mishel

3 Tips for Using LinkedIn to Generate New Business Leads

April 25, 2012 By mishel Leave a Comment

Tip #1: Join Targeted LinkedIn Groups

Groups provide a powerful way for you to get to know your target audience in the marketplace that you provide services to – or want to provide services to. The trick is to pick the right kind of group to join. Here are some things to consider before joining a group.

Expand your reach: Don’t just join the groups related to what you do for a living. This won’t be where you find new customers. If you are a small business located in Los Angeles, California, and you specialize in making handmade black leather shoes for women, join the “I Love Handmade Shoes” group on LinkedIn.
Participate: Once you are accepted as a group member, it is important to participate. If group members of “I Love Handmade Shoes” are posting questions about where they can find the best handmade shoes, participate in this conversation. A hard sell can be annoying, so start off by telling them what to watch out for (check the stitching, make sure there is a good return policy, etc.) and then let them know that you have an excellent product and provide a link to photos of your product online and make sure they can order your product from the link you have sent them too.
Bigger isn’t really better: The “I Love Handmade Shoes” has 15,000 members and was started by a woman in Paris, France. Most of the posts are in French and while it may be fun to practice your broken French with this group, is it really the right place for you to invest your time in? While researching groups on LinkedIn, you also found the group “I Love Handmade Black Leather Shoes” that was created by a woman in Greenville, Delaware. It has 1,800 members and is very active. Which one do you think is a better use of your time? In my opinion, save the broken French for the vacation to Paris. You’ll probably gain more traction interacting with your US-based audience.

Once you start participating, you are making a commitment to participate in that group conversation. So make sure it is the best use of your time.

Tip #2: Participate by responding to LinkedIn Answers

Answering questions on LinkedIn is an excellent way to position yourself as an expert on the topic you are answering the question about. When answering questions related to your industry expertise, linking to other helpful information on a personal blog (that has been optimized for lead generation, i.e., a call-to-action on the page you are linking to) will position you so that you drive targeted (and interested) leads your way.

Tip #3: Conduct a LinkedIn Search

Want to get your foot in the door at that large corporation? Conduct a people search on LinkedIn. Using the drop down menu that is part of the upper right-hand search box, will help you generate targeted results. Once your results are listed, use the options on the left to refine your search. If you do not have any direct connections in your network to someone in that company, check the “2nd connections” box on the left. This will refine your search again and provide a list of names at your target company. On their individual profiles, you will see a list of shared connections. Ask your friends to introduce you via LinkedIn to the people at that target company and you’re in!

Without question, LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool. However, it is so much more. The entire LinkedIn site is searchable and when used properly, it can be an amazing lead generator. Leads turn into new business, and that cash register starts ringing. Who doesn’t like that sound?

Filed Under: LinkedIn

Easy to Use WordPress Templates

April 13, 2012 By mishel Leave a Comment

I use WordPress for all of my websites. WordPress is an amazing platform. You can build an entire site with WordPress, it isn’t just for blogging anymore. I may be a bit more technically oriented than the general website user, but WordPress is truly easy to use when you have an easy template to work with.

If you are not a graphic designer – check out www.TemplateMonster.com. Template Monster offers lots of eye-candy. You can pick a beautifully designed WordPress template for around $50. They will even handle the customization for you for a very reasonable price.

If your pocketbook is cringing at spending $50 on a WordPress Template, there are some really easy to use templates that are free. Here are three of my favorites:

PageLines: This is a beautiful site that can drag and drop tools that make the need for a graphic designer null and void (sadly, for me).
Monochrome: Visit cfoinsights.net to see how this template looks.
MagicBlue: This template is very easy to customize and has some pretty graphics already built in.

If you’re reading this post and are still skeptical – email me and ask me to send you my easy-to-use training manual. I wrote it myself and used it to train 15 accountants, with absolutely ZERO website building skills, how to use WordPress so that they could update our firm Intranet on their own.

Filed Under: Resources

LinkedIn Monday, Twitter Tuesday, Facebook Friday

April 12, 2012 By mishel Leave a Comment

I am always asked, “How much time do you spend using Social Media?” My answer is, “as much time as I make for it.” Having a Social Media account like Facebook or LinkedIn is free, but the time spent using and maintaining them are not. It is important to pick and choose from all of the options out there, understand where your audience lives, and then provide content that they will be interested in.

My goal for each of these accounts is to provide content with a purpose. No tweets about my last trip to the kitchen for toast with peanut butter will show up on any of my Twitter accounts, but my personal Facebook page might provide some peanut butter induced fun… and lots of pictures of my dog.

Connect with Me

Facebook

Mishel and Fizzgig: This is my personal Facebook account. It contains all that newsy, chatter kind of content that you normally share with just friends and family.

Mishel Justesen: This is my “professional” Facebook account. This account is used to solve the conundrum of having to link a personal Facebook account to a company Facebook page. I do not post any personal (or potentially embarrassing) content on this page.

RBZ.Recruiting: This is the recruiting page for the company I work for. The target audience for this page is college students who are interested in working for our firm. Our goal for this page is to provide a fun way to showcase our firm culture.

Mishel Justesen: This is a link to my personal LinkedIn profile. If you are not connected to me through your network but would like to send a request to join my network, my email address is parishopper@gmail.com.

RBZ Company Profile: This is a link to the company profile that I maintain for the firm I work for.

Twitter

@morphodesign: This is my personal Twitter feed. I post interesting links to graphic design and social media related news items.

@rbzllp: This twitter feed provides tax, audit and business consulting tips.

Flickr

Mishel Justesen: This is a personal Flickr account that I use to archive all of my favorite iPhone photos. It’s a very random collection of stuff.

Google+

Mishel Justesen: I haven’t completely jumped on the Google+ bandwagon yet, but I felt it was important to establish an account as I believe that this platform is not going to go away anytime soon, and well, it IS a Google product. Probably a good idea to pay attention to this one folks!

Tumblr

Morpho Blue Design: My beloved Tumblr blog – is very neglected. This was an experiment to see how it worked. I mainly use this account from my iPhone when traveling – which doesn’t happen very often.

FourSquare

Mishel Justesen: I am the proud mayor of Trimana – the cafe located in the building of work in. This is either happy news, or pathetic if you dwell on it too much. I’m not sure how this account helps me out professionally yet, but personally free food or discounted adult beverages when you “check-in” at a location is always appreciated.

Filed Under: Social

Adding a Twitter Feed to Your Blog

April 6, 2012 By mishel Leave a Comment

There are many ways to add your Twitter feed to your blog. Here is one method that can be done in three easy steps.

The following instructions assume that you are using a sidebar on your blog site. I am a WordPress user, so I am using WordPress terminology. WordPress uses “Widgets” for extra things that you can add to your site, like a tag cloud, blogroll, and in this case, a text-widget that you can copy and paste code into.

Step 1: Copy and paste the following code:

<center><script src="http://widgets.twimg.com/j/2/widget.js"></script>
<script>
new TWTR.Widget({
  version: 2,
  type: 'profile',
  rpp: 4,
  interval: 6000,
  width: 220,
  height: 300,
  theme: {
    shell: {
      background: '#ffffff',
      color: '#793d19'
    },
    tweets: {
      background: '#ffffff',
      color: '#793d19',
      links: '#ea7f1e'
    }
  },
  features: {
    scrollbar: false,
    loop: false,
    live: false,
    hashtags: true,
    timestamp: true,
    avatars: false,
    behavior: 'all'
  }
}).render().setUser('yourtwitterhandle').start();
</script></center>

Step 2: Past this code into a text-widget that you have added to your blog sidebar.

Step 3: Modify the code to your liking.

If Step 3 gives you a headache, don’t worry. There is really only one part of this code that absolutely MUST BE changed. Take a look at the second to last row of the code:

}).render().setUser('yourtwitterhandle').start();

I have made the words, “yourtwitterhandle” in between the single quotes bold. You must change the words in bold (i.e., yourtwitterhandle) to your Twitter username. Do not use the “@” symbol and be sure to JUST change the words. Do not accidentally delete the single quotes when you do this.

Publish or save your text-widget and then preview your site. Your Twitter feed should now show up in your sidebar.

If you like the way your Twitter feed looks – stop here and happy blogging. If you would like to adjust the width, height, font and background colors of our feed, here is what you need to change.

Width and Height

Width and height is measure in pixels. So the the Twitter feed that you just added to your sidebar is currently 220 pixels wide by 300 pixels tall. The code looks like this:

width: 220,

height: 300,

Adjust the width and height to best fit the area that you have set aside for your sidebar by changing these numbers. It usually takes me 3 or 4 tries before I get it just right.

Background and Font Colors

The background colors are controlled underneath the “shell: {” part of your code. Colors on the internet are created using a “#” symbol followed by a series of letters and numbers. This is called a “hexidecimal color code” or “hex code” if you don’t want to sound too geeky. Here is a link to a handy-dandy hex color code chart so that you can pick out some new colors for your Twitter feed.

This is the code that you will adjust once you have picked some new hex codes. The characters that you will change are bold. Make sure that you always include the “#” symbol followed by the letters and numbers that make up your color. Be careful not to accidentally delete the single quote around the hex code:

shell: {
      background: '#ffffff',
      color: '#793d19'

The background immediately around your actual Tweets and the color of your fonts are controlled underneath the “tweets: {” part of your code. Same concept as above, using your handy-dandy hex color code chart, pick out some colors and modify just the code that I have made bold in the sample below.

tweets: {
      background: '#ffffff',
      color: '#793d19',
      links: '#ea7f1e'

Hopefully your Twitter feed is now beautiful and customized to fit the design of your blog. I hope you found this information useful. I would love to see successful uses of this little “how to” – so leave me a comment with a link to your blog so I can check it out!

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: sidebar, twitter, widget, wordpress

New Email, New LinkedIn Account?

February 20, 2012 By mishel Leave a Comment

Question: I set-up a LinkedIn account a long time ago and haven’t really used it. Now I have a new email account. Do I have to set up a new LinkedIn account?

Answer: Nope!

All you need to do is log into your account and change your email in your address in your account settings. The settings can be found on the top left hand side of your LinkedIn page in the drop-down menu underneath your name.

When you log into your main account settings, look underneath the thumbnail of your headshot. You will see the old email and right next to it, there is a “change/add” button right next to it. Click the “change/add” link and change your email address.

That’s it!