As I pull data for clients this month (and my websites) I have noticed a trend. Over the last 3 months I’ve seen the quality of traffic increase to almost triple the amount.

Many of my clients are starting to use social media and they are beginning to see the payoff. More quality traffic to their websites & blogs.

Here are some numbers from one of my own websites:

LinkedIn traffic has increased by 320%, time spent on site up 224% and bounce rate has gone down 34% over the past three months. Those are amazing numbers!

Facebook traffic has gone up as well, but not as much as LinkedIN.

Many businesses I know have seen great numbers coming from both LinkedIn and Facebook. Is your business seeing the same thing?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed some strange emails coming via LinkedIn for people looking to connect. I wanted to pass along this information and see if anyone else is seeing the same thing.

Here is what I have seen over the last 2 weeks:

“Bob Jones” has indicated you are a Colleague at college:
I have seen about 5 of these over the past few weeks. Another one is people looking to connect because we worked together at Xerox, Kodak (for me) or somewhere else. When looking through their profile it’s obvious that we never worked together and they may have never worked for that company.

Have you noticed any of these messages over the past few months? I’d love to hear your feedback.

Vinny D’s stance, just say no to spam!

Say no to SPAM on LinkedIN

I asked this same question last year and I wanted to see if this has changed for you with the addition of the iPad and other devices. When you go on vacation, do you check your email and / or social media tools or do you take a break from these applications? For me, when I go on vacation, I like to get away from all my social media tools and email. I find I then feel more refreshed when I get back from vacation.

What are your thoughts? What do you do? Do you check your email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. or do you turn those off while you are away? I’d love to hear your opinion.

I have been on the subject of LinkedIN for the past few postings, so I thought why not talk about 5 changes / suggestions that I would make to LinkedIN.

5. Applications – There are so many (really just a few), but how do I use them. I found the application “Company Buzz,” but I would love to see it more in action. Why not have a few videos on how to use these apps. It would really help me see the value of using these applications.

4. Search – When searching on a company or person I find it at times, either unreliable or frustrating to go through all the information. Updates to this area would make LinkedIn even more powerful.

3. Job area – It would be great to have the functionality to save searches. I have heard this from many people as most of us search on the same criteria everyday and it would be great to save these searches.

2. Home Page – At times I feel like there is way too much going on here. I wish it was organized better. It maybe the status area linked with Twitter (multiple updates from my contacts during the day) but for me, I know I don’t feel as connected to my network as I used to.

1. The biggest one right now, is the changes they made to the groups area.
If you read the my posting last week (LinkedIn Recommendations by Vinny D), you may remember that I mentioned that I don’t like the changes. I liked the way the area was before, as do many other LinkedIn users. With the new updates it seems to have lost the true value of the discussions. I’m hoping they make changes to correct this.

There you have it, just some of Vinny D’s suggestions for LinkedIn. What would you add to the list?

Over the past couple of months, I’ve read some great articles about how you should use Twitter and Facebook. The one thing that many of the articles have not included is LinkedIn. If you are a regular read, you know I’ve spent some time on LinkedIn and wanted to give you my top five pointers for using it.

5. LinkedIn groups: Don’t spam! You will be taken out of the group by the group manager. If you have a question or want to answer somebody that is great and it’s an awesome way to help others. But, if you are just there to inform people about your latest product or service or self promote, then think of another way to do this because many group managers will remove you from the group and most likely notify LinkedIn as well.

When looking for new groups to join, look for groups that have new discussions on a regular basis. Right now you are limited to only joining 50 groups and I’ve found after joining a group that they don’t have very much discussions in the group then I will leave that group and find another group that matches more of what I’m looking for. If you go to your groups tab, you can now see very easily how active each of your groups are. See below. I love this feature as well.

LinkedIN - Group Activity

4. Profile: LinkedIn will give you a status of 0% to 100% on Profile Completeness. The closer your profile is to 100% the better chance you have of being found.

LinkedIn - Profile Completeness

Also, make sure you have a photo of yourself and not your company logo. Many times, if you meet somebody at a conference or networking event, they may not remember your name but they’ll remember your face so make it easier for those new contacts to connect with you when you send an invite to them.

3. Status updates: Remember to update your status a few times a week. Many people forget about this and it’s a key area of LinkedIn. You can now link your Twitter account with your LinkedIn account. I only update my LinkedIn status about once a day or every other day. I try to post information that I know my network will find interesting, maybe an interesting article that I think they will enjoy, some type of project status or even just a great quote that I’ve found. I have also been known to ask questions on my status area and I usually get some great information back from my contacts.

2. Recommends area: I love this area for LinkedIn. Maybe you have a boss or ex-boss, co-worker, etc. that you want to recommend. Write something about working with them and maybe they will do the same for you. If your a consultant this is very helpful for new clients to learn more about you. It really works and it’s often an overlooked part of LinkedIn.

1. Personal Notes: If you want to connect with somebody outside your circle, that is great, but make the note personal. I love meeting new connections, but the one thing that I hate is getting a default “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” If you don’t know the person, write a personal note to the new contact so they know why you want to connect and maybe a little bit about you as well.

Here is a bonus feature that many of you may have heard about, but don’t use. If you enjoy reading books like I do, add this module to your LinkedIn profile, Reading List by Amazon. I love to read so I post the books I’m reading all the time and my connections enjoy reading my book reviews. It’s a great way to find out what your connections are reading and help each other out. Another feature I love on LinkedIN.

LinkedIn - Reading List By Amazon

So there you go, just a few of my pointers on using LinkedIn. Do you have any pointers on using LinkedIn, feel free to comment below.

Related Posts:

New Features on LinkedIN

Five quick tips for using LinkedIn..

A few weeks ago, I decided to pick-up the book, “Delivering Happiness: A Path To Profits, Passion, and Purpose” by Tony Hsieh and I can tell you this, I’m very glad I did.

This book, by far, is the best book I have read in awhile. This book rocks! Tony goes through his own history, the joys and pains of his first startup “LinkExchange” and then through his journey of running Zappos. When you read this book, you will really see how his past experiences shapes how he runs Zappos. If you’ve heard anything about Zappos, you know it’s a great company with outstanding service. From the earlier days, they talk about how customer service was going to be the cornerstone of the company. After reading the book, I can easily say I’m a customer for life!

As you read later in the book, they have narrations from Zappos employees. They talk about the joys of working for the company, the company culture and much more. It was nice to see that they were included and really enjoyed reading their stories as well.

Tony also talks about the decision he and his team had to make regarding layoffs. I was very impressed for two reasons: 1. He talked about it (most CEO’s will avoid talking about layoffs) and 2. How he handled the situation really impressed me.

As I was reading the book, I tweeted about it and was very impressed on the quick response from Zappos. That just shows me how great their customer service is. Today, they probably have one of the best customer support teams and after reading this book, you will find out why.

Zappos response via Twitter

If you read any book this summer, pick up “Delivering Happiness”, I know you will be glad you did. If you have read this book, please comment here. I’d love to hear you feedback.

The past few weeks I have talked a lot about Facebook and not as much about LinkedIn. I feel like I have left out one of my favorite tools for the past few months and thought that I would write about some of the new features within LinkedIn.

If you haven’t been on LinkedIN in awhile then you should visit LinkedIN.com. Really, you should! There are a ton of changes and they are great.

Here is a run down of five changes over the past three months:

1.  You can finally delete emails. Before you could only archive the messages, but now we have the functionality to delete the message. Awesome!

2. The front page has a different look to it. There are two tabs now on the top left corner. One is messages and the other is for invites. It feels much more organized now.

LinkedIn Home Page - New message area

3. You can link your twitter account to LinkedIn and vice versa. I love this feature. I try not to post everything I post on Twitter to LinkedIn because it can get somewhat annoying, but I do try to update my LinkedIn status once a day.

"LinkedIn status bar with Twitter feature"

4. You can now follow companies! It sounds strange, but let me explain. If you are looking for a job and you have a few companies that fit what your looking for, then you can follow them. As an added bonus, anytime there is job status change – hire, departure or department moves or job opening … they will show there. What a powerful feature. Check it out! If you’re looking for a job, you will be glad you did.

"Company updates on LinkedIn"

5. New group layout. You should probably just visit your groups to find out what I’m talking about. Honestly, this one is still growing on me. I do miss the old group layout but the new layout is growing on me. See “What’s new in groups” for more information.

"LinkedIN new group features"

There are just a few of the things that LinkedIn has changed over the past few months. I am very impressed and looking forward to more changes coming this year. Like I said, if you haven’t been on LinkedIn for awhile, check it out and let me know what you think of the changes.

First I would like to say sorry for the delay. I had some major issues with our puppy over the past two weeks. She is doing better now.
So, I wanted to talk about something that I was thinking about over the weekend. What would we do without social media? We all know that some of our friends, family, etc. aren’t on Facebook or do not understand Twitter, but for my family it is a great way to keep in touch with family and friends and to keep them updated on our lives, for example the status of our puppy.

I was talking with some friends over the weekend and many don’t even check their email anymore. Most only use Facebook and Twitter to keep in touch with others. I have heard the reports that younger generations don’t use email at all, which really surprises me, but at some point in the future I can see email not being used at all.

For me, I love using Facebook: to keep in touch with friends and because it is part of my business to help others understand how to use social media.

I have proven to myself that I can break away from social media when I need to (vacations, family time, etc.), but it is tough and I don’t know what I would do without Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis.

So my question to you, what would you do without social media?

Well, it’s that time again, Memorial Day weekend is here and I thought I would take another look at how Home Depot and Lowe’s are doing via Social Media/Twitter. Here’s the post from last year.

First, let’s compare how many are following each Twitter account:

Home Depot has 22, 350 followers and is following 21, 022.
Lowe’s has 7,355 followers and is following 3,700.

Home Depot now has a team of people helping with the social media work, so you can see how serious they are about social media. Another plus to me. I also like the fact that HD follows back most of the people that are following them. Lowe’s – not so much.

Second, Home Depot is still leading the way with interactions between customers, either positive or negative comments. I am very impressed with how they improving their in store experience and really listening to their customers. More about this later.

Lowe’s is doing an ok job, much better then last year, but they still need to improve. Many of their responses regarding negative comments are the same. Very robotish, which almost makes it sound like they really don’t care. “Doug, I’m sorry to hear about your store experience. We’d like to know more. You can reach us here: ”

Third, in store experience, I mentioned last year that if I have the choice, I usually go to Lowe’s over Home Depot. But I have tell you, the past two months, I’ve chosen to spend my money at Home Depot. Part of it is that they had some of the products I was looking for, but I have to say, both times I was there, I was greeted by employees and they were very helpful. I’m not taking anything away from Lowe’s because I still enjoy going to their store, but HD is impressing me with the improvements they are making. Keep it up Home Depot.

So, there you have it, how both Lowe’s and Home Depot are doing via social media one year later.

Final Grade, Home Depot A- and Lowe’s C+. Maybe I’ll do another review next year. Have a great Memorial Day Weekend.

So, I have been talking a lot in the past few weeks about Facebook and I thought I would change up the conversation a bit. Over the past week or two, we have been hearing about Facebook and the privacy issues, so I thought I would write this week about Twitter and how some companies I have been following are using it.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed one tweet I directed towards a fairly large company. The surprising thing is, this large company (we’ll call them “big green”) have a huge fan base, but they aren’t using Twitter at all to communicate with their fan base. They started following me, but I haven’t received any response from them, even though I blasted them about how the poor quality their product is. The thing that shocks me the most is they don’t follow anybody now (they must have stopped following me) but they have 418 followers. It’s amazing how some companies still understand the power using social media.

I have also been reviewing a few companies for a side project (totally different arena now) and I’m amazed on how some companies don’t interact with any of their followers or fans via Facebook. I’m hoping as social media matures more, we’ll see better use of social media. Think about the savings that companies could use via social media. There are really a ton of ways.

On the flip side, I have had some really great conversations using social media. One company that I was really surprised on how well they answered my questions any how they also have a large following on Facebook and Twitter is Bowflex. They did a great job answering all the questions I had before the sale as well as after the sale. It really changed my perception of Bowflex and I was quite impressed with them. That really led to me buying a Bowflex system. So, kudos to them for doing a great job with social media.

My question for you is, have you tried reaching out to companies via Twitter or even Facebook and were either pleased by the response or shocked for the lack of contact? I’d love to hear your story.