Recently in Social Media Category

You have a contact - first/last name & email.  

You would like to know more about this contact & whether you can do business with them.

And, you have searched LinkedIn and failed to the find the contact.

So, now you need to invite the person to join LinkedIn.

But, be careful and use these exact steps.  Otherwise, you will end up being labelled a "spammer" by LinkedIn.

Step 1.  Sign into LinkedIn  & Locate "Network" on Black Tool Bar

Step 2.  Hit "Network" to get a drop down and then hit "Add connections".

You should see this screen - be very careful here and don't hit anything but the "Any Email" button on the far right.

Don't touch any other buttons - very bad Karma.

Step 3. LinkedIn will continue to try trick you, but don't fall for it.  They only want your email addresses.

You should see this screen.  

Don't touch anything except the small triangle "invite by individual mail".

Hit it once. It should turn and point down.

Step 4.  Copy and Paste the one email address.

Step 5.  Email your contact & explain why you invited him/her to LinkedIn: what is in it for them.

If you found this LinkedIn Tip useful, then follow Franchise-Info on LinkedIn by hitting "Follow" on our LinkedIn company card, below.

You will automatically get more tips delivered right to you.

CVENT is the largest event management software company in the US.    We have used their software countless times while attending and showing at conferences around North America.

They have just written this EBOOK on how to boost attendance through social media.

I hope that you find it as valuable as we have.

This is just another tool to help Get YOU Noticed!

Ben Baker, President

CMYK Solutions Inc.

In today’s world we need to understand not only what to communicate to our potential clients, but  HOW.   We need to understand that decisions are made on the move and not always by people tied to their desks.   With that in mind, we are working more and more with our clients to design, develop and implement mobile marketing campaigns that allow them to capture their audiences attention where they are and when they are paying attention.

It is not enough though to develop an active campaign to draw them in.  You need to have a platform that speaks the language of mobile.   Websites are designed today to be viewed on 20″ monitors, 24″ to 36″ away.     That is no longer reality for people on the move.  Therefore we encourage people to develop simple, yet effective, MOBILE MICRO SITES that effectively tell a simplified story and move people effectively towards activation.

Here is the example of our website.  From any mobile device, type in our regular URL and it will direct you to the mobile site.

Franchise owners are, by definition, local business people. They pride themselves on having a local presence, on being locally owned and operated. But when it comes to appearing to be local, well, that’s a different story.

Even though we know that local marketing, local listings and social media play a huge role in bringing in franchisee business, corporate marketing departments are often slow to adopt social media programs. There seem to be so many barriers for them, like who will run it, who will “approve” the content, do we have enough staff to take this on, what guidelines need to be put in place in terms of content, what about legal issues, and so on. And so on.

There has long been an argument about who owns the brand and who is responsible for social and digital communications. Is it the franchisor or the franchisee? Should franchisors have full autonomy over messaging? Or should individual franchises be in charge of their communication as it relates to the communities they serve? This is a heated ongoing discussion, and it appears there isn’t a clear cut answer. One thing is for sure, though. When corporate marketing stops caring about what their franchisees have to say about their local markets, franchisees stop caring about compliance.

One way to keep both happy is to communicate a central brand message through multiple digital media, while allowing individual franchisees the latitude to build their own social networks. Through templates for local websites, facebook pages, blogs, twitter and other vehicles, zees can engage their customers on a local level, and truly appear local instead of corporate.

Of course, both corporate and system want these outlets to appear professional – that’s why it’s good to invest in some upfront training. Seminars or webinars on how best to use social media, what works best in the digitial marketplace and how to keep a handle on it. If done well, these training sessions provide a great way to increase visibility and connect with customers.

As 2011 unfolds, we continue to witness a growing consumption of mobile videos. The number of U.S. mobile users watching video on their mobile devices was nearly 25 million people by the end of 2010 ( source: Nielsen new mobile video report. And, the newest trends revealed in Cisco’s Global Mobile Data Reportpromises us a bright future.

- Global mobile data nearly tripled for the third year in a row.
Global mobile data traffic in 2010 was 237 petabytes per month, and 49.8 percent of this traffic was video usage.

- Mobile devices are becoming more compatible with video usage.
It is more convenient and engaging to watch videos nowadays. Mobile connection speeds doubled in 2010 and many mobile devices have more powerful processors and larger screens than ever before.

- Usage of smartphones is increasing.
Though smartphones represent only 13 percent of total global handsets in use today, they are responsible for over 78 percent of total global mobile devices traffic. In 2010, the typical smartphone racked up 24 times more mobile data traffic than the typical basic-feature cell phone. Furthermore, the average consumption of traffic more than doubled in the past year (from 35 MB per month in 2009 to 79 MB in 2010).

- Mobile videos are available beyond the power of electrical grids and geographical borders.
There are 48 million people in the world who have mobile phones even though they do not have electricity at home. One of my most astounding discoveries during my travel to Rwanda was that there were more people who owned mobile phones than people with access to electricity.

- The Vimeo iPhone App is now live.
With the newly released Vimeo application, users can now upload, edit, manage and watch more videos than before on the iPhone.

New technological advances in the space also increased opportunities for monetizing of mobile videos. Ad support became stronger. The arrival of HTML5 allows videos to run without the use of plug-ins such as Flash, opening up new opportunities for video advertisers.

As the year progresses, we’ll see a lot of new twists in the changing world of mobile videos. I am looking forward to new developments and will try to keep you up-to-date. And, the great news is that mobile devices are among the many places where your videos can be watched. So, let’s keep on producing great videos and increasing our visibility to the rest of the world.

From David Meerman Scott's blog, on The Business Value Behind Social Media, both good and bad.

Martin Giles, U.S. Technology Correspondent, The Economist who served as moderator. 

Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, popular blogger and co-author of Trust Agents and author of Social Media 101. 

Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group and co-author of two books: Groundswell and Open Leadership.

Interesting, at points, discussion about how some businesses are using social media correctly. For example, Rackspace who uses Twitter to replace its customer service, when your server is down, twit it to Rackspace who knows who you are and so can reboot your server.

What opportunities are there here for franchisees?

Consider this fluff story about social media and franchising, from Entrepreneur.

"In April 2009, after a buy-one, get-one-free e-mail promotion bumped up his business by 40 percent on a single Tuesday, Zpizza franchisee Michael Blank of Alexandria, Va., decided that he needed to do more digital marketing.

As he started to look into social media, he realized that using Facebook and Twitter would give him an opportunity to inform his customers about deals and specials and allow him to begin conversations with them.

He persuaded the company's headquarters to move forward with social networking, and now the Zpizza Facebook page has more than 1,700 fans while his region's Twitter presence has nearly 600 followers.

Although the return on tweeting coupon codes and sharing specials on Facebook hasn't reached the 40 percent mark he had experienced earlier, Blank is sure that it will as more people learn about Zpizza's presence.

To get there, he's working with local mothers to encourage them to blog information about and reviews of the restaurant. "It's an incredibly cheap way to brand and market yourself," he says, because most social networking sites and blogs are free."

The tools by which traditional one way media is made social can be cheap, moderate or expensive. 

But what this article failed to highlight is how much time Blank put in "working with local mothers" to gain their attention and the rate of return for his attention getting efforts.

Would this have been better spent on simply re-marketing to existing customers using an opt-in email newsletter, with coupons?

Most market professionals note the very low rate of conversion using Facebook, primarily because people using Facebook are looking for attention with their posts, and not looking to buy.  Search still dominates this channel.