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Which Social Media Platform is Right for Your Small Business [INFOGRAPHIC]

small business social media
Does your head swim when you think about social media marketing? If you’re a small business owner, and in particular, a solopreneur, I suspect it does. There are so many social networking sites available: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube, and don’t forget about Vine! How can you be expected to maintain a presence on these sites and still run your business?

The short answer is, you can’t. Not well anyway! When I work with clients, I recommend that they focus on one social network first and master that one before starting a presence on another site. But not every business is suited for every social networking site.

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Manage Your Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day [INFOGRAPHIC]

Are you struggilng to manage your social media? If you own a small business with only 1 or 2 employees or you’re a solopreneur, I know how tough it can be to manage all the social networking accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. This is one of the areas I concentrate on when I work with clients.
There are only so many hours in the day to get work done. You need to have a life outside of your company! I was thrilled to come across this terrific infographic from Pardot that gives you a schedule to manage your social media in just 30 minutes a day!

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How to Become a LinkedIn Jedi Master [INFOGRAPHIC]

LinkedIn tips

This post should have come out 10 days ago on Star Wars Day – You know, “May the 4th be with you! 🙂 — but I didn’t see it until this week. The clever concept by Gryffin includes some important points for using LinkedIn for your business. Here are a few that caught my eye:

â–şLinkedIn can send 4x as many visitors to your company website than Twitter or Facebook

â–şMarketers who build out additional company information on their company page tend to have 2x as many followers

â–ş41 percent of LinkedIn users come from mobile devices.

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OPPRTUNITY Knocks for LinkedIn Users

Opprtunity for LinkedIn UsersA colleague of mine complained recently that he didn’t think LinkedIn was useful for generating leads. Maybe you’ve felt the same way. Just imagine how your business would change if you started getting leads from fellow LinkedIn users delivered straight to your email inbox.

You can if you sign up for an account with OPPRTUNITY. (And no, I did not mispell the word “opportunity.”) How does it work? You log in with your LinkedIn account* (or sign up using your email address) and OPPRTUNITY grabs what it needs to create your account including location, image, etc. Then, you choose one of three reasons why you’re using the service: to secure leads, to find job opportunities or job candidates. The answer will determine what opportunites the service sends your way.

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The 30 Minute Plan for Getting More Clients

getting more clients Small business owners and solopreneurs in particular, rarely have a moment to spare in their workday. But if getting more clients is a priority for you – and it certainly should be if you want to grow your business, you have to make time for marketing. But just how much time is the big question.

How does 30 minutes a day grab you?

Here is a formula you can follow Monday through Friday that is almost guaranteed to get you more business. (Notice I said, “almost.”) Sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot guarantee that you’ll get more clients. I can only guarantee that if you follow this strategy, you’re bound to be more successful than you are right now.

It doesn’t matter what time of day you set aside 30 minutes for marketing. Ideally, it should be at the start of your day. That way, once you’re finished, you can relax and get on with the rest of your tasks. But if you’d rather set aside 30 minutes at the end your workday, that’s fine too. The key to success is to be consistent. Experts say it takes 30 days to establish a habit. This 30 minute marketing plan should become a habit if you want to get the most benefit from it. 

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7 Places to Add Keywords to Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn profileOne of my first blog posts (and one of my most popular) was called, “6 Places to Add Keywords to Your LinkedIn Profile.” It was written back in 2010, and LinkedIn has certainly changed a great deal since then. At that time, there were 187 million professional members in 200 countries. Today, there are 277 million members. Of that number, 34 percent have incomes over $100,000. There were no company pages back in 2010 either, but today, there are more than three million of them.

LinkedIn marketing expert Lewis Howes once said, “LinkedIn is the number one social networking site on the planet today. And… it’s the number one site for anyone looking to build their business.” I believe that’s certainly true today. I did some work for Scholastic Book Fairs a number of years ago. That job came about because the social media manager who was hiring found my profile on LinkedIn. I’m still getting leads from the site today.

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How to Share Status Updates with LinkedIn Groups

post to linkedin groups2Got an event you want to promote to more than one LinkedIn group? Want to share a great quotation with several LinkedIn groups at the same time?

LinkedIn makes it easy to share articles with more than one group at a time. You’ve probably seen the LinkedIn share button on blog posts before, right? And if you’re reading a discussion in a LinkedIn group, you can easily share it with another group by hovering your mouse over the bottom of the discussion to bring up the “More” tab. When you click “more,” a dropdown menu comes up with an option to “share link.” As you can see in the image below, you can check the box that says “Post to group(s)” and then type in the name of the groups you want to see the article.

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