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By Neptune Moon, August 12, 2011 5:36 pm

So I just saw a tweet from Avinash Kaushik about three settings you will want to change in LinkedIn to keep your profile information from being shared with third party sites. I am pretty big on privacy and controlling access to my various online profiles, so I was surprised to read about this and took action right away!

Item One: Social Advertising

According to LinkedIn’s own preferences box:

LinkedIn may sometimes pair an advertiser’s message with social content from LinkedIn’s network in order to make the ad more relevant. When LinkedIn members recommend people and services, follow companies, or take other actions, their name/photo may show up in related ads shown to you. Conversely, when you take these actions on LinkedIn, your name/photo may show up in related ads shown to LinkedIn members. By providing social context, we make it easy for our members to learn about products and services that the LinkedIn network is interacting with.

What does it mean? It means that advertisers could use your profile information alongside their ads if you have interacted with them in some way. Just because I follow someone or a company, does not mean I endorse them.

How to turn it off: The default is that you are opted in to this. To opt out, go to your Settings Tab > Accounts >Manage Social Advertising and uncheck the box that says “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.”

Item Two: Data Sharing with Third Party Applications

What does it mean? It means that you are giving LinkedIn permission to share your profile data with undisclosed third party applications.

How to tun it off: To change this setting, go to your Settings Tab > Groups, Companies & Applications > Data sharing with third-party applications and uncheck the box that says “Yes, share my data with third party applications.”

Item Three: Partner InMail

According to LinkedIn’s own preference box:

LinkedIn Partner InMails are messages from our partners with informational or promotional content that is part of a marketing or hiring campaign. These Partner InMails are sent to LinkedIn users based on non-personal information, such as the title of your current position, your primary industry, or your region, and are not from individual recruiters using LinkedIn. Your name and e-mail address will not be disclosed to LinkedIn’s marketing partners.

What does it mean? It means that you are agreeing to allow LinkedIn’s marketing partners to send you unsolicited emails.

How to turn it off: To change this setting, got to your Settings Tab > Email > Turn On/Off Partner InMail and uncheck the box that says “LinkedIn’s marketing partners may send you informational and promotional messages.” and uncheck the box that says “LinkedIn’s hiring campaign partners may send you informational and promotional messages.”

The problem isn’t necessarily that LinkedIn wants to start making itself more social – which it clearly does. The problem is, it automatically opts users in, without any notice. Have they not learned anything from Facebook and their privacy outcries after making similar changes to their network? I realize that the point of being on a network like LinkedIn or Facebook is to share information and I am all for that. But, I am also for utter transparency in what is being shared and for having control over what parts of my profiles are shared and with whom. I don’t think I’m alone in this!

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By Neptune Moon, June 28, 2011 2:19 pm

With technology advancing at what often feels like warp speed, it is easy to forget that on the other side of any type of communication is still a human being. We have so many opportunities to instantly express our thoughts and opinions and so many outlets to post to, I think we may have lost sight of why we engage in the first place – to communicate.

So much of our business communication is decidedly one-sided and often, a little ego-centric. Think about it – how do you communicate most often with prospective clients or customers? Email? Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? A blog? There has been a lot of talk in the past couple of years about how push marketing is dead and it is now all about engagement. While I agree that engagement media (think Twitter and Facebook) have certainly risen in popularity and sophistication, there is still plenty of room in your marketing mix for good old-fashioned push marketing (think Email or blogs).

Whatever channel you choose to communicate with your customers, make sure that you are always putting THEM first. It is so easy to forget this simple philosophy and just bombard people with messages that are all about you and not all that interesting to them! I often suggest to clients that they think about their own behavior when we are discussing a new marketing concept or delivery method. Granted, your target market may be very different from your client and those differences are important to recognize, but there are certain types of behavior that are pretty universally annoying.

Are you guilty of any of these?

1. Obnoxious Frequency. Sending the same email blast out every other day for two weeks because your open rates are low. Tweeting about every little thought that comes into your head all day long.
2. The Hard Sell. Are all of your communications all about how wonderful your company or product is?
3. Not Listening. Do you ever reply to people who do try to engage with you or do you leave them hanging?
4. Being Intrusive. Social media can be tricky – just because you or your company was mentioned, does not always mean you need to jump in to a conversation.
5. Not Asking for Permission. Do you add people to your email list, or worse text message list, without asking? Do you get permission for one thing and then automatically sign them up for everything else?
6. Abusing Trust. Do you share email addresses with other companies?
7. Not Taking No for an Answer. Do you make it easy for people to disengage with you if they so desire?

Engaging in great communication starts with you and it is easier than you might think. How can you avoid being guilty of the above offenses?

1. Take a hard look at your email content and/or your email list segmentation. If you have low open rates, ask yourself why. Perhaps your information is not all that interesting or useful. Make it better!
2. Ease up on the blatant sales language. Start to build a reputation as a connector of people or a source of useful and topical information.
3. Build social media listening into your social media strategy – spend time reading what others are writing and when appropriate, join the conversation.
4. Use some restraint and avoid being creepy! Just because you or your company were mentioned in a post does not automatically mean it is appropriate or welcome for you to directly engage and jump into someone else’s conversation.
5. Follow sound opt-in procedures and be clear about your policies when someone is signing up to receive communication from you.
6. Treat your email list, followers and connections like gold – because they are! If you’re not sure about a particular behavior, you probably shouldn’t do it.
7. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe and if you do step over the line in the social space, apologize quickly and sincerely and then go away.

If we all take a moment to think about our audience and put ourselves in their shoes, our communications can’t help but be better!

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By Neptune Moon, July 9, 2010 5:18 pm

Google Social Media + Lead Generation and you’ll find a wide variety of opinions on this topic. I’d like to suggest that can social media generate leads, is not even the best question to ask. A better question is how can we use social media to best support our business/organization and our customers?

There is an interesting article on just this topic over at the American Express OPEN Technology Forum “Is Social Media Failing to Produce Business Leads?” – read it here. In it, the author suggests that perhaps social media’s “job” isn’t so much to produce leads, but to allow companies to better or more strongly engage with their customers.

I tend to agree with this premise. I think there is an almost involuntary urge to try to make every technology fit in to an old school box about how to use it and what it does. That kind of thinking is a mistake. While those of you who have read posts here before know that I do believe selling is still about putting the right offer in front of the right person at the right time - with social media, we have a whole host of new tools to help accomplish this task.

Social media can do a lot of things, but expecting to setup a Twitter account, a Facebook business page and/or even a LinkedIn profile and then just have the leads flowing in, is a completely unrealistic view of how these tools work. In order to get benefit from them, you have to actively use them. And not just to post your sales information or press releases, but to actually talk to your customers and potential customers.

Social media has opened up brand new ways for people and businesses to communicate and engage with each other, it’s true. But it is important to understand what these tools can and cannot do and how to make them work for you.

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By Neptune Moon, June 1, 2010 6:45 pm

So unless you’ve been living under a rock or in outer Mongolia for the past couple of years, you’ve probably found yourself wondering what the heck you should be doing to take part in this brave new world of social media to advance your career or business…

The prospect can really be quite overwhelming – which media to choose? How to choose? What to post? How often to post? How to interact with others? When not to engage with others? The questions can seem endless!

The good news is, that social media, like anything else is something you can figure out one step at a time. When you break it down into reasonable steps, it suddenly seems like an achievable goal. And don’t we all want to set achievable goals?!?

A few questions to get you started:

1. Who is my target audience?
2. Where do they spend the most time – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp, YouTube, etc.?
3. How much time do you have to commit to social media on a weekly basis?
4. Who in your organization will be responsible for keeping your presence up?
5. Who will develop your social media policies?

Developing and implementing a social media strategy takes time and effort, but beginning to think about these questions is a great place to start!

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By Neptune Moon, August 26, 2009 8:36 am

I’ve got an article on this topic over on NeptuneMoon.com, but I thought it was worth mentioning here too. Times are tough – this isn’t exactly a news flash… Everyone, it seems, it looking to do more with less. And while we can certainly relate to that sentiment, taken too far, it can have the exact opposite effect.

How, you might ask, can that be? Isn’t looking for the lowest price always the best course of action – especially in slow times? For groceries, gas and cell phone service, sure. For your business’ web site and marketing initiaves, most definitely not.

Look, I’m not suggesting that price isn’t a factor – it is always a factor. I am saying that now really is a great time to make an investment in your business. When times get tough, most organizations immediately pull back on everything, with marketing being among the first items to get slashed from the budget. It’s an easy place to cut, but doing so is short-sighted.

Think about it – if all or most of your competitors are slashing their marketing budgets and efforts, doesn’t that make this the perfect time to get your message out more, not less? If they’ve gone radio silent and you’re still on the air, who will likely gain new business?

It can be a bit of a tough sell and more than a little scary to pony up dollars for marketing in a soft economy – but the risk of not doing it is a lot scarier!

Think about doing SEO if you haven’t already. Take a hard, honest and critical look at your web site from your customers’ perspective and make changes to make your web site more useful to them. Start an e-communication program – leverage your knowledge and add value for your customers and potential customers.

The right mix varies by situation – get out there and start revving up your business now! You’ll be glad you did.

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