Google Social Search - Your circle of influence is important

With the launch of Google Social Search last week, this puts a new dimension on social search optimisation and how companies should be approaching their search optimisation strategy.

Your social circle is based upon the information that Google stores in your Google account. It pulls together your contacts from Google, services in your Google profile, and your connections on sites such as Twitter.

The rationale behind this change is that if you are connected with these people they are engaged with you and your company, so you will have relevance and trust.

Companies should optimise the number of relevant contacts that they have on the various social networking sites such as Linkedin and Twitter.

So Google Trust Rank is going to become a growing influence in rankings. So companies now longer can hide behind the world of social media, then need to embrace it, otherwise they could potentially see their listings in Google natural search diminishing.

A word of caution though. When Google page rank came out, people went crazy doing reciprocal linking to grow their inbound links. Eventually Google caught up with this practice and sites were heavily penalised for this. So grow your network with quality and relevance in mind. Don't just connect with someone, just because you can - are they relevant to your business and brand?

What's your take on Google social search and how do you think it'll impact search listings?

IoD 'Just Lunch' Monday 25th January - Reflections

We hosted the first in our series of 'Just Lunch' networking events yesterday at 3 Albion Place, 12 - 2pm.

It was a group of members that attended, and for some their first networking event they have attended at the IoD and others it was great to catch up.

Over the past year, we have listened to our members and tailored events accordingly. The emphasis on networking and referrals has grown in importance, and so we came up with 'Just Lunch'.

Rather than the rushed networking you find at some events, it was great to take the opportunity to talk further. Usually you get as far as the immediate 'so what do you do?' conversation, so with the informal approach (no seating plan and no elevator pitches over lunch) it was good to take the time to have those conversations.

Over lunch, I took the opportunity to talk to Andy Cheetham from Lime Licensing on how franchising operates, the pitfalls and licensing considerations; Steve Garcia-Luengo from Mako Marketing has just moved up to Yorkshire and has an interesting PR and marketing business.

People always think of the 'here and now' when they think networking. It's about the art of conversation and listening to individuals, it is not just about you, and getting your message across.

The next 'Just Lunch' - 22nd February, 12 - 2pm, 3 Albion Place

We are having Martin Dean from Leeds Initiative joining us for lunch. The Leeds Initiative is the city’s local strategic partnership working together for The vision for Leeds.

The Vision for Leeds is a long-term strategy for the economic, social and environmental development of the city. It is also known as the sustainable community strategy, which the Government now requires cities to produce.

Martin is joining us to engage business leaders in their view of Leeds and to get IoD members view on the economic and skills aspect of the future for Leeds.

Would be great to have a good turn out, so we can have a lively and involved discussion about where we (as business leaders) see the vision for Leeds in 2030. If there are any questions prior to the event, please let me know.

To book go to the IoD Website or call the regional office: 0113 243 0152

Build Your Credibility on LinkedIn

Online Credibility – why is it important
Online credibility is the perception your customers, potential customers, business / collaboration partners get when they encounter you online e.g. visit your blog, read your comments online, read your profile, etc.

Your online credibility is an increasingly important way of showcasing your specialised knowledge and expertise. Anyone can start a blog or start participating in forums and as more people engage with the social web, differentiating yourself will become imperative.

We live in a world where we expect people to be qualified on what they write about – but you don't need qualifications in the social web. So your online credibility is the only evidence of your expertise. Even if you have qualifications, people will use the all of the information about you online to draw conclusions about your credibility. Every bit of information about you on the internet is important.


Build Your Credibility on Linkedin
A new member joined LinkedIn every second and it is becoming an essential place to build your online e-portfolio and credibility. In January 2009 there was a 22% increase in visitors to LinkedIn, which was primarily due to people understanding the need for networking and job hunting during a recession.

Most people understand the basics to setting up the profile, but beyond that they do not understand the potential of how they can use this online networking to:

• Increase traffic to their website
• Become an online expert within your niche
• Build trust with existing & potential customers
• Build rapport with your existing network

In this post I will look beyond the basics and look at how you can invest your time to build your reputation and credibility on Linkedin. You can download this post as a document from Google Docs.

• Setting up Your Profile
• Do not set up dummy accounts on false names
• Accounts with few people linked to are considered less influential
• Needs to be real, needs to reflect your personality and who you are

• Add a picture
• Make sure it is a professional looking picture
• Make sure it's a head shot and you are looking at the camera
• You need to make an impact with the photo

• Headline – is your personal brand tag line
• Focus it around your niche and occupation
• E.g. it could be very main stream: Charlotte Britton, Online Marketing Expert or
• Enticing and engaging: Helping you make the most of the Social Web
• You need to draw people in to look at your profile

• Work experience
• Put in each role
• Summarise the impact you made there
• Keep it concise, do not waffle

• Summary
• This is your elevator pitch
• What looking to do, what you are about, your unique selling points

• Include keywords in content
• Increase your chances of getting the content indexed by Google
• Content will then get shown on search phrases around – your name and company
• Boosting your web presence
• Making you look more influential

• Remember how people read online
• Make it short and snappy
• Summarise, use bullet points

• Distinguish yourself from the crowd
• Add websites that showcase your abilities
• As you get more recommendations, answer more questions and build your network, you will gain more credibility

• Customise Contact Settings
• Let people know what you are looking out for on LinkedIn

• Build Your Network
• Reflect your offline network online
• Upload your contacts from your email client (AOL, Gmail or Outlook etc)

• If you are going to an event
• Research the people prior to going (if you have the delegate list before hand

• After a networking event
• Do not link to all the people that attended the event, as that would be considered spamming people and appear aggressive
• Only link to the people you personally met or will be doing business with

• Personalise each invitation
• As you would with any networking, invest the time in personalising the introduction

• People with too many connections
• How can anyone know so many of people?
• People with a huge network could be considered a 'social butterfly'
• Unless they hold a position where they may meet a lot of people, too may contacts could lead to a drop in credibility
• Only link to the people that are influential, potential customers / suppliers or people that you know
• Try not to link with the people just to increase numbers

• Do not link to people to the people you met at a job interview or pitch
• If you do not get the job, you have linked up un-necessarily
• Looks like you are stalking them
• Is inappropriate as you may appear to be attempting to influence their decision

• Add in other Applications
• Find the Application Directory
• There are other applications you may find applicable
• The main ones listed are below

• Integrate your blog using the Blog Link
• Ensure you blog regularly
• Add commentary on topical subjects
• This can prove that you understand your niche and your knowledge

• Twitter
• Link to your Twitter account under the profile
• Integrate the twitter feed, which will update your status with your tweets

• Slideshare
• Upload white papers / power points which prove your knowledge to Slideshare
• Then link up your slide share account with LinkedIn
• Then people reading your profile can browse the documents
• Further building your credibility

• Events
• If you run any events you may wish to add on the events application which will enable you to set up and promote your events
• Show which events you are attending
• Promote your events to your network

• Recommendations
• Think wisely on this as it's linked to your credibility
• Only recommend people you know well and would be happy to work with yourself
• Try not to reciprocal recommend as this will show up on the weekly Linkedin updates and will lose credibility
• Be sincere, authentic and real
• Anything too gushy and over the top will appear insincere

• Linked In Answers
• Was launched in February 2007
• Enables users to ask and answer questions
• Questions are open for 7 days prior to closing
• The person who has asked the question can close the question early
• Answer questions before you start asking questions
• Sub categories within each main category
• Find one which reflects your skill set
• Or where you potential customers might reside
• Do not go for the obvious choices which are crowded with your competitors
• Pull Categories RSS into you RSS reader
• Such as feedburner or Google reader
• This means you don't have to login every time you want to review the questions
• Makes participating more time effective

• Answering Questions
• Establish and grow your personal brand
• Only answer questions that are pertinent to your niche and knowledge base
• Don't make up an answer
• Answer questions on a regular basis, infrequent participating does not look like you are committed
• Answer in a timely fashion
• If your opinion goes against the majority of answers, ensure you back it up with evidence / links to other people who think the same
• Do not troll other people in the group (your response invokes an emotional response from the person who asked the question or disruptive behaviour)

• Becoming an expert
• Share more than you take
• Explicit selling, marketing and self promotion can be flagged by anyone, be careful
• Demonstrate you are an expert, give the reader a compelling reason to view your profile
• When you become an expert you get a badge on your profile by Linkedin
• It takes time, building your credibility is not going to happen in a week
• Questions are indexed by Google
• Great opportunity to increase web / brand presence
• Boost traffic to website and profile

• Asking Questions
• Follow Linkedin's etiquette on answering questions
• Linkedin FAQs
• You can email question to 200 of your 1st degree contacts
• Free members can ask 10 questions per month
• Should be 1 question on 1 subject
• Ask questions that will be of value to others
• If answers go off topic you can close early
• Personally thank people who take the time to answer your question (you'd do it in the real world!)
• Asking 1 question per month is good for building credibility

• Groups
• Search for groups where you can be grow to be an expert
• Find one which reflects your skill set
• Or where you potential customers might reside
• Do not go for the obvious choices which are crowded with your competitors
• Same principles as Asking / Answering Questions apply

• Add company profile page
• Current employees can add page
• will need to provide registered company own email address which will be validated
• Click on companies found on top bar of navigation
• optimise so will be found in search engines

E Portfolios - your personal brand online

Today I was on the panel at Leeds Met Uni Learning Lunch: E-Portfolios event. I managed to get the team to set up the hash tag #LeedsMetLL and so we got quite a few questions from students prior to the event. The Leeds Met Employerability Office tweeted the event and kept up with the lively debate (so please read the tweets!).

There were three of us presenting slightly different aspects of e-portfolios:

Nicholas Halafihi - Senior Lecturer Sports Business Management talked about the pilot e-portfolio programme that is running with Year 1 students. The system enabled students to record the reflections, assessment, biography & other associated profile / learning information. With the idea being that epmployers would be able to view the CV / e-portfolio of the student when they are looking for work experience or employment. Employers would be able to login with specific details so they could only view that specific student. Two students came along to share their positive experience.

Ben Cotton - talked about 'Going Digital' from a student perspective and how having a living e-portfolio available online has enabled him to build his online presence and credibility. He currently is on the Leeds Met Grad progamme and has had various roles within PR and will be taking up a new job in London at the end of the month . Ben is an avid social media user - and I had already started following Ben on Twitter, way before this event.

Ben mentioned that using the social media sites that are out there to build your e-portfolio is essential as it demonstrated to employers that you understand the industry and how to build a campaign.

It was useful being last as I could blend ideas from the two previous presentations. I do think there is a role for an e-portfolio system where students can document their journey and growth as a student. This information is important for a potential employer as you can see the strengths, weaknesses and skills of that person.

However it should not be used in isolation of the social media and online marketing sites that are available. Every person is their own brand, and it is important to build your brand, shout about your USPs and what makes you different.

So students, especially if they are looking for careers in journalism, IT, marketing, PR or advertising need to be engaged in the other social media sites to prove their proficiency and capabilty to employers.

However students need to learn and understand the ettiquette and importance of building an online brand and the credibility / integrity that goes with it. We all have those lary nights, but those photos that get uploaded to Flickr/ Facebook could be deterimental to your employerability in the future.

Having spoken to quite a number of my fellow business owners, they all said they check people on Facebook - and what they find, does influence the impression of that person. They also mentioned that they 'Google' a person and see what search results come up on their name. I wonder how many students acutally realise that? Scary huh?

Giving students these skills of to understand the importance of their online brand and maintaining their integrity / credibility is fundamental to building their e-portfolio.

The univerisities that enable their students to start off in a protected, internal e-portfolio system and helps them grow the skills / understanding of the other sites will improve their employerability of their students overall. The universities that get this the quickest and respond to the challenge accordingly, will be successful in winning students as well.

However this will need a step change internally - as students will need to collaborate and learn from each other, online within the e-portfolio system. So there needs to be joined up thinking between the facalties, so the areas of excellence amongst the students can share their knowledge and experience.

Waterstones inspiring use of Twitter

I was on Twitter on New Years Eve afternoon and saw this tweet come through on the Waterstones account:





I clicked on the link to the book which was a book called A Wild Affair by Gemma Townley. It sounded like just the kind of book for a winter's afternoon.

As directed by the tweet I emailed Waterstones back. Last week the book arrived in the post. Luckily I was on a long snowy train journey this week, so took the book with me.

Overall I give 10/10 to Waterstones for an inspiring use of Twitter. What great way to get customer generated content on your website, to get customers engaged with your brand and to get people talking about your brand. It must of worked as I am writing this blog post, right?

So I am now on the look out for other inspiring uses of Twitter. Not just the standard RT of articles, jokes or videos. Something inspiring, new, innovative that's going to get people talking about the brand and the outcome. Would be great to hear your stories of innovative uses of Twitter

Audio Blogging - word of mouth marketing

Ever had those moments / thoughts, where you want to share an experience on your blog with others but the technology just isn't there?

I was at a meeting on Thursday last week and met John Duffy, Marketing Director from Ipadio. They have some clever software which enables you to do live telephone feeds into your website. Alternatively you can record these calls and these files can upload them afterwards.

John gave some inspiring demonstrations where this software / service has been used. One was where a team had tracked the Great Wall of China for sponsorship and phoned in live (and recorded it) to say they had arrived.

Another example is the Duke of Edinburgh awards which are evaluated by assessors on their expeditions, so the assessors phone in the assessment rather than writing it down.

There are a few terms for this phlogging or audio blogging and certainly is an extension to moblogging, mobile blogging. This differs to podcasts (not video casts) as that assumes that the files is streamed over the internet, as opposed to live streaming to a web page (and the file is then saved).

Audio blogging is an emerging market with only a few services on offer such as hipcast. Interestingly Audioboo has launched a service for the iphone so your audio blog file is saved and you can link to it.

Ipadio can also do phone > text service as well. It can integrate into Twitter, blogs and all the main social media platforms, so the potential for adoption of the technology into main stream is a possibility.

With the increase in mobile technology, I can see this being a growing marketing, as there are so many applications for this software. People calling in from expeditions, people sending in reviews of gigs, people sharing moments with friends, businesses using it for site visits.....the list is endless.

So how would you use this technology in your business or hobbies? I'd be interested to hear!

Meet Up Mondays IoD YDF Informal Networking

Networking is critical to business especially in the slowdown, but it's often hard to find the right type of event or find a suitable venue. 'Meet Up Monday's is more of an informal approach to networking or whether you just want to catch up with friends then this is a great opportunity.

The first event was held in January 09, where over 40 IoD members and guests gathered at IoD Leeds, since then this informal networking event has grown from strength to strength.

Every 3rd Monday of the month, the YDF invite all IoD members to attend informal networking. All members are invited to attend and can bring up to two guests to any meeting. Any non IoD member should get in touch through LinkedIn to confirm their attendance.

The next events:

• Monday 18th January, 5.30 - 7.30pm, 3 Albion Place
• Monday 8th February (3rd week being 1/2 term), Sky Lounge, City Inn, 2 Wharf Approach, Leeds, LS1 4BR, 5 - 7pm