Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, is planning to go public very soon. The company apparently will file an IPO any time soon and it might be valued between $20 billion and $25 billion. This matters to those in the marketing field, as SnapChat is being increasingly viewed as an important social marketing tool. #social #corporate
After LinkedIn went public, its importance as a social networking platform for professionals has crystallized to the point of it becoming mandatory for whoever wants to grow in life. LinkedIn provides a great platform for professionals and businesses to interact with each other, network, and engage in useful conversations that might lead to hiring or a business contract signed. Back in 2014, there were more than 300 million members. Now, the figure has rose to 467 million. With LinkedIn serving as the only platform for professionals to interact, it is certainly the right place to look for opportunities to boost your business. For this, LinkedIn makes things even simpler. It offers LinkedIn Groups, a great way to share your knowledge and prove that you are a thought leader in your area. A LinkedIn Group can be categorized under any industry you want, and it fetches people who are looking for communities where they can learn, share and discuss. A LinkedIn Group can be described as an active platform where knowledge is shared, and relationships are built. In this article, let us take a look at how LinkedIn Groups boost your business. Spruce up your profile One of the first things you must do in order to get business is to spruce up your profile. Most of the profiles on LinkedIn are still carrying information from years ago, and they have not been updated. Profiles are also not written in a way that they can optimize your information. Hire a professional writer and get your profile rewritten and spruced up. This is worth paying money for because this is the most important section on LinkedIn. Once you spruce up your profile, get people to write testimonials for you which are focused on your business. This will help you to land some new contracts. Communicate with your network Do not make the mistake of keeping quiet on LinkedIn. If you are like a regular LinkedIn user, you will certainly have at least 500 people in your network. Contact every single one of them and make a list of people who might be useful. Ensure that you invite all of these people to your own LinkedIn Group, about which we shall discuss below. Asking people in your connections to visit your group will help you to boost credibility and visibility. It takes a while for you to meet that sweet spot between getting people on your network and getting unknown people to join your group. Though it takes time, it is better to start with your own connections first. Create a group You can create your own LinkedIn Group. All you need to do is choose the category where your group should be listed, choose a topic, fill out some profile details and then begin sharing useful information and engaging people in discussions. Use the group to provide useful information and ask people to join if you think the discussions will help them. By creating a group, you also tend to increase your visibility. Not only for yourself, but also for your company. This helps to boost sales and leads begin to come through. Become a thought leader Once you create a group, the next step is to start sharing information that is related to your niche. Help others to solve their problems, direct them to resources and tell them what to do if they ask you for solutions. All this will crystallize your position as a thought leader or expert. Do not beat around the bush or talk about things that are irrelevant to your experience. Be honest and share from your personal and professional experience, so that it helps people to make the right choices. Involve your employees Once you establish yourself as a thought leader, and once your group is popular enough, ask your own employees to start sharing information and engaging in discussions. This brings a more human and public face to your company, which is always important if you want business. Involving employees is a great idea, because they tend to have their own connections too, who will probably join the group your employees are commenting in. This way, you can enhance traffic not only to the group, but to your own website, which certainly will lead to more conversions. Join other groups Once your own group is doing well, begin to join other similar groups too. This will help you to interact with even more people and get them to join your group. Most importantly, do not go to other groups and spam them continuously with comments in order to gain visibility. Instead, respond to queries that match with your experience, and when there is conversation happening, you can invite the other person to join your own group./ This way, you will not annoy people and you will still be able to get quality leads from others groups. Last but not the least, you will learn a lot from conversations in other groups. Take home thoughts As we can see, LinkedIn is a great place to network with other professionals. Networking on LinkedIn may lead to possible job or business opportunities. Make sure that your personal profile is up to date and communicate with your network regularly and create a group based on your expertise. Ensure that you post regularly in the group and help others. LinkedIn is a wonderful platform that can be used by professionals and businesses alike. LinkedIn Groups help to boost your identity as a thought leader and that indirectly boosts your business.
LinkedIn’s troubles in Russia seem to be getting deeper. A Russian court ruled that LinkedIn broke a law that states that personal data of Russian citizens should be stored only on servers located in Russia. However, LinkedIn is allowed to appeal this ruling. #social
Instagram Stories seems to be getting bigger with each update. This time around, the photo-sharing app will enable mentioned, links and ‘boomerang’ in Stories. Boomerang lets you publish one-second videos on Stories. #social
A couple of weeks ago, it was reported that Facebook runs ads that excludes certain races. Now, the social giant will no longer allow advertisers to exclude specific racial groups while placing ads related to housing, employment and credit. #social #marketing
Facebook is planning to introduce mass sponsored messages on its Messenger app. Messenger bots have proved to be popular among businesses and these bots are likely to drive conversations and conversions on the Messenger app. If customers will recieve it well is another story to speculate. #ai #marketing #social
There is a lot of content out there, that simply is not relevant to people. One of the reasons for this is that content is time dependent. Some kinds of content fare better when they are as close to the real thing as possible. For example, we would not want to watch re-runs of football matches. Instead, we would like to watch them live. Similarly, we would not want to watch an interview much late. If our favorite celebrity is online, we would like to watch it as it is happening. If you have a company or a brand, and you would like to reach your Facebook followers in a more intimate and immediate manner, Facebook Live may be the best answer. Facebook Live brings video live streaming to your followers, with the help of which you can stream videos live. Each time you stream a video, your audience will be sent notifications. This helps you to connect with them on a real time basis. Certainly, you would not want to keep posting same text messages and miss out on live streaming advantages. Facebook Live may be great for you if you already have a large audience. In this article, let us take a look at the features of Facebook Live and then discuss for whom it is a good option. What is Facebook Live? What Are Its Features? Facebook Live helps you to broadcast live to a large audience, across the world. All you need is a cellphone with a camera, and a cellular or Wi-Fi network. Facebook Live helps you to have engaging conversations with your followers. You can answer their questions, interact with them face to face, and then you can monitor live reactions. Live reactions help you to know what they are thinking and what you should be doing. It is a well known fact that people love watching videos. Facebook Live is a great place for people to watch videos they like. All your current followers will receive the videos in their news feed. Newer followers can be discovered too, when you livestream an event or a video. The best feature of Facebook Live is that you will be able to connect immediately. You can instantly talk to people who care about your brand and you can soak in their feedback, without wasting any time. Facebook Live is one of the best options to narrate your story. And you can do this the way you want. Facebook Live offers great filters that can be used to create special effects in your video live streaming. With all these great features, Facebook Live is certainly a force to reckon with. However, is it really for you? In this section, let us take a look at whether Facebook Live is for you or not. Do you have a social presence? The first question you need to ask yourself is, if you have a social presence. If you do not have a Facebook page set up, or any social followers, it may not be the right time to go ahead and spend time on Facebook Live. The first thing you should be doing is to set up your brand’s Facebook page with the help of which you can build an audience. First, concentrate on setting up your Facebook Page. Once you are done with that, you can start looking at building a good follower base. Do you already have a lot of followers? If you do not have a lot of followers, Facebook Live may not help you a lot. Facebook Live is an intimate video live streaming service that helps you to connect with your audience better. Of course, it can help you find new followers, but you first need a good Facebook presence in order to find newer followers. So, it is a good idea to focus on building your page, interacting with your audience, blogging regularly, and basically, engaging in social media campaigns that will help you gain followers traditionally. What do you plan to achieve through Facebook Live? You need to know what you plan to achieve with Facebook Live. It is a live streaming service that works the best when you have something to show, say or tell. For example, you can live stream an event such as a product launch, or you can talk to your audience directly. This means, you can engage with them at a personal level and this helps you to connect with them personally. You may also set up Q & A sessions to help answer questions and get to know what is in people’s minds. Take home message Facebook Live is a great video live streaming service that works well when one already has enough followers. It comes with a number of useful features that helps you to retain and gain new followers. You can use Facebook Live to answer people’s questions, use live reactions to understand their thought process, and also ensure that your videos reach new followers. You can easily connect with your audience and narrate your story the way you want to say it. However, you need to make sure that Facebook Live is really for you. It works well for those who already have a social media strategy in place. It also works well when one has a lot of followers or when they know what they want to achieve through Facebook Live. If this is not the case, then you might want to start with a social media strategy instead, working through social profiles and then getting into niche services such as Facebook Live. At the end of the day, all social platforms come with their own features that make it easy for you to reach your target audience. However, you need to know what you are looking for and how you plan to do it. With a proper plan in place, you can make use of Facebook Live and other many interesting features that Facebook and other social platforms provide.
The struggling social media giant is considering selling off Vine in a desperate attempt to cut down operational costs. The anticipated sale though hopes to bring partial respite to Twitter; bidders have an upper hand over the deal knowing Twitter’s financial woes are far from over and its frantic plans to shut down Vine last month. If the deal does go through, Vine lovers will surely drink to it. #social
Instagram will introduce product tags to allow customers to shop within the app. Tags take the customer to a different product page with more information and a shop now link connecting them to the seller’s storefront. Instagram has merely been an exposure platform for brands; with sale window open, marketers have a compelling reason to embrace it. #social
New update to Atlassian’s HipChat comes with Amazon Alexa support. Users can simply start a conversation by speaking to Amazon Echo device. Alexa can respond on your behalf, notify you when new messages are posted and show summaries of chat. Beyond messaging capabilities, HipChat allows developers to build third-party extensions. With Alexa support, you can command Echo the way you want. #social
