I wrote  many posts about the power of LinkedIn for Social Media Strategies and business.

Everytime I’m speaking on an Internet Marketing Seminar or teaching Social Media Classes I always listen to the same question:

“I’ve got limited time to invest in social media, but there seem to be a million sites out there. How do I know which one is worth my time? If I only have time for one, which one should it be?”

Generally I try to explain that all tools available should fit into your strategy and your level of commitment – either time or content production- and I then explain how I use my various online presence and my expectation with each one of them.

However every single time I end up talking about LinkedIn and my fixation with this tool.

What is Linkedin?

LinkedIn is a website that allows professional network with over 70 million members globally.

LinkedIn is one of those sites that tends to get brushed aside in the sexy, shiny world of social media. It’s not flashy, we rarely hear buzz about billion dollar valuations and you don’t get a billion email reminders to visit because your contacts on LinkedIn are not encouraged to write on your wall, send zombies after you or take lengthy and inane quizzes.

What are LinkedIn Features?

Linkedin has many handy features but one I like to use most are their groups. A powerful networking strategie along with seeding content strategy.

LinkedIn Groups allow you to:

* Quickly discover the most popular discussions in your professional groups.
* Have an active part in determining the top discussions by liking and commenting.
* Follow the most influential people in your groups by checking the Top Influencers board or clicking their profile image to see all their group activity.
* See both member-generated discussions and news in one setting.
* Easily browse previews of the last three comments in a discussion.
* Find interesting discussions by seeing who liked a discussion and how many people commented.

LinkedIn has now rolled out few changes to their groups making it more social and more engaging.

Watch the video below.

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A woman from Southern California hopes to soon regain her two children, kidnapped 15 years ago by their father. She traced them through Facebook, authorities said.

In 1995, when the children were two and three years old, the father left home with their children and told his wife – whose name was withheld by authorities – that she would never see them again.

However, according to the Police, in March, 2010 the woman spotted her daughter in Orlando/US.

After swapping a few messages, the oldest child, who is now 18 years, said he would not know his mother, broke contact and cancelled his Facebook page.

The woman called the police and a few days later the father was detained at a bus stop while waiting for his second child who was returning from school.

The man was arrested in Florida and the children were taken to California. Osceolla County authorities have accused him of kidnapping and violating the terms of custody of minors.

However, the children have not yet met with their mother. “There is a relationship,” said Carrie Hoeppner of the Department of Children and Families in Florida. “There is an immediate reunification and happy for everyone.”

“A reunion is something that will take time,” he added. “They have to develop a relationship with her mother and it will not happen overnight.”

So, with all it’s bad press lately we see that Facebook is not all bad…

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After 2 months, we are back with the 3rd session of Social Media Club Melbourne.

This time in great style. After having the guys from Lonely Planet (1st event), and 3 of the most well known entrepreneurs in Australia (here, here, here) we are now bringing together 3 of the most prominent bloggers in Australia.

Meet Melbourne’s Global Power Bloggers

Darren Rowse aka @problogger, and The Inquistr’s Duncan Riley are big players on the world stage; rounding out the bill is Pip Lincolne, aka @meetmeatmikes, Australia’s number one female blogger.

When: Tuesday 8th June, 6-9pm

Book Here to listen to Australia’s Power bloggers.

MC for the evening will be Yvonne Adele (aka @IdeasCulture), a popular blogger and prolific Twitterer who also happens to be one of Australia’s most sought-after speakers on the subject of ideas generation.

This will be a ripper.

SMC Melbourne is part of the global Social Media Club organisation. The club’s mission is to “connect media makers from around the world to advance media literacy, promote industry standards, encourage ethical behaviour and share lessons they have learned”.

In Melbourne the organisation is represented by Nikki Bannatyne, Simon Small , Tim Beveridge, Trevor Young and me Lucio Ribeiro.

@SMCmelb on Twitter

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While everyone is losing time talking about the changes of Google’s visual and it’s new icons there’s a real change rolling out from Google that has a much higher impact for Web marketers.

The company has just announced they’re opening a full App Gallery for Google Analytics.

Google Application Gallery

This gallery contains applications that extend Google Analytics in new and exciting ways.

They are solutions that help analysts, marketers, IT teams, and executives get more out of Google Analytics
(if you are part of the ones that believes that Analytics=Visits stop reading here).

Apps are available in 12 categories, including business intelligence, campaign management, content, data collection, e-commerce, email marketing, mobile marketing, phone tracking, reporting tools, SEO, site auditing, and widgets and gadgets.

According to Mashable website – Coming Soon Google Analytics will release a new set of Analytics reports for Adwords.

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Moo! Why don't raise the stickiness?

Here are 2 quick tips to make your website more user friendly and more SEO efficient using Free Google Tools.

Google recently introduced Web Elements, which are simple snippets of really simple code you can copy/paste into your site’s HTML.

Quick Tip 1 – How to insert Google Search on my website?

If you don’t have a Search tool on your website you may be missing an opportunity to improve customer retention and conversions on your site.

Because users want fast answers and because they are used to pop words and hit search, it’s a good idea to make their life easier on your website giving them a search facility,

The Google Custom Search Engine team has made it really easy to add custom search to any site. Just follow these steps:

1) Access Google Web Elements

2) Click on Custom Search

3) Configure to automatically search your website.

4) Copy the code

5) Place on your website.

Quick Tip 2 – Add Google Maps and Directions to your website.

Meet the Google Maps driving directions gadget that makes it easy for customers to get directions to your office or store.

Thanks to Google, businesses can now offer customers quick and easy step-by-step directions.

The new Google directions gadget will allow business owners to pre-fill the direction “To” field with one or multiple addresses, while leaving open the “From” field so that customers can input their address or some other starting point.

From there, customers can print driving, walking or transit directions in just one click. Google will also provide suggestions for related addresses if users enter vague starting locations, as sometimes knowing the exact details of where you are ‘right now’ is difficult.

The widgets are great for users and add a nice bit of functionality to sites. However, they’re only good for showing users where you’re located. If you want Google to know, and to rank you accordingly, you’ll still need to tell the search engines where your bricks and mortar store is located. And that means using the text on the page to convey it. You can’t leave it up to the gadget.

This helps you in 2 ways.

1) It improves the stickness on your website. Users don’t need to leave your website to find directions.

2) It helps to improve your Local Search SEO.

As a smart small business owner, you want to make sure you cover your bases, so here’s a couple more tips:

1. Grab the directions widget to make it easy for users to map out and find your  location.
2. Create a detailed, keyword-rich Directions page to make it easy for search engines to map out your location and consequently improve your SEO.

Cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

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Let me start with a statement. I wish I had come up with Twitter concept and I wish I could have the U$100 million in investments available for my businesses.

However everytime I see Twitter as a business I ask myself What’s wrong with you Twitter people?

Twitter is not the new kid on the block anymore. Data from Twiter usage is coming from bad to worse and the brand percepetion of Twitter is not helping at all.

Third Annual Survey of Top Marketing Trends by Anderson Analytics and The Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG)

73% of Twitter accounts have tweeted fewer than 10 times according to a new report from Barracuda Networks, a Web security company.

As of December 2009, only 21% of Twitter account holders were what Barracuda defines as “true users,” meaning someone who has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and has tweeted at least 10 times.

Wired 40

In 2000, Wired published the Wired 40 — 40 companies that they said were engineering the new economy.

“A future of unprecedented growth lies ahead”.

Well, let’s pretend that we took their advice and invested $10,000 of our cash into those 40 companies. Where would we be now?

This is an exercise by Wired magazine…..

That $10,000 worth of stock in 2000 would carry a value of just $6,870.29 today. (There are some variables here — in some cases, we assumed you had sold your stock in, say, Enron, on the last day of trading, which is unlikely. This combines both worst- and best-case scenarios.) Think we stink as stock pickers? We’re not the only ones. The Nasdaq is valued at less than half of what it was in March 2000, when the dotcom crash began.

Big picture is good, but reality bites soon or later. The question is simple. How the $100million ill return?

Lucio Ribeiro

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Things to do Before ad:tech Sydney 2010

As my part of being Social Media Manager for ad:tech, I want to help my readers get the most out of the event. So I’m providing you with some tips to prepare yourself before attending.

There are many things you should do before attending ad:tech if you want to be prepared and make the most of the conference.

I’ve broken them down into three main categories for you: research, connect, and plan.

Research for ad:tech Sydney 2010

The very first thing you need to do is research.

You need to have a look through http://www.ad-tech.com/sydney/adtech_sydney.aspx to make sure you know the dates (16^th and 17^th of March), and have a look through the schedule to see which presentations you want to attend (I strongly suggest to attend Jeff’s-Cadbury case).

If you haven’t already had a look, you’ll see there’s always three different presentations running at the one time, so take note of the ones that interest you the most.

You should also have a look through the sponsors, exhibitors and speakers at the event. Have a look through some of their websites to see what you know about them, if they’d be of any value to you – i.e. a prospective client, or a coonection to a prospective client.

It will also be very beneficial for you to have an idea of who is going to ad:tech Sydney, and what they do.

And to do this you can use the hashtag I mentioned last week #ATSYD to search and you’ll be able to see many names – well Twitter accounts – of people attending or you can just head to the list on ad:tech Sydney Twitter list.

Then you can look through them to see if any of them could be beneficial for you to know or just to talk to at the conference. It’s always nice to know something about the person before you meet them, and they might be very impressed or flattered that you know just one thing about who they are or what they do because you’ve taken your time to read their blog or visit their website.

Similarly, I’d also recommend reading up on as much industry news as you can, the more you know about the latest digital marketing and advertising news, the more impressive you’ll sound when you’re networking at the event.

Connect

Connect or die.

Once you’ve found the people you think will be the best people for you to meet and talk to at the conference, start connecting with them through social media now.

A simple tweet to say hi breaks the ice a bit and you get to introduce yourself before meeting them. This means when you do meet them at the conference, they will probably have looked through your website/blog to find out who you are.

Another great way of making a small connection with someone influential in the industry if you’re not game enough to tweet (or e-mail, Facebook them etc.) is to leave a comment on their blog.

People will always read people’s comments on their own blog as they want to see what feedback and discussion they’re receiving.

If you leave a comment to engage in conversation with them, discussing their blog posting they’ll probably reply to you and you will already have started that connection. Then once at ad:tech, you’ll be able to tell them you’re the person who was having a discussion with them via comments on their blog. They will be very impressed by this – assuming you’ve posted intelligence comments with valid points on their blog – and you’ll receive a great first impression from them.

Plan

Plan

Think about how you want people to remember you. Think about and plan a little introduction speech, so when you meet people instead of introducing yourself in a monotonous boring way, think of something interesting you can say about yourself. This will help people remember who you are, instead of you becoming just a face of one of the many hundreds or thousands of people they meet over the course of the event.

Also plan what types of conversations you want to be having. This means you won’t be talking to someone and after the introductions have nothing to say, making it awkward for both of you. This is why you need to research as I mentioned earlier. It will give you ideas of good conversational topics you can raise with people.

You also need to make sure your business cards, website, and resume are up-to-date. The last thing you want to do is get there and realise you have out-dated, amateur looking business cards that you feel ashamed to be giving out. Remember, people will judge you on your business cards, because apart from anything you may have just said to them in the few minutes you’ve been talking to them, they have nothing else to judge you on yet – and we all know how important first impressions are.

Also think of technical issues that you may forget about later. i.e make sure you have extra batteries or power supplies for your laptop, remember to bring your phone and laptop charger. All the little things that are essential, but you may forget you need to write a list or pack them early.

Doing each of these three steps: researching, connecting and planning will give you the competitive edge.

People will remember you, you’ll create far more meaningful and powerful contacts, and you’ll get the most out of the conference.

Hope to see you there

Lucio

on Twitter

on Facebook

on everything else.

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