Learning to Love and Leverage LinkedIn

Poor LinkedIn ... It may always be the buttoned-up-and-boring old dude compared to Facebook and Twitter, but that is precisely why it can be much more useful than other social networks for creating and nurturing professional relationships, establishing and shaping your personal brand and positioning your company as an authority among competitors.

LinkedIn seems to help the old people a wider range of ages feel more safe and comfortable than they do when lurking around participating in other social networks. It can be ideal for people who see value of joining the conversation, yet are not comfortable blurring the line between professional and personal contacts. On LinkedIn, the parameters are more set in that the conversations almost always are professional and industry specific. There is an ease associated with knowing even a tiny bit of what to expect, especially for social media newcomers.

Other cool things about LinkedIn:

- Unlike Facebook, there is no fear of being tagged in an unflattering photo.

- You do not have to question whether you want to "add" your mom.

- Unlike Twitter, there are several ways to reach out to your contacts without word count limits.

- No one is likely to ask you via LinkedIn to send them Mafia Wars items*.

* That's not to say you won't be asked for things; just keep in mind how much more valuable it is to your colleague to write them a professional recommendation versus helping them raise a barn or sending them a virtual sheep in Farmville.

I admit that I've been on LinkedIn for a few years and never bothered much with it until early 2010. I'd answer invitations to connect and send invitations of my own every few months. Besides joining a couple of groups, adding my blog url and providing basic career updates, I had done little else until our Content Operations department created the JCI Freelance Writers Group. The goal of this group was twofold: to create a single channel through which our department would share resources with our writers and to encouraging networking, conversation and resource-sharing among them as peers. So far, it has been a successful tool for us and our writers to share links about and discuss topics including online research, writing SEO-friendly headlines and copy, as well as other items. As the group develops, the possibilities seem to be endless for other applications.

The freelance writers group is just one way JCI already is using LinkedIn as a business tool; we also have a Journal Communications Inc. company profile established to represent our corporate identity on this channel.

If you have not yet created a LinkedIn profile, check it out and register. If you have a profile already, but have not maximized its potential (like me), here are two links to multiple resources that will help you do just that:

100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn

Lara Kretler's LinkedIn Bookmarks

Using Social Media To Control the Conversation

Many businesses hesitate to jump on the social media bandwagon because they're nervous. It's a far cry from sending out a press release or direct mailer. It's a different kind of networking from exchanging business cards in the elevator. It's something new, and it's something you cannot completely control. But as marketing strategist David Meerman Scott puts it, you have to lose control of your marketing in order for it to succeed.

To get started, many businesses and organizations want to know everything there is to know about social media and how to prevent anything that can possibly go wrong. However, the whole idea behind social media is that it's social. But sometimes business professionals need to be reminded of that – it's the people, the consumers who are in charge, not the business. When you have a presence and you're there to hear what they're saying, then you are there to steer the conversation.

Blogger Kaila Colbin recently wrote a great article for Media Post entitled Two Golden Rules For Companies On Social Media discussing why many businesses and organizations hesitate to start out in social media:

People will be complaining, in public, and these complaints will be visible to everyone, and other people who see those complaints might not like us anymore, and then the good times will be over. Providing a soapbox on which our customers can advertise their dissatisfaction runs counter to every protective instinct we have.

The problem, of course, is that those complaints are already being aired online. Anyone upset enough to go to your Facebook page and tell you what they don't like is upset enough to tell their friends and followers in your absence. Staying off social media doesn't stop the problem; it merely removes the discomfort of having to deal with it. Being on social media at least gives you the chance to respond.

But there are distinctive right ways and wrong ways to respond.

The wrong way: what's happening with Nestle on Facebook.

Whether overwhelmed or underprepared, the company went on a counterattack - trading insults with its own Facebook fans and ‘unfriending’ them. It deleted threatening posts and modified logos, and posted a warning to users in the hope that it would deter them from sharing their views. Once the online ‘bullying’ got picked up on Twitter, it went global.

Nestle's public image suffered because they didn't follow Colbin's golden rules:

1. Act With Integrity: The first rule isn't about turning your company into a group of enlightened monks or save-the-world superheros. Integrity is about being consistent. It's about (to use a horrible consultant phrase) living up to the brand promise. It's about making sure that what you see is what you get.
2. Admit Your Mistakes: We all mess up, especially on social media. But the optimal way to deal with a mistake is to admit it, take any steps necessary to correct the situation, and then move on.

Two companies that followed these rules, particularly #2, are Domino's and Southwest.

Dominos had some very bad publicity last year, which got started on YouTube, and so CEO Patrick Doyle responded in the same medium where the problem occurred – YouTube. The video isn't highly produced – it's straight, to the point, no frills. But it does the job effectively.

Similarly, Southwest came under fire in February after an incident in which director Kevin Smith tweeted about being kicked off a flight due to his weight. Southwest is very active in social media, and less than 20 minutes after his initial tweet, Southwest responded with an apology. And multiple blog entries. Ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, they would have used traditional media such as a press release or press conference that wouldn't have had the same immediate and personal effect. Today, Southwest helped recover from a negative situation by responding efficiently and appropriately – using the right social media tools.

Both of these companies, while facing PR nightmares, used social media to try to make things right. They went directly to the source of the situations and used these channels as best they could. And most of these are circumstances that smaller businesses and organizations will never have to face. But what you can learn from these examples is that you have to be here to respond to the smaller problems that come up day-to-day.

Comcast is a great example of what social media can do to to improve your customer service reputation. Their use of Twitter to respond to customer complaints – not even those directed to them – has really made them a standout among social media success stories.

But how do you start from scratch? Unfortunately, there is no simple way to do this other than diving right into social media, headfirst. Not to say you need to immediately go sign up for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, Digg and YouTube today. But if you get online and spend a little time watching the conversations happen, you can quickly and easily start learning where your customers/clients/members are already located, which of the many (and there are many) social media tools are best for your particular purpose and how they can work to your advantage.


Photo: Matt Hamm

What is Social Media, anyway?

Welcome to our blog!

Just for kicks (and for what I thought might be a nice start to our blog), I Googled "What is social media?"
  
And here's what ranked first:

"Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques." 
                                                         –Wikipedia social media page
Can I get a HUH?

No wonder so many people are overwhelmed or even downright frightened by the term Social Media. It seems so big, so complex, so challenging. I'll be honest. We did, too. Until we jumped in and decided to give it a go.

If there's anything I've learned about social media in the past four months, it's this: You'll never understand its uses, its benefits or even the fun of it until you try it out for yourself.

So that's what our blog is about. We're trying new things – by conducting "Social Media Research Projects" and seeing what happens. We'll be posting our success stories, and probably some failure stories, too. We're mining the web, looking for good resources that we think we can all benefit from, and collecting them here as a one-stop shop for good social media info. And we're creating some of our own resources to help you get started – some videos, slideshows and even white papers. 

I like to believe that social media is a conversation. And in the spirit of conversation, we hope our blog will be as well. We will be posting information here that all of us can apply in some way – to our businesses, organizations or even our personal lives. 
And if there's something specific to social media you want to know more about, let's talk. E-mail us at social@jnlcom.com and we'll cover your question in an upcoming blog post.