Online Presence Training10.01.2009

Prepared for:Executive Group

Prepared by:Wendy BracheWendy@GetMoreAccess.com

Welcome!

Please login to your LinkedIn account

Who am I?• Wendy Brache

• Online marketing consultant• Online presence specialist• Teach Telecom and high tech B2B corporations

how to create, build, and enhance their online presence and online brand.

Why Do I Care About My Online Presence?

• You want to be more findable to those searching for your expertise.

• You want to connect with more prospects.

• You want to connect with higher quality prospects.

• You want to close more deals.

Okay, Wendy—what’s one of the easiest ways to get started on increasing and improving my online presence?• LinkedIn is a big part of increasing your online presence and creating your online brand.

• A fully optimized LinkedIn profile will make you more findable – LinkedIn has over 35 million users– Number 1 business networking tool in the U.S.– LinkedIn used as a search engine

• A large, high quality LinkedIn profile will help you recruit more agents– Increased network of industry professionals– Create more business opportunities

• A LinkedIn profile rich with information, recommendations, expert answers and strong links will help you recruit higher quality agents– Better reputation– Industry expert– Thought Leader

• It’s not just about finding contacts you know, but more about finding contacts you NEED to know.

What will I have accomplished by the end of this hour?

• You already have LinkedIn profiles—what we’re going to do here is to show you how to take it to the next level and show you how to really utilize LinkedIn to create more business opportunities.

• You’ll have a stronger, more credible, highly optimized profile conducive to Google search that proves your industry expertise and thought leadership

• You’ll be more findable by prospects and industry insiders

• You’ll have the tools to find more customers

• You’ll have the tools to find better quality leads

Does it Really Work?• Success in the last two weeks:

– A recent Telecom trainee joined a group on LinkedIn last week. He attended a local group event and came out with 2 hot leads within one hour.

– A recent Telecom trainee enhanced his profile and began adding connections. He imported emails from his Yahoo account. A past colleague contacted him immediately, explaining that he has several customers who are either in the Vegas SuperNAP or are looking to get there or a nearby data center—a large business opportunity.

Improving Your Online Presence

The first thing a savvy agent will do is Google you. You want him/her to see great information within the first 10 search results and above the fold. Having a comprehensive online presence proves that you are a respected player in the game.Your name here

Bad Online Presence

Good Online Presence

LinkedIn

Your LinkedIn Page– Is your online resume– Is your personal web page– Is your online advertisement– Creates your online brand– Is proof of your industry expertise– Is proof of your thought leadership within

the business community– Is proof of connections within the industry– Provides a good first Impression

LinkedIn is a highly effective search engine. People will use LI to find you. So you want to optimize your

profile with keywords and phrases.

11 Quick Tips to Create a Killer LinkedIn Profile

Good idea: Create your LinkedIn profile content in MS Word so you have a master, editable copy. You can cut/paste into your profile as changes are made.

Tip #1: Improve Your Header Section • Your header section is the single most important

part of your LinkedIn profile. It’s the first content people see and should be treated like a newspaper headline. Google indexes LinkedIn profiles based on header content.

• You have 140 characters—use them carefully.

• Optimize with keyword to make is easier for people to find your expertise.

• Only put your name in the name section (adding a phone # or email address will get you kicked off of LI).

• Add a picture. Only you—no groups, logos, family members. LI will help you crop it.

• Make sure your “Industry” is up to date and relevant.

Tip #2: Utilize Your Status Update Bar

• Update once per week and include keywords. Every time you update your profile, it puts your name in front of other LinkedIn users. It’s like you’re your own little AdWord creating more impressions.

• You have 140 characters, just like Twitter.

• There are status utilities out there (i.e.: Flock browser application) that will allow you to update LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook statuses all at once, but LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are all meant for different kinds of status updates.– Twitter: real time, today– Facebook: 1 day to 1 week horizon– LinkedIn: 1 week to 1 month horizon

Tip #3: Add and Improve Your Summary Section

• You have 2000 characters in the summary section—a great SEO opportunity.

• Here are some initial questions you can answer to improve your summary section: How do you help clients? What do your clients get that they wouldn’t get from anywhere else? What makes you so special? What’s so great about your services? Use words like veteran, experienced, ace, guru, expert.

• Break up paragraphs with 6 or more lines into multiple paragraphs.

Tip #4: Add and Improve Your Specialties Section

• This is an important section for data mining and keyword purposes. You have 500 characters here—use them all.

• Include keywords, not sentences. Separate with a comma (,) semi colon (;) or bar (|).

Tip #5: Maximize the Most Under-Utilized Section of LinkedIn: Experience

• EACH position description allows you to add 2,000 characters. This is an excellent opportunity to optimize with key words phrases for search purposes.

• Answer these questions for each job/company:– Who is the Company? (explain acronyms

or names the average person would not know)

– What does the company do?– Where does the company market?

(Nationally, regionally, locally?)– To whom does the company sell? (B2B,

B2C, etc.)– What did you do, specifically, for the

company? How did you add value to the company and increase the bottom line?

– List any awards or special achievements

• Add all positions dating back to college to give you more opportunities for connections.

Tip #6: Maximize Your Websites Section

•Go to “Edit My Profile”

•Click edit next to each of the three website sections.

•Instead of choosing “My Company”, etc—choose “other”

•Add “[Company Name] Website” in the area to the right

•Add the website link in the area underneath

•Do the same for the other two link opportunities. Link them to an internal page in the website or to the blog. Label them as well as you can with the limited space available.

You have several areas in which to add detailed content. Add copy that answers: “here’s how this education lends itself to what I do for my clients now.”–Degree- 100 characters–Fields of study- 100 characters–Activities and Societies- 500 characters Additional Notes-1000 characters–Interests allows you 1000 characters–Groups and associations allows you 1000 characters–Honors and awards allows you1000 characters

Tip #7: Maximize Your Education and Interests sections

Tip #8: Increase Connections

• Build a bigger network

• Increase Connections: Send 5-10 personalized invitations every week. Copy only needs to be 1-2 sentences long.

• After every live event, meeting, show, engagement—send a LI invitation to people you met. Send a batch invite/message to attendees saying “let’s circle back around and talk more about …”

• When receiving an invite, always send 1-2 sentence personalized message in return. Add a link to your Sales Executive page after your signature.

•There is a way to add a link to all your outgoing emails and other collateral that, when clicked on, automatically logs the user into LinkedIn and takes them to the invitation page, where your name and email will already be populated.

•To do this, you’ll need your LinkedIn ID number and a confirmed email address associated with your account.

•First, go to “Account and Settings”

• (For the secret, see next slide)

Tip #8 (con’t): Insider Info on How to Increase Connections

•On the left side bar, click the plus sign next to “profile”

•Hold your mouse over the “view my profile” link (don’t click)

•Look at the lower left area of your browser

•Here is your ID number

•Replace my information in this link with YOUR information:

http://www.linkedin.com/inviteFromProfile?from=profile&key=19629486&firstName=Wendy+Brache+-+wendy@getmoreaccess.com

•Use this as a “Connect with me on LinkedIn” hyperlink in your email signature

http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=19629486&trk=tab_pro

http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=19629486&trk=tab_pro

Tip #8 (con’t): Insider Info on How to Increase Connections

Tip #9: Get Into the Scene—Hang Out Where Your Prospects Are Hanging Out

• Groups: Join more. You can have up to 50.

• Join groups of peers and industry insiders as well as groups to which your prospective agents would belong.

• Easy way to add connections as you can send invitations to every group member.

• This is a great way to get your name in front of prospects and also to listen to what potential customer hot buttons are.

Tip #10: Now—Become the (Wo)Man

• No matter how good your qualifications are there are millions of other educated, highly skilled, highly experienced, dedicated people just like you.

• Recommendations are proof that you provide value, and add an important layer in the search for expertise.

• Increase Recommendations. In your request, refer to a specific job, position or project you worked on together. Tell them you’ll be happy to return the favor.

• Recommend others first and they often respond in kind.

• Try to get to about a 5% recommendation to connection rate.

Tip #11: Find Better Quality Leads

• The best agents are looking for someone who knows what they’re doing. They want someone who is an expert, someone who will make them look good, someone with a good reputation.

• Quality agents are players on LinkedIn.

• Answer Questions to become an “expert”. Answer 1-3 questions each week.

• Under “Advanced Answers Search”, then category “technology”, then sub-category “information technology”, then sub-sub-category “telecommunications”. Click on “Show only unanswered questions.”

• Answer questions in detail and nicely ask the question poster to close out the question and rate the best answer.

LinkedIn HousekeepingHousekeeping:• Under “Edit Public Profile Settings”: Create a

Vanity URL (Under “Account and Settings”, then under “Public Profile”, change the URL extension to your name)

• Under “Contact Settings”: make sure all are selected

• Under “Account and Settings”: Check your email settings—are all your email addresses, past and present, listed?

Insider Tip

FYI: LI has a 100% delivery rate of emails, and spam filters are user-generated.

Find More Leads• Search people, jobs, companies,

answers, inbox, groups for contacts: Click the down arrow for specification

• Advanced Search allows you to data mine on companies, buildings, groups, titles

• Utilize Boolean Search Method, which finds that text anywhere in profiles, and/or, “”””… i.e.: (network OR IT OR Technology) AND (director OR manager OR specialist)

• With keywords, be sure to include the variants of the words and their synonyms and THEIR synonyms

• Data Mining Companies: Find company profiles to connect with current and past employees of the company

• Data Mining Buildings: Click on “in or near”. Choose “50 Mile Radius” or other.

• Data Mining People and Titles: Keep in mind that title generation on LI is user generated, so there will be many different names/titles for the same type of position.

• Data Mining Industries: Search in your verticals

Find More Leads (con’t)

Find More Leads• Data Mining Groups: In addition to inviting all

the members of each of your groups, look at groups in Telecom and in your best verticals. Join. Look for the creator of the group and the members with the largest networks, and connect with them to improve your scope. Group owners are great contacts WITH great contacts—search through relevant groups and run your mouse over the group owner’s name

Find More Leads• Data Mining Companies: Find

company profiles to connect with current and past employees of the company

• Data Mining Buildings: Choose “50 Mile Radius”

• Data Mining People and Titles: Keep in mind that title generation on LI is user generated, so there will be many different names/titles for the same type of position.

• Data Mining Groups: In addition to inviting all the members of each of your groups, look at groups in Telecom and in your best verticals. Join. Look for the creator of the group and the members with the largest networks, and connect with them to improve your scope.

• Data Mining Industries: Search in your verticals—

• Search Groups

• Look at owners of groups. Run your mouse over group owner names to see their companies, titles and connections. Great way to find prospective agents and well connected people that you’ll want to add to your network.

Find More Leads (con’t)

Next Steps to Increase Your Online Presence and Create Your Online Brand

– Enhance your LinkedIn profile with up-to-the-minute blog posts

– Add a Slideshare presentation to your LinkedIn profile

– Utilize LinkedIn applications to collaborate, post events, create and deliver polls, and much, much more…

– Customize your everyday emails

– Create customized email campaigns

– Write and publish online articles, article marketing

Additional Resources: “How to Use Web 2.0 to Differentiate Yourself From the Competition”

• http://www.b2bpowerexchange.net/video/wendy-brache-using-web-20-to

Good Luck!

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