5 Things You Should Correct On LinkedIn
This is a guest post by Margaret Jules.
An online professional profile helps you out in extracting the best of the professional opportunities in
a jiffy. Therefore, many job seekers or people looking for the network development sign up for social
networking sites like LinkedIn to add to their professional advantages. But, unfortunately, these profiles
also need some transparency in the professional and non-professional details, for when it comes to
corporate sectors, hiring managers read into things. If your LinkedIn profile hasn’t helped you out in
achieving a successful professional networking yet, chances are you might be having some loopholes in
your LinkedIn profile page. Here are five things that you need to rectify on LinkedIn right away to ensure
a long-term successful professional networking.
1. No recommendations
If any hiring manager goes through your profile and doesn’t notice even a single recommendation, it
is sure to leave out a bad impression of your professional history. It could even make you look like a
passive employee who hasn’t done anything worth recommendation. Therefore, if your profile isn’t
flooded with some recommendations, say at least 5-6, and then it’s advisable to seek out people you
have worked with or currently working with and ask for their recommendations.
2. Too many recommendations
In the context to receive various recommendations, it is also incumbent not to bestow your profile
with a flood of supported recommendations. It makes a shady impression, as if you have either bought
people to recommend you or you are looking for a job. The absolute fix for this issue is to update your
recommendations by shooting out the former recommendations from your former colleagues, and
asking recommendation from the clients you have recently worked with.
3. Don’t Lie
In order to virtually spruce up your professional history, don’t give out details that don’t hold any truth.
Most of the LinkedIn profile holders fill up their professional and academic details with superfluous
details only to make their profile look mature, attractive and eligible. So, it’s recommended not to
practice it, for you could eventually get caught.
4. Post a picture
It goes without proving that pictures are worth a thousand words. And, for professionals and in the
business world, this adage is very prominent to follow. You must feature a photo in your about me
page that shows what you really look like. This helps in developing uninterrupted communication and
networking with others. However, don’t end up posting an ultra-glamorous, flirty picture unless your
target group is entertainment or broadcasting industry, as it could jeopardize your professional image.
5. Describe your professional specialty
So, you have underlined what your job title is, but, what about your specialty? If you don’t come clear
on what you do from 8-5 during the working days, one can’t actually extract out your professional
specialty. Remember, a blank piece of paper that doesn’t come tagged up with a description is
completely useless. Therefore, share your experience and allow others to have a little sneak-a-peak at
your professional summary.
When it comes down to establish a professional networking or to strengthen the ones you have,
LinkedIn can undoubtedly help you out in umpteenth ways. It is essential, however, to scarp down an
erroneous profile that doesn’t help you at all, and to come clear and concise about your professional
details and inclinations.
About the author: Margaret is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on environment and
technology. Beside this she is fond of books. She recently did an article on auto motto. These days she is
busy in writing an article on eco friend.
How To: Use Pinterest To Drive Traffic To Your Site
This is a Guest Post by Sandra Mason.
Are you interested in significantly driving up the traffic to your blog or business website? Do you want to add a potent tool to your marketing and promotional campaign that will help your brand reach a variety of new users worldwide? If so, you must add Pinterest to your social networking arsenal. Pinterest is a pinboard-style photo sharing community that has become the fastest growing website ever. The unprecedented growth of Pinterest has surpassed that of social networking powerhouses Facebook and Twitter at the same time in their development.
Pinterest provides its users a platform to organize, share and disseminate photos and videos found throughout the web. Some of the most common content themes on Pinterest include beauty, fashion, home decor, exotic foods and inspirational items. As you can imagine, these themes cater more to the interests of women rather than men. In fact, 80 percent of all Pinterest users are female.
There are several different ways you can utilize this photo sharing community to really market and promote your blog or business website. Let’s take a look at some of these ways.
Join the Community
If you want to use the Pinterest community for marketing and promotional purposes, the first step, of course, is to join the community. You should play around with Pinterest to truly understand how the social networking tool works. You can create your own virtual pinboards that are organized by different categories that interest you. If you are a fashionista, one of your pinboards may be titled “fashion.” This pinboard is likely to be populated with such photos as clothing, shoes and styles that appeal to you. You can follow other Pinterest users who share similar tastes as interests as you. Once you get the hang of Pinterest on your own, you can create a profile for your business or blog.
Attract the Women
As you know, 80 percent of Pinterest users are currently female. Does your business offer products or services that would appeal to women, such as clothing or home decor services? Is your blog niche centered on fashion? If so, you can create eye candy pins that immediately capture the attention of women. If your business has a product to sell that would appeal to women, Pinterest absolutely is the way to go to generate sales. Data analysis has revealed that Pinterest drives both more traffic and sales than Facebook.
Diversify
They say that variety is the spice of life. It’s no different with Pinterest. It is important that your business or blog’s Pinterest page feature a variety of different attractive and appealing pins. You may want to consider hiring a professional graphic designer to help you create those eye candy pins that will appeal to women. Also, remember that your pins do not have to be limited to just images. You can create video-based pins that showcase satisfied customers using your products. A creative idea is to convert a positive customer testimonial into a text-based pin.
Use the “Pin It” Button
As your business or blog develops a respectable presence on Pinterest, you should add the sleek and stylish “Pin It” button to your site. This will allow users to easily pin appealing content directly to their personal pinboards. This will also increase the number of “re-pins” that you content will receive, which is very similar to backlinking in the SEO world. Essentially, this is an excellent way to get your content and brand out there as much as possible on Pinterest. As you can see, this button will begin to work for itself in no time.
Monitor Analytics
As the owner of a business or blog, you have the ability to track your site’s analytics. You can follow and understand exactly where your traffic is coming from through Pinterest. Whatever seems to be working, do more of it.
Pinterest is hot right now, and getting hotter. You should really consider adding this popular photo-sharing tool to your marketing and promotional campaign.
Sandra Mason is an online English instructor for College City. Sandra is also an avid Pinterest user who has purchased products through promotions on the networking site. Sandra has come to understand how businesses have tapped into Pinterest for marketing and promotional purposes.
Great Ways to Use Timeline Cover for Facebook Pages
Bud Light's Facebook Cover.
This is a guest post by Margaret Jules.
The use of social media for internet marketing and promotion has become inevitable due to the
increasing popularity of social networking platforms and the fact that these avenues give marketers
access to a global audience. It is for the marketers to build relationships with their target audience.
Facebook is one such networking platform which boasts of more than 900 million users across the
world.
The timeline cover for Facebook pages gives you an opportunity to use it as a part of your campaign.
Reach out to your target audience and convey your message through a picture. When the use of the
visual medium and aesthetics has become a must-do, all thanks to the emergence of platforms such as
Pinterest and Vimeo, your Facebook page too, amidst other things, can convey a brand message through
a graphic or a picture. Here is how you can make the most of it.
1. Give a hint of your work culture
If the page is meant to give an inkling of the functioning of the organization, the picture can serve as an
appropriate representation of the same. Use pictures that represent interactions among employees,
brainstorming sessions or anything that lies at the core of the work culture of the organization. Let it
represent the effort you put in to bring the best of products and services to your customers.
2. Focus on the best practices of the organization
Through a graphical creative representation or actual pictures from the process, let people take a glance
at what goes on behind the scenes. People have a greater impact than graphics created for effect. Let
people know your organization to build a trust factor.
3. Include people’s feedback
The prominence of social networking platforms in internet marketing and promotion owes it to people
sharing information and making product recommendations. Feedback from a peer counts as a definite
lead for conversion. Let people be the representatives of your products. Let them speak for you through
your Facebook timeline cover.
4. Capture graphics that connect with people
It is invariably the brands that establish an emotional connection with people that succeed in grabbing a
major market share. This is because the brand message is in sync with the needs of the consumer. Make
sure that your timeline cover works towards establishing that connection for you.
5. Create visual representation of the different aspects of your business
Find and capture the aesthetically appealing aspects of your business. Connect with people through
humor in a message. Creativity is the basis of all such initiatives. It forms the core of internet marketing.
Make sure that the work you take up has an impact and your target audience finds more reasons to buy
your products.
Facebook serves as a perfect tool for interacting with clients. Existing and potential customers can
voice their opinion on a product. People can recommend products and share information through their
Facebook profiles. As the social networking site implements changes and makes more avenues available
to marketers, it is for them to devise strategies to maximize the gains.
About the author: Margaret is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on environment and
technology. Beside this she is fond of books. She recently did an article on cellphonebeat. These days
she is busy in writing an article on gizmowatch.
Make Money Tweeting The Pro Way
If you’ve been here before, I wrote an awesome post before comparing all the Twitter Advertising networks. Here’s a few tips on how you can earn even more with these networks. I have personally received over $1200 from these networks, so I can assure you that these aren’t scams.
1. Gotta join ‘em all!
That’s right. I suggest that you should sign up for all 13 of the networks, even if you don’t consider tweeting ads from all of them. Why? Sometimes, great opportunities are usually only available from an advertiser to one network only. If you can’t be bothered to sign up for all of them, just sign up for Ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets & MyLikes. These are the top networks.
2. Fill her up!
When joining these networks, make sure you fully enter in all your profile details, especially when choosing your Categories in MyLikes and Ad.ly, and entering the tags in Sponsored Tweets. This is important as many advertisers look for tweeters by searching for keywords and categories.
Applicable to: All
3. Sound like yourself!
“Yo homies check out this rad app!” might not get you many clicks if you usually tweet in a formal tone & manner. Only some networks allow you to customize the message before posting it. Also you can encourage more clicks by using vocabulary such as “Click here:” or “Check it out:” before the link.
Applicable to: Sponsored Tweets, MyLikes
4. Keep it in the family!
Keep the ads related to your account CPC. When creating accounts, keep different accounts focused on one central topic. For example, an account called @realabsfitness will generally be about fitness and exercise, and not the latest iPods. This way, you’ll get more targeted ads and therefore, more clicks.
Applicable to: All
5. We no speak Americano!
The majority of twitter users are from the United States. Unsurprisingly, most ads target and cater to users in the U.S. You can check where the majority of your followers are located using Ad.ly Analytics‘ Location Overlay map. If the majority of your followers are from the United States, that’s great. If not, you should check on indivdual offers as some offers may only count clicks from United States.
Applicable to: Sponsored Tweets, MyLikes
6. Pick the ads with the highest CPC rate
This is obvious. You should always pick the adverts with the highest Cost Per Click (CPC) rate. For example, I get paid up to $0. 48 per click on MyLikes because I choose the right advertisers. You can do the same. With 2 clicks from my followers, I can already buy a burger from McDonald’s.
Applicable to: Sponsored Tweets, MyLikes
7. Check your email often!
Ad.ly and MyLikes will notify you of new opportunites via email. For Ad.ly, these are often time limited to 24 hours. So stick close to your phone or computer! You could be missing out on opportunities!
Applicable to: Ad.ly, MyLikes
8. Accept all (cost per tweet) offers
I’ve received offers ranging from $20 to $300 per tweet. I’ve accepted all of them. This only applies to Cost Per Tweet ads (Ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets) as you typically earn more than Cost Per Click ads (MyLikes).
Applicable to: Sponsored Tweets, Ad.ly
9. What time is it?
If possble, try to tweet at 1PM Eastern Standard Time, or at least within 11AM to 3PM EST. According to Sysmos, this is when the most Twitter activity happens during the day. You can get more clicks when there are more people on twitter at one time. Only MyLikes allows you to specific what time to post the ads.
Twitter is most active on Tuesdays & Wednesdays, and the least active on on the weekends. If every tweets while at work, I wonder if the productivity level has decreased 
Applicable to: MyLikes
10. Multiple accounts
If you’re planning to have multiple accounts to tweet more ads, make sure you differentiate into different topics to maximize your earnings. Don’t just have 10 different accounts about Apple, and remember, don’t spam.
Applicable to: All
11. Repeition is the key to success
In Sponsored Tweets, you should enable ClickWatch to maximise the number of clicks. ClickWatch enables under performing ads to be retweeted up to a maximum of three times. Also, with MyLikes, You can schedule your ads to appear at a certain time and date with a third-party service. By repeating your ad, you can receive more clicks, and therefore bigger earnings. I personally use Twaitter, but their are other services.
Applicable to: MyLikes, Sponsored Tweets
12. Finally,
Go Above and Beyond Twitter!
Above and Beyond’s music is awesome. Anyways, back to the point. Ad.ly allows you to tweet ads to your MySpace account too, while MyLikes allows you to post your ads to Twitter, Facebook profile, Facebook Fan Page, YouTube, Blogger, WordPress, Friendfeed, Tumblr and more. Personally, I only tweet ads on Twitter and no where else. Why? Because I don’t like trying to make money off my friends. But if you have a large audience on your Blogger blog, this could be a huge earner.
I like to compare followers/fans/friends as Tensile strength of a structure. Why? If you post too many ads, your followers will reach what I like to compare to the Ultimate Tensile Strength before reaching the Fracture Point. There is a certain balance to between your tweets and ads. If you post too many ads, your followers will stand it up to a certain point (the Ultimate Tensile Strength) until they decide to unfollow / block you (the so-called Fracture Point). So, don’t over-post ads!
If you follow all these steps, you can easily earn $20-$250 a month.
Any problems? Leave a comment below and I’ll personally email/reply you back.
11 Ways to Maximise Traffic From Twitter
Josh here: I’m done with high school forever, and I have 5 months off till uni. I’m now going to try to blog at least once a week. Cheers and enjoy the post .
There are two parts to maximizing traffic from twitter – first, you’ll need a boatload of followers (preferably a boatload of pirates from Somalia 
) and to format you tweet correctly to allow the most number of clicks from your followers.
So firstly, you’ll need a crane load of followers. But how do you do that?
Your Twitter Profile
1. Have a twitter Profile Picture – Hopefully a picture of your face, or a personal branding/logo. Research shows that a person with a picture has 10 times more followers than one without. But never, never have a picture of a half-naked girl. Not only are you offended the ladies, but you already lost half off your potential readers as only men are more likely to click on your tweets. (Lame, but too true). Having a picture of a half-naked picture only makes you look more like a spammer too.
2. Fill In Your Bio – with something relevant and interesting. Not just “Student”, or “Porn Director” – be descriptive, and mostly, be brief. You only have 160 characters so you’ll have to be creative. Remember, D0n’7 wr173 1n søm3 fαñcy ʎɐʍ that you find artsy – remember, you are targeting other people to follow you, and they may not be able to read your bio.
3. Don’t spam, especially spamming #trendingtopics hashtags with unrelated items – it can also get you banned – careful there.
4. Follow others! That’s right. This has to be the most effective way to meet new people (and sneakily get new followers as they follow you back). But to be honest, I’ve met some really interesting and great people by following and chatting with them. If I didn’t follow them in the first place, I’ve have never knew what I missed out.
5. You should tweet things that are generally around one central topic. For example, an account called @livetechnews should be tweeting about, well tech news and gadgets and not oral health. Also, never ever tweet about everything you are doing right now. No one cares if you just ate a ham sandwich for lunch. Tweet about things that are interesting. I totally fail at this rule, I tweet about anything & everything
6. @reply people when they talk to you. Don’t just ignore people (unless they are spammers of course, which you should promptly block and report them for spam). This may not seem like an obvious way to get more clicks, but interacting with people allows you to keep your Twitter account active. Yes, having loads of followers is good, but having a load of spam/bot followers isn’t, and won’t get you much traffic to your site.
The Tweet itself
Obviously, you are trying get the maximum traffic from twitter to your site/blog, so you’ll need to format your tweet correctly to get the maximum traffic too! Here’s how you do that:
7. Keep the tweet simple. For a blog post, the simpliest format (and the format you should use) is “[BlogPostTitle] [ShortenedLink]” – Remember the K-I-S-S philosophy – Keep It Simple Stupid. The more complex your tweet is, the harder it is for your followers to understand what you’re trying to convey.
Keep It Simple Stupid!
8. Never have an @username, hyperlink, and a hashtag in a single tweet. For example, my tweet is “@Apple launched a new Macbook http://bit.ly/link #mac #apple #macbook”. Having any of these three things make Twitter create a “link”, with shows as a different color. Your follower could get distracted on the hashtag. Then they check out @Apple. And then they totally forget about the link. Look how this looks as a tweet:
Too complicated & distracting!
Much Better!
9. Place the most important keywords at the beginning and the end of the tweet. Remember the Google Heat Map? Your most important information should be on your top left, or in the case of a tweet, the first few (and last) characters of a tweet. Confused? Here’s what I mean:
Yes, you may need to restructure your sentence to get to most clicks to your link.
10. Never ever post a full link to your blog post. eg. http://joshlam.com/2009/09/comparsion-the-13-twitter-advertising-networks/, but instead have a shortened link like http://bit.ly/3g2yd1 it’ll make your tweets look neater, and your followers will focus more on your actual blog title, rather than the long link. Also, remember, you’re limited to 140 characters - shortening links saves space too.
11. Use established URL shorteners. Try not to use some unknown URL shortener. Here’s a list of the most trustworthy (and most popular) URL shorteners: -I would generally stick to the top two shorteners.
goo.gl (Google’s own one, you’ll need to install their toolbar)
Bonus
Here’s two awesome tricks with j.mp and bit.ly – they are the same company, thus, their links are interchangeable. For example, this bit.ly link: http://bit.ly/3g2yd1 redirects to the same site as http://j.mp/3g2yd1
You can add a “+” sign to the end of any j.mp/bit.ly link to check its stats. For example, the stats for the above link, http://bit.ly/3g2yd1, is located at http://bit.ly/3g2yd1+ – this will allow you to check on your own stats, as well as the ability to spy on your competitor’s click-thru stats by adding a “+” to their link. Cool innit?
Sorry for all you “twitter gurus” out there reading this, this guide is really for marketing beginners to Twitter. I was blogging about way to advanced stuff before (according to the comments), so I hope this helps!
Ad.ly vs. Sponsored Tweets: Twitter Advertising Showdown
You want to make money from Twitter. You joined all 12 networks mentioned in this blog post and see that you’ll get the highest paying offers from Ad.ly or Sponsored Tweets. Here’s a comparison and my recommendation on which one you should use.
Both sites insist on disclaimers in each advertising tweet. Each Ad.ly tweet will usually have a “(Ad)”, while the disclaimer from Sponsored Tweets are customizable, with tags like “#spon”, “ad” or “sponsored”. This is the same for the tweet too, where Sponsored Tweets will allow you to customize the message (allowing it to be approved by the advertiser) that are tweeted. Yes, some people disagree to tweeting ads, but
You can cash out to PayPal when you reach $50 on both networks, but only Ad.ly offers a cheque option.
Ad.ly – So far I’ve made $152
Ad.ly is the latest Twitter Advertising network, having just launched on the 22nd of September. Similar to Sponsored Tweets
below, this service mostly caters to high end advertisers (my two advertisers were Microsoft and NBC) wanting to connect with medium to high-end Twitter users. In fact, founder and CEO Sean Rad says that he wants Ad.ly to be the Federated Media for Twitter. They have an impressive list of high-profile celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Brooke Burke, Nicole Richie, Brody Jenner, Dr. Drew and Samantha Ronson. ad.ly also allows you to donate a portion of your earnings to a charity of your choice. Their launch party video is shown below:
Sponsored Tweets – So far I’ve made $315.18
Sponsored Tweets is IZEA’s brand new advertising network. IZEA is a social media marketing company and the world leader in sponsored conversations. IZEA operates a network of over 250000 bloggers and 25000 advertisers. Izea has numerous sponsored advertising networks prior to SponsoredTweets, including PayPerPost and SocialSpark. This being said, SponsoredTweets is geared more towards Web Celebrities like John Chow and Shoemoney, although smaller tweeters will still get opportunities.
Yes. I’ve made more from Sponsored Tweets than Ad.ly. But Ad.ly is a newer network, without the backing of a parent advertising company with an expertise in Internet Marketing (yet).
Here’s the conclusion. Sign up for both Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets. But look out for Ad.ly, which are backed by large advertisers like Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, NBC, Nestle and Microsoft. A bigger company will usually mean a bigger advertising budget, and thus more offers available to you. For example, my advertisers are NBC and Microsoft. Ad.ly also has these “limited time” offers, where you’ll have to accept the ad within 24 hours. Check your email often!
To Your Success,
Josh Lam
Have you made anything from Ad.ly or Sponsored Tweets? Which one do you prefer? Comment below.
