Feet Thru The Door Marketing

If you build a Facebook Page, will Fans come?

This is the great hope for many businesses. However, fans do not magically appear from Facebook.  “How can I get more fans to my Facebook page?” is the question I most often get asked by store owners.

A Hub Spot Study reveals the importance of building your Fanbase on Facebook.  It found that

Facebook Pages with over 500 fans up to 1,000 fans have 3.5 times more traffic than pages with less than 500 fans.  Additionally it showed that Facebook Pages with over 1,000 fans have 22 times more traffic than pages with less than 500 fans.

The average Facebook page has 130 fans.  So if you have 500 fans you are well above average and your traffic increases.  However, there is a tremendous jump in traffic on Facebook pages with over 1,000 fans.

It’s the rich gets richer concept; the more fans you have the more important your page appears to Facebook.  The more important your page appears, the easier it is to get your status updates into your fan’s newsfeed.

The more people receiving your information the greater the chance more of them will interact with you.  When more people interact with you, the greater reach you have as their friends and friends of their friends see your information.  The more your fans interact with your page the more Facebook will show your status updates. The Rich Get Richer! You have to build your Fanbase if you want to be successful on Facebook.

Here are 18 ideas for you to get more fans for your Store’s Facebook Business Page.

1. Invite Your Email List

If you have an e-mail list (and you should) include in your newsletter that you have developed a new page on Facebook and to Like it.  It is always easier and cheaper to get a current customer back into your store than it is to find a new customer.  So first target your existing customers.  Send out an e-mail, encourage them to like your page and become involved on your page.  Ask them to write a recommendation of your store.  The people on your e-mail list will be your best fans.  Your good customers will be the most likely to engage with your status updates and write positive reviews. If you have a large e-mail list, which I hope all of you do, this is a great way to get your Facebook page going.

2. Add to Your Email Signature

Add a link to your Facebook page in your e-mail signature.  Down at the bottom of your signature under your name and your store information put, “Like Us on Facebook” and a link to your Facebook page.  The people you know and interact with you through email will also be the type of Fans you want on your Facebook page.  You’ll be surprised how many times someone clicks the link and likes your Facebook page.

3. Displays in Your Store

Go to Kinko’s or Office Depot and have a little sign made up with the Facebook logo.  Just having that Facebook logo is sometimes enough, but underneath the logo you can also put the URL to your Facebook page.  Make several signs and add to your window display, place in your show case, and place it on the counter where you take-in repairs.

4. Use QR Code

On your store display use a QR code.  QR codes are the little square box similar to a bar code that is made to be scanned by a SmartPhone.  You can get a QR code made for free, just search in Google for “QR code generator” and you’ll find many websites to go to have it made for free.  Type in your URL to your FaceBook Page and it generates the QR code file to take to the printer to have printed on your sign.  People with a SmartPhone, can scan that code and they will automatically be taken to your Facebook page right on their cell phone while they’re standing in your store.

5. Use Print Media

Anytime you create advertising for your store include the Facebook logo and your URL.  You can also include your QR code.  You may want to include the words “Like us on Facebook”. If you’re doing a mailing, a postcard or a brochure, include your FaceBook page information.  If you use a billboard in town include the FaceBook Logo.  You don’t always have to put your URL.  As cars pass by a billboard they may not search for you as they are driving, but if they see the Logo the next time they are on FaceBook they may search for your store.  Any print advertising that you do, include that you have a Facebook page.

6. Add to Your Sales Slips

The next time you have your sales slip printed put at the bottom “Like us on Facebook” and your Facebook URL.  Your existing customers make the BEST FaceBook Fans.

7. Welcome Tab

A Welcome Tab is a custom tab that you add to your Facebook page. A Welcome Tab is the landing page when someone comes to your Facebook page for the very first time. That’s why it’s called a welcome tab, you welcome the visitor in.  On your welcome tab you want to encourage the new visitor to click the Like button.  Also include information about your store, your location and phone number.

Statistics have shown that having a welcome tab that encourages new visitors to like your page, will increase your fan count by 50-percent.  Fifty-percent more visitors to your page will Like your page if you have a welcome tab than if you don’t have a welcome tab.  If you haven’t created a Welcome Tab on your page yet, that’s one thing I encourage you to do right away.

8. Link from All Your Websites

You can have a link on your website that says “Like us on Facebook” with a link to your page.

You can also have a Like button on your website that visitors can click and become a fan of your Facebook page without ever leaving your website.

9. Link from All Social Media

If you have a Twitter account, put a link to your Facebook page in your profile.  Post Tweets to “Like us on Facebook” and put your Facebook page URL in the tweet.  If you have a LinkedIn, Google +, or YouTube account be sure to include links to your Facebook Page in all those profiles.  Include links in any post you make from those accounts as well.  If you have a blog, blog about your Facebook page.  Put in the sidebar of your blog the Like button or text to “Like us on Facebook” with the link to your Facebook page.

10. Link from Your Personal Profile

After you have created your business page, go back to your personal profile and edit your profile.  In the section where you list your website, put a link there to your store’s page on Facebook.  Then when your friends are interacting with you, or anybody who looks at your profile information, they will see the link to your business page for your store and can go directly to your business page from your profile.  This is one of the most overlooked resources Facebook provides you to build your Fanbase.

11. Suggest To Facebook Friends

Suggest to Facebook friends is not as effective as it used to be.  Two or three years ago this was the best way to get your friends to be fans of your Facebook page.  It doesn’t work as well today but it never hurts to send your friends a page invite.  On your page click on the “Suggest to friends” link and your friend list will appear.  Go through your friends list and check off everyone you want to send the page invite to, and Facebook will send them out.  Don’t over do this and annoy your friends, but sending them a page invite once is more than appropriate.  If Your Friends Don’t Like Jewelry You Need New Friends.

12. Use the Share Button

The share button on your page is fairly new and generally more effective today than the Suggest to Friends.  When you click the Share button on your page, it generates a Status Update with information about your page.  You can add a comment to it and the Status Update goes out to all your friends.

13. Status Updates (from your Profile)

When you make status updates from your profile go ahead and talk about your page, “We created this new page, check it out and Like us on our Facebook page.”  Now you want to keep an 80/20 balance on your profile updates. That is 80-percent of your status updates should be personal and only 20-percent about your store.  So don’t talk too much about your Facebook page and your store from your profile, but you can talk about it.  In the status updates that you send out to your friends put a link to your page so they can go there and like the page.  This is another great way to reach out to your Facebook Friends and convert then into Fans.

14. Facebook Comments

Another way you can reach out to your friends is when they make a post you can comment and put a link to your Facebook page in the comment.  Now you want to be careful about this, so that you don’t look like a spammer.  Only link to your page if your comment relates to the content of the post.  For example if someone made a status update, “I’m not sure what I’m going to buy my wife for Mother’s Day.  Anybody got a suggestion?”  You can comment and say, “Yes, we have a lot of suggestions.  Check out our Facebook page,” and link to your page.  Those comments go back out to all your friends, and to all the friends of the person who made the original status update.  Hint: You don’t have to wait around for someone to make a post for you to comment on.  Ask a close friend to make a post setting you up for your comment.

15. Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are a great way to reach out to your community and tell people on Facebook about your store.  Facebook ads can be very inexpensive; you can do it as cheaply as $1.00 a day.  You don’t have to spend a ton of money on Facebook ads, but with just a little bit of money you can have a great reach telling people about your page.  The great advantage of Facebook Ads is demographic targeting.  Facebook has all the information in everyone’s profile for you to pinpoint the exact group of people you want to target your ads to.

16. Facebook Promotions

You can run many different types of promotions on Facebook.  You can have special offers or a coupon where Facebook users have to like your page to get the coupon.  They can print the page or just show it to you on their cell phone.  You can have an e-book they can download after they Liked your page.  You can announce in-store drawings with a form to fill out and bring into the store.  There are many different ways you can have promotions on your page to get people to become fans and/or come into your store.

17. Run a Contest

A contest on Facebook is where you have different people enter and then people vote on those entered with the winner receiving a prize.  For example, for Valentine’s you might have couples come into your store in January to have their picture taken. You then put the couples’s picture on your Facebook page and run a contest for the best looking Valentine couple, or the Valentine couple most in love.  Their picture is displayed on your page along with all the other couples, and whoever gets the most votes between February 1st and February 14th wins a prize.  It could be some jewelry, maybe a watch for the guy and a necklace for the girl, or maybe a romantic weekend away at a nearby resort or hotel.  This gets all the people that enter the contest to tell all of their friends to go to your page to vote for them.  Of course they have to become a Fan of your page before they can vote.

18. Run a Sweepstakes

A sweepstakes is where Facebook users can go to your page and enter the sweepstakes (after they become a Fan of your page of course).   Then there is a drawing for one winner to receive a prize.

Warning:

You need to be careful when running a Facebook contests, or sweepstakes. Facebook has strict rules about running a contest or sweepstakes.  If you violate those rules FaceBook can delete your page without warning.

In addition, the fans you gain from these are not always the best fans to have.  If you run a contest you will get many people to Like your page, but most of them are only interested in helping their friends win, and don’t care about your store.

If you run a sweepstakes to win an iPad, I guarantee you are going to get a ton of new fans to your page.  The problem is they’re all going to be interested in iPads and electronics and don’t care about jewelry.  There are people that spend all day on Facebook searching for the word “iPad,” and every time they see an iPad they go and enter the contest.  Even if you are not targeting your advertisement to them, they can still find your sweepstake on Facebook.  They will enter just to win the iPad, and could care less about what the page is about or what product you are selling; they just want the iPad.  Sweepstakes are a great way to get a lot of fans, but those fans are not going to be the best quality fans.  They probably are not going to interact with your page and most likely will not come into your store to buy your jewelry.  Basically they are worthless fans.

The best way around this is to keep the contest, the sweepstake, the promotion, the coupon, whatever you do, related to your store.  Make it something they have to come into the store to receive, because after all, that’s the ultimate goal you want, getting them into your store.

Don’t Ever BUY Fans

There are companies out there that will tell you, “We can get you X number of fans for ONLY X number of dollars”.   They will get people to like your page, and they are legitimate people on Facebook.  But all those fans are interested in is the money.  The person will log onto Facebook and become a fan of a list of pages and they get paid so much per page that they become a fan of. Those fans don’t care about your page; they don’t care about your products or anything about jewelry, they’re just being a Fan-For-Hire.  These are not the type of fans you want.  They will do your page more harm than good.  If any company tells you they can buy you fans don’t walk away from them – RUN!

People love their mobile phones and are spending more time on them ever before.  Whether you’re walking down the street or inside a shopping mall, sitting in a coffee shop or at the airport, half the people around you are looking down at their cellphones.  It’s like the internet is starting again, but with a smaller screen. This isn’t just a temporary fad that is going to fade away. Mobile Marketing is here to stay!

Consider these Facts:

• One third ofU.S.citizens now carry a SmartPhone
• Mobile Web Usage tripled in 2011
• Mobile Internet Usage will pass Computers by 2013
• 1/3 of Facebook users and 2/3 of all Facebook activity is byMobiledevices
• Google Recently Purchased Motorola’s mobile division for $12.5 Billion (4 times as much as they paid for YouTube)
• One half of all Local Searches are preformed on mobile devices
• 44% of total searches for Last Minute Gifts & Store Locator Terms this past Christmas Season were from Mobile Devices

As marketers we have to understand these new types of consumers and how best to reach them.  A study done by iCrossing asked people whether they expect websites that they visit frequently to have a dedicated mobile version, and 84% of people said yes. So if you don’t have a mobile version of your website, you are disappointing your customers.

Your Website

A mobile version of your website is necessary because mobile devices have screens much smaller than a computer monitor. If you’ve ever ­visited traditional websites on a SmartPhone, you know they can be ­downright unusable. This is why a mobile version of your website optimized for phone screens is more important than ever.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes; think about the information they want—location, hours, contact numbers, services offered and products carried. Display this information front and center on a website optimized and simplified for the mobile Web.

Design for Thumbs, not Mice!

Not only is the screen size smaller; navigation on mobile devices is different as well.  You don’t have a mouse to navigate around the page and from one page to the next.  Instead a touch screen is used with your finger or thumb.  There is nothing more frustrating than trying to click on a button, only to be taken to the wrong place because your finger activated the button next to what you were trying to click on.

When designing your mobile website create larger links and buttons and leave additional white space around them.  Especially if you have more than one link near each other as in a menu screen.

Keep the Layout Simple!

You need to forget about all the fancy, complicated websites that jewelers have grown accustom to.  You need to present your information in a simple easy to follow manner.  However, simple does not have to be boring.  You can dress up your mobile website with font selection, colors, and a limited use of small graphics and pictures.

Use Smaller File Size! 

The mobile consumer is an impatient audience.  They are not going to wait around for your big beautiful picture to load.  While great improvements have been made in connections speeds on mobile devises they still do not compare to high speed internet connections for your computer.

You don’t need large astonishing pictures on your mobile website to convey your marketing message.  A picture maybe worth a thousand words, but they pale in comparison to holding the actual jewelry in your hands – to Touch, to See the Beauty, to Feel the Quality.  Use small pictures on your mobile website to bring the consumer into your store to hold the real thing (and give your sales staff the opportunity to make the jewelry theirs)!

Discuss these design considerations with your webmaster and create a mobile version of your website.  For the Do-It-Yourselfers check out Modify http://mobify.com and Zinadoo http://zinadoo.com  These are mobile website creation tools where you can enter your information and create your own mobile website to upload to your server.

For your blogs the WordPress Mobile Pack plug-in is the top plug-in to use to create a mobile version of your WordPress blog.

Getting Listed

The way to surf on the Web from a mobile device is different than on computers. The mobile Web uses the browser that is built into your phone to connect to the Internet.  The search engines that feed information to the mobile browser are completely different search engines with a different set of algorithms to list websites.  Just because your website ranks high in searches preformed on your computer does not guarantee that your website will be ranked high on mobile searches or listed at all.

Mobile Users are Mobile!

Because of this mobile search engines use a user’s precise location to filter search data.  On mobile devices Local Search intent is assumed.  This gives local brick-n-mortar stores a decided advantage over web based stores, but only if the local retailer has optimized his website for the mobile searches.

In addition to the location based search results, mobile users are often using map apps or other apps that contain maps when searching for places to shop. Being listed in local maps has become increasingly critical for businesses.

If your website ranks well in Google Maps and Bing Maps in search results on your computer, you have a leg up on getting ranked well in mobile searches as well. You need to give the search engines as many trusted signals as possible about the correct location of your business, such as setting up and optimizing a Google Place Page, and putting your business name, street address, city, state, zip code and phone number (with area code) in text on each page of your website.  In addition, create external citations to help reinforce the accuracy of that information.

You can gain an extra edge by adding a KML file to your website, as this also generates a strong location signal. KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language and is an XML file format designed to describe geographic information for programs like Google Earth and Google Maps. Simply put – it is a way to structure your location data so that it is easy for Google to pinpoint the exact physical location of your business.

The minimum data to include within your KML file is:

• Business Name
• Short Description
• Street Address
• City
• State
• Zip Code
• Phone Number
• Website URL
• Latitude
• Longitude

The fastest way to create a basic KML file is to use one of the online generators which make this process very easy. There are quite a few online and desktop programs, including Google Earth that you can use to create a KML file.  The one I have found to work best for this purpose and that I use, is the Geo Sitemap & KML Generator at: http://www.geositemapgenerator.com This is one of the easiest to use KML/Sitemap Generators available, and you don’t have to know your business’s Latitude and Longitude in order to use the tool, it will get that information for you from your street address.  And the best part is the tool is free to use.

Go to the website and enter your store information.  A Google map will display with your location for you to verify and you can adjust the pinpoint if necessary. It will also generate the needed XML Geo Sitemap.

Once you have finished, you will have both a .kml and .XML file to download.  Upload the two files to the root of your Website (same directory as your home page). Then verify everything is correct by going to http://maps.google.com and enter the URL for your KML file (http://YourDomainName.com/location.kml) and click search. Google will locate the file on your server and display its location information right within Google Maps. Alternatively, you could also open the file in Google Earth if you have that program available.

The search engines will find these files and index them the next time they crawl your website and it will improve your website rankings in both mobile searches as well as in Google and Bing maps.  Rather than waiting for the search engines to re-crawl your website you can let them know about the new files by Pinging their URLs to topPingdirectories as well as submit them to Google using the Google Webmaster Toolbox.

In this excerpt from a recent seminar Brad Simon, owner of Internet 4 Jeweler, explains in this humorous story about Eggs why Marketing is essential to your business success.  For more information go to http://Internet4Jewelers.com

Everyone knows that Facebook is an enormous network boasting 700 million users rapidly moving to eclipse One Billion.  Over 30 billion pieces of content are shared every month by those users.

For businesses it is an excellent media to stay in touch with your clients and reach out to new potential customers.  Creating a Business ‘Fan’ Page and developing a large following of fans is great, however, with the vast size of the network how do you get your message seen by your target audience?

Facebook tells us that 95% of people who ‘Likes’ a business page (becoming a ‘Fan’ of the page) NEVER return to that page again.  That means that all the time you have spent developing your business profile with all your  company information, uploading pictures into photo albums, adding video and other content to your page, is only seen once the day they became a fan.

Facebook’s News Feed

The main communication tool in Facebook is called the News Feed.  When you post a ‘status update’ on your business page or upload a picture, video or other content to your page a message is sent to all your fans in their News Feed.

The News Feed is on your home page.  When you’re logged into Facebook it’s that middle column where you see the stories. Facebook calls them stories, these stories are the posts from fan pages that you liked and from friends that you’ve become friends with.

News Feed VS Page Wall

When you create a status update it is posted on your page wall.  It is also sent out through your fans News Feed.  When a fan ‘Likes’ the post or comments on it, the comment is posted on your Wall and the Likes are tallied.  It looks as if your fan visited your page and commented on your Wall, but in reality they commented on their News Feed and Facebook posted their comment on your Page Wall.

Most people believe that:

1. All Status Updates and messages about new content are automatically added to every Fan’s News Feed.
2. All ‘Stories’ in your News Feed remain there the same amount of time and is pushed down by the next story.

However, neither of these assumptions are correct!

There is so much content shared on Facebook that users would grow weary of reading through all the garbage to find content of importance.  So Facebook filters through all the content from all your friends and the business pages you have liked, and only shows you what they believe is most relevant to you.

If you take a close look at your News Feed you will see the content is not in chronological order. Some older stories are still near the top while newer stories move down quicker.

Most Recent Vs. Top News

If you look at the top right of your News Feed you will see links to ‘Top News’ and ‘Most Recent’. The default is always set to Top News. This is Facebook’s filtered results with the more important lingering around longer than less important and many post never making the list at all.

Most Recent will be in absolute chronological order of everything that comes through fan pages and friends. This list is unfiltered and everything is posted here.

Switching back and forth between the two a couple of time will reveal the dramatic difference between the two lists and the difference the Facebook Filter makes.  Most people do not know about this and always view their home page in the default Top News setting.

As you can see, it is vitally important for a business to learn how to get their messages to appear in the Top Stories and stay their as long as possible.

Facebook’s ‘EdgeRank’

The Top News is filtered by an algorithm that Facebook calls ‘EdgeRank’.  Every piece of content on Facebook, whether a personal profile created it or a fan page created it, is passed through the filter.  What you see in the Top News is what Facebook has decided on your behalf what it thinks is important to you.

EdgeRank Demystified

There are three primary components to the EdgeRank algorithm:

1. Affinity Score
   The affinity score is the relationship that your fans have with not just your fan page but that specific piece of content.
2. Weight
   There are various types of content including a photo, video, link, or plain text.  Each type is given a different weight.
3. Time Decay or Recency
   Basically, it’s how recent the content is, how long ago the piece of content was created.

 Strategies for Effective Facebook Marketing

Understanding each of the components of the EdgeRank algorithm and how to apply them to your content will help it reach your fans’ News Feed and stay there longer.  This will certainly give a definite Edge to Your Marketing.

Affinity Score

What’s really important to understand is that your fans have a different EdgeRank score with every piece of your content.  Plus, each piece of content has a different EdgeRank score with each of your Fans.

Facebook looks at a number of items when compiling the Affinity Score and it is all centered on your fans engagement (likes and comments they have made in the past).  The more they engage with your page the higher their EdgeRank score will be with content you publish.  The more they have engage with similar content with what you published the higher their score will be on that particular piece of content.

So if a fan of your page has commented on and or like a lot of pictures in the past, when you post a new picture their score will be higher than some one who has never commented on or like a photo before.  If a fan has engaged with videos in the past but not many photos, then their EdgeRank score will be higher for videos than photos.

If a fan of your page has engaged with your page in the past whether it was commenting on or liking a story in their News Feed, writing directly on your Page Wall, writing a recommendation, or linking to your page in a personal status update, their EdgeRank will be higher on all your content than a fan who has not engaged with you.

Weight

Facebook gives EdgeRank scores weighted by the types of content in the story.  The weight given is as follows:

1. Photos
2. Videos
3. Links to websites
4. Text updates

A status update including a video is given more weight (and thus a higher EdgeRank score) than an update containing links, but not as much as an update containing a picture.  All three of these receive more weight than an update containing plain text.

Time Decay or Recency

Facebook gives the most recent stories the highest EdgeRank.  As time passes the score is lowered.  Regardless of how high an EdgeRank score a story receives based on the two criteria above, as time passes the score is lowered until it eventually drops from the News Feed.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of your status update you should post during times when the majority of your target audience is logged onto Facebook reading their News Feed, not just when it is a convenient time for you to post.

Sixty percent of all Facebook users only access Facebook in the evenings and weekends, and many of the remaining forty percent access Facebook during those times as well.  If you only post during business hours you are missing out on some of the best times for your updates to be seen.

In addition, posts made outside of business hours have a 20% higher engagement rate. This is most likely due to the fact that during business hours people feel they have less time to spend responding to what they read. Regardless of the reason, getting more engagement helps your Affinity Score and as explained above, this helps the most in raising your EdgeRank score.

Updates made on Fridays receive 18% more engagement than stories posted on other days of the week. The less people want to be at work, it is reasoned, the more they’re on Facebook.

Facebook tracks an interesting statistic that they call the Gross National Happiness factor.  You can check this out at: http://apps.facebook.com/gnh_index

To determine the ‘Happiness Index’ Facebook tracks all comments made and ranks them as either negative or positive.  They conclude that when people make more positive comments they are happier.  This index spikes by more than 10% on Fridays and Holidays receive the highest rankings.  Holidays and weekends are great times to post your content. Reach out to people when they’re in good moods.

Another interesting static from Facebook is that for retail businesses engagement skyrockets on Sundays. This maybe due to a carryover from newspapers that traditionally ran most of their Ads for retail stores in their Sunday additions. However retail business posts account for only 5% of all posts on Sundays.  Not only is it a great time for retailers to engage their target audience, there is also less competition.

While these prime times should be taken advantage of, you don’t want to ignore the rest of the week. People access Facebook at different times of the day and on different days of the week.  The best approach is to create different types of content on a consistent basis, posting each day of the week with a slight increase during the prime times.

Don’t post 20 new pictures of your jewelry all at once.  By doing so you will only reach those people who are active on Facebook at that time.  Instead, space your updates at least two to three hours apart over several days.  In this manor you will have the broadest impact reaching the most people.

LinkedIn was the very first Social Networking Website.  Although it often gets overlooked by businesses today and doesn’t receive the status that FaceBook and Twitter receives, it is important for businesses to include LinkedIn into their marketing mix.

LinkedIn is considered the premier Social Networking website for business professionals.  It is more than a place to perform job searches and find employees.  From the beginning LinkedIn was focused on business networking.  While many other social networking websites have left their original niches to gain a broader appeal, LinkedIn has remained faithful to their original purpose and has remained focused on business networking.

The power of LinkedIn is that business professionals tend to spend their social media time on LinkedIn. LinkedIn the largest Business to Business Network – It’s how you’re viewed professionally. All the top executives and high-end clients spend time here.  Executives from every Fortune 500 company are found on LinkedIn and 40% of LinkedIn users make over $100,000.  Anyone who wants to network with like minded business people tend to gravitate towards LinkedIn.

The idea behind LinkedIn is your connections.  When trying to understand the LinkedIn structure think in terms of the Kevin Bacon game “Six Degree of Kevin Bacon” also known as “Six Degree of Separation”.  In the game you start with an actor or actress and find someone who they starred with in a movie.  Then find the people who they starred with until you find a connection to Kevin Bacon through six or less people. Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, “a friend of a friend” statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.

LinkedIn only goes to 3 steps of separation.  They are called your First Level Connections, Second Level connections, and your Third Level Connections.  Your First Level Connections are all the people who you personally know. Your Second Level Connections are all the people that they know who are not already one of your First Level Connections.  Your Third Level Connections are, of course, all the people that your Second Level Connections know who are not already one of you First or Second Level Connections.

When you first set-up all the people you know, LinkedIn automatically makes all the Second and Third Level Connections.  By connecting with around 100 people you know, you can easily have thousands of Second Level Connections and hundreds of thousands if not millions of Third Level Connections.

The idea behind LinkedIn is that you tell all your friends (your First Level Connections) something important, such as you are running a new promotion at your store.  They in turn tell all their friends (your Second Level Connections) and they tell their friends (your Third Level Connections).  After all isn’t that the way real life happens.  You tell your friend something, and they go to a party and see their friends and they tell them what you told them.  And they tell their friends.

LinkedIn allows you to do this only much faster.  You can announce something to all your friends and business associates all at the same time and instantly they tell all their friends and business associates and they tell all their friends and business associates.  So all you need to do is share something with your 100 or so close friends and business associates, and soon thousands and then millions of business minded people will have a chance to hear your message.  It’s like Word of Mouth Advertising throughout the business community On Steroids!

Your Profile – The Heart of LinkedIn

Like with most other Social Media platforms, with LinkedIn you start by creating a Personal Profile about you, the individual.  You are NOT a Jewelry Store.  You are a person who happens to own or manage a jewelry store.

As you develop your profile LinkedIn keeps a running tally of how complete your profile is, so that you can see your progress and what you have left to complete.  You want your profile to be 100% completed.  To do this
you need to include the following:

• Your picture. This needs to be a picture of YOU! Don’t upload a picture of jewelry, your store front, or some cute graphic. Remember this is a professional business network and you want to present yourself as professional as possible.
• Your current position.  This is where you get to state that you work for or own a jewelry store.
• At least two past positions.  If possible list jewelry related positions as this helps build your authority status within the industry.
• Information about your education.
• A summery of your background and experiences.  While you want to include information about your jewelry related background, don’t make it exclusively about jewelry.  You are more than just a jeweler.  Add in other information about yourself to make it sound like a real person.
• Details about your specialties. As with your background summary, if applicable add information from outside the jewelry industry in addition to your jewelry specialties.
• Plus to complete your profile you need at least three recommendations from other LinkedIn users.

Once you have completed all of the above on your Professional Profile, LinkedIn will proclaim that your profile is complete!  However, just because LinkedIn says it is complete, don’t stop there.  The key to a successful LinkedIn platform is Profile Optimization.

Placing your keywords strategically throughout your profile will help you to be found for the items you want to be found for.  A LinkedIn profile can appear in Google search results.  When someone is looking for jewelry in your area, your LinkedIn profile has a very good chance to appear in the results if you have optimized it with your keywords properly.

The five best places to add your keywords are:

1. Your Headline
2. Your Current Work Experience
3. Your Past Work Experience
4. Your Summary
5. Your Specialty Areas

Website Links

LinkedIn allows you to place up to three links to other websites in your profile.  You want to be certain to use all three.  The first should be a link to your store’s website. This provides an easy way to get others on LinkedIn to visit your store website.  In addition it is a high quality link that will help your store’s website rank higher in search results.  The other two links can be to your store’s Blog, YouTube channel, FaceBook business page, Twitter account, or other webpage about your store that you want to promote.

Make certain to customize your links.  Click on ‘Other’ in the dropdown menu where you place your links and type in a description for each of the links.  For example, instead of calling the link to your store’s website “Our Website” or some other non-descript name, call it “Your City’s Premier Jeweler”.  This not only makes it more inviting for others to click on, it adds your keywords to the “anchor text” of the link creating more value to the search engines.

Be creative and add keyword rich titles for all three of your links.  If you find that nobody is clicking on them you can always go back and change the description at a later time.

Applications

Currently there are 19 different LinkedIn applications for your profile.  Adding these to your profile will help customize it and make it more effective.

The two I like the most are:

• The Twitter App With this app you can add your twitter feed so that your tweets come directly into LinkedIn.  You can have all of your tweets imported or you have the option to add only certain tweets.
• The WordPress App This app imports the feed from your WordPress Blog directly into LinkedIn.  When you create a new post on your Blog, all your LinkedIn connections will know about it.  The title of you Blog post will appear in LinkedIn as a hot link.  Your connections can read your blog title and if interested click on it and they will be taken to your Blog to read the entire article you posted.

By adding Apps to your profile you can personalize it, and by integrating your other social media websites together you create a powerful network of websites.  By connecting your social networks together you not only reach more people with your message, you save time by not having to log into each social media website separately and repost your information.

Profile Sections

Another feature you can add to your profile is Sections.  You can find the Sections Feature when you edit your profile.  Scroll down your profile and click on “Add Sections”.  Currently there are five Sections you can add to enhance your professional profile.  They are; Certifications, Languages, Patents, Publications, and Skills.  This is a great way to add information about you and help establish your authority status.

Vanity URL

Once you have set up your profile LinkedIn by default will assign your profile a URL consisting or random letters and numbers.  You can create a vanity URL for your profile so that it will be easier for you to share with your friends, colleagues, and customers.  In addition the vanity URL will make it easier to link to your profile and for the search engines to find it.

To do so click on “Edit Profile” under the dropdown menu for Profile.  Then scroll down to “Public Profile” and you will see the URL for your Profile Page.  Click on “Edit” next to the URL.  On the page you are taken to scroll down to where you see “Your Current URL” in the right hand column.  Click “Customize your public profile URL” to make changes to it.

Company Pages

LinkedIn allows users to create a Company Page.  Here you can list information about your company including a feed from your Blog and other RSS feeds.  Recently they added some new features.

There is a New Product and Service feature where you can showcase different products and services you offer.  In addition to text descriptions and pictures of your products, you can also add videos showing your products or services in action.

A valuable new feature is Recommendations.  Your customers can now recommend one of your products or services and that recommendation will go out to all their connections in their next LinkedIn updates. Plus the recommendation will appear on your company page next to the product or service they recommend.