Author Archives: Jonathan Pollinger

Start your own TV station!

Great news from Google last week with the announcement that Hangouts on Air are now available for all Google+ users following a trial with selected partners. Hangouts are an amazing feature of Google+ which enable you to hold a video conference with up to nine other people. More about Hangouts and why you should be using them in this previous post – Have you tried Google+ Hangouts?

The two key benefits of Hangouts On Air are:

Ability to broadcast live - you can now broadcast your live Hangout from your Google+ stream, your YouTube channel or your website to anyone with an internet connection.

Automatic recording and sharing – your Hangout is recorded automatically on Google+ and on YouTube and of course you can embed on your website and share across your social networks.

It really is like having your own internet TV station and there are no setup costs! There are numerous uses for Hangouts On Air – great for training, conferences, sharing of ideas and concerts.

The next #wearesocialclub featuring a Social Media Q and A with me and music from Juey will be broadcast live from 6.30pm on Thursday 31 May at www.wearesocialclub.co.uk, on my YouTube channel and on Google+.

To learn more about Hangouts and other features of Google+ come along to my workshop next Wednesday in Maxet House, Cheltenham. It’s £87 including lunch.

5 steps to obtaining sales through LinkedIn

When making an approach to a potential new client on LinkedIn it can be difficult not to come across as pushy or spammy. If you follow the process below you’ll avoid being pushy and will improve your chances of obtaining quality business via LinkedIn.

Here are five steps to obtaining sales through LinkedIn:

1) Save searches – set up saved searches to arrange a weekly email of potential contacts. For example, if you provide medical supplies to doctor’s surgeries you can receive a weekly email of local doctors. I’ve set up a saved search of local PR and marketing professionals. For instructions on how to set up a LinkedIn saved search view this #tweetthat video.

2) State commonalities – mentioning a shared hobby or a mutual connection sets the tone in an initial message and should create some interest to your approach. For example, if you’ve done some work for a mutual connection make sure to mention it and refer to the project if relevant.

3) Be brief – we are all very busy and an over long message might not get read at all. Make sure your initial message is no more than 150 words.

4) Talk about working together – Rather than blatant self promotion talk about ‘working together’ and make sure to state the benefits of doing so.

5) Consider InMail – one of the benefits of LinkedIn’s Business account is the facility to be able to send an email to any member of LinkedIn; and there are a 150 million of them. Your message will also be displayed on their homepage. By using LinkedIn this way they state that you’re 30 times more likely to get a response using InMail than by a regular email.

More on this at my LinkedIn Masterclass on Wednesday 30 May in Cheltenham – it’s £87 including lunch.

Kit Kat – give us a break!

Makers of Kit Kat Nestlé together with agency JWT have launched an application that automates social networking updates to give people a break. Really?

The Social Break application takes over the updating of posts to social networks for a while to allow users to ‘reduce the pressure they feel of having to be so active on social media channels’.

It might give users of the app a break but what about the recipients of all updates? It goes against ‘putting your audience first’ which for me is the first rule of social media.

Clearly it’s a bit tongue in cheek and the aim is no doubt to maximise PR for Kit Kat but it’s an ill conceived idea that generates social media spam. So Kit Kat – please give us a break!

How to get retweeted to 245,000 people

Started in October 2010 by @TheoPaphitis, from BBC Dragons’ Den, the Small Business Sunday hashtag or #sbs on Twitter is going from strength to strength. It helps small business owners gain increased exposure and potential new clients by awarding 6 retweets on Sunday nights. Theo has more than 245,000 Twitter followers plus ‘winners’ profiles get displayed on the #sbs website. So the exposure to potential new clients is huge and with more followers, increased traffic to your website and lots of publicity the chances of making more sales are high.

20 mins left for this weeks #SBS tweet me your small business and I will retweet my fav 6 and a place on theopaphitissbs.com Good Luck !

— Theo Paphitis (@TheoPaphitis) May 13, 2012

The #sbs idea is developing. Past winners are encouraged to add their profiles to the #sbs website and concept has moved to the face to face world with an event held at Edgbaston Cricket Stadium on 30 March 2012. This provided an opportunity to network with past #sbs winners.

Around 2000 tweets are received each Sunday evening so on pure chance there’s approximately a 1 in 300 chance of being selected. Not bad considering the potential benefits and the minual effort required to enter. As well as business benefits previous winners have spoken about being given a boost from congratulatory messages and support from others on Twitter.

If you run a small business I’d encourage you to enter. The rules are detailed on the #sbs website website.

Foursquare launch history page

History has been the fashion in social media this past six months led the the launch of Facebook’s Timeline. Foursquare are now getting in on the act by adding a new history page. It’s fully searchable so you can view all your past check-ins from any month or year. You can also filters by who you were checked-in with, what type of venue you were in, and which town or country.

From a users’s point of view there are lots of potential benefits. For example, it’s handy to remember all the cool places you visited when on holiday. Useful if you want to make recommendations to friends visiting the same place. From a venue owner’s perspective it will provide additional visibility as users search their past check-ins.

10 great examples of Facebook Timelines

Timeline for Facebook Pages has now been with us since the end of March and whilst plenty of businesses and brands have yet to tell the story of their brand and company, a good number have made the most of the new format. There’s plenty of US examples – just Google – but here are ten examples from companies, brands and organisations based in the UK:

1. Cadbury UK
2. Manchester United
3. Dove
4. The Spectator
5. Starbucks UK
6. Cath Kidston
7. Pret A Manger
8. Heinz Soup UK
9. HTC UK
10. National Trust

At my next Facebook Masterclass on Wednesday 13 June in Cheltenham you can learn how to set up the Timeline and tell the story of your business, brand or organisation. Bookings being taken now at £87 per person which includes lunch.

Nicola Gower

Exactly what we needed to get our properties confident in using FB and Twitter.

Nicola Gower, NT

Great LinkedIn profile example

What better example to use for a LinkedIn profile than LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s? You can improve your own profile by following Reid’s example in a number of areas. Here are a few:

• His Headline of ‘Entrepreneur. Product Strategist. Investor.’ clearly displays what he is all about. Note that it’s not the same as any of his current job titles.
• He’s approaching 49 recommendations which provide a clear endorsement of his ability.
• He has a large network of over 500 connections.
• Three websites are displayed and he’s customised two of them providing a link to his charity plus details on LinkedIn vacancies. Perhaps he hasn’t customised ‘Company Website’ as it is of course LinkedIn.
• His Twitter account name is displayed which makes it easy for visitors to his profile to follow him.
• He’s customised his profile URL making it neater for use on business cards, email signature etc. You can view how to customise your URL in the #tweetthat video below:

6 Google+ changes

Google+ has undergone a radical overhaul and now has a fresher and cleaner look. It’s the first big change for the network since it’s launch in June last year. I find it way more easy to use than Facebook and LinkedIn and particularly like the ability to edit posts after they’ve been published…because I’m always making typos! With 6 of the latest changes outlined below it’s even more easy to use.

1) Profile picture changes – The profile pic has been moved from left hand side to a more prominent position on the right hand side. It should be a minimum of 250 pixels x 250 pixels but you can upload a larger photo which Google+ allows you to crop to display the right size image.

2) Cover photo is now an option – you can now replace the photo strip (which is now larger) with a Facebook style cover photo. Hover over the existing photo strip and select the ‘landscape photo’ option. The cover image needs to be 940 pixels x 180 pixels but like the profile picture you can upload a larger photo which G+ allows you to crop to display the right size image.

3) Main Circles on new nav bar – You now can now add two Circles to a top navigation bar which allows you to select them quickly for when you want to send posts to different audiences. Circles are at the centre of Google+ and allow you to communicate to different audiences – a major improvement on Facebook’s untargetted approach for Pages. To decide which Circles appear at the top go to Circles on the left hand side then drag the two Circles towards to the left hand side.

4) Hangouts are now more accessible – You can now fire up a Hangout via a menu icon on the new vertical navigation bar on the left hand side. Select the button to view Hangouts that are currently live – another nice new feature. Hangouts are a unique and great feature of Google+ – you can read more about how you can use Hangouts in a previous article.

5) Activity – It’s now easier for you to see who has +1′d or shared your content. Simply click on the +1 or Share icons on the bottom right of a post and the ‘activity’ for each post will be displayed. This includes thumbnails and names of each person who has engaged with your post. Select their thumbnail or name to view a profile.

6) New share button – There’s a new style Share button (see left hand side of any of my blog posts) that you can add to your blog or news articles to encourage Google+ users to share to their profiles. There is great SEO value in this – read Improve your SEO by sharing to Google+.

To learn more about Google+ and how it can benefit your business you can attend my next Google+ Masterclass in Cheltenham on Wednesday 23 May.

Engaging and conversational G+ profile

A great example of how to use Google+ is artist Paul Stickland’s profile. Hat tip to @narjasinklings for spotting this one. G+ is great for showing off photos so it’s a great medium for Paul to demonstrate his artwork. In his ‘live album‘ he regularly showcases his work for comment and he gets lots of positive feedback.

Regular posts contain links to interesting artwork from not just himself and others too plus there’s links to websites and interesting photos. All presented in an informal and engaging style.