LinkedIn Launches Sponsored Updates

In a move to monetize its service, LinkedIn has launched sponsored updates, which are, essentially, the site’s version of a Facebook promoted post. Like promoted posts, LinkedIn company page administrators can pay to have their sponsored updates appear on the homepage feeds of relevant users who do not follow their company already.

Sponsored Updates can appear on desktop, smartphone and tablet devices. They are clearly marked ‘Sponsored’ at the top, the main content is as it would be on a normal post and the normal calls to action – Like, Comment and Share – are joined by a ‘Follow’ button, enabling users to follow the company which posted the content.

David Hahn, Vice President of LinkedIn’s Product Management, announced the new feature in a blog post yesterday, also taking the opportunity to reveal some impressive LinkedIn membership statistics: the social media site for professionals now has over 225 million members, 3 million company pages and 300 notable figures contributing to the Influencer programme.

Hahn believes that the 1.5 publishers whose content is featured on the site will greatly benefit from the new feature, as will the members who post it. Members can target professionals based on the information they have on their profiles, promoting sponsored updates in 20 different languages across the 200 countries where LinkedIn is active.

Marketers are increasingly leveraging content to inform, educate, and inspire their current and prospective customers. But the high quality content they’ve produced – slideshows, articles, videos, and whitepapers – does not always achieve enough reach and engagement on their own channels. With Sponsored Updates, marketers will be able to distribute this content directly to relevant professionals in a place their customers and prospects are already consuming professionally relevant content. Marketers can target Sponsored Updates to any segment of our premium audience based on professional profile data. 

Users can choose to pay by click or by impression, and then they can monitor their sponsored updates using LinkedIn’s analytics software. In the announcement post, Hahn gives a few examples of companies which have successfully used sponsored updates already: Telstra managed to increase the rate at which they gained new followers by 12%, while HubSpot generated “400% more leads coming from their target audience compared to other paid channels”.

The sponsored updates feature is currently only available to customers with an account representative, but it will become available to all companies in the next month.

What do you think of LinkedIn sponsored updates?

9 Web Marketing Tips To Help Your Small Business

Web marketing is one arena where small businesses can compete against larger companies within the same field. While the size of a budget does influence the amount of money that can be directed towards marketing costs, on the Internet, every company performs on the same stage. With these web marketing tips, you can help your small business thrive and succeed.

1. Build Out Your Brand
Establishing a recognizable brand image is critical to the growth of your company. Part of a building a brand is associating the name and image of your company with quality in the minds of your customers. When people see a brand image they know, they are reminded of the reasons they trust the company, and they may feel compelled to choose your products or services over those of your competitors. To begin building your brand, place your logo on company social networking pages and use the image in all of your marketing materials online.

2. Make the Most of Your Marketing Budget
To compete against larger companies who may have a marketing budget that is exponentially larger than your own, choose your marketing avenues wisely. For example, paid search campaigns are one arena that can be easily won by throwing large amounts of cash at keywords. Instead, your money may be better spent on other strategies that stretch the value of your marketing dollars, such as content marketing or natural search engine optimization improvements. You can also use social networking sites directly to speak to customers instead of paying to advertise on them.

3. Stay Ahead of Search Engine Updates
When a search engine updates the way it returns search results for keywords, businesses everywhere can experience massive losses or impressive gains in rankings. For buying-orientated keywords in popular niches, this can substantially change the amount of a traffic directed to a site from search results. To avoid being on the losing end when Google releases an update, keep the content on your site fresh and interesting. Update your pages frequently, and optimize each page according to best practice standards. Quality content never goes out of style, and search engines will reward you for making it enjoyable for visitors to read your site.

4. Engage Your Customers
Social networking sites offer your company the opportunity to interact with your customers in ways that were not possible a decade ago. Customers with problems can contact you directly on Twitter, giving you the chance to positively resolve their issue in a very public way. You can use Twitter and Facebook to open up a dialogue with your customers to find out what they want from your company and get feedback on the services you offer. When your company releases new products or has news to share, you can post the updates on social networking sites. Customers that find the information useful may share it with others, and you can use this to your advantage by announcing sales and deals to people willing to connect with your company on social sites.

5. Combine Strategies
To succeed with web marketing, you need to use more than one strategy. A killer web page is great to inform customers about the services you offer, but without marketing they will never find your page to know about your company in the first place. You need to combine social, search and content strategies to reach your customers in every way possible. Additionally, within each marketing area there are more approaches to take.

6. Include Testimonials
Potential customers that read glowing testimonials of your company are likely to be interested in learning more about what you provide. Testimonials are powerful, and you can feature them on your site by linking to review sites such as Yelp, or you can ask your customers who give you feedback if they are willing to allow you to display their comment on your site. Google reviews are also important to building trust in your company. It is a good idea to stay aware of the reviews your company has received, so you can make improvements and learn what is working for you and what needs to be changed.

7. Update Old Content
Today, visitors to your website will arrive expecting to learn something from you in addition to finding out more about contacting your company or the services you offer. You can give them a reason to work with you by refreshing your existing content. You can create videos to feature on your site, and you can integrate content that is likely to be shared on social networking sites. Adding useful content helps build your brand image as well. When you provide potential customers with tips or tricks that are relevant to what they knew they needed when they searched for your site, you begin building a trusting relationship with people that may ultimately convince them to give you a call to find out more about your services or products.

8. Test New Site Features
The changes you make to your site by incorporating new web marketing strategies should be tested for viability. Customers become used to the way a site operates, and changes often cause a temporary dip in sales as people learn to interact with your site in a new way. To minimize the impact of changes on your company, test each feature as you roll it out. User interface changes can lead customers towards the areas of your site you want them to see, and you can try out the placement of calls to action within your content pages to discover any changes that should be made.

9. Try Different Approaches
As the web marketing industry grows, new and innovative techniques are being developed to help you expand your business. Even if the tried and true methods are working well for your company at the moment, you can stay one step ahead with a willingness to try out new ideas and take different approaches to the same problems. If you are unsure of where to go next with your web marketing strategy, consult an Internet marketing company. The industry is old enough at this point that many companies are highly specialized in a specific area, so you can benefit by finding out the different approaches taken.
What other tips would you give when it comes to helping your business gain more exposure through web marketing?

image: small business/shutterstock

Google Powers Up The +1

Google has increased the significance of the ‘+1’ button on Google+, changing its function so that more +1’d posts feature in the Google+ stream.

Before, a +1 would only inform the content’s publisher which users appreciated what they had posted, consequentially appearing in these users’ streams. If a user wanted to draw a friend’s attention to a particular post, they had to share it with them.

Users were only notified about a friend’s +1 via an ‘activity update’, which would provide them with the most basic details of a post. Now, if a user +1s a post, it might appear in the Google+ streams of other users in their circles.

The changes to the +1 make it even more similar to the Facebook ‘Like’, a tool which can help posts get ranked in the news feeds of a user’s friends. however, Google has not released information concerning how a +1, or a share for that matter, will affect a posts chance of appearing in a friend’s stream. In the announcement post, Google’s Shimrit Ben-Yair says that Google+ will “occasionally highlight posts that were +1'd by people in [a user’s] circles”, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is very vague, giving no indication which +1’d posts will be highlighted and why. In fact, the wording almost suggests that the process will be entirely random.

I’m not suggesting that Google be completely transparent about their post ranking software (that would be ridiculous), or even that they release an EdgeRank-like algorithm onto the web, but it would be useful to know how much both +1s and shares are taken into account, and if they are taken into account together. For example, will a friend’s article shared publicly have more significance than an article they have +1’d, or vice versa? The only way to find out, I suppose, is to experiment.

Despite Google’s secretiveness, the new and improved +1 button will undoubtedly help users get their articles and posts more views on Google+. The more streams a post appears in, the more likely it is to be seen and clicked on, gaining the user who posted it a wider audience.

Users can still control who sees the posts they +1 by changing their account settings, but if they decide not to, only their friends who have permission to see their +1’d posts will see them, just in a new place. Users can also filter the +1’d posts they see in their stream, so if a friend or a circle are a bit scattergun with their +1s they can alter their settings so any content said friends do +1 doesn’t appear in their stream – learn more about how to do this here.

What do you think of the new +1 button?