How Often? When? And How Many?

There are all kinds of statistics around about when to post where and with what frequency in order to reach as many people as possible.  Over the course of the summer, I conducted a survey among my LinkedIn contacts, Twitter followers and Facebook friends to understand their social media behaviour.  Here are the results.

Twitter

Check Frequency: 45% check Twitter mulitple times per day.  Add another 17% that checks it daily.

Check Peak:  The prime moments for checking Twitter seems to be during and after work hours (over 70% for both categories).  The morning seems to show the lowest activity and so do breaks.

Post Frequency: There is a wide spread which is linked to the large number of lurkers on Twitter.  However, it seems that 43% tweet 1-3/week,.  27% do it between 1 and 3 times per day.  Less than 10% tweet more than 5 times per day.

LinkedIn

Check Frequency: The use of LinkedIn for more than HR purposes is driving up the frequency with which people check LinkedIn.  With over 35% checking multiple times/day and 29% daily we give LinkedIn a thumbs up. Amazingly enough 2% never visits their profile while the rest checks it once a month.

Check Peak: As can be expected with a “professional” networking platform, most people access it during the work day.  An amazing 80% do it during work hours.  Breaks, mornings and evenigs do not seem to be  so popular.  It si considered work.

Post Frequency: From experience I know people do not do many Status Updates on LinkedIn.  The survey confirmed this again with 27% never posting and 33% only once a month.  Less than 11% post daily on LinkedIn.

Facebook

Check Frequency: As expected over 65% check their Facebook multiple times per day.  Adding the 17% of daily checkers and we can conclude we are addicted to Facebook!

Check Peak: Here too, not many surprises except the fact that before breakfast does not do so well.  The highest peak lies in the evening after work.

Post Frequency: Since facebook has the highest degree of “lurkers” it is not surprising that weekly (42%) and daily (31%) post are the dominant numbers here.

Google what?

Yet again, Google+ demonstrates its ability to stay under the radar.  Even though there are so many accounts (gmail users, android users, picasa users, youtube user, etc.) few people are even aware they have a G+ account.  More that 60% never visit the account with another 10% that don’t even know they have such an account.

Conclusion

Though this research did not reveal anything dramatic, it confirms that LinkedIn is the professional tool of choice and tolerated in the workplace; Facebook the lurking tool into our realm of friends and brands; Twitter the platform no one really knows what to think of; and Google+ that special place in the desert!

How does your social media behaviour fit in with these results?

Here is the graphic representation of these survey results.

What is your Twitter clockspeed?

Salespeople are embracing social selling.  There are a lot of benefits to adding social to your traditional sales process which has been covered in many different articles.  These articles cover things such as researching your clients, content curation, relationship building and even lead generation.

After doing some research of where your target audience is , creating social (selling) profiles is easy.  Especially with all the good advice, tips and tricks you can find on the internet.  But then the next dilemma’s  arrive on the scene: what content to post where, how many posts and how much time will this take?

Of course, there is no unique and one answer to these questions.  There are some articles out there that say you will be spending 20 – 60 minutes per day, but is that realistic?  Looking at the forerunners of social selling might give us some more insight.  Where better to look for inspiration on the above questions than to the list with the Top 30 Social Salespeople.  Today, I will focus on what they do on Twitter.

Quantity

There are many posts about how many times you should tweet per day.  One thing that seems to jump out is that the quantity seems to be going up.  In the past it was once a day but today the number is likely going up to 3 to 8 tweets a day.  This includes of course your tweets, retweets and replies to others.

But how many are our experts averaging?  A quick analysis gives us a range between 4 and 36 tweets per DAY!  The average being 17.  One of the reasons why this number could high is because these experts are taking part in twitter chats and are much solicited by their “fans” but that could also be considered as social selling.

Digging a little deeper, it seems they are tweeting every day of the week with Saturday and Sunday at a 1/3 or less of the weekday volume.  And most tweet around the clock with a real dip around 2-5 AM.  I assume this has to do with their worldwide audience and their use of scheduling tools.

And then there is the lifespan of a tweet.  After some digging I found that this varies between 10 and 18 minutes.

Conclusion: There is, of course, no exact number but it seems that you need to tweet 10+ times/day or otherwise said “once every hour” during the workday. And possibly 3 times/day during the weekend.

Content Structure

There is no such thing as a perfect tweet, but common knowledge has it that every tweet should have a good text with a call to action, a link to more content and one or more hashtags.  To make the tweet complete, you might add a twitter handle as part of a reply or general mention.

Unfortunately, most tweets do not adhere to this scheme.  Our experts manage include a link to more content in about 15% to 90% of their tweets. The average being one tweet out of two having a link.  When it comes to the use of hashtags, we see a similar behavior.  The experts average between 0 and 4 hashtags per tweet.

Conclusion: Every tweet you send out should have at least one or possibly 2 hashtags.

Time investment

So how much time do you spend tweeting?  The 2 above topics can give us some indication on how much time you will be spending per day.  Since there is no real science to this, here are some of my thoughts

• Tweet 12-15 x day
• Every other tweet has a link to additional content and a good hashtag.
• Average time to create and send out a tweet: 1 minute (and yes this can vary) but keep in mind that some thought needs to go into the text, call to action and hashtag(s) to use.
• If you include a link in your tweet or you retweet a tweet with a link, you need make sure you have read the content of the link which I will count as 1 minute per link. Since half the tweets contain links this will consume some time.

Conclusion: Taking the above bullet points into account, you will spend 20 minutes or more per day on your outgoing tweets.

And there is more

Of course, sending out tweets (like sending out email content) is only the beginning of the integration of social into your sales process.  You will be investing time into listening, content reading /curation and actual relationship building.  More to follow in future posts.

So how much time do you think you invest into your social selling routine?

Are you into Twitterstorms and Tweetchats?

We all know that Twitter was conceived to exchange information in short message format.  But it has evolved to much more.  There are Tweetstorms, Tweetchats, Twitterwalls, etc., which are creating a lot of commotion about the usage of Twitter.  People are getting disenchanted with the users of these practices but are they really all that bad?  Maybe not? And what strategy should follow to counter these negative comments?

Twitterstorms

A Twitter storm is stretching  the Twitter term Microblog to become a real (full) Blog.  Twitter was certainly not build for this with its 140 character limit.  However,  some people are splitting up their text  and start splitting their story into separate messages.  Each item is numbered so that the reader can follow the thread.  Of course, your followers are getting a lot messages in a very limited timeframe thus polluting their Twitterstreams.  However, with so many people on Twitter, it is great way to spread your story.  Will this change how people are using Twitter?  Maybe not…  Who knows you might even some extra followers, though  unlikely.

The biggest danger is that due to fast pace of tweeting, many of your followers might get disenchanted and start unfollowing you.

My thoughts: Personally, I think you have more to lose than to win by creating such as storm. If you have a (long) story to tell, I think you should be using a real blog and use Twitter to direct traffic to your blog.

Tweetchat

A Tweetchat is live moderated Twitter event around a certain topic using a specific hashtag.  Tweetchats are planned events which are announced on Twitter and on websites.  Typically, there are 5 to 6 questions put forward that will be asked during the course of 1 hour.  To participate, all you need to do is tweet during the set times using the designated hashtag. Of course like with a webinar, It’s also possible to just follow the conversation by searching the hashtag without engaging.

One thing you have to remember, is that during a Tweetchat in which you actively participate, you will also create a large number of tweets thus also polluting the streams of your followers.  Again this might lead to people unfollowing you.  However, if they pick up on the hashtag and discover the great conversation, it could be considered as a good thing.

My thoughts: I have recently joined a number these Tweetchat sessions and it has brought me 3 pieces of value:

• Information gathering – much like a webinar you get and can absorb knowledge about a certain topic. People share freely and publicly information.  A great place for learning!
• Contribute, Collaborate and Engage – Twitterchats provide the ideal platform to exchange ideas, provide content, add value and bounce ideas off eachother, ask questions, etc. in a specific (public) spotlight.
• Get more relevant followers – everyone on the chat can relate to the topic.  So by sharing relevant and valuable information with other members on the chat, you can easily discover new interesting people and increase your twitter followers.

Conclusion and recommendation:

I think you need to think carefully about starting a Twitterstorm or Tweetchat from your personal account.  There will big spikes in you twitter activity and we all know that your followers are not waiting for this.  Maybe the solution could be that you create a clearly defined account for these types of twitter activities whereby you make sure there is a good connection with your personal account.  This way you can participate fully and not disenchant your followers.

Finally, I want to end this post with 3 questions:

1. What do you think about Tweetchats and storms? And my suggested approach?
2. What interesting Tweetchats do know and do you participate in?  My favorites are: #s4lchat, #HSENTchat #contentmarketing and #HRchatBE (unfortunately stopped in march)
3. Are you hosting Tweetchats with your target audience (clients, partners, etc.)

I love to hear your reaction!

The 10-60-30 Rule of Social Selling

If Social Selling is all about Connecting, Listening and Content Sharing, then getting started on Social Media can be a daunting task. Have you ever wondered which tools you could/should be using? And more importantly, how much time you need to spend on it. Here is my take (and experience) on it.

Connecting
Social Networking platforms are made for connecting. Here you will find the obvious candidates such as LinkedIn and Twitter. However, Xing and Viadeo might be good alternatives in the German and French speaking markets. Not everyone is on LinkedIn. In a B2B situation, Facebook seems the last option social sellers jump on. But since so many people have a profile here, it might make sense to link here too but you need a clear strategy on what and how to share. The inevitable discussion between personal and professional lives.

Finding and connecting new prospects and clients are here clearly the marching orders. Nothing new so far. Make discovering new contacts part of your daily routine.

Listening
Here it becomes a little more complicated and time consuming. There are at least 2 reasons for monitoring: understanding what your contacts are saying/doing/interested in and finding interesting content to share in the content sharing stage.

Listening to what your contacts are saying can be done through Hootsuite and LinkedIn Saved Searches, while finding content could be done through Google Alerts, LinkedIn Pulse, Feedly or any other RSS feeder program.

How much time you will be spending on this part of your social selling routine will vary a lot depending on the number of contacts, the activity level of those contacts, the variety of topics you are following and how much reading you will be doing yourself.

Content Sharing
Content is everywhere on the internet but prime locations are Slideshare, YouTube (or Vimeo), Blogs and Forums. Once you have that content you will want to share it. Tools such as Buffer or Hootsuite.

Additionally to sharing interesting content from others (less than 40% of all your content) you will need to create. You might create presentations, blog posts and general status updates/tweets. Let me be clear that this is a time intensive task and thus easily postponed. Once you created your own content you will want to share this with your contacts via Status Updates and Tweets.

Finally, through the monitoring and listening programs you will also find more opportunities to engage with and help your clients and prospects. Your entrance ticket to become a trusted advisor.

Again, it is hard to put a number on this when it comes to time spent. Do not consider this lost time but think how much time you saved by not having to drive to your client to have a conversation.

10-60-30 Rule of Social Selling
Social Selling is more about the approach rather than the use of a number of tools (see above). Over the course of time, this has evolved into a daily routine. My experience has demonstrated that the different steps and tools must be interwoven with everything you do during the day.

Today I can say that I spend about 10% of my time working on the connecting bit. 60% reviewing what my listening tools unearth in terms of client conversations and content. And I must admit that most of the time goes to reading and qualifying whether this information can be shared to provide more value to the clients (and me, of course). Finally, 30% is the actual sharing and personal content creation.

So how does your social selling routine stack up?

Why “Who viewed my profile” on LinkedIn is crap!

When you use linkedIn we all love the feature “Who has viewed our profile”.  Though this is a key feature on LinkedIn and in a social selling approach, it is also a great source of frustration.

But first something else I am wondering about connected to “Who has viewed your profile”.  Recently I saw a post that someone who completes their “Summary” get 10x more views on LinkedIn.  Watch out there is a catch which I will come to later.  For now, no one nor any article can explain me if this is true or why?  Of course, I believe you need to complete this section in your profile since it is your evelator pitch.  But what the effect is on being found, I do not really get.  Well secretly, I do.  Anyone (from LinkedIn) care to comment and back it up with proof?

And now for my catches.

LinkedIn is all  about networking.  And still people decide they want to remain semi-anonymous or anonymous.  It is my experience these people are either my competitors or recruiters.  I can’t t get my head around the fact they are not open to being identified.  I wonder if they go to real life network meetings with a bag over their head or hand you a business card from someone else?  Strange!  I guess they have a good reason which I fail to understand, but that is my problem and yes, my frustration.  Let me tell you I will let you know if I viewed your profile and who knows maybe we can help eachother!  That is the true nature of networking and LinkedIn.

But recently I ran across another interesting  issue.  The count of people who viewed my profile seems to be different depending on the language interface I use.  Below is a screenshot of my profile views using the english (342) and dutch (559) interface.  Very strange indeed.  It seems LinkedIn makes me more popular in NL than EN. And yes, they are the same people.   Out goes my trust in LinkedIn statistics!  Anyone care to enlighten me?

Let me be clear, I am a LinkedIn addict and believer but sometimes we need to step back to put it all into perspective.  Of course, I will continue to use the “who viewed my profile” to reach out to people and conduct business.  I love to hear your views and comments!

6 Social Media things to do before breakfast

When you get involved in social media, you quickly learn that it requires regularity and discipline.  Creating a daily routine is of course one of the best ways to approach this.  Over time I have together a 30-minute routine.

Here are the things I do before breakfast:

1. Email
   1. Delete uninteresting/unwanted emails.
   2. Mark emails to be treated during the workday.
   3. Answer urgent emails.
   4. Check emails from LinkedIn groups for good content and mark for later reading.
   5. Review Google Alerts and mark interesting items with GetPocket.
2. Social media monitoring
   1. Review social media monitoring dashboard and react appropriately.
   2. Go to Hootsuite and review monitoring columns and react appropriately.
3. LinkedIn
   1. People Who viewed your profile is a perfect opportunity to start a conversation or even get connected (selectively).
   2. Contacts show people that have a New job, Birthday or Work Anniversary.  This again is a great opportunity to start a conversation.
   3. Review LinkedIn Inbox for messages and connection requests.
4. Twitter
   1. Check tweets that mention me and act appropriately
   2. Check new followers out
   3. Check who unfollowed me and decide on course of action (recapture or accept)
   4. Quickly review the recent Tweet stream
5. Facebook & Google+
   1. Check personal and company timelines for posts from friends and fans
   2. Wish friends a Happy Birthday
   3. Check messages and take action if needed
6. Content sharing
   1. Share my quote of the day or content from others across a number of platforms
   2. Contribute and share content through my Tumblr blog on Social Media tools

Having created this routine, I am able to start my day informed, organized and inspired.   Since I have created this morning, I have also developed a similar approach for the evening routine.  The evening routine focuses more on content generation but I will discuss this in another blog post.

Do you have a similar routine? Why not share it through the comments below.  Or do you want details about any of the steps mentioned in my routine, send me a mail (mic@vanguard-leadership.be)

13 Social Media Tools you should use as a consultant in 2014

Over the course of the years we have seen an explosion of social media networks and tools.  Though most of these tools come in Freemium, most of us continue with the free version.   Here is a list of tools  – and I will exclude Twitter and LinkedIn since most of you are using these anyway-  you should be using if you are trying to make your life simpler while using social media.

1. Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com )

Whether you are managing, monitoring or posting (planning) messages, Hootsuite is the tool that allows you to manage 5 profile for free (my suggestions: personal Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts plus your Facebook page and LinkedIn Company page).

2. Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts )

To complete your social media monitor you could set up a number of Google Alerts to get informed when Google has indexed more articles within your search criteria (your area of expertise, News, Video’s, etc.) . This is an ideal source to find content to share with your audience or leads

3. Buffer (www.bufferapp.com )

As a consultant you are probably reading a lot of blogs or articles.  Posting and sharing this information all at the same time is not a good idea.  Buffer will help you out by allowing you to schedule posts from theses articles themselves over 10 time slots during the course of the day on 3 social media platforms for free.

4. Commun.it (www.commun.it )

If you are a Twitter user, understanding and managing your audience is key.  Keep track of your new followers, who to unfollow, who to engage, etc. is good to know but what really stands out is to know who is no longer following you.  Commun.it and some other tools will provide you with the answer.  You can re-engage them and recapture your unfollowers.

5. WordPress (www.wordpress.com )

Consultants have  a lot of knowledge which could position themselves as a thought leaders.  You are probably trying to get into the press to get visibility with your target audience and it does not always work out every month.  So why not auto-publish and start your own blog.  Sharing your views, best practices, tips and tricks are great ways to get recognized for your knowledge.

6. Slideshare (www.slideshare.net)

Giving presentations and training sessions are part of your life.  Uploading your presentations to Slideshare will not only boost your SEO, but also create thought leadership and even generate leads.  It is also a great source to find information about your area of expertise or about your clients.

7. YouTube (www.youtube.com )

People like to see their consultants at work. Nothing works better than videos.  Using Instagram, Vine or just your smartphone you can create a good sample of what you do.  Posting these videos of presentations, training sessions or workshops will create the necessary trust to get invited for a sales pitch.

8. Google+ (www.googleplus.com )

You are for or against G+.  I am all in favor because the Hangouts are a powerful tool for communicating with clients.  Using these Hangouts you can not only save yourself from driving a lot of miles to visit your clients but also have face to face contacts and share data/presentations/et al from your PC in a streamlined way.  It can also be a great collaboration platform between fellow consultants working on the same projects.  A wonderful timesaver

9. Doodle (www.doodle.com )

Setting up meetings via email and/or phone can be very time consuming, so let Doodle help you find the ideal time to meet.  Yet another timesaver.

10. Dropbox (www.dropbox.com )

Sharing files has never been easier, using Dropbox you can share files between your own devices (PC/Smartphone/Tablet) but also between clients or peers.  There are of course alternatives such as Google Doc, Skydrive, Googgle Drive, etc.  These applications can also be used for making a backup of your data.

11. Evernote (www.evernote.com)

One of the apps I have come to appreciate over the course of the last year is Evernote.  Taking notes has never been easier.  The notes are synchronized between your devices so which ever device your bring to the meeting you have the latest meeting report on you.

12. Zapier/IFTTT (www.zapier.com & www.ifttt.com)

Though I am not a big fan of automating my social media activity, I have found that Zapier and IFTTT do have a place in my modus operandi.  It can automate the repetitive tasks I would do anyway.  And yes, they are people who are against this

13. Wunderlist (www.wunderlist.com)

If you are a bit like me you have a number of to do lists, As with Evernote, I have come to appreciate Wunderlist as a cross-device platform to keep track of all those tasks I need to accomplish.

Of course, the list does not end here.  There is always a bit of a trade-off between how much time you need to spend using the tool and how much ROI it provides.  Which other one’s are you using to make your social media life simpler or more complete.

10 Reasons Jobseekers Don’t Click Through on Recruiter’s LinkedIn Profile

There is a lot of advice on how candidates should optimize their LinkedIn profile so they can be found by recruiters.  I recently came across this post 5 Reasons Recruiters Don’t Click Through Your LinkedIn Profile which inspired me for this post.

Over the summer months of 2013 I have done some research how recruiters in Belgium present themselves on LinkedIn (750 profiles of recruitment professionals reviewed) and here are my conclusions (and also the reasons why candidates do not click on recruiter’s profiles).

Reason #1: 50% have NO profile picture.  Recruiters want to see what candidates look like, but so do candidates want to know what recruiters look like.

Reason #2: They have no contact information.  And yes, only the 1^st degree contacts can see you email/phone number but still as a recruiter you want to have the “good”  candidates find you easily.  Only 1 in 8 has their email/phone number visible somewhere in their profile!  Only 50% mention their website!

BTW. Few job seekers are not using the Inmail functions.

Reason #3: Only 33% have a personalized Vanity URL.  This could suggest a newbie or someone who does not care about their image or profile.

Reason #4: Few contact (Less than 250).  I understand you are careful with who you let into your network but less than 500 contacts does not foster any confidence that the recruiter is “well connected”.  It is also unlikely they will connect with you, even if they do not share who they are connected to..

Reason #5: About 50% have completed their summary information (your elevator pitch).  When it comes to their work history it seems they are not willing to provide much detail about it other than their title.  Less than 10% have discovered the multi-media possibilities of LinkedIn.  It seems the motto is “less is better”.  Again not fostering confidence.

Reason #6: Recruiters do not seems to share much which groups they belong to.  Most are part of 8 to 12 groups mostly general or peer groups.  So again, it makes it difficult for candidates to get in touch with them.  (Tip: remember, you can send free emails to all group members). Additionally, recruiters do not seem to follow any companies.  Most follow their own only.

Reason #7: Few recruiters are active on other networks such as Twitter, Facebook or Google+.  So Twitter handles can barely be found on their LinkedIn profile.

Reason #8: You have “Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile” set to anonymous or semi-anonymous.  The candidate is not able to click back.

Reason #9: Recruiters barely use Status Update to inform their network they are looking for candidates or even better sharing valuable information about the recruitment business or processes.

Reason #10: Most recruiters have few endorsements (sign of unhappy candidates?).  And recommendations are even more hard to find.

When it comes down to company profile, recruitment companies do not stand out an example.  Here are some examples:

• 76% have their logo on the company profile
• 33% have a cover picture
• 41% have Products and Services filled in
• 22% have recommendations for these Products and Services
• 33% use Company Status updates to inform their followers about new opportunities or to share information with their contacts.
• 97% of all company updates NEVER get shared, liked or commented on
• Less than 50% mention on their website they can be found on Social Media!

.I would like to end with 2 conclusions:

1. Recruiters still social media (and LinkedIn in particular) as a one-way street where they control the drive direction.  However, social media is a two-way street with a lot of opportunities.  Most recruiters are aware they need to have a professional profile but they have a long way to go.
2. Recruiters seem to forget they need to find new clients and opportunities to fill too, but their profile does not appeal to future clients.

What reasons do you have not to visit recruiter’s profile?  Love to hear from you!

If you are interested in getting a copy of the results of my survey (200 companies and 750 profiles reviewed), please mail me at mic@vanguard-leadership.be .

Are you automating your social media?

It is just over a month ago that Belgium had its first #kloutparty.  To attend you needed to prove (or not) your influence by having a high Kloutscore.

Have you ever wondered how some of these young men and women have done it to increase their influence in a short period of time?  Do you really think they are on social media all day? Think again because there are some shortcuts…  Some are using social media automation tools.  Whether this is a good idea or not, you are the judge but here is a partial list of useful tools…

To start you can use the tools the platforms themselves offer.  For example, your LinkedIn status can automatically be posted through on your Twitter account; On Twitter you are able to send your post through to Facebook.  On Facebook you can schedule your posts in the future on your fan page allowing you to distribute messages throughout the day and when your fans are online and available.  Some people schedule messages on Sunday for the rest of the week.

There are, of course, also a set of tools that allow you to schedule posts on these platforms.  Listing all of them is not an option and would lead us to far but here are some examples: Facebook posts scan be easily scheduled using Postplanner, Tweets using Tweetlater and pins on Pinterest using ViralTag.  Individually these are good tools but they are limited to one platform.

Scheduling on multiple platforms can be made easy through applications such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and others.  They allow you to place one post on multiple platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and even Google+.  The biggest advantage is that you only have to enter the post once and it gets posted to all selected platforms.  The biggest drawback is that it is a same message everywhere and that is not always best practice.  The scheduling option is useful to optimize the spread of posts throughout the day or when your target audience is online.

Some people love to share information with their network.  They read a lot of stuff, discover new and interesting information and want to share it.  Even though most of the content platforms do have a “share” button, the readers do not want to overshare message in a short period of time.  In comes Bufferapp (aka Buffer). Buffer makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule the great content you find.   Custom scheduling, multiple accounts and detailed analytics make this app your best friend when reading and sharing information.  With simple keystroke you fill up your Buffer at one time in the day and Buffer automatically posts them for you through the day.   This is a great way to spread your activity level through the day.

And then, there are some extreme tools that really automate your social media: IFTTT, Zapier, Socialoomph and many more.  These tools work on the simple principle of “Action & Reaction” of better “Trigger & Reaction”.  IFTTT and Zapier use “recipes” to automate social media activity meaning if you place a message on one platform it triggers an action on a platform.  An example: if you have a new follower (IF/Trigger) you could create a DM or Reply Tweet to welcome your new follower (THEN THIS/reaction).  Using these tools you can automate a lot of your social media activity from just one post.  However, I want to caution you here that these tools also hold certain dangers that could have a negative effect. An example: If your trigger is a #hashtag do not blindly Retweet this message as it could say bad things about you!

Personally I am not a big fan of automation but in certain cases I do use it once in a while.  It turns out that these are the action that I would do anyway and hold very little danger.  Which of these tools you will be using will depend on what your are trying to automate keeping in mind the advantages but also possible disadvantages.  As always there is no social media automation tool that fits all needs.  My personal favorite is Buffer.

Which ones are you using and what are your experiences?

Is paying for LinkedIn ego-tripping?

The large majority of people are using LinkedIn for free.  However, you get constantly bombarded with upgrade requests from LinkedIn.  And yes, a number of people are paying but it is really needed or worth it?

Let me be clear, if you are in recruitment there is no doubt that paying for LinkedIn is an asset but otherwise I think paying is more a status symbol especially when your target audience (eg. Belgium with less than 1.8 million members) is less than 2 miilion people.  Are you collecting badges?

If you are paying for LinkedIn, keep in mind that you will have to put in the work to use the functionality you are paying for and that cost is often overlooked.

The Facts

LinkedIn offers a bunch of different payment schemes.  From Premium over Sales and job Seekers to Recruiters.  With formulas varying between 20€ to 300€/month for different types of functionality.

But what are you getting?  You will see more than the last 5 people who viewed your profile, You will see full names in the 3rd degree, You can review more profiles, you have more saved searches and introductions, and yes, the all-important Inmails.

The Reality

After asking around most people seem to pay for one of these functions: who viewed my profile and send Inmails.

Looking at these and other paying features, you will find that a lot is never used or there are simple work arounds.  Let’s take a look at some of these paying items.

Ask yourself how many people have viewed your profile in the last 3 days?  I’ll bet you that it is less than 5 unless you post great stuff via your status update or change your personal profile data every day.  So if you are using LinkedIn intensively (as you claim), you will look at this daily or every other day and you will catch who viewed your profile. So no need to pay.

You want to send emails to people in the 2^nd degree and beyond, Inmail is your answer.  This is an Email via LinkedIn that the receiver needs to answer within 7 days (or you get your credit back).  A subscription will give you between 3 and 25 Inmails per month.  This sounds great but after asking around it seems few people are actually using this to its full potential. Are you really sending 3 to 25 emails per month via this system on LinkedIn?  Okay, it is probably the best feature paying on LinkedIn but most people are not aware that they can be purchased separately for about 10€/Inmail thus payment for use versus a subscription might be a better option.

By the way, did you know you can send ANYONE on LinkedIn a free message if you are a member of the same group on LinkedIn?

An then there are other options such as using introductions to get a mail to a 2^nd degree contact or the plain old Google Search option to find someone’s email address.  So here too the conclusion must be that you can live without.

In real life we ask people to introduce us to other people, but we rarely use this feature in on LinkedIn.  Again, how many introductions do you ask on a monthly basis? And yes the answer is that you can do this on a free subscription (3 per month).

And then there is the search and view of people’s profile.  You can click and see the first 100 profiles on a free subscription.  Do you really want to review the 299^th profile?  Maybe your search criteria need to be fine-tuned.

Have you ever heard of “saved searches”.  If not, do not feel bad because you are not alone.  “Saved searches” will run a specific search combination on a regular basis (weekly/monthly) and send you a list of profiles that meet that criteria.  It is similar to Google Alerts.  Both are great tools to generate leads.  Again, you have 3 of these searches with a free subscription.  So why pay if these 3 have not been used yet.

The only conclusion I can draw from the above is that paying for LinkedIn is more of a status symbol than of real use with a good ROI.  If you are looking for real ROI, you need to keep your network warm while slowly expanding it with a purpose.

“Keeping your network warm” Tips

I would like to end this post on a constructive way to keep your network warm.  Are you willing to spend 20 minutes/day to have a real ROI from your network?

1. Make sure your profile is up to speed and includes your contact information visibly.  Set your “how others see my profile when I click” to full view.
2. Do regular “Status Updates” sharing both own information and information from others you want to share with your network.
3. Use the renewed Network/Contact tab option “Daily” (Stay in touch with your network)
   1. Congratulate your contacts with their new jobs
   2. Wish your contacts a Happy birthday
   3. Congratulate your contacts on being x number of years in their job
   4. Review the new posts and comments in the groups you belong to and contribute where possible
   5. Check out who reviewed your profile
      1. 1^st degree contact -> send a message to start a conversation
      2. 2^nd degree contact -> if interesting “connect” or even better “ask for an “introduction” through a mutual friend
      3. Check out the results of your “saved searched” and act upon it.
      4. Review Companies that you follow for interesting content (for sharing)

Your moment to comment

Do I hear people grumbling or saying “yes, I always thought so”, I’d love to hear from you.  Do you agree or disagree with me?  And what are you doing to keep your network warm?

One thing is sure, I am not going to pay for LinkedIn (but never say never)