Linkedin is one of the top social networking sites on the Internet these days. It has been around for a while now, but it still doesn’t get the respect that it deserves. Many businesses focus too much on Facebook and Twitter and don’t pay enough attention to Linkedin and similar services. In reality, Linkedin is an amazing network to be a part of if you want to build business relationships, gather leads, and network with experts in your industry. Being involved on Linkedin is more than just creating a profile and telling others what you do for a living. Creating a killer profile should be on the top of your agenda but it shouldn’t be your only contribution to the Linkedin community. Depending on your business model, there are plenty of ways to reach out to your prospects on Linkedin and build long lasting relationships.

If you are looking for ideas on how to use Linkedin to build leads for your business, here are some tactics that you can try:

• Your Linkedin Profile: your profile is your first impression on folks who find you on the web or through LinkedIn. Make sure you have information on your skills and recent projects. Add your relevant experience to your work history and don’t forget to mention your education. Don’t forget to use the right keywords so people can find you through search engines and Linkedin search. Make sure you provide an accurate description of what your talents are and how you can help others.
• Past colleagues: don’t wait for others to find you on LinkedIn. Take action and add your former colleagues to your network. You never know when you are going to need their help and vice versa. Don’t let your past relationships to go to waste.
• Linkedin Groups: Linkedin groups are a great way to connect with others and build your network. Just don’t join them. Participate in them. Join sub-groups and volunteer for activities in those groups.
• Relationship Management: don’t forget that Linkedin is about networking with others. In order to do that, you need to be connected with them. Being an open networker can help you a long way towards achieving your professional goals. You should also get your Twitter and Facebook friends to join you on Linkedin.
• Contact Management: thanks to LinkedIn, you have a decent contact management system that you should definitely use to manage your professional networks. Don’t hesitate to add new connections from the groups that you are a part of or people who have answered your questions on Linkedin.
• Your blog/websites: you should take time to add your blogs and websites to your Linkedin account. Don’t forget to change “My Website” text link to something more descriptive.
• Share Info: whether it’s sharing articles, answering to polls, helping others with their questions, or sharing your travel information through Linkedin applications, you have got plenty of choices to be involved on Linkedin.
• Add Company: don’t forget to add your company or business to Linkedin. Don’t just rely on your personal profile to push your business.
• Recommendations: don’t be shy to ask for recommendations on LinkedIn. It’s much easier to get folks to recommend you on LinkedIn. Your clients and past colleagues can provide your business with much needed boost to score more clients in the future.
• Turn on Applications: you should have done this by now, but if you haven’t, make sure to check out the applications available on Linkedin and add the appropriate ones to your page.

Linkedin is a wonderful community to be a part of, and the noise is much lower on Linkedin than Twitter or Facebook. If you have taken time to get more involved on Twitter and Facebook, there is no reason you should take the time to do the same on Linkedin. You’d be surprised once you see your results.

Driving traffic to your online venture should be one of your top priorities. Your goal should be to get your conversion rates as high as feasible to make a profit with your business, but a conversion rate of 100% does not lead to a profitable business. In fact, any number like that probably means that you are not doing a good job driving enough traffic to your website. You can always try SEO and pay per click marketing to increase traffic to your business and generate leads, but what a lot of entrepreneurs are not paying attention to is the power of Facebook Ads. It’s true that being involved in Facebook and having your own fan page up and running can generate leads for you. But in order to really make it on Facebook, you’ve got to take a more aggressive approach. Facebook Ads is a very exciting ad system that lets you target Facebook users by their birthday, how they are interacting with your pages, their age, and even their marital status. These are all invaluable information that can help you reach a more targeted set of prospects.

There are many Facebook ad strategies that you can use to make money online, but you don’t have to be a genius to get started pushing your brand on Facebook. You do need to create a page for your business before getting started. A lot of entrepreneurs that are using Facebook only drive traffic to their own websites. But you should compare your conversions rates from your fan pages and your home page to find out which one is more suitable for Facebook traffic. Once you have done that, you are ready to take advantage of Facebook’s Ad system:

What I like about Facebook Ads is the fact that is very simple to use. So you don’t have to be genius to get started with it. You do want to take time to read the guidelines to find out what you can and can’t do on Facebook. The people behind this system are very strict, and they won’t hesitate to remove your ads if you are not compliant with their policies. You also want to test image ads versus text-only ads to figure out which works the best for your situation. Continue reading Drive Traffic To Your Website with Facebook Ads

YouTube has quickly become of the best sources for small businesses to generate leads and dominate the search engines. In a previous post, I talked about how you can use search engine optimization to drive traffic to your small business website and take your business to the new level. Guess what? Video optimization is going to be a part of that process as well. Whether you decide to put your content on YouTube or on your own service, you want to make sure that you give it the best chance to be found by searchers and your visitors. YouTube is especially attractive for small businesses as they don’t have to pay a whole lot of money to host the videos, and they can go viral with the help of the YouTube community.

Creating videos for business is much different from making them for fun. There are a lot of talented individuals on YouTube who make killer videos, and as a small business owner you can always recruit these folks to push your brand. But you can’t model your own videos after these people. Your business, its brand, image, and reputation is too important to experiment with. So it’s always good to have a strategy on what you want to accomplish with your YouTube videos and go about executing it step by step. Not having a plan is the easiest way to go bust on YouTube.
Continue reading YouTube For Business 101: How To Get Started