Getting the most from LinkedIn - July Glasgow New Media Breakfast

    

  

GETTING THE MOST FROM LINKEDIN

How to use LinkedIn effectively for yourself and your business

DATE: 25th July 2014

TIME: 7.30am for 8am

VENUE: 29 Member's Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow


Remarkably, it was July 2012 when we last looked at LinkedIn, and much has changed in the last two years.

In fact, there have been changes in the last two months that may well impact how you use LinkedIn in the future. So, we thought it might be time to take a fresh look at what is perceived to be the business social media platform.

Also, thank you to Bronagh Bell, General Manager at The Beardmore Hotel & Conference Centre for suggesting this as a topic. We welcome all topic suggestions, so let us know if there's anything you would like us to explore in the future.

WHAT WILL WE COVER?
The July New Media Breakfast will take a look at the following:

• Optimising your personal profile and making it really work for you 
• LinkedIn Business pages and optimising them for your services or product 
• LinkedIn Groups and why these are important to you 
• LinkedIn Amalytics 
• Sharing content on LinkedIn 
• Building a relevant community on LinkedIn 

Too many people waste time on social media channels, and in particualry LinkedIn, because they don't fully understand how it works, or how it can work for their business. The session is designed to help you understand the real power of LinkedIn and how it can be a useful platform to engage and to find people relevant to your business.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
This New Media Breakfast is suitable for everyone in the workplace. Whether you're an employee looking to improve your connections and generate leads, a graduate at the start of your career, or a business owner looking to find new business, this breakfast session will have something for you.

If your are using, or thinking of using, LinkedIn you should come along and find out the true potential of the platform and how to make it really work for you.

WHAT SPECIFICALLY WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW?
Every business requires its own tailored social media solution so if you have a specific question relevant to this topic please send it to us. If you would like to ask a question please email gordon@fatbuzz.com and we will be happy to consider it as part of the presentation.

SPEAKER
Gordon White, Managing Director, fatBuzz Ltd will be presenting the July New Media Breakfast presentation.

HOW TO BOOK
Venue: 29 Member's Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow
Date: Friday 25th July 2014
Time: 7.30am for 8am
Cost: £10+vat

BOOK FOR NEW MEDIA BREAKFAST GLASGOW HERE:

No.29 MEMBERS GO FREE 

If you are a 29 Member you can attend the breakfast free of charge. Please email fiona@fatbuzz.com with you membership number and she will add you to the attendance list.

We hope you can make it along to this event. If so, I look forward to seeing you on the day.

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Take the social media wake up challenge...

    

  

We watched with interest last week when Facebook suffered a 20 minute outage. Yes, 20 minutes when some people's world seemed to have ended. How could they keep in touch? What had they missed? How would their friends survive without their updates?

There were many people who quickly jumped on other channels like Twitter to share their thoughts and to find out if Mark Zuckerberg had simply kicked a cable out of the wall in his office, or had the world really come to an end?

Some of the tweets were actually quite amusing.

The Guardian reported, 'Facebook referral to the Guardian fell off a cliff.'  They even shared an analytics report demonstrating the effect of this short outage.  However, they also reported an almost identical spike in referral traffic from Twitter during the same period.

Read The Guardian article here

I think it was a powerful demonstration of how communication has changed forever. It would appear that people weren't happy to just wait for Mark to put the plug back in the wall socket; they quickly moved their activity to Twitter. It possibly also demonstrated to people just how reliant on the tools they have become for their everyday communication.  Some might argue, too reliant.

I'm often asked to speak to social media sceptics and to try to convince them about the importance of social media as a communication tool. This can be in relation to marketing, customer service, recruitment, brand awareness etc. etc. There are many arguments I can, and have, used to encourage these sceptics to think seriously before dismissing social media, but there is one simple challenge I set them that seems to be convincing.

I display the following two slides; the first has the names of some of the major social media channels (displayed in black type), the second has some of the words phrases used in connection with these channels (displayed in pink). I then point out that none of these channels, or the words and phrases existed 15 years ago - many of them are not even 10 years old yet.

The Challenge

I then invite the audience to take a note of how long they manage to go after they awake the following morning before they hear one of these words or phrases. For many, especially morning radio listeners, they'll not even manage to leave their own homes before they've heard at least one of them.

The Point
Social media has woven it way into our lives, it's part of our daily routine, and it's increasingly difficult to ignore it. Many brands are even shifting their Customer Service operations to social media, so even if you don't want to, you may be forced to use these channels to be heard.

Moreover, it can no longer be considered a fad - fads don't last 10+ years.

Social media has changed communication forever, it has altered the way we research information, the way we engage, and how we organise our lives.

Ignoring social media is tantamount to ignoring the telephone at the turn of the last century. And, if Mr. Zuckerberg gets himself a cordless computer, we might get uninterrupted service in the future!

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Facebook's Slingshot might cause problems for those with social media prenups' - Social Media Podcast 65

Play the podcast here:

In Social Media Podcast Edition No.65 the fatBuzz team is back for some chat and light hearted banter around the world of social media.  This time we have Gordon White, Graeme Geddes, Cameron Wilson, and Kenny MacMillan. 

Once again, Meilee Anderson has some useful contributions from America and we are grateful to her for keeping us informed about what's happening in the USA.

This podcast was recorded at the height of the first round matches of the World Cup in Brazil, so we take a look at some of the social media and what some people have being doing to tap into the global popularity of the event.  During the conversation we mention a map showing Twitter activity during the USA vs Ghana match, here is that map, it is quite fascinating to watch.

Read the whole Daily Mail article about the USA's interest in this game, and the World Cup in general, in the Daily Mail Article... Here 

There has been a lot going on since the last podcast and we get through lots of other topics, here's some of the things we discuss in No.65 with the links we promise on the podcast.

• The World Cup - Twitter App - MyPad Paisley - AJ Shoots
• LinkedIn to get a new layout - TechCrunch Article
• Digital Business Conference - Hologram Pop Up Banners 
• Facebook's latest App - Slingshot -  Read Mashable post
• Snapchat's new functions 
• Freedom of Speech, where do we draw the line? - Read The Guardian Article
• Social Media Prenups' - Read Business Insider Article
• Uber - London Cabbies drive traffic to the App! - Read the Evening Standard Article
• The most popular Apps with teens - Read the Venture Beat Article
• Facebook outage - Some of the funny tweets
• Ian Wright's first podcast - Outstanding Finance Podcast
• Carbon Financial Partners Cycle Challenge - Read Carbon's Blog Post
• Soldier On - using online and offline marketing - Soldier On Web Site
• STV Glasgow - A new local television service for Glasgow

During the podcast I also refer to a video whilst talking about people's reaction to Facebook's outage which I promised to add a link to, here it is:

We hope you enjoy the podcast, please also share it with your friends and colleagues, you can do so using the share buttons at the top of bottom of this post.

Play the podcast here:

Subscribe/Download Social Media Podcast on iTunes

Would you like a presentation on social media and customer service?
We're offering a range of bespoke or generic presentations on the topic of social media and customer service, if you would like to find out more please go to the following link: Are you prepared to lose control?

Have you listened to the digital copyright podcast?

We continue to see people using images, video content and other files taken from the internet without consideration to potential copyright issues. We would encourage all of our listeners to download Social Media Podcast 50 which clearly outlines what you should and shouldn't do with images sourced online. Find it on iTunes now.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE US TO TALK ABOUT?
If there is a specific topic you would like us to cover in a future podcast please let us know. You can email gordon@fatbuzz.com or send us a message on Twitter @MediaPodcast or, you can post it as a comment on the Social Media Podcast Facebook page.

If you have found this post interesting please share it with your on-line community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.