During a recent trip to the Washington D.C. area I was presented with an opportunity too good to miss! A group of well respected, expert SEO/Social media consultants in Frederick Md. were gathering to "talk shop" ... and I was invited! The meeting was held at The LaPaz Restaurant in Frederick Md.'s historic district. In attendance were David Bruce Jr., Andrew Smith, Kimba Green, Karen & Chris Highland, Peggy Magnanelli and myself.
A combined Klout score in excess of 320!
David Bruce and I have known each other for years, and worked on several projects together. The rest of the group I had met and communicated with for several months as a result of my association with David and a group he started on Facebook the "Facebook for Business Cooperative". The topics discussed included ...
- Social Bookmarking
- Photo Sharing
- Blogging
- Content Creation
- Sales Copy
- Article Directories
- Business Directories
- The Panda Update
- Google's Search Algorithm
- RSS Feeds
- SEO in Politics
... when the discussion turned to Linkedin several of us at the table conceded that while we understood both the basic premise and inherent value of Linkedin right now, we had not put as much thought into setting up and maintaining our profiles and sharing preferences. I mentioned that most of my "less than optimal" posting came from automated posting that I had set up months ago, and went on to say that I was considering turning it off. At this Point Kimba Green owner of "White Lion Social", a Frederick Md. Consulting/Business service jumped in and stated ...
"Automating your posts to LinkedIn isn't a bad thing as long as you understand that not everything you would post to FB should be posted to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is your most professional image. Use it wisely. In my opinion you should not be selling your products or your services. Speak of your successes or of industry news or of company successes. LinkedIn can be a valuable part of your strategy."
"If you post the same thing 3 times a day or you only post what you have to offer most will stop following your stream of information. DO NOT SELL ON LINKEDIN and that includes your products, services or houses!"
"The value of LinkedIn to your overall Social value is at least 65% (not speaking of Google value), Twitter 25%, and Facebook 10%. Think about that with everything you sent out through your social stream."
"Facebook will give some (mostly RE Agents) brand recognition, Twitter will push out your valuable information to the stream and LinkedIn is the foundation to your professional image!"
Kimba turned out to be a wealth of information, not only on the subject of Linkedin, but in all aspects of social media! The amount of knowledge freely given away throughout the course of the evening would certainly have filled several textbooks. What had started as a casual get together turned into a storm of collaboration, with each of us striving to share our views, and gain a fresh and more informed perspective on what is effective, and why, in social media and search engine marketing.
