LinkedIn was actually launched back in 2003, but had a slow following until the recent popularity of social media sites for business.  With more than 46 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is most frequently used as a way of networking with business colleagues and potential employers and employees.  In the past it was considered bad form to use social sites such as MySpace or Facebook for business purposes.  I’d say there’s been a shift there, wouldn’t you agree?  If you have yet to be so bold: Go here to add your LinkedIn profile (or, if you prefer, your resume) to your Facebook page: http://apps.facebook.com/my-resume.

The main idea of LinkedIn is/was to connect business professionals with other business pros that they trust, have worked with or know personally. These connections are carefully maintained by the site to avoid spammers and friend gatherers by asking questions before making a connection with another person. It also helps connect your “6 degrees of separation” by joining groups of other like-minded professionals that you can network with.

LinkedIn for Business

But what about LinkedIn’s use for businesses?  Well, the big dogs have been on board for awhile now.  More than 40% of Fortune 100 companies pay to use the site to find talent among its 46 million members.  But it’s not just about finding talent, although let’s not ignore that completely.  Did you know that you have the opportunity to showcase your business on LinkedIn as well?  Yep, it’s true. The 46 million and growing members of this network can read all about you, your company, and the potentially mindblowing things that you can do for them, their business, their friend’s business…you get the point.  Go here to get started: and Select “Add a Company”.   Or you can go look at ours, here.  You can also pay for premium profiles and those are custom quotes apparently.

There are a lot of ways to use LinkedIn for business and, for the sake of brevity and not reinventing the wheel, here’s a fantastic article by Meryl Evan of Webworkerdaily called: 33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business.

Growth & Innovation - Look Out:

There is a “buzz” growing around LinkedIn.  I’m actually writing this because clients keep asking about it and figured it was time I looked into it a little deeper.  Speaking of “buzz”, this is cool:  LinkedIn has what called a Company Buzz application, which allows members to track what is said about a company on Twitter. The application is a filter for Twitter conversations based on search terms and can be customized by members, allowing them to see who is talking about a specific company and products.  The application shows Tweets, trends and top keywords.  Very nice way to track and consolidate what is being said about your biz.

As for growth, these number are just out today:  In Europe the network  just crossed the 11 million members barrier, which cements it’s position as the preferred professional online network in Europe and the rest of the world. Globally, a new professional signs up for LinkedIn every second. LinkedIn currently gets a million new members every two weeks. LinkedIn is a global network, operating in 200 countries and across 170 industries. The’’ve launched local language sites in France, Germany and Spain and there are more in the pipeline.

 

You may want to think about checking it out.

Anyway, the one’s I have made recently have not been malled by the YouTube police yet, but I also post on Vimeo just to be safe.  Here’s a video from a Consulting Challenge Conference that I attended in Las Vegas this past weekend.  Special thanks once again to Maria Gudelis with Wildhorse Performance Marketing and to all of the wonderful people that I’ve connected with over the past month.  What a group!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyway, in my “delving”, I ran across this video about Facebook Datacenters that is just so awesome that I had to share it.  I’ve actually watched it many times and I don’t generally do that.  Here are a few stats that are well over 6 months old so feel free to multiply them by some obscene number to get the current rates:

The company’s data centers store more than 40 billion photos, and users upload 40 million new photos each day – about 2,000 photos every second. Not surprisingly, the racks are packed. The facility is using a raised-floor design, with no containment but generous spacing between racks.  Facebook appears to be spending $20 million to $25 million a year for the data center space that houses its servers, according to an analysis of the company’s data center infrastructure.  Here’s the very cool video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Major Corporations are Facebook believers
Many leading corporations have already committed to utilizing Facebook as a sound advertising platform, including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Co., Saturn, Sony Pictures, The New York Times Co. and Verizon. Why are these companies so energised to jump on board with Facebook? .

Because Facebook is providing the most targeted – and therefore one of the most mighty – advertising platforms that has ever been created. Envision being able to display your company’s ads to solely the consumers within your target market. Due to the sum of information Facebook gathers from users, ads can be presented to a specific type of user based on sex, age, education, relationship status, keywords that appear in their profile, or even political views. It’s the promise of genuine one-to-one marketing.

Facebook Beacon: Advertising at the Mighty Referral Level
Another new Facebook tool called Beacon alerts others as to what their friends have been buying on-line. When two Facebook users “friend” each other, each user can experience the other’s profile with their pictures, videos or anything else that is included. members are alerted to all of their friends’ actions on Facebook through what are known as news feeds.

These news feeds are based on the actions that the user and their friends make on Facebook. Many Facebook members have hundreds of designated friends, meaning these stories can be seen by a large number of people in some instances. .

Facebook Beacon takes these news alerts to a whole new level, because now users can be aware of their friends’ activities not just on Facebook, but across the entire web.

By inserting a few lines of computer code on a site, a business can release Facebook users’ interactions with their website onto Facebook news feeds. Beacon allows businesses to publish actions including if a Facebook member buys a product, signs up for a service, adds an item to a wish list and much more. Once the member performs the action, they are alerted that your business’s website is posting a story to their Facebook profile and that they have a chance to not allow the story to be sent. If they do not opt out, then no additional member action is necessary to release the story on their profile. For example, if someone buys a movie from Blockbuster online, then it is placed in their news feed and in their friends’ news feeds; along with the story is a picture of the friend who purchased the movie and an ad for Blockbuster. This is advertising at the powerful referral level. .

As Zuckerberg said later in his speech, “People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.” .

Facebook Pages: Interact with your Customers in Surroundings they Trust
Facebook even has built a means for companies to create a presence on their site for free. Facebook Pages can help businesses shape your brand online.

Companies merely go on to Facebook and create a profile. Facebook Pages permits businesses to interact with their clients in a familiar, trusted environment. When the page is created, one of the goals of a company on Facebook is to acquire “fans” of their service or products. This is very similar to two individual members becoming “friends” on Facebook, except that a business cannot view a members’ profile. Businesses can increase their chances of winning fans by making certain that their Facebook page is constantly updated with fresh content and new applications to occupy and hold the users of Facebook. .

Once a member becomes a fan of a business’s Facebook Page, the fan can be kept in nonstop contact with the business through Facebook. If a business launches a new product or service, they can send a message through their Facebook Page to all the fans of the website. Companies can exhibit special offers or promotions as often as they want. Whenever a fan interacts with the page, their activities are automatically rendered into social stories that are again publicized to the news feeds. Next to the story in the news feed is a link to the business’s Facebook Page. Again, your business has been promoted virally with a personal referral from a friend.

To typical members, Facebook may seem a stand-alone Website — a vehicle for masses to renew and revitalize personal relationships, to put up comments and photos and perhaps play games. But more than 10,000 Web sites now acknowledge a new service called Facebook Connect, which enables members to use their Facebook ID and password to move fluidly among websites where registration is necessary.

The service also lends new social functions to those other sites. For instance, a person who puts up a video on YouTube can also share it via Facebook with a single click. And Facebook has global reach, having been translated into 50 languages, with 40 more in development, the company says.  Each new Facebook member, every “friend” tallied, every business that starts a page, every Web entity that recognizes Facebook Connect — all lend to the critical mass behind Facebook’s momentum.  From a business view, the associations raise the value of what Facebook calls the “social graph” — its ever-expanding map of human relationships — even while doubters inquire about its ability to transform its popularity into profit.

How important is Facebook?  If Google combusted the so-called Web 2.0 business era, Facebook may be ushering in Web 3.0.

Facebook has moved from a way for college kids to share pictures and stories into what will likely become one of the most potent advertising platforms on tap. Be among the first companies in your field to leverage this powerful new advertising platform. Get started in Facebook by contacting Rapid Response Marketing or visiting our Facebook page.
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Facebook

Facebook has already become one of the most popular social networking websites in the world, with some 50 million users today – and that figure doubles every six months. A broad and rising share of Facebook members are over the age of 23.   Even as it has grown to more than 200 million users and become the global leader in social-networking Web sites, some view it as simply a nifty way for people to share info and images among scattered friends and acquaintances.  But admirers say Mark Zuckerberg’s five-year-old startup is poised to satisfy hype as the next big thing — that it will power online social interaction the way Google drives online search. Facebook is aggressively moving beyond the home page to pursue its charge to become a “social utility” that helps people “connect and share.”  Facebook is perpetually evolving and improving its members’ experience with new features and applications. Whether or not you completely understand social media or social networking sites, the one aspect you must realize is that they are going to alter the way businesses advertise.

Advertising: From Mass Media to Personal Connections
Facebook is trying to change the way businesses market and advertise their products and services to potential consumers. Google Adwords revolutionized the way businesses market on the Internet by selling advertisements in a live auction style and by publishing the advertisements to people who are looking for pertinent information, answers and products. Facebook intends to improve on this and present even more targeted ads to users of their social network. At last year’s launch of Facebook’s new advertising platform, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, laid out his vision for the future of advertising. According to Zuckerberg:

Once every hundred years media changes. The last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won’t be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections. 

There’s too much information here for 1 post so i’ve split this in two.  Next time, I’ll get into how Major Corporations and small businesses are using Facebook and some tools available that you may not be aware of.