I have switched my blog to a self-hosted option on my website. I am now using WordPress and giving it a tried. Here is the new address:
blog.nosalcentral.com
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
SEO and the Job Hunt...
On Tuesday, May 18th I had the opportunity to speak at the CareerConnection "Hire DFW First" Symposium at the Addison Conference Center. Below are a few notes from my presentation.
With the limited number of jobs and the high number of candidates, it is critical to have your Resume and LinkedIn profiles optimized for keywords which will increase the chances of being selected as a candidate.
As you may be aware when looking for a job you are now a sales and marketing professional. You are now the product you are selling and need to market yourself to be know. One of the task that we need to do in this role is to now our market and who our competition is.
First, we need to define a list of 10 keywords that help define what we do. My list is something like this:
SEO, Social Media, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, analytics
Once you have a list of your keywords, run a few searches on LinkedIn and identify the top 10 in your field. Review their profiles and look for terms that help in increasing your value.
While you are looking at the search results, see if you can find yourself. If you are not in the first couple of pages, you need to increase your keyword usage. Narrow your search to your local area. You can also change the relevance to keywords and have a broader result.
The quantity of keywords on your LinkedIn Profile and your resume is the key. You have to have one more instance of your keyword and you will be above the rest of your field.
For your LinkedIn profile, the Professional Headline, Summary, Specialties and all job titles are the key fields when search. Go through all these fields and add instances of your keywords. Don't forget that you can use parentheses to add more value as a definition to the job title.
Keep tweaking your keyword count till you are at the top of your field. At that time you will see inquiries about your skills and request for interviews increase.
Keywords are king, the one with the most wins. Know your competition and you will be on top of your market.
With the limited number of jobs and the high number of candidates, it is critical to have your Resume and LinkedIn profiles optimized for keywords which will increase the chances of being selected as a candidate.
As you may be aware when looking for a job you are now a sales and marketing professional. You are now the product you are selling and need to market yourself to be know. One of the task that we need to do in this role is to now our market and who our competition is.
First, we need to define a list of 10 keywords that help define what we do. My list is something like this:
SEO, Social Media, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, analytics
Once you have a list of your keywords, run a few searches on LinkedIn and identify the top 10 in your field. Review their profiles and look for terms that help in increasing your value.
While you are looking at the search results, see if you can find yourself. If you are not in the first couple of pages, you need to increase your keyword usage. Narrow your search to your local area. You can also change the relevance to keywords and have a broader result.
The quantity of keywords on your LinkedIn Profile and your resume is the key. You have to have one more instance of your keyword and you will be above the rest of your field.
For your LinkedIn profile, the Professional Headline, Summary, Specialties and all job titles are the key fields when search. Go through all these fields and add instances of your keywords. Don't forget that you can use parentheses to add more value as a definition to the job title.
Keep tweaking your keyword count till you are at the top of your field. At that time you will see inquiries about your skills and request for interviews increase.
Keywords are king, the one with the most wins. Know your competition and you will be on top of your market.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
QR Codes???
Ever wanted to have your own bar code to do things with? They are limited to a certain number of numerical digits and don't do a lot more than inventory control. I have been hearing talk about QR Codes here lately and have been seeing some interesting uses for them.
What is a QR Code you may be asking? Well, here is one.
One of the uses of QR Codes is with smart phones and allow you to quickly point to a bit of information based on the code. It can be a phone number, SMS, or web address coded in the blob of squares.
There could be a lot of cool uses for this. Imagine having the code on a product package and have it take you to more information on the product or even suggested uses.
How about putting the code on the back of your business card and have it linked to your LinkedIn Profile, your website or portfolio.
Are you doing a trade show? How about putting on in your booth that take a visitor to your contact us page specifically setup for the show to capture date in to Sales Force?
Tomorrow, I have the opportunity to speak to a group about LinkedIn, I am going to put a small sign up that point to my contact page and see what happens. Or maybe I should do my LinkedIn profile.
Do you want to generate one? Check out Kaywa's website and have fun...
Then load up your smart phone with one of the free apps to scan your new QR Code.
Leave us a comment, tell me how you are using a QR Code.
What is a QR Code you may be asking? Well, here is one.
One of the uses of QR Codes is with smart phones and allow you to quickly point to a bit of information based on the code. It can be a phone number, SMS, or web address coded in the blob of squares.
There could be a lot of cool uses for this. Imagine having the code on a product package and have it take you to more information on the product or even suggested uses.
How about putting the code on the back of your business card and have it linked to your LinkedIn Profile, your website or portfolio.
Are you doing a trade show? How about putting on in your booth that take a visitor to your contact us page specifically setup for the show to capture date in to Sales Force?
Tomorrow, I have the opportunity to speak to a group about LinkedIn, I am going to put a small sign up that point to my contact page and see what happens. Or maybe I should do my LinkedIn profile.
Do you want to generate one? Check out Kaywa's website and have fun...
Then load up your smart phone with one of the free apps to scan your new QR Code.
Leave us a comment, tell me how you are using a QR Code.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
DFW SEO - Presentation Notes
Tonight I had the opportunity to present to the Dallas Interactive Marketing & Internet SEO SEM Meetup.
As a independent consultant that provides SEO and Social Media Marketing, I am looking for ways to quantify my results with clients. Everyone wants to be at the top of the search results but can't truly afford the time and effort that it takes to increase the SEO value and increase the results on Google and Bing.
The first tool that I use to quantify SEO value and effectiveness is Web Site Grader. With Web Site Grader, I am able to have a grade value of the site, all on a scale of 100. Not only does this site give the grade, it also gives suggestions on things that need to be improved. Image Alt Tags, Meta tags, age of domain and inbound links are taken into consideration.
Second, I showed the web site SpyFu.com, SpyFu is great for looking at the competition and what they are doing with PPC (Pay Per Click). I can see what campaigns they ran and get an overall impression of how they have been marketing them selves.
The third tool is a plug-in for FireFox called SEOQuake This tool allows me to look at the keywords and density of any page on the internet. This allows me to get a good over view of a competitors site and develop a list of keywords to start the process of SEO.
So what I am looking at with these tools is to evaluate the competition. Ultimately, we are wanting to one up our competitors and have more SEO Value that them. Look at there keywords, there current CPC campaigns and look at their scores. From there I will go into action to increase my clients SEO presence and have tools to see the effectiveness of my efforts.
As a independent consultant that provides SEO and Social Media Marketing, I am looking for ways to quantify my results with clients. Everyone wants to be at the top of the search results but can't truly afford the time and effort that it takes to increase the SEO value and increase the results on Google and Bing.
The first tool that I use to quantify SEO value and effectiveness is Web Site Grader. With Web Site Grader, I am able to have a grade value of the site, all on a scale of 100. Not only does this site give the grade, it also gives suggestions on things that need to be improved. Image Alt Tags, Meta tags, age of domain and inbound links are taken into consideration.
Second, I showed the web site SpyFu.com, SpyFu is great for looking at the competition and what they are doing with PPC (Pay Per Click). I can see what campaigns they ran and get an overall impression of how they have been marketing them selves.
The third tool is a plug-in for FireFox called SEOQuake This tool allows me to look at the keywords and density of any page on the internet. This allows me to get a good over view of a competitors site and develop a list of keywords to start the process of SEO.
So what I am looking at with these tools is to evaluate the competition. Ultimately, we are wanting to one up our competitors and have more SEO Value that them. Look at there keywords, there current CPC campaigns and look at their scores. From there I will go into action to increase my clients SEO presence and have tools to see the effectiveness of my efforts.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Blue Knot Luncheon Presentation Notes
Today I had the opportunity to present to the Blue Knot group which is the technical group of the Jewish Federation.
While we were hoping for a bigger group, we did have just under 40 in attendance. There were a number of other events that were taking place at the same time so it did have the attendance a little low.
Social Media
I started with a video from YouTube entitled "Social Media ROI: Socialnomics"
Social Media is not a in your face sales tool. You want to talk about relevant information to your audience. Talking about going to Starbucks to get another double whatchamacallit coffee thing is not a productive topic of interest to most people.
Facebook is a massive social site that appears to be morphing into a new game platform with the craze of Farmville, Mafia Wars and Fishville. With the demographics information available from the profiles for all the users, you can do some very detailed marketing.
One option that is a growing trend is the creation of "Fan Pages" on Facebook. These pages allow you to have "fans" and be able to talk to them and make offers that they would be interested.
Twitter, is another tool that has a growing market for companies to have a presence to provide a face for a company. A lot of companies are creating a presence to do customer service and insure that a good reputation is being maintained.
I gave an example of a Professional Blogger in California that had an issue with their internet service. A phone call to customer service rendered a time frame of 2 days before the issue would be resolved. A quick tweet on their cell generated a personal call from a VP and their internet service was back up in a couple of hours.
Follow or stalk people that are saying meaningful things. Things that are of interest to you.
Post message about things to add value to your products or services.
Repost or retweet, message and links that are good info to share.
All of the social media sites can be a big consumer of your time. There are a number of tools that can help you streamline your posting activities.
SocialOomph.com - This is a free tool that allows you to schedule your messages to your social sites. Example, on Monday morning take 30 minutes and setup 20 tweets or so that will communicate to your audience at various times through out the week. When would your audience be looking?
Ping.fm - Provides a tool to tweet once and hit all the social sites.
Extra Tip: Setup several Google Alerts to monitor your name, your business and/or your products. This will allow you to keep tabs of what is being said.
pipl.com - I mentioned this as a tool to see what is publicly known about you. It is an aggregation
of public records (phone, birth, death, etc.) a little freaky to see what you can find.
If I can answer any questions about my presentation to day please feel free to post a comment.
While we were hoping for a bigger group, we did have just under 40 in attendance. There were a number of other events that were taking place at the same time so it did have the attendance a little low.
Social Media
I started with a video from YouTube entitled "Social Media ROI: Socialnomics"
Social Media is not a in your face sales tool. You want to talk about relevant information to your audience. Talking about going to Starbucks to get another double whatchamacallit coffee thing is not a productive topic of interest to most people.
Facebook is a massive social site that appears to be morphing into a new game platform with the craze of Farmville, Mafia Wars and Fishville. With the demographics information available from the profiles for all the users, you can do some very detailed marketing.
One option that is a growing trend is the creation of "Fan Pages" on Facebook. These pages allow you to have "fans" and be able to talk to them and make offers that they would be interested.
Twitter, is another tool that has a growing market for companies to have a presence to provide a face for a company. A lot of companies are creating a presence to do customer service and insure that a good reputation is being maintained.
I gave an example of a Professional Blogger in California that had an issue with their internet service. A phone call to customer service rendered a time frame of 2 days before the issue would be resolved. A quick tweet on their cell generated a personal call from a VP and their internet service was back up in a couple of hours.
Follow or stalk people that are saying meaningful things. Things that are of interest to you.
Post message about things to add value to your products or services.
Repost or retweet, message and links that are good info to share.
All of the social media sites can be a big consumer of your time. There are a number of tools that can help you streamline your posting activities.
SocialOomph.com - This is a free tool that allows you to schedule your messages to your social sites. Example, on Monday morning take 30 minutes and setup 20 tweets or so that will communicate to your audience at various times through out the week. When would your audience be looking?
Ping.fm - Provides a tool to tweet once and hit all the social sites.
Extra Tip: Setup several Google Alerts to monitor your name, your business and/or your products. This will allow you to keep tabs of what is being said.
pipl.com - I mentioned this as a tool to see what is publicly known about you. It is an aggregation
of public records (phone, birth, death, etc.) a little freaky to see what you can find.
If I can answer any questions about my presentation to day please feel free to post a comment.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Where is Waldo... I mean John...
Well, it has been a few months since I have written a new blog post. So I thought I would take a few minutes to crank out a quick post.
First and foremost, business has picked up and the weather has increased to a much more desirable temperature. The past several weeks have been a flurry of meetings and putting together proposals for a number of potential clients. All a great thing since as many of you know, I am doing my own start-up and making a go of it on my own. Just for grins, here is a partial list of some of my new clients. OK, this is also a shameless plug and a attempt to increase the off page SEO value of my clients sites.
DentSquadUSA • P+D Solutions • dZignPak • WhiteShield • Virtech Paralegal • The Solar Group • RDH Vending • Pacific Church of God • It's Rocket Science • Heritage Vistas • Calahan Design Solutions
The services that I am providing for these clients varies from client to client. Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, web site design and maintenance. I am totally having a great time working with these clients.
Hands on with the iPad
If you have not had the opportunity to have a little hands on time with the new iPad from Apple, you will find yourself,or at least I did, start thinking of ways to justify spending the money to buy one.
My first impressions was great, I was impressed with the screen, the size and the applications were beautiful.
The physical device felt a bit thicker than I was expecting. The edges of the body were smooth much like the newest generation of the MacBook Pro screen. The screen was larger than I imagined and was crisp and clean. Clicking or tapping icons was a little more pronounced than I expected. Several times while I was testing the unit, i tapped an icon and nothing happened. I had to slowly and intentionally tap the icon to get it to register the selection.
The software was very iPhone like and the same gestures allowed me to quickly pick it up and start flipping screens left and right. I also found it very responsive to the orientation of the iPad and flipped as needed.
Using the keyboard was pretty easy I did find the vertical keyboard a bit cramped to type with both hands as a keyboard. Flipping it horizontal was a much easier typing experience. However, I was unsure where my fingers were since I did not have a bump on the "f" and "j" keys.
The e-mail application was much richer than the iPhone version of the app. It was more like the Mail app on the Mac OS which allowed you to see your folders and accounts I like that added functionality.
The Calendar would allow you to flip to a horizontal version and gave a much richer look and feel with having a column on the left to see your calendars. I really liked the fact that each event in the calendar had a colored bullet with black text unlike the Mac OS Calendar where all the text for an event is color. That might be a preference but did not take the time to look.
iPhoto was very much like the iPhoto on the Mac. It allowed you to double tap a photo thumbnail and open the image to full screen. Flipping a finger left and right was smooth to navigate between images. Using the thumb and index finger would allow me to rotate images effortlessly. You could also setup slide shows by accessing a menu and defining time and transition.
The iBook app was nice. There were all the expected functionality that I would guess would be available with other eBook Readers. This included the control of brightness, text size and bookmarking. I really enjoyed the page turning animation. It was very intuitive to allow the 3D representation of turning a real books page. I also loved how you could run your finger back and forth to control the animation. Several of the books that I looked at also included illustrations and looked great.
The web (Safari) looked great. I looked at a couple of my sites and a few others to get an idea of the format. My sites generally are 955 wide and looked great in both orientations.
I also looked at a couple of YouTube videos and they were a bit chunky but would not slow me down from watching old StarTrek content. I viewed a HD video and it looked amazing.
Summary, I would love to have one of these now, but I am not at a point where luxuries are allowed :-(. I could see that this could easily replace a computer for my kids since all that they do is surf the web and do e-mail. As a student I can see the iPad quickly becoming a norm on campuses with the availability of the books in the iBook format. Adding the iWork tools allows you to word process, presentation creation and many of the other standards.
If you dare, go check it out at the Apple Store and see what you think. Oh by the way, you might want to leave your wallet at home, since the $499 starting price is pretty tempting.
First and foremost, business has picked up and the weather has increased to a much more desirable temperature. The past several weeks have been a flurry of meetings and putting together proposals for a number of potential clients. All a great thing since as many of you know, I am doing my own start-up and making a go of it on my own. Just for grins, here is a partial list of some of my new clients. OK, this is also a shameless plug and a attempt to increase the off page SEO value of my clients sites.
DentSquadUSA • P+D Solutions • dZignPak • WhiteShield • Virtech Paralegal • The Solar Group • RDH Vending • Pacific Church of God • It's Rocket Science • Heritage Vistas • Calahan Design Solutions
The services that I am providing for these clients varies from client to client. Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, web site design and maintenance. I am totally having a great time working with these clients.
Hands on with the iPad
If you have not had the opportunity to have a little hands on time with the new iPad from Apple, you will find yourself,or at least I did, start thinking of ways to justify spending the money to buy one.
My first impressions was great, I was impressed with the screen, the size and the applications were beautiful.
The physical device felt a bit thicker than I was expecting. The edges of the body were smooth much like the newest generation of the MacBook Pro screen. The screen was larger than I imagined and was crisp and clean. Clicking or tapping icons was a little more pronounced than I expected. Several times while I was testing the unit, i tapped an icon and nothing happened. I had to slowly and intentionally tap the icon to get it to register the selection.
The software was very iPhone like and the same gestures allowed me to quickly pick it up and start flipping screens left and right. I also found it very responsive to the orientation of the iPad and flipped as needed.
Using the keyboard was pretty easy I did find the vertical keyboard a bit cramped to type with both hands as a keyboard. Flipping it horizontal was a much easier typing experience. However, I was unsure where my fingers were since I did not have a bump on the "f" and "j" keys.
The e-mail application was much richer than the iPhone version of the app. It was more like the Mail app on the Mac OS which allowed you to see your folders and accounts I like that added functionality.
The Calendar would allow you to flip to a horizontal version and gave a much richer look and feel with having a column on the left to see your calendars. I really liked the fact that each event in the calendar had a colored bullet with black text unlike the Mac OS Calendar where all the text for an event is color. That might be a preference but did not take the time to look.
iPhoto was very much like the iPhoto on the Mac. It allowed you to double tap a photo thumbnail and open the image to full screen. Flipping a finger left and right was smooth to navigate between images. Using the thumb and index finger would allow me to rotate images effortlessly. You could also setup slide shows by accessing a menu and defining time and transition.
The iBook app was nice. There were all the expected functionality that I would guess would be available with other eBook Readers. This included the control of brightness, text size and bookmarking. I really enjoyed the page turning animation. It was very intuitive to allow the 3D representation of turning a real books page. I also loved how you could run your finger back and forth to control the animation. Several of the books that I looked at also included illustrations and looked great.
The web (Safari) looked great. I looked at a couple of my sites and a few others to get an idea of the format. My sites generally are 955 wide and looked great in both orientations.
I also looked at a couple of YouTube videos and they were a bit chunky but would not slow me down from watching old StarTrek content. I viewed a HD video and it looked amazing.
Summary, I would love to have one of these now, but I am not at a point where luxuries are allowed :-(. I could see that this could easily replace a computer for my kids since all that they do is surf the web and do e-mail. As a student I can see the iPad quickly becoming a norm on campuses with the availability of the books in the iBook format. Adding the iWork tools allows you to word process, presentation creation and many of the other standards.
If you dare, go check it out at the Apple Store and see what you think. Oh by the way, you might want to leave your wallet at home, since the $499 starting price is pretty tempting.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Its valuable, Its cool and Its Free...
Google Analytics
As I am reviewing clients current web presence many times I find that clients are not making use of any kind of analytics for their site. They have no idea how many visitors they have on their site and not sure how effective they are with their web presence.
There are a wide range of analytic tools on the market. There are high end enterprise solutions like Coremetrics which will monitor an online store and make relevant recommendations to the site visitor based on previous viewed or purchased products. For today, we are going to focus on Google Analytics and see, while it is a free tool, it does provide a lot of useful information that allows you to have a better understanding of your visitor and how effective your site is.
I am not going to take the time to go through the details of setting up a Google Analytics account and how to add the needed script to a site. If you are needing assistance in doing this please let me know and I would be happy to talk with you about getting you setup.
Above is the Dashboard for Google Analytics. This is where the fun begins for looking at the activities that are happening within a site. We first see a time line that shows the sites total visitors for the past month. This chart always surprises me with the fact that every site has its unique peak peak day. In the above example, we see that Monday and Tuesday are the traffic days for this site. Other sites that I work with vary greatly. One site that I work with peaks on Thursdays and another peaks on Saturdays.
What does this peak tell us? From a marketing stand point, it shows us when we need to drum up traffic to the site. Send out an e-mailing around the low time. Make an offer on a blog to drive traffic to the site. Most action that is taken will clearly be seen in this chart.
The next area that we can look at is the Site Usage, where we are seeing the overall numbers for the given time frame. In this section we see Visits, Pageviews, Pages/Visit, Bounce Rate, Avg. Time on Site and % New Visits. Let look at each of these and get a better understanding of each.
Visits – This is the total number of visitors to the site. In another section in the report there is also a Unique Visitor stat that is unique as defined by a machines IP Address.
Pageviews – This is the total number of pages that were served or viewed by the above users.
Pages/Visit – The average number of pages viewed by each visitor
Bounce Rate – This is an interesting item that is tracked. And can be used as a gauge for how effective or relevant the content of a page is. In other words, If visit comes to the site and looks at the home page then leaves without looking at additional pages that would be one bounce. This becomes informative when you drill down in the report and look at specific pages and see the bounce rates.
Looking at the bounce rate we can gather the value of the page to our visitors. If there is a high bounce rate we may need to look at the content of the page and rethink what is said or show about your product or services.
Avg. Time on Site – This shows the average amount of time that a visitor spends on a site. We can compare the statistics for Bounce Rate with this and get a better idea of the overall effectiveness of the site. If this number is high then we can say that our audience is spending time on the site.
% New Visits – This is the percentage of the total Visits that are new or have an IP Address that has not been to the site previously. When you first start gathering data on your site, this number will be high so keep that in mind as it goes down over a period of time.
Each of these sections can be drilled into further allowing you to see greater detail into your sites activity.
The next section that I would like to focus on today is the Traffic Source Overview. Clicking on the View Report link will allow us to drill down and see a greater wealth of information on the source of our visitors. In this section we will see details about Direct Traffic, Referring Sites and Search Engines. This is were you get a since for the overall value of your site. Questions that I ask when looking at these details are: Where are the largest number of users coming from? Is a large percentage of my traffic coming from a Search Engine? How effective are third party sites at bringing traffic to my site? Is Twitter, Facebook or a Blog driving traffic?
Here is where I can talk about needing a good Search Engine Optimization or SEO plan in place. But you will need to look at you sites data and make that call on your own. Better yet, give me a call and I can help you get a better understanding of what is going on.
Another part of the Traffic Source Overview is the keywords section. Here you will see a list of the actual words that were used to search and find you. Here is where you can monitor the effectiveness of your keywords found on your site. If the words you think are your keywords are not being searched for to find you, you need to revisit your sites content.
Remember, ultimately keywords are king, and those keywords are made up of the relevant content of your site. This is heading to the subject of SEO but we will have to wait to and discuss that at a later time.
John
I am your CEO for SEO
NosalCentral, Your Central Source for Internet Marketing Solutions
Monday, February 1, 2010
Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #10
Making Connections With People
When it gets down to the root use of LinkedIn, its making connections with people. My philosophy with establishing connections is pretty simple. If I've meet you through networking, I will connect with you on LinkedIn. I do have one requirement, when you ask to link with me you have to state were we meet.
If you have been using LinkedIn for a while you have seen that there is no way to delete messages that you have received. Your only option is to archive the messages to remove them from your Inbox. I mention this to explain why I request that you tell me where I meet you. It allows me to go back at anytime and search my Inbox for people that I meet at a specific event. What a great way to recall how you met someone when that name is on the tip of your tongue.
So lets talk about the options that you have when connecting with people. The key as you may know, is knowing someone's e-mail address in most cases. Connections or links are defined by how you know the connection. These connections are Classmate, We've done business together, Friend, Group and I don't know... All of these options require a sub selection with the exception of Friend and I don't know...
I find for most of the connections that I do, that I use the Other option. This option requires an e-mail to complete the connection. Secondarily, I make a lot of my connections via the Group option.
The personal note section is where we can type a personal note to the person that we are wanting to connect with. I always encourage making the note personal. Again, tell them where we meet them this makes it easier for the other person to recall where they meet you. After all not all of us have photographic memory and remember everyone's name and face.
Every now and then, you may be wanting to connect with someone that you don't have their e-mail address or have a direct way to connect with them. This is when you may need to reach out using your network to get in contact with someone. This generally happens when someone is two degrees of separation from you. At this point you will be required to connect with someone that would act as a middleman. You will be required to not only type a note to the person you are trying to connect with, but you will also have the opportunity to send a note to the middleman. Please note that both notes will be seen by all parties. So keep the note to your networked acquaintance professional.
When establishing this multi-degree connection, it will take sometime and require the middle man to forward the request. When typing your notes, tell everyone why you are wanting to establish the connection.
If you are ever in a position that you are unable to find a way to connect with someone, remember to Google them by name and company. You never know, you might find their e-mail address in this manor.
In summary, tell everyone how you know them when establishing a connection. Know the people that you connect with. Do your part in helping to establish connections between people.
Next time we will be moving away from LinkedIn and start looking at tools for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
And if you are your company is needing help with your internet marketing contact us at NosalCentral for all your Internet Marketing Solutions.
When it gets down to the root use of LinkedIn, its making connections with people. My philosophy with establishing connections is pretty simple. If I've meet you through networking, I will connect with you on LinkedIn. I do have one requirement, when you ask to link with me you have to state were we meet.
If you have been using LinkedIn for a while you have seen that there is no way to delete messages that you have received. Your only option is to archive the messages to remove them from your Inbox. I mention this to explain why I request that you tell me where I meet you. It allows me to go back at anytime and search my Inbox for people that I meet at a specific event. What a great way to recall how you met someone when that name is on the tip of your tongue.
So lets talk about the options that you have when connecting with people. The key as you may know, is knowing someone's e-mail address in most cases. Connections or links are defined by how you know the connection. These connections are Classmate, We've done business together, Friend, Group and I don't know... All of these options require a sub selection with the exception of Friend and I don't know...
I find for most of the connections that I do, that I use the Other option. This option requires an e-mail to complete the connection. Secondarily, I make a lot of my connections via the Group option.
The personal note section is where we can type a personal note to the person that we are wanting to connect with. I always encourage making the note personal. Again, tell them where we meet them this makes it easier for the other person to recall where they meet you. After all not all of us have photographic memory and remember everyone's name and face.
Every now and then, you may be wanting to connect with someone that you don't have their e-mail address or have a direct way to connect with them. This is when you may need to reach out using your network to get in contact with someone. This generally happens when someone is two degrees of separation from you. At this point you will be required to connect with someone that would act as a middleman. You will be required to not only type a note to the person you are trying to connect with, but you will also have the opportunity to send a note to the middleman. Please note that both notes will be seen by all parties. So keep the note to your networked acquaintance professional.
When establishing this multi-degree connection, it will take sometime and require the middle man to forward the request. When typing your notes, tell everyone why you are wanting to establish the connection.
If you are ever in a position that you are unable to find a way to connect with someone, remember to Google them by name and company. You never know, you might find their e-mail address in this manor.
In summary, tell everyone how you know them when establishing a connection. Know the people that you connect with. Do your part in helping to establish connections between people.
Next time we will be moving away from LinkedIn and start looking at tools for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
And if you are your company is needing help with your internet marketing contact us at NosalCentral for all your Internet Marketing Solutions.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #9
The Art of Giving and Receiving Recommendations
Recommendations are way to give and receive feed back from coworkers, managers, clients and others that you have the opportunity to work with during your career. A common recommendation may be a manager giving a recommendation for a current or past employee.
The recommendation could be worded something like this:
“John is one of the more innovative and productive people that I have had the pleasure of working with. John's direct role was the manager of our Graphics and Marketing Department, but his strong abilities and teamwork attitude led him into involvement in many more areas of the company. His technical and organizational skills are excellent, and applicable to many things. John's high moral values and cooperative spirit gained him respect throughout our entire organization. I would strongly recommend John to any future employer, and I hope I get the opportunity to work with him again.”
Recommendations are associated to a specific company or listing in your work experience. I regularly speak with groups of pre-employed individuals and as a way to fill the gap in there experience, I will recommend that they list volunteer activities, these volunteer while are not a paying gig does allow for some great opportunities to receive recommendations.
One nice thing about recommendations on LinkedIn is that you have total control of what is displayed through an approval process. This approval process allows you to make sure that everything is spelled correctly and that it is painting you in a good light.
Another feature of the approval or the Management of your recommendations is that you can hide recommendations at will. This allows you to change up what people are seeing about you and may allow you to put your strongest foot forward with the best of your recommendations.
When you receive a recommendation, you can't edit a recommendation, but it is quite acceptable to return a recommendation to the person that sent it and ask them to fix a problem. Or I like to select the text, make the changes and send it back to ask that they re-post the recommendation. I have on occasion, even rewritten a recommendation to have a stronger branding of my abilities and add needed keywords to increase the overall value of the recommendation.
One of the most common questions that I am asked is, "does the person giving the recommendation have to be on LinkedIn?" Yes both parties have to be on LinkedIn for this to work.
What is the value of recommendations on your profile? This allows people or more specifically recruiters to see what others are saying about your abilities. And from the other perspective, it allows them to see what you say about others. What this boils down to is that it is good to not just receive, but to also give recommendations.
There are a number of opinions when it comes to reciprocating recommendations. You may be thinking, this person gave me a recommendation so I am now obligated to give them one. My thought on this is when someone gives me a recommendation, I like to wait a week or so to give them one back. This way you have a chance to think about what you could say and not have the instant reaction to their recommendation. It allows for your follow up recommendation to have a bit more validity.
So how do you ask for recommendations? I personally look for opportunities where someone thanks me for doing something for them. I will also use it as a way to help with customer service in my business. After completing a project for a client. I will mention that I would appreciate their feed back on LinkedIn in the form of a recommendation.
Next time we will be looking at adding to your network with invites. Until then, I would love to have your feed back on this blog. Let me know how I can help you more. Or if you have any questions that I can answer or even add as a topic for a future post. Interaction with an audience is what makes a blog a success.
NosalCentral is helping small companies around the country with a successful internet presence. Want to learn more, visit our site at NosalCentral.com.
Recommendations are way to give and receive feed back from coworkers, managers, clients and others that you have the opportunity to work with during your career. A common recommendation may be a manager giving a recommendation for a current or past employee.
The recommendation could be worded something like this:
“John is one of the more innovative and productive people that I have had the pleasure of working with. John's direct role was the manager of our Graphics and Marketing Department, but his strong abilities and teamwork attitude led him into involvement in many more areas of the company. His technical and organizational skills are excellent, and applicable to many things. John's high moral values and cooperative spirit gained him respect throughout our entire organization. I would strongly recommend John to any future employer, and I hope I get the opportunity to work with him again.”
Recommendations are associated to a specific company or listing in your work experience. I regularly speak with groups of pre-employed individuals and as a way to fill the gap in there experience, I will recommend that they list volunteer activities, these volunteer while are not a paying gig does allow for some great opportunities to receive recommendations.
One nice thing about recommendations on LinkedIn is that you have total control of what is displayed through an approval process. This approval process allows you to make sure that everything is spelled correctly and that it is painting you in a good light.
Another feature of the approval or the Management of your recommendations is that you can hide recommendations at will. This allows you to change up what people are seeing about you and may allow you to put your strongest foot forward with the best of your recommendations.
When you receive a recommendation, you can't edit a recommendation, but it is quite acceptable to return a recommendation to the person that sent it and ask them to fix a problem. Or I like to select the text, make the changes and send it back to ask that they re-post the recommendation. I have on occasion, even rewritten a recommendation to have a stronger branding of my abilities and add needed keywords to increase the overall value of the recommendation.
One of the most common questions that I am asked is, "does the person giving the recommendation have to be on LinkedIn?" Yes both parties have to be on LinkedIn for this to work.
What is the value of recommendations on your profile? This allows people or more specifically recruiters to see what others are saying about your abilities. And from the other perspective, it allows them to see what you say about others. What this boils down to is that it is good to not just receive, but to also give recommendations.
There are a number of opinions when it comes to reciprocating recommendations. You may be thinking, this person gave me a recommendation so I am now obligated to give them one. My thought on this is when someone gives me a recommendation, I like to wait a week or so to give them one back. This way you have a chance to think about what you could say and not have the instant reaction to their recommendation. It allows for your follow up recommendation to have a bit more validity.
So how do you ask for recommendations? I personally look for opportunities where someone thanks me for doing something for them. I will also use it as a way to help with customer service in my business. After completing a project for a client. I will mention that I would appreciate their feed back on LinkedIn in the form of a recommendation.
Next time we will be looking at adding to your network with invites. Until then, I would love to have your feed back on this blog. Let me know how I can help you more. Or if you have any questions that I can answer or even add as a topic for a future post. Interaction with an audience is what makes a blog a success.
NosalCentral is helping small companies around the country with a successful internet presence. Want to learn more, visit our site at NosalCentral.com.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Social Media Club Dallas - Chris Brogan
Had the opportunity to attend the Social Media Club Dallas January event with guest speaker Chris Brogan at the Angelika Dallas at Mockingbird Station.
I arrived early to help setup and do what I could to make the event a total success. Meet up with several of my friends @kfcatoe and @davidswinney. And very quickly the excitement was building with folks started arriving for the event.
In talking with the organizers, it was a sold out show with 200 people in attendance. Wow, how much Social Media geekiness can you fit in one room. It was awesome to see the number of well know social media leaders from the Dallas area all in one location.
I also had the opportunity to shake hands and chat with @chrisbrogan for a few minutes.
@mikedmerrill president of @smcdallas introduced @chrisbrogan and the event was on. I was being the true geek that I am and was tweeting highlights through out the lecture. After all this was an acceptable practice at an event like this.
Here are a few notes that I took:
After the lecture, there was a tweetup next door at @Trinityhall where everyone went and packed the place for some great networking and Guinness drinking.
There was one other thing that happened that was a highlight of the evening. Once just about everyone cleared the Angelika, a couple of dozen of us were standing around chatting about the event. When from the next theater over out walked Jerry Jones and his wife. Yes the Dallas Cowboy's Jerry Jones. He was pretty cool with it all and posed for several camera phone photos. I tried but the light was way to low for my iPhone to do much.
If you are interested in Social Media you need to check out the Social Media Club.
Until next time.
John
NosalCentral - Your Central Source for Web Solutions
I arrived early to help setup and do what I could to make the event a total success. Meet up with several of my friends @kfcatoe and @davidswinney. And very quickly the excitement was building with folks started arriving for the event.
In talking with the organizers, it was a sold out show with 200 people in attendance. Wow, how much Social Media geekiness can you fit in one room. It was awesome to see the number of well know social media leaders from the Dallas area all in one location.
I also had the opportunity to shake hands and chat with @chrisbrogan for a few minutes.
@mikedmerrill president of @smcdallas introduced @chrisbrogan and the event was on. I was being the true geek that I am and was tweeting highlights through out the lecture. After all this was an acceptable practice at an event like this.
Here are a few notes that I took:
- We are all in customer service.
- Networking is no longer passing business cards and shaking hands.
- Experts say that we can only have a strong network of 150 people. We need to overlap our 150 people with other peoples networks and increase the strength and size of our networks.
- Marketing should be made up of 2 parts helping, 2 parts connecting and 1 part selling.
- Listening is a key part of being successful.
- We should be like farmers... The look for ways to build and give back.
- We should be spending 40% of our twitter time listening.
- We should be making an effort to comment on other peoples blogs.
- What can we do to give value prior to the sale?
- We need to ask questions. Ask opinions. This helps us to listen and hear the needs of others.
- LinkedIn is more than a job seeking tool. We need to write our profiles with a focus on the future and not the past.
After the lecture, there was a tweetup next door at @Trinityhall where everyone went and packed the place for some great networking and Guinness drinking.
There was one other thing that happened that was a highlight of the evening. Once just about everyone cleared the Angelika, a couple of dozen of us were standing around chatting about the event. When from the next theater over out walked Jerry Jones and his wife. Yes the Dallas Cowboy's Jerry Jones. He was pretty cool with it all and posed for several camera phone photos. I tried but the light was way to low for my iPhone to do much.
If you are interested in Social Media you need to check out the Social Media Club.
Until next time.
John
NosalCentral - Your Central Source for Web Solutions
Monday, January 18, 2010
Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #8
Groups are the bomb...
One of the things that I enjoy using in LinkedIn is the Groups. In the Groups, you can do additional networking with people that have common interest. And best of all, you have the opportunity to post and respond to messages that are specific to that group.
Lets first define what Groups are. First off, Groups are made by users of LinkedIn. Anyone can create a group even you and I. So if you want to create a group for Breeding Goldfish for Fun and Profit, you can do that. Groups are a great way to talk and connect with others with like interest.
Lets focus more on how we can use groups to our advantage. First lets look at finding a group that we may want to join. Using the Search option at the top of any screen in LinkedIn , you are able to search for any keyword or topic that you may have interest in. Everything from Abacus to Zooligy there is probably a group on the topic.
Many times you may find a number of groups for a given topic. Here is where you have to look at the value of a group. Look at the number of participants that are in the group. If you have a couple of good fits, join both and get a feel for the topics that are discussed. If after a week or so you see one group is better than the other, you can unsubscribe from the unwanted group.
One thing you will want to do is keep the groups that you are members of relevant to your professional branding. So you may not want to join groups for political, religious, or others that are controversial in a corporate environment.
Once you have joined a group or groups, you are able to start posting and answering questions. This is a great opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your area of interest or expertise.
A hidden gem that is part of being members of groups is that you now have access to the membership list for the group. You can access this from the More > Members secondary menu when you are on the page for a specific group. Here you will find the complete list for all the members in that group. Once viewing the Members list, you are able to search the members of the group for specific keywords.
When searching within the Members list you could look for contacts at specific companies for that you may be targeting for a work search or sales opportunity.
Groups allow us to add a whole new dimension to our networking with professionals in our area of interest. By responding to post we can establish our expertise in a given subject. Then using the members list we can find people in our area within companies that we may be wanting to connect with.
While Groups in LinkedIn are a great way to network, NosalCentral is a great way to gain control over your web presence. Weather it is Analytics, SEO or a Social Media we can help you with increasing your value on the web.
One of the things that I enjoy using in LinkedIn is the Groups. In the Groups, you can do additional networking with people that have common interest. And best of all, you have the opportunity to post and respond to messages that are specific to that group.
Lets first define what Groups are. First off, Groups are made by users of LinkedIn. Anyone can create a group even you and I. So if you want to create a group for Breeding Goldfish for Fun and Profit, you can do that. Groups are a great way to talk and connect with others with like interest.
Lets focus more on how we can use groups to our advantage. First lets look at finding a group that we may want to join. Using the Search option at the top of any screen in LinkedIn , you are able to search for any keyword or topic that you may have interest in. Everything from Abacus to Zooligy there is probably a group on the topic.
Many times you may find a number of groups for a given topic. Here is where you have to look at the value of a group. Look at the number of participants that are in the group. If you have a couple of good fits, join both and get a feel for the topics that are discussed. If after a week or so you see one group is better than the other, you can unsubscribe from the unwanted group.
One thing you will want to do is keep the groups that you are members of relevant to your professional branding. So you may not want to join groups for political, religious, or others that are controversial in a corporate environment.
Once you have joined a group or groups, you are able to start posting and answering questions. This is a great opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your area of interest or expertise.
A hidden gem that is part of being members of groups is that you now have access to the membership list for the group. You can access this from the More > Members secondary menu when you are on the page for a specific group. Here you will find the complete list for all the members in that group. Once viewing the Members list, you are able to search the members of the group for specific keywords.
When searching within the Members list you could look for contacts at specific companies for that you may be targeting for a work search or sales opportunity.
Groups allow us to add a whole new dimension to our networking with professionals in our area of interest. By responding to post we can establish our expertise in a given subject. Then using the members list we can find people in our area within companies that we may be wanting to connect with.
While Groups in LinkedIn are a great way to network, NosalCentral is a great way to gain control over your web presence. Weather it is Analytics, SEO or a Social Media we can help you with increasing your value on the web.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #7
Using Apps to add interest to your profile.
Each week I look at a lot of profiles and after a while they all start to look a like. They all have a photo, a summary and work experience. All of this information is a lot like reading through a stack of 100 resumes. A little on the dry reading side.
What can we do to add a little bling to our profiles? Thanks to LinkedIn for opening the doors in early 2009 to 3rd party developers, which allows for extended functionality to be added to our profiles.
Lets look at a few of these third party add-on tools and talk about ways that you might use them to add additional interest in who you are.
The first that I like to recommend is the Reading List by Amazon. With this application, you can show your business focus and show that you are looking to improve your knowledge through reading. Or if you are a technology geek, that you have all the latest toys like the Amazon Kindle.
Use the reading list to make a list of recent books that you have read or would like to read. If you have read something, add a comment about what you read. However, you may not want to list the latest Zane Grey novel that you read. While it may have been a good read, it is not promoting your business focus.
Also use this reading list to help you open doors with people. Lets say you are getting ready to meet with someone for the first time. Take a look at their profile and see what they have read. Use that to help get the conversation relaxed and moving.
Another application that I like to add to my profile is the Box.net app. This application allows you to add any file to your profile. This would be great if say you were a creative writer or a graphic artist. You could place samples of your work or your portfolio on your profile.
Box.net allows you to also organize the files by creating sub-folders for the various needs that you may have. You may create a folder for presentations, Writing, PDFs or maybe a version of your resume.
Another handy application is SlideShare. Slide share allows you to take any PowerPoint presentation and add it as a self-running movie in your profile. So if you happen to be in a position where you are doing a lot of PowerPoint work, you might add a sample using this.
Or how about this option, create a 12 to 15 slide presentation about you. Use this as a way to sell yourself and tell people why they should hire you if you are looking for a job.
There are many other applications that you can add to your profile. There is one for Events, Blogging, Polls and Twitter. All of these applications allow you to add additional interest to who you are and best of all take your profile to the next level.
While we are mentioning ways to take things to the next level, NosalCentral can help take your companies web presence to the next level with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Marketing.
Visit our website and give us a call to learn more about our services.
Each week I look at a lot of profiles and after a while they all start to look a like. They all have a photo, a summary and work experience. All of this information is a lot like reading through a stack of 100 resumes. A little on the dry reading side.
What can we do to add a little bling to our profiles? Thanks to LinkedIn for opening the doors in early 2009 to 3rd party developers, which allows for extended functionality to be added to our profiles.
Lets look at a few of these third party add-on tools and talk about ways that you might use them to add additional interest in who you are.
The first that I like to recommend is the Reading List by Amazon. With this application, you can show your business focus and show that you are looking to improve your knowledge through reading. Or if you are a technology geek, that you have all the latest toys like the Amazon Kindle.
Use the reading list to make a list of recent books that you have read or would like to read. If you have read something, add a comment about what you read. However, you may not want to list the latest Zane Grey novel that you read. While it may have been a good read, it is not promoting your business focus.
Also use this reading list to help you open doors with people. Lets say you are getting ready to meet with someone for the first time. Take a look at their profile and see what they have read. Use that to help get the conversation relaxed and moving.
Another application that I like to add to my profile is the Box.net app. This application allows you to add any file to your profile. This would be great if say you were a creative writer or a graphic artist. You could place samples of your work or your portfolio on your profile.
Box.net allows you to also organize the files by creating sub-folders for the various needs that you may have. You may create a folder for presentations, Writing, PDFs or maybe a version of your resume.
Another handy application is SlideShare. Slide share allows you to take any PowerPoint presentation and add it as a self-running movie in your profile. So if you happen to be in a position where you are doing a lot of PowerPoint work, you might add a sample using this.
Or how about this option, create a 12 to 15 slide presentation about you. Use this as a way to sell yourself and tell people why they should hire you if you are looking for a job.
There are many other applications that you can add to your profile. There is one for Events, Blogging, Polls and Twitter. All of these applications allow you to add additional interest to who you are and best of all take your profile to the next level.
While we are mentioning ways to take things to the next level, NosalCentral can help take your companies web presence to the next level with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Marketing.
Visit our website and give us a call to learn more about our services.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #6
Keywords and Branding
Our profile, resume and our social media presence are all key to defining who we are. One of the challenges that we have when defining who we are is defining things that set us apart from the rest of the world. We also want to be found if we are looking for our next career opportunity.
The way to stand out in the crowd is to have relevant keywords and a strong branding of who you are and what you do. Lets take a look at these two items, Keywords and Branding and how we can do this within our profiles on LinkedIn. Note: these same approaches can be used with our resume and other social media sites.
Lets first look at keywords. These are the words that are specific to who you are. For example, if you are a Project Manager: PMI, PMP, SixSigma, Green Belt, Program Manager, MS Project, Visio and any other terms or software that are specific to your expertise would be the keywords that you may have.
Another example that we could look at is a Administrative Assistant, they would have a list of software and skills that they are experienced with: Microsoft Office (MS), Excel, Word, Power Point, Outlook, FrontPage, Shorthand, Event Planning... Notice that I listed out all the pieces of Microsoft Office, I did this to cover the many ways that someone might be searching for your skills.
So why are keywords so important? Think about you being in a position where you are needing to find a person that has a specific skill set. You might search for specific software that this individual would need to have experience with in order to fill the position.
Now, do a search to find yourself, are you in the top 10 results? Take a look at the people that are higher in the ranking than you. These people may be your competition. Look at their profiles, what put them higher in the results?
You may be asking yourself, what can I do to get higher in the ranking. Here is the key... Review your profile and use your keywords as many times as you can in your Summary and Experience sections of your profile. Use the Specialties section as a place to put all of your keywords. Look at job posts or descriptions for your position and incorporate the terms and phrases that are used.
Now that we have identified keywords and looked at how we can increase the relevance of our profiles, lets talk about branding a bit more. In a recent marketing networking group, we had a lengthy discussion on branding ourselves. What can we do to set ourselves apart froom the rest of the crowd?
Work on developing a unique statement that defines who you are. It needs to be catchy and memorable. One friend of mine brands himself as "the Joe Montana of Marketing". As you might have seen with my company I am branding my company as "NosalCentral, Your Central Source for Web Solutions".
Develop a statement that you can use to brand you as... who knows, the "Stretch Armstrong of Admin Assistants". Have fun with it and you will come up with something great.
Keywords and Branding are an important aspect to having a strong presence on LinkedIn. These same tips can also be used for your resume and other social media sites.
Keywords are also a vital part of a corporate presence on the internet. Want to know what search engines see your keywords look like? Let NosalCentral help you get on top of your keywords and ultimately be at the top of the search engine results to increase your ROI on your website.
NosalCentral is your keyword for SEO, SEM and Analysis of your web presence.
Our profile, resume and our social media presence are all key to defining who we are. One of the challenges that we have when defining who we are is defining things that set us apart from the rest of the world. We also want to be found if we are looking for our next career opportunity.
The way to stand out in the crowd is to have relevant keywords and a strong branding of who you are and what you do. Lets take a look at these two items, Keywords and Branding and how we can do this within our profiles on LinkedIn. Note: these same approaches can be used with our resume and other social media sites.
Lets first look at keywords. These are the words that are specific to who you are. For example, if you are a Project Manager: PMI, PMP, SixSigma, Green Belt, Program Manager, MS Project, Visio and any other terms or software that are specific to your expertise would be the keywords that you may have.
Another example that we could look at is a Administrative Assistant, they would have a list of software and skills that they are experienced with: Microsoft Office (MS), Excel, Word, Power Point, Outlook, FrontPage, Shorthand, Event Planning... Notice that I listed out all the pieces of Microsoft Office, I did this to cover the many ways that someone might be searching for your skills.
So why are keywords so important? Think about you being in a position where you are needing to find a person that has a specific skill set. You might search for specific software that this individual would need to have experience with in order to fill the position.
Now, do a search to find yourself, are you in the top 10 results? Take a look at the people that are higher in the ranking than you. These people may be your competition. Look at their profiles, what put them higher in the results?
You may be asking yourself, what can I do to get higher in the ranking. Here is the key... Review your profile and use your keywords as many times as you can in your Summary and Experience sections of your profile. Use the Specialties section as a place to put all of your keywords. Look at job posts or descriptions for your position and incorporate the terms and phrases that are used.
Now that we have identified keywords and looked at how we can increase the relevance of our profiles, lets talk about branding a bit more. In a recent marketing networking group, we had a lengthy discussion on branding ourselves. What can we do to set ourselves apart froom the rest of the crowd?
Work on developing a unique statement that defines who you are. It needs to be catchy and memorable. One friend of mine brands himself as "the Joe Montana of Marketing". As you might have seen with my company I am branding my company as "NosalCentral, Your Central Source for Web Solutions".
Develop a statement that you can use to brand you as... who knows, the "Stretch Armstrong of Admin Assistants". Have fun with it and you will come up with something great.
Keywords and Branding are an important aspect to having a strong presence on LinkedIn. These same tips can also be used for your resume and other social media sites.
Keywords are also a vital part of a corporate presence on the internet. Want to know what search engines see your keywords look like? Let NosalCentral help you get on top of your keywords and ultimately be at the top of the search engine results to increase your ROI on your website.
NosalCentral is your keyword for SEO, SEM and Analysis of your web presence.
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