I have a love/hate relationship with the placement of social network icons on a website. Some websites have them in their header and some put them in the footer. In this Golden Nugget, I'll give you my point of view of where and why you should place your social icons.
Are They Important Enough?
Back when MySpace and Friendster were the latest craze, it seemed like everyone was adding large icons for those networks to their website header. Websites without those icons were made to feel like... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I don't often write about LinkedIn because it's considered a business-to-business social network and my educational focus is helping entrepreneurs connect directly with consumers. That said, today I'm going to share how you could use this network to your advantage.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a professional social network. The goal of this network is to allow you to maintain your curriculum vitae and connect with those you've worked with throughout your career. You can conn... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The time needed to manage social media can easily eat up most of your day. Over the last few weeks, I've detailed a lot of social media tactics in this 2015 Holiday Run-Up series. If you've missed out on the discussion so far, then go back to the beginning here and catch up.
I'm sitting on a regional jet right now as I write this. I'm heading back to New Jersey after three days with the RJO in St. Louis, Missouri. For me, it was a weekend of discussions about e-commerce, online local marketing, and social networking.
I was very impressed with all the jewelers I spoke to this weekend and I'm starting to think that the need for social media is starting to be understood as a necessity for marketing, even though the results can't be tracked. Many jewelers told me... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday I'm jumping all the way back to Nugget Number 101. The topic was getting started on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has tried to reinvent itself a few times since that post on December 13, 2010, so it's time I talk about it again. Ironically, while on a coaching call with one of my jewelers the other day, he asked me how old customers could find him now that he works at, and is in the ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Jewelers are in the business of helping couples get to the moment when they profess their love and vow "til death do us part."
Few relationships are intended to last forever, or even a lifetime, but when you get into bed with a business partner, you are rarely thinking about the day when you will break up. When you're in business for yourself, you should be making forward steps to improve your business, but also prepare yourself to different possible future outcomes.
Although I'd like nothing more than for every jeweler to manage their own social media accounts, the truth is that many business owners don't, or can't do it. I'm told many reasons why they can't, like not having enough time, or not knowing where to start, or how to do it, or even which social network they should be using.
We follow news and blogs from a few jewelry industry websites, groups on LinkedIn, Twitter conversations and articles from Instore Magazine and MJSA. When we see something interesting, or perhaps a developing trend, we try to pay attention to it and report back on it here.
We're hoping that you value the SEO education and real world evaluations of websites, mobile websites, and how you can use them.
In other words, we're hoping you value us as experts in our field, and that the jWAG.biz website is an excellent resource for you.
Other jewelry industry sources have yet to take on the challenge of explaining how Google ranking has changed since February 2011; instead, they stay with familiar topics of Facebook, Twitter, Google Places, and marketing ideas. Maybe it's because the changes are too new and no one wants to a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We'd like to revisit social signals for your website.
A "social signal" is an internet service or feature that allows you to share your web pages to other members within your online circle of friends.
Wikipedia currently maintains a list of 198 popular social networking websites. Each of them has their own method of sharing links and information amongst friends.
Search engines are slowly tapping into the popular social networking sites and beginning to measure and include intra-member communications (i.e. sharing and liking) in organic search results.
According to Wikipedia the top social websites listed by member totals are: 1. Facebook 2. Qzone (China) 3. Habbo (teen website) 4. Twitter 5. Windows Live 6. Bebo 7. Vkonatakte (Russia) 8. Tagged 9. Orkut 10. LinkedIn
The final item to talk about is Status updates. Yes, LinkedIn has status updates just like on Facebook, and just like updates to Twitter.
Your first thought is probably one of, "Oh great; another things I have to waste time on," but you shouldn't look at it like that.
Status updates on LinkedIn do not have to be once an hour, once a day or even once a week. They only need to be when you have something relevant and exciting to share with your connections.
An easy example would be "I've been hired to create a custom championship ring for a sports team." It doesn't have to be that exciting, either; you could simply say, "I've been hired to create a custom pendant for a 25th wedding anniversary."
LinkedIn has a built in method for allowing one business professional to recommend the services of another. Each profile includes a "Recommend" link below each listing in the Experience and Education section.
You need to build some recommendations. This will validate your work and create an instant reputation for potential customers that have discovered your profile. Just like reviews on Google Places, the reviews here have a long term value.
But you don't have to wait for people to give you a review. In fact, if you don't ask for reviews you will probably never get them. Once you've established a few dozen connections you should wait before soliciting recommendations from people. You simply do not want to create a connection and then request a recommendation in the same day, or e... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Now that we've spent the last 6 Daily Gold Nuggets telling you how to set up your LinkedIn profile, you're probably wondering when we will get to the topic of making money! That starts now, but this is not a quick race; it's long-term, business sustainable building.
First, start out with creating connections. This process will be slow and tedious. Sit down in front of a computer with your top 10% or 20% customer list. Methodically copy and paste their names from your customer management system to the search box on LinkedIn.
We're saying you should do this using a copy/paste method because typing everyone's name from a printout might take until next year, and you've got better things to do.
After you enter their name, click the blue magnifying glass to search for them. Quick... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Last week we gave you 5 days of information about LinkedIn. We're covering a lot of information and this is unexpectedly turning into a mini course about LinkedIn. We're taking this long approach because LinkedIn is a popular social network that many people don't understand. We hope you are finding this useful and we look forward to feedback. By the way, we welcome all feedback even if it's to call us idiots when you disagree.
After reviewing the information covered already, we realized we mentioned something briefly about company information on Tuesday last week, but never went back to talk about it; let's do that now.
When you were editing your current job listing you probably saw a screen that said "Create a Company Profile for {jewelry store name}" and we assume you skipped past... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Groups are where people with similar interests can come together for discussions on specific topics. They are targeted and categorized around location, industry or activity. There are thousands of groups and initially it will be difficult to find something appropriate for you.
To start, go into the Groups area of LinkedIn and search for your town name. It's unlikely that there will be groups for suburban towns, but if you find something, you may want to get involved. Remember: this is networking and you need to put yourself out there to get noticed. Your customers might be there and happily surprised to see you.
The next thing to search for is your state or province name. This should return a plethora of groups relating to job and business networking. Look for one that seems appr... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the fourth email in our LinkedIn setup strategies presented this week. So far, we've explained good methods to fill in your Summary, Specialties, Experience and Education sections.
Today, we want you to look at the Twitter settings in your profile. From your Edit Profile screen, click the tiny "Edit" link next to the Twitter setting. From the Twitter Settings screen, you can put in your Twitter account name and select it to be visible to anyone.
As we discussed last week, Twitter should be used at least once per hour. That's a lot of noise to be making on Twitter and you don't want to overwhelm your professional users on LinkedIn. So make sure you select the setting to "Share only tweet that contain #in." This is a good practice even if you only tweet a few times a week. ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In today's continuation of our discussion on building a good LinkedIn profile, you will discover a good strategy for the Summary and Specialties sections.
As a reminder, your LinkedIn profile is an online business resume; at least that's what LinkedIn feels it should be. But we want you to take a different strategy and instead use it to build connections to your existing customers.
How many paper resumes have you seen with the "Summary" section beginning with the words "To find a job where..." or "My goal is to..." other similar words? As you browse through LinkedIn, you will see hundreds of profiles of people trying to cram the history of their life's work into the Summary. Apparently, everyone needs to go back to basic resume writing school. This strategy would be quite obviously wrong if the same information was print... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Continuing with our conversation about LinkedIn, let's talk about the different types of account available. As of the writing of this Nugget, LinkedIn has 5 different account types as indicated here:
LinkedIn Basic, Free Business, $24.95 per month Business Plus, $49.99 per month Executive, $99.95 per month LinkedIn Pro, $499.99 per month
Each account type has about the same features, but as a retail jeweler you only need to have the Basic account. You shouldn't need any of the other accounts unless you are looking to seek a new career or hire a professional employee.
As you build your LinkedIn profile, you will encounter at least one term you might not yet be familiar with through other social media sites. The basis of LinkedIn is making a connection with other business professionals. The word "connect... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
You have to be everywhere online in order to achieve local dominance within your market. Actually, that's a general statement for any industry, not just jewelry. What it means is that there is no single, all-powerful website or social network for everyone. Every one of us has unique taste and needs and therefore no single website works for everyone, although Facebook certainly thinks they do.
Twitter is for noise-making. Facebook can be used for friends, family or business. MySpace has even more noise than Twitter. CafeMom is for moms-to-be. Classmates is the place to connect with school friends. There are hundreds of others and you can find a great list on Wikipedia by searching for "List of social networking websites" if you are really interested.
Your customers will come from everywhere, and that's why you need to ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The phrase "duplicate content" is mentioned a lot when it comes to website SEO. Your website ranking will be lower if you have duplicate content issues.
Duplicate content on your website is a result of sloppy programming or setup. In reality, your website will feed the search engines the same information multiple times. In response, the search engine will remove you from the SERPs until you fix the problem.
Google, Yahoo and Bing are all fighting for the best "user experience." That experience includes not including badly functioning websites. It would be frustrating for the all of us if we had to deal with that every day.
On the other hand, something that we all seem to be dealing with every day is duplicate status updates on Facebook.
Just because you have the ability to cross-post between social websi... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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"...serious kudos to you. We love your straight talk, pertinent information and plain language. I don't know how many industries have something of jWAG's caliber available, but I learn from the emails every day. Really, really nice work, and very appreciated." -Cheryl Herrick, Global Pathways Jewelry
