you can learn and understand how it works.

With Web 2.0 different metrics also apply. Traditional marketing metrics included circulation, reach, response rates, hits, click thoughts. In Web 2.0, metrics and measurement focus on the number of blog readers, comment posts, SERP, bookmarks, references, contributions to blogs, and others. As with anything, want can’t be measured, can be managed.

Web 2.0 is continuing to evolve as a marketing tool. Develop a plan, monitor activity and results, be creative, and try different things. See what is working in other industries, even consumer marketing and see how it applies to your business.