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Here's a quick introduction/explanation of the material to be covered:

I'm officially sucked in to Twitter. I resisted it for so long. Then, I thought I'd just dip my toes in. I'm totally knee deep now.

I wrote a post today on the HubSpot blog listing "Internet Marketing Blogs You Should Be Reading".

I shot a quick email including a link to the post to the bloggers that I listed. (See Blog Sales Tip #6 & #10.)

Almost all of them responded with a quick thank you. David Meerman Scott, author of "The New Rules of PR & Marketing" was one of them. His signature linked to his Twitter page. I subscribed.

He subscribed back and is now reading my Twitter feed.

I didn't expect him to subscribe back. He's following 121 people and he has 275 followers.

I wouldn't call David Meerman Scott "internet famous" in marketing circles. He's not as well known as Jeffrey Gitomer or Seth Godin. But, he's kind of a big deal. He is very well known and is a very successful author, speaker, blogger, consultant, etc.

He only follows <1 in 2 people who follow him. So, I'm atleast 2x more followable than his average followee. That's the economics.

This interests me because it becomes infinitely more difficult for people like David to "be responsive" to individuals as more and more individuals require his attention.

In August 2004, I wrote a post called "What Does A Connection Mean in a Social Network". I argued that a connection on MySpace and LinkedIn, etc didn't really mean much because it "felt" obligatory to connect with people who requested it. Relationships were automatically forced to be "bidirectional" in nature. Whereas real world relationships are unidirectional. Examples: I am a fan of Jeff Gitomer's. He doesn't really know me although he did autograph a book for me. I am a fan of Jason Calacanis's. I think he dislikes me. I am a fan of Seth Godin's. If he remembers me at all, it's because I've bashed him a few times on my blog. You get the idea.

The question I have is "Where does this breakdown?" We're already seeing "uni-directional" social networks like Twitter supercede (or atleast compete with) "bi-directional" ones like LinkedIn. LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook were never suitable for someone like Seth Godin to use it as a communications platform. With Twitter, he can use it because he doesn't have to respond. He doesn't even have to pay attention to you. In fact, if you look at Seth's Twitter profile, he doesn't pay attention to anyone.

I'm sure there's a breakdown point where someone like David Meerman Scott cannott pay attention to one more person. How close is David Meerman Scott to that number?

At what point in the accumulation of social capital, does it become impossible for someone to reply with a "thank you". Seth? It seems like you know the answer.

Update: I realized after rereading it, that it looks like I was calling Seth out for not thanking me. That's not what I meant at all. It doesn't matter whether someone thanked me for linking to them. I linked to him because he deserved the link, not because I was looking for a thank you. Plus, If I were as successful as Seth, I wouldn't respond to me either.  

Yesterday, I gave a talk about how to generate leads using linkedin and other online networking activities. 

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This morning, it looks like LinkedIn has launched a nice redesign of their site. It took me a few minutes to get used to it. But, after clicking around, I think it really works. It's more intuitive, and organizes things a lot better. It seems that a lot more capabilities and information are easier to find now and are a few less clicks away. (Another fan of the new look.)

Yesterday, Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot Co-founder launched a group on LinkedIn called Internet Marketing Mavens. If you consider yourself an internet marketing maven or aspire to be one, you should request membership. 

Why You Should Join LinkedIn.
Unless your company primarily services teenagers or college students, more of your prospective clients and current clients are on LinkedIn than any other network [In the US atleast].  I'm not saying they're using it well [or are any more likely to respond to your email or take your phone call]. But, they are there. [Where else are there that many of your prospects in one place?] Some of them might be on Facebook or Myspace and I'm sure you could attend conferences where more of them are.

But, no matter what you sell or who you sell to, LinkedIn is the domain of people with buying power inside the home and inside the company. And it's 24/7 and tells you who knows who. (Still not convinced? Here's another good argument.) 

What I Wish LinkedIn Would Do Differently
Allow more unfettered comunication. Their business model is dependent on charging individuals for the privelege of communicating with their personal networks. Long term, this is not sustainable. It's the equivalent to a tax that discourages commerce.

LinkedIn (and us) would be better served if they enabled more communication and created other ways to add value. 

The greatest thing that LinkedIn did for allowing people to meet new people, was start their question/answer functionality.

Their group functionality needs a little work, though. It merely allows you to join a group. It's kinda like joining the chamber of commerce just to be in the business directory. Yeah. It's cheaper than the phonebook, but the real value of joining a group is that the group provides opportunities for people to meet new people through committees, volunteer opportunities and events. LinkedIn should, at a minimum, launch a premium group service that allows organizers to launch a forum, publish some events and send bulletins to members. The groups' page should also show network updates, job posts, question/answers that anyone in the group has published. 

Most small and mid sized businesses are just dipping their toes into blogging. With keyword research and a good analytics package, it's not hard to plan and measure how blogging will impact the bottom and top lines for a business. If it's an ecommerce site, blogging is a no brainer. If you're a b2b company trying to generate leads... again... a no brainer. If you're b2c and people are passionate about your types of products (ie you sell wine not hammers), also a no brainer. If you're a realtor, you should be talking to Real Estate Tomato about how to start a real estate blog... umm... yesterday. (Of course, you shouldn't underestimate what's required to be successful with a blog - no matter who you are or what you sell.)

All that said, social media is still the wild west. There's no best practices. There are very few services that assist business owners in a meaningful way. The only businesses that are taking advantage of social media are big brand name F1000 companies. They have the budgets to deal directly with the big social networks and the budgets to tap the big ad agencies who deal with the big social networks.

Everyone else is sorta left figuring this out themselves. I've been able to successfully generate leads from social media activity. So has the internet marketing company I work for. We teach our clients best practices for the sites that actually drive traffic directly, and support our clients' SEO strategy. We also give them the tools to analyze effectiveness in terms of traffic, leads and soon: sales across their SEO, PPC, blogging, and blogosphere/social media activity. This informs what works and what they should do more of. For example, if Digg reaches your audience, you should learn how to use Digg. If you're trying to reach a younger crowd, join facebook. If you're trying to reach CEOs, start answering questions and endorsing people on LinkedIN.

But, this list could go on and on. How does someone know where to focus their efforts and how do they measure what's working before the leads come in? As this map indicates, you could literally spend all of 2008 registering and learning social media services. There certainly isn't a comprehensive tool within the reach of the average mid sized business to track all the leading indicators of social media success or failure. However, is it really necessary to track the leading indicators? If you have a website that converts visitors into leads and you can successfully generate traffic from social media sources and measure which social media sites send visitors with a high likelihod of converting to a lead... then... I'm left with the conclusion that you should just find yourself a social media advisor. I'm sure that 1 out of 50,000 people are like me (or the guys at Read/Write Web) who spend too much time tracking the social media landscape, who can interpret it and translate it for the average business owner so they know what to do first.

And if in doubt and you don't want to find an advisor, start with LinkedIn. If you're in business, chances are that your best prospects are on there.

1. The most important thing you need to do to drive traffic to your website from LinkedIn is to (duh) actually put your company's URL in your profile. Very few people actually do this. When you put the link in your profile, don't use your company name. Use a phrase that someone might search for. For Hive411, I use online networking as the link text. For Hubspot, I use internet marketing software. If you are a residential contractor in Worcester MA with a specialty in kitchen remodeling, put "Kitchen remodeling contractor Worcester MA" as your link text. These links will send you traffic directly from linkedin. It'll also help you rank higher in search engines for the keywords that you use.

2. The second most important thing for you to do is invite all of your trusted contacts to connect with you. I currently have 298 connections on there. I wouldn't say that I trust them all. But, I usually don't decline a connection request. Therefore, over the years, I've accumulated what I call a nice "LinkedIn Baseball Card Collection". The only down side to a big collection is that I have to deny connection requests sometimes if I don't know the parties involved.

3. Now that you have connections, it's time to use LinkedIn. This one is counterintuitive, but it's the most important one. Don't ask people to send a request to connect. I rarely ask someone to connect me with someone else. Why? The first reason is that I don't need to: I can pretty much help anyone generate leads online for their business and have plenty of people that want to talk to me, so I rarely go out and solicit. Also, it's difficult to initiate a sales call with a relative stranger without asking an open ended or blabbing about the features and benefits of your product. How often would you forward that stuff to a friend if you don't know they are in the market for it? Exactly. That's SNAM.

4. So, instead of focussing on connecting directly with prospects, I work on increasing my visibility in the LinkedIn network. The easiest way to do that is to endorse people you know. So, once you invite your trusted contacts (#2 above), go and endorse their work. Almost every time that I've done this, people have reciprocated by endorsing me. How does this help you drive traffic? Your name shows up prominently on their profile with a link to your profile. And of course, since you put your URL (#1) on your profile, some people will click through and visit your website.

5. So, now you have your website linked, you've connected with all the people you know and you have some endorsements that tell people that you do great work. You're now ready to start reaching out to prospects. The best way to do that on LinkedIn is by answering questions. LinkedIn has a very cool tool that allows anyone to post a question. They are categorized and searchable. I recommend you go and find questions that people are asking that you can answer with some expert advice. You should answer it an unbiased and non promotional way. If your answer is good, you'll be demonstrating that you are an expert. There's a big chance that the person asking the question may need your service and will contact you. Further, since the question is archived, it can be found on linkedin, (and if it is a public question), in search engines. Here's the most important part, though. When you answer the question, at the bottom of the answer, you can put your URL. It's masked, so it won't help your search engine rankings. But, the question and answer will be indexed and anyone that reads your answer and wants to meet you, can then click through.