Linkedin

Profile Names on Social Media Sites | Tips and Techniques

June 27, 2010 By Wendy Soucie Leave a Comment

Xeesm gets all your social links in one place for better management

Best practices for managing and choosing your social media profile name is not discussed but should be. Your name, is of course, your ultimate personal brand. Gone are the days of cute but anonymous profile names. In the age of authenticity and network building, people find you by keywords, real names and your email. Managing your online reputation can be best done if your profile name is claimed across all the social media channels you intend to use now or in the future. Finding the right tools to help you manage all these social sites is the next challenge and solved by a social business application like Xeesm.

What’s in a name

Consider first your reasons and goals for being on social media sites. Just as a business should answer the question of ‘Why’, you should also define your goals and objectives for any particular site. Whether you are managing your online reputation, a budding entrepreneur, connecting with alumni friends, looking for a job, changing careers, or looking for venture capital be clear about what you are doing here to define what you need to accomplish.

LinkedIn – A place for you to find people you know – use your full name, maiden name and middle initials. Don’t use a nickname, your company or product brand name when you customize the URL.
Facebook – A place for you to find people you used to know – use your full name, maiden name or nickname most commonly used in the past. Facebook lets you customize the URL for your profile. With over 400M users on Facebook, don’t wait to see if your name is available for your personal profile and your business page if you have one.
Twitter – A place for you to find people you want to know – With some character limitations in Twitter for the displayed profile name its important for you to enter the data in several ways. Use your full name on the account and abbreviate your name only if you have to for the username. You can always setup another account with the clever username as a second profile.
Slideshare – A place to share your expertise in a visual presentation format
Youtube – A place for you to share video and the third largest search engine.

Steps to take

You should first make a list of the different variations of your name that are acceptable. If you have a more common name, your middle initial is a must. Use nicknames only if you are also known in business by that name. My brother is a third generation Donald with his son also called Donald (IV). He has been know by the name “Skip” since he was 3 years old. I don’t even think his business associates even know his real name. In that case he would use his nick name incorporated into his profile.

There are several sites that can save you some time to find out if your name is available across several social sites at one time. Knowem and Namechk are two of the more popular ones. Both are continually adding new social sites. Knowem has monetized the service nicely by adding the paid feature of creating your profiles on any selected sites for you. They even have an ongoing service

Claim your name

If you have an understanding of your goals and have created a strategy about your activity you should know the type of social media sites that will best serve you. You can choose to signup for those sites one at a time or claim them all at one time (its just time and money after all). Just as we would recommend using the same profile picture across all your social profiles, especially if you are new to social media, use the same profile name across all your sites if you can.

As a business owner, author or even a celebrity, its important to reserve your name. There is some squatting going on for user names, so don’t regret waiting around to claim your name.

Customizing your profile URL

If you haven’t done it yet, several of the top social sites provide ways to customize your personal profile. If you are on Facebook go to www.facebook.com/username. If you can’t get your first choice it will suggest other variations for you. If you are building a business page on Facebook, you can’t actually name your page with a custom URL until you have 25 or more people following your page (or liking as the terms go these days).

Twitter does let you change your profile name in midstream from the settings page of your profile, but you will have to let your followers know about it so they can find you in a search. One of the key points in Twitter is to make sure your name in the account settings is your full name, and then if you have to shorten it for the username, its possible to find you under either variation.

LinkedIn is the one place to customize your profile URL to your complete name. Although you can change it, you do want to promote your LinkedIn profile link, and making changes just doesn’t help your presence. You can edit the URL under Edit My Profile tab and click on the edit link beside the URL link in the boxed profile section of your profile. Remember no spaces or hypens as the characters are limited.

I have found that on Youtube and Slideshare that I have taken a slightly different approach. On Slideshare, a social site for sharing presentations and documents, I have classified my account name under my business name (Wendy Soucie Consulting) as opposed to my personal name, even though my personal name is the actual URL Slideshare.net/wsoucie. On Youtube I have created a Business channel under Youtube/wendysoucie and then created a separate personal video channel for miscellaneous videos that don’t fit with my business focus directly but which I still want to share.

Solving the problem of changing names

One tool that I have used to minimize the problem of managing social media site links is Xeesm.com. It has a free social address link page and it lets me add as many links here as I need while only using one link on my emails or my business card. This is one site that you definitely need to create with your fixed name as you can’t change it later.

Take your time before you decide, but the default will be the name you enter into the first name and last name fields. If there are multiple users with similar names, but default it will auto generate numbers to add to the end. I don’t think this looks professional at all – so before you save it, try to find another acceptable combination with your middle initial etc.

Your name is your personal brand. Don’t let someone else be the first to abscond with your identity. Consider your strategy, your goals, check what’s available, claim it and then manage it with Xeesm.

Did you get your name?

How to prepare for a conference using social business engagement – Xeesm (customerthink.com)
Entering Contacts in my Xeesm Edge | Success with SocialCRM (customerthink.com)

Filed Under: Linkedin, social crm, Social Media Tools, Tips and Techniques, Xeesm Tagged With: Business, Facebook, Linkedin, Social Media, social profiles, Twitter, xeesm

LinkedIn Updates and changes – Interview on NBC15 with Carleen Wild

June 24, 2010 By Wendy Soucie 1 Comment

</div>

: Image via CrunchBase

Thursday, June 24, 2010, I had the opportunity to discuss with NBC15 News Anchor Carleen Wild, the recent changes and updates to LinkedIn, Inbox, groups, company profiles and the new Twitter app.

Entering Contacts in my Xeesm Edge | Success with SocialCRM

May 24, 2010 By Wendy Soucie 1 Comment

I am sharing my experiences with the SocialCRM tool Xeesm over the course of the next few months. I have made a strategic decision to use a Social CRM tool instead of a contact management tool like ACT! (which I actually deleted from my computer). Perhaps my experience as a BETA tester and a new Business Partner with the Xeesm product will be helpful to other innovative sales professional looking for tools that help with their social business relationships.

This week has been full of success and failures with data entry. In my over zealous attempts to get all my contacts as quickly into Xeesm, I relearned several lessons my mother taught me that clearly apply to getting started with Xeesm Edge.

Patience is a virtue

Although I could enter contacts one at a time into Xeesm, doing that for over 6,000 contacts seemed monumental. I wanted to use the upload feature so I didn’t have to do as much work. In my efforts to quickly get all of my contacts in as quickly as possible, I exported my Gmail contacts and uploaded them into the import tool.

First I was impatient and hit the button twice for submit. Instead of uploading 6,000 contacts, I duplicated them and had 12,000. Unlike Google Gmail contacts or Outlook, there is no “you have duplicates” so you have to delete things. Or start over.

My data was not entirely accurate before I started. I should have at least sorted for those with email addresses and only uploaded those. The data, once you get it into the Contact Manager, is somewhat cumbersome. It would be much easier to manipulate, delete, correct, etc. in a spreadsheet than online.

Tip 1: Export your contacts into a spread sheet prior to uploading into Xeesm. Only upload those contacts associated with an email address, eliminate duplicates, and edit out extraneous titles and certification abbreviations attached to the contact name.

Something worth doing is worth doing right.

If you have the business version of Xeesm you have the ability to setup Categories and Flights (Groups) of contacts prior to uploading. This is something worth doing before you just upload contacts. Doing a little strategic thinking about how to group contacts, partners, prospects, and clients will be important to spend less time identifying them once in Xeesm.

The categories I set up were: professional association contacts (broken down by group name), clients, partners, teams, manufacturing prospects, professional service firm prospects, Wisconsin prospects, national prospects, Social Media Academy Alumni, Integrated Alliances Certified Trainers, and Xeesm Business Partners. The flights I created were more granular and focused on my short and midterm business efforts.

Tip 2: By having the categories and flights created, I can now add a column in the spread sheet prior to uploading the contacts. Now they will go directly into the flight and the category that is appropriate. Definitely a time saver.

Have you created your Xeesm yet? If you are one of my contacts on LinkedIn, search and find your profile, claim it, and add your social links.

Xeesm Company Introduction – Social Business Applications (slideshare.net)
B2B Social CRM Increasingly Important as Sales Cycles Lengthen (customerthink.com)
It’s a bird, it’s a plane! No, it’s Social Media Super-consultant! (wendysoucie.com)
Project Management, Social Media, and Productivity (slideshare.net)
Xeesm 2020 – The fast track to social business (slideshare.net)
Using the Xeesm dispatcher and preparing data | SocialCRM (wendysoucie.com)

Filed Under: Linkedin, Sales 2.0, social crm, Social Media Tools, Tips and Techniques, Xeesm Tagged With: blog, Linkedin, SCRM, Social Media Tools, Social+crm, Xeesm Business Partners, Xeesm Edge

How LinkedIn will fire up your career – Fortune Magazine

April 1, 2010 By Wendy Soucie Leave a Comment

: Image via Wikipedia

(Fortune) –”If you need a job, or just want a better one, here’s a number that will give you hope: 50,000. That’s how many people the giant consulting firm Accenture plans to hire this year. Yes, actual jobs, with pay. It’s looking for telecom consultants, finance experts, software specialists, and many more. You could be one of them — but will Accenture find you? To pick these hires the old-fashioned way, the firm would rely on headhunters, employee referrals, and job boards. But the game has changed. To get the attention of John Campagnino, Accenture’s head of global recruiting, you’d better be on the web. To put a sharper point on it: If you don’t have a profile on LinkedIn, you’re nowhere.”

via How LinkedIn will fire up your career – Mar. 25, 2010.

Wendy’s Note:

I am a little biased to the writer’s point of view in this article as a trainer for Integrated Alliances on LinkedIn and other social media tools. LinkedIn as a business networking site has really gained momentum in the past 6 months. I would guess that it aligns with the increase in unemployed professionals across the country.

I run a couple of groups on LinkedIn, one for Alumni of the University of Rhode Island (my alma mater). In the past 3-4 months I have an average of 20 – 80 people joining my group each week. So while it is true that for your online reputation management and job search you should be on LinkedIn, I would recommend that you be on this — or any other business networking site– with a complete profile that is written with keywords in mind.

First impressions demand a complete social media profile

First impressions are created when anyone looks at your profile. If you are trying to build a solid network, how would it look with no picture, a generic, blase headline, and a one sentence past job and role descriptions? Here’s a few tips for you to get started on cleaning up your LinkedIn profile

Picture – Use a basic headshot picture from any digital camera, no professional help needed.

A clean, white background is best.
Do not use group photos or logo’s. No one will know which one your are.
Upload up to a 4Mb file and the system has a cropping tool. The final picture is quite small – 80 x 80 pixels.

If you would like more advice on how to take a good profile photo consider this post on tips for headshots and photos

Headline – This is the most important section on your profile. On LinkedIn this field defaults to current job title at current employer. When you add or change the headline, it does not change the current job however. Use interesting, compelling, targeted keywords to attract interest. This is critical in attracting people to click through from search listings.

Limited to 140 characters – use wisely.
Search LinkedIn for the job title you are interested and consider who shows in the result page.
Use the Google keyword tool if you don’t know what terms to use that fit your job interests.

Summary – Think of it as a brochure and a business Bio. Begin with how helpful you are to others, make people want to help you in return.

Only include current and relevant information as this is a high-level overview.
This is not an historical area unless the history remains part of the current and future.
Formatting is limited to ALL CAPS, some special keyboard characters (~ > | #) and symbols that can be pulled in from Word (see above).
You get 2,000 characters (about 2/3 of a printed page) to work with.

Specialties – While the Summary section is like a brochure, with complete sentences and fancy formatting, the Specialties section is a place that resembles a list – a list of keywords like in a Search Engine sense.

Create a list of keywords, then look at the variations of these words and then look at synonyms and variants of the synonyms (see below).
You have 500 characters to work with (about 2 paragraphs).

Experience (Work History) – What to include? How far to go back? What to say? The Best Practice is to include every employer since college. This creates more opportunities for you to create relationships with others.

If you had multiple positions at a company, use the highest position held.
Do NOT simply copy/paste in data from a resume.
Use years only, no months needed.
You get lot’s of space, 2,000 characters, so make use of it!

What to say? For each position, state the following:

What does the company do?
Who do they do it for?
Where do they operate?
What was your role?
What made you special there?

You are competing with over 60,000 profiles on LinkedIn so do your utmost to make your profile get found in the crowd by recruiters, customers and vendors.

Do you have questions on how to improve your profile on LinkedIn? Please ask in the comments section, or connect with me on LinkedIn and reference this post. I will provide a free review and recommendation.

Everything You Need to Know About LinkedIn (socialmediaexaminer.com)
How to Use LinkedIn for Business (a Lewis Howes Interview) (socialmediaexaminer.com)
3 Private Social Community Options for B2B Companies (socialmediab2b.com)

Filed Under: In My Opinion, Linkedin Tagged With: Accenture, Employment, interviews, Linkedin, Reputation Management, Social Media, social relationship management

Social Media Breakfast Madison | Do It Yourself Video | February 2010

March 16, 2010 By Wendy Soucie 1 Comment

SMB Madison February Meeting Covers Video

In February and March 2010 Social Media Breakfast Madison is covering Do It Yourself and Professional Video topics. Brandyn Olson of Requisite Video provided the presentation for February and Sandy Kallio provided reporting duties.

First steps

Set goals for your video.
What are you trying to do?
What results do you desire?
Have a call to action.

Other points to consider

Research your audience and have a strategy.
Where is your target audience active online?
What are the problems and issues they are talking about

Choose your tool (s) carefully with resources in mind.

What tools will you use?
Where will the video be hosted or embedded?
How will you get people to view it?
Where is your target market active online and can you reach them through the tools and resources you have?

Test & measure.

How will you know it’s working?
Views can be misleading.

His example: Client’s goal was 10 new members in three months. Video by Requisite Video had 100 views, obviously focused on the right audience because 13 converted memberships to the customer in the first month.

FaceBook page considerations

If you’re on FaceBook have you built an audience so they’re ready and willing to receive your video message?

What do they need to see, hear, feel? Consider your Web page a 24-hour channel. If there’s no video, nothing’s on.

Brandyn Olson talked about Requisite Video’s FaceBook fan page being more active than his Web site. He also shared his strategy to spread content over FaceBook and YouTube vs. pages hidden behind pages on the company Web site.

Making the best of what you have.

At the meeting we had a High Definition and regular Flip video, a camera and tripod on display as examples. In most cases, HD is not crucial. For clients who shoot their own video but want a more professional look, Requisite video will re-edit and post it for them.

Other products to consider are the Kodak Xi8 which has an external mic, or the Sony Bloggie which is HD and allows you to take 5MP stills. The external mic picup is an important feature for interviews.

Viewers expect quality.

If it’s a great story, they’re willing to sit, listen, watch longer. Tips to improve quality:

Stabilize with a tripod, your body, bean bag. Brandyn demonstrated walking, crossing leg over leg facing subject and using both arms for slow panning. Emphasized slow movement to avoid stutter problem.
Follow the rule of thirds and focus on the intersections of those spaces for subject placement. Avoid distractions in the background (such as a plant growing out of your subject’s head).
Frame so just the top of the head shows.Typically, there’s too much room above the subject. Better to get more floor in the image than than ceiling.
Lighting it up. LCD/laptops can make the image darker, so this is essential.
Audio quality – or lack of – is the biggest problem with flip cameras. If you need an option for an external mike, consider the Sony camera.
Avoid noisy coffee shops, find a quieter place such as a conference room, get close to the subject – especially if a soft speaker, and be aware that as the interviewer your voice will be heard well. A small tabletop tripod is important and warned about pointing it up and filming your subject’s nostrils.
Once you take your video, don’t forget to think about how else you could use the content. Make it into a podcast, video-cast, and transcribe for a text-based post.

Video content is not search-able… yet.

Until the technology is greatly improved tagging, meta descriptions and file titles on video are the only way anyone can find your information. Don’t forget this step.

The search engines can see that its a video, but unless you tag and describe the contents, its an unknown. Pay attention to how you tag, and where you post. All of the social sites allow you to tag and add a description which is critical. this is also a good reason to transcribe your video for text-based post. Phonetic searching is coming, but Brandyn sounds less hopeful since he tried “Sauk Prairie Bald Eagles” and got “George Washington Cape.”

Distribution channels: YouTube, Website, blog, FaceBook, paid placement.

Brandyn talked about YouTube as the hosting platform and that he used to be concerned about traffic loss from his site when the video would end and other video options would pop up for viewers.

He created his own YouTube channel and has two categories for his videos posted there: testimonial videos and promotional videos.

It is suggested that paying attention to how you title the videos, using a video interview of Midwest Airlines staff as an example of how one could capitalize on that name.

Brandyn talked about the benefits of posting on YouTube: free to start, optimized – the most active place for video.

Brandyn and others talked about archiving video and labeling drives so can find what he needs later. He keeps a list via Google docs but it’s not searchable by key word. Al Falaschi of Widen ( a Madison-based company specializing in digital asset management) said he uses Final Cut Server asset management as a software tool.

Brandyn showed how his company created four videos for a martial arts business, with the first piece short and very upbeat – and with an embedded play list with the other three. Viewers could watch all four or pick what they wanted to see without scrolling down a page.

When NOT to do it yourself.

When you’re not sure what results you want
When you’re not sure what your message is
When your goals are not achievable with the tools and resources you have
When you’re branding yourself or your company. Consider professional help for this opportunity to make a great first impression.
When your time is worth more than the cost to hire a professional.

Our March Social Media Breakfast Madison on Tuesday, March 30th at Talula Restaurant (802 Atlas Avenue Madison WI), will cover video from the point of view of having others do it for you. Final speakers to be determined.

Please share your video experience and stories in the comments.

The Art of Filming an Interview | Top One Report | In My Opinion (wendysoucie.com)
Using Video for Getting Traffic (thoughtmechanics.com)
YouTube Turns On Captions On Millions Of Videos (huffingtonpost.com)

Filed Under: Linkedin, Social Media Breakfast Madison, Social Media Tools, Video Tagged With: brandyn olson, Business, Facebook for Business, Final Cut Server, Flip Video, interviews, Linkedin, Midwest Airlines, requisite video, Social Media Breakfast Madison, Video, YouTube

Social

Subscribe

Social Media Breakfast Madison – Feed Your Mind and Your Belly

Categories

Latest Tweets

Blogroll

Contributors

Profile Names on Social Media Sites | Tips and Techniques

What’s in a name

Steps to take

Claim your name

Customizing your profile URL

Solving the problem of changing names

Related articles by Zemanta

LinkedIn Updates and changes – Interview on NBC15 with Carleen Wild

Top LinkedIn changes

Related articles by Zemanta

Entering Contacts in my Xeesm Edge | Success with SocialCRM

Patience is a virtue

Something worth doing is worth doing right.

Related articles by Zemanta

How LinkedIn will fire up your career – Fortune Magazine

First impressions demand a complete social media profile

Related articles by Zemanta

Social Media Breakfast Madison | Do It Yourself Video | February 2010

First steps

Choose your tool (s) carefully with resources in mind.

Test & measure.

FaceBook page considerations

Making the best of what you have.

Viewers expect quality.

Video content is not search-able… yet.

Distribution channels: YouTube, Website, blog, FaceBook, paid placement.

Related articles by Zemanta

Social

Subscribe

Social Media Breakfast Madison – Feed Your Mind and Your Belly

Categories

Latest Tweets

Blogroll

Contributors