Sarah Santacroce is a certified social media, internet marketing, and virtual event specialist. She enjoys every aspect of small business marketing. Through her own business, Simplicity, it is her mission to help other small businesses and solopreneurs increase their visibility and use social media tools as part of their marketing strategy.
Sarah draws on 12 years of experience in Business Administration, in fields ranging from Employee Training to Public Relations at big and small companies. She became interested in Online Marketing and Social Media to promote her own business and after lots of research and numerous classes and webinars she is now offering that knowledge to other small- to mid-sized businesses who struggle to find their place on the web.
In this blog, Sarah draws on examples from her own blog to give knowitall.ch visitors a few tips for managing their own businesses.
Photo by phanlop88, www.freedigitalphotos.net
By Sarah Santacroce at Simplicity
Should I pay for a LinkedIn Premium account? This is a question I get asked on each & every LinkedIn webinar. It’s of course a very valid question, since the monthly investment is not exactly peanuts.
Let’s see what you get more when you pay:
Full list of ‘People Who Viewed Your Profile
As a free member you can only see the last five people to have viewed their profile. Premium members on the other hand get the full list of people from the last 90 days.
I often reach out to people who view my profile to see if they are interested in connecting. Often times they were just too shy to ask. If you’re on LinkedIn every day like me, then you don’t necessarily need to see the full list since you’ll always see the last 5 people who visited your profile.
Photo by Stuart Miles, www.freedigitalphotos.net
By Sarah Santacroce at Simplicity
During a workshop on newsletters one of the participants asked “What is the difference between a blog and a newsletter?
Below is my attempt to answer this question
A Blog is your hub
On a blog which ideally is part of your website, you create content, share your knowledge, opinion and experience. Depending on your schedule, you submit monthly, weekly or daily blog posts. These posts are then public, on the internet, visible to everybody who visits your website, who’s subscribed to your RSS feed or who you’ve shared the post with on Social Media platforms (read this post on ‘Not blogging? You’re wasting your time on Social Media’).
By Sarah Santacroce at Simplicity. Free image courtesy of Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I’m a big fan of LinkedIn Groups. But there’s not just LinkedIn who has groups. Facebook too ! In this post I’ll tell you how I participate in Facebook Groups & why I like them !
What Is a Facebook Group?
According to Webopedia, Facebook Groups are pages that you create within Facebook that are based around a real-life interest or group or to declare an affiliation or association with people and things.
Why Should You Join a Facebook Group?
Facebook Groups are great to stay connected with a group of people and friends to promote, share and discuss relevant topics. You can join a group for personal interest, or, as in my case, for professional reasons.
Two examples of groups that I’m a member of:
- A group of Social Media Specialists: on this group we share our expertise, learn from each other, help each other out & help promote each other’s businesses. I learn a lot from my fellow members who are other Social Media Enthusiasts from all over the world.
- A group of fellow Mompreneurs in my region: on this group I get to learn what other local business owners are offering, and can also promote my own services from time to time. What unites us is the fact that a) we are all mompreneurs and b) we are all local to the Geneva, Switzerland area.
Why I Like Facebook Groups
Let’s be honest here, we all spend time on Facebook every day. So it makes sense to be participating in groups on a platform where you check in daily anyway. Each time someone posts something on one of your groups, you also get a notification from FB. I also like the visual aspect of these groups. And the fact that you can message each group member individually !
Facebook Groups versus LinkedIn Groups
For my “Get More Coaching Clients With Online Marketing“course I created a LinkedIn Group for members to socialize, share experiences & ask questions. I could have chosen a Facebook group too, but LinkedIn seemed more appropriate in this case. I think the choice will depend on your audience. If you’re creating a group for Financial Analysts, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d say LinkedIn is better. To stay in touch with your college friends, I would choose Facebook…
Author's Bio
Sarah Santacroce is a certified social media, internet marketing, and virtual event specialist. She enjoys every aspect of small business marketing. It is her mission to help other small businesses and solopreneurs increase their visibility and use social media tools as part of their marketing strategy.
Sarah draws on 12 years of experience in Business Administration, in fields ranging from Employee Training to Public Relations at big and small companies. She became interested in Online Marketing and Social Media to promote her own business and after lots of research and numerous classes and webinars she is now offering that knowledge to other small- to mid-sized businesses who struggle to find their place on the web.
This article is the latest in a series of regular contributions that Sarah makes to her guest blog on knowitall.ch. You can see more articles from Sarah on her own website at: www.simplicityadmins.ch
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By Sarah Santacroce at Simplicity. Free image courtesy of Renjith Krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
On my “13 Simple Techniques To Get More Leads with LinkedIn” webinar one of the participants asked:
“Should I accept invitations from people I don’t know?”
Good question. The more connections, the bigger your reach. So technically it’s a good business strategy to accept everyone’s invitation. But yet, I don’t recommend this approach. In this post I’m sharing:
My very personal LinkedIn Connections Strategy
“A contact only becomes a connection when there’s some kind of exchange between the two parties”. Click here to share this quote on Twitter
It’s not just a numbers game.
Yes, it’s true that your reach increases the more connections you have in your network. But just like on Facebook, the numbers alone won’t guarantee your success. Even though LinkedIn is a business network, don’t forget that “people do business with people”. So if you just have numbers in your network, and not real connections, you won’t get anything back from your marketing efforts.
So Sarah, what’s your LinkedIn Connections Strategy?
By Sarah Santacroce at Simplicity
You know those messages you get on LinkedIn, telling you that “your LinkedIn profile is now 60% complete” ? Well, in order to achieve the 100% completion, your profile must include three recommendations or referrals given to you by others. These referrals can be from clients, strategic partners or even professional colleagues. For small business owners I’d like to increase that number to 7 referrals. Don’t ask me why 7, I don’t have a good reason for it, I just like that number better than 3. 3 is the bare minimum, 7 is the ideal number.
Why should you have recommendations on your profile?
- Because you get more inquiries: according to LinkedIn users with recommendations in their profiles are three times more likely to receive relevant offers and inquiries through searches on LinkedIn.
- Because people search online before they buy and will come read what other people say about your services on your profile
- Because every time you get a recommendation, it will show up in your network’s newsfeed as well.
