The personal aspects of LinkedIn to find a job and Facebook to chat with your friends are well known. But less obvious are that these tools can be used to do for business purposes too. In this Webinar, social media expert David Strom will provide some guidelines into how to best use both of these to find new customers, create stellar customer support, cut down on overhead, and improve responsiveness.
This was the basis of a webinar for MSPtv.com in July 2011:
http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=323141&s=1&k=477DA79E6044B5A04D13C6AFF679EBAA&partnerref=REDMOND&deletecookie=true
4. Agenda Steps to take to find someone online Deeper dive into LinkedIn Groups on Facebook and LinkedIn How Dell and others do customer support Cool tools to use 4
8. Let’s take a quick poll Choose as many of the following as apply to your situation: I used LinkedIn to get my current job I have hired someone that I found on LinkedIn first I have posted something on Twitter within the last week I have my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts connected so that posts from one are seen on the other I still have just the very basic information on my LinkedIn profile My children have more Facebook friends than I do 8
40. Let’s take another poll Do you have business accounts set up on which of these services: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Wordpress or some other blog service 40
57. Follow Us on all your favorite social Media Sites and stay informed! 57
Editor's Notes
V3
Start with GoogleGo to LinkedIn search box and see how to connect with themLook at their Web siteFollow them on Facebook/etc.
Go to search.twitter.com to see if they have an account and who is writing about them
Answers and Recommendations
Here is the dialog box for creating a new group inside Facebook. You name it, choose your members, and decide which of three options you want for privacy – open, secret (meaning that members only can see the group and who else is a member and what the posts are) or closed (meaning that members only can see the posts, but otherwise anyone else can view who is in the group)
So here is an example of an open group that I belong to, a group of published authors in the St Louis area. You can see who is in it, and view the posts of the group. You can also do text chats with the group, and create events that members can sign up for or indicate whether they will attend.
1) http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php Start there. 2) Click "Local Business or Place"3) Choose the category that best fits your business. Enter its name, location and phone number. 4) Check off "I agree to Facebook Pages Terms" and then click "Get Started"5) On the next screen, select "I do not have a Facebook account" and enter your email address that doesn’t have an existing Facebook account attached to it.
They fixed Bluetooth drivers when a software update resulted in significant issues;They have launched new Products based on input from IdeastormFeedback from ratings and reviews resulted in new drivers and speakers in a laptop model;They are currently following up on some packaging questions raised across the Web;Have gotten feedback on some of their mobility products -- resulted in constant improvement on newer versions..They changed images on Dell.com because customers thought there should be clearer representation of size and shape of replacement batteries
Dell’s Ideastorm is a communal suggestion box that anyone can use to make recommendations to Dell about their products and services. It was launched in 2007, and Dell has implemented hundreds of the ideas here. Users can vote the ideas up or down, similar to Digg and Facebook. Each idea is tagged with its implementation status for easy reference, too.
The company tracks tens of thousands of Tweets daily that mention the company and its products, in 11 different languages
This is the Dell page for TagTeam inside of Facebook, so you can get recommended computer configurations and advice without having to leave that environment.
Spiceworks gives away a free SMB network management tool, and makes its money selling ads on its Web site and console. IT pros share tips and tricks on how to run their networks in the community discussions, and posted product reviews and other valuable information. There are regional user groups all over the place, and the company even asks its users to vote on new features.
Sage Software has seen a tremendous turn around in their support activities for their SMB CRM products. They had a lot of negative comments on various discussion boards, including Amazon’s. They created new feedback mechanisms on their Web site, had staff monitor the posts and start writing back and trying to resolve them quickly, put together an advisory board of customers and used them to spread the word around the Internet. Whenever they had a negative post, an executive would call the person directly and try to convert the experience into a positive one.
Finally, there is AT&T, which while a consumer brand has this marvelously-designed page that shows a variety of social media channels that you can connect to them. There is a list of various Twitter IDs, ways to chat with them on Facebook and LinkedIn, a collection of YouTube videos and recent posts on both Twitter and Facebook that are all collected here.
Mention my Bank of America experience.
From Jason Boog -- http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/5-twitter-profile-mistakes-writers-should-avoid_b32527
is another multiple-posting type of service, and this one makes use of your mobile phone, instant messaging and email to spread the word. If you have a mobile sales force and they want to announce a customer win or something else from on the road, this can be an effective tool for this purpose.
very useful service that at one glance can tell you whether the name that you wish to use is already taken for hundreds of online services, including domain names, social networking sites, blogs, and so forth. It is generally quite accurate and can save you time if you are thinking of a new product or service name and want to see if it is in use.
one of dozens of URL shortening services. The issue for Twitter especially is that if you want to Tweet a link to something interesting that you have written or read online, the URLs can be very lengthy and consume many of the 140 characters in your message. Bit.ly gets around this by condensing the URL to just a few characters. You can also use the service to keep track of how many of your followers have clicked on the shortened link and where they came from, again to give you an idea of the popularity of your messages and where they ended up.
com will show you the pattern of anyone's Twitter account – when and how often they Tweet and how many followers they have amassed over the last couple of months. This is useful to see if a particular account is worth following, or ways that you can adjust your own Tweeting pattern based on time of day and day of the week
useful to see how you rate in terms of your level of influence with Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. You enter your account information and it will produce a score from 1 to 100 – the higher the score, the more influential you are. You can also track your influence over time to see if the number of your posts and Tweets have had anything to do with whether people are paying attention to you too.
Sheen now has more than 4 million followers
http://www.socialquickstarter.com from Constant Contact, an entire series of training videos and step by step instructions.