Different social networking sites have their own ways of organizing and managing information. Today I’d like to discuss some features of LinkedIn that will help you get more organized, saving you time and effort in ultimately maintaining your account:

1. Tags: an often underused feature of LinkedIn is the ability to “tag” your contacts in different groups- for example, as classmates, coworkers, or industry contacts. As you begin to build an extensive list of contacts, tags will allow you to quickly locate people you may want to contact. You can place people under multiple tags (for example, you may tag a former professor of yours under “university alumni” and “professors”). If you later required a scholarly recommendation, you could simply search under “professors” and instantly find them; while if you knew of an event happening for your university alumni, you could invite everyone that you have tagged under this school.

2. Groups: There are a wide variety of industry groups and discussions on LinkedIn. From marketing to plumbing, if it’s an industry- there will be a group! Once you have joined groups, make sure you set up your email preferences accordingly. You can choose to receive a daily or weekly update from this group, and you can also control who can contact you (for example, all group members, or only administrators). This is something that many people forget to do when joining groups- and something that many people, in turn, regret when they are clearing out their inbox! Save yourself the headache, and tailor your group email settings.

3. Newsfeed: Like Facebook, LinkedIn has a newsfeed, in which you can view updates from your connections, groups, and industry. This is a great resource to keep an eye on your network’s pulse. However, as the default settings are set to show you every single update, customizing yours settings is probably a good idea. By customizing your newsfeed settings, you can view more of the information that is important, and relevant, to you. For example, someone who is actively searching for a new job would want to opt in to receive updates about new jobs, while they may not be interested in whether or not their connections have updated their profile. On the other hand, a company looking for new staff may want to opt in to receive updates from their connections’ profiles- this could alert them to new and relevant experience that may be useful to their organization. Once you have tailored your newsfeed settings, you can further refine your search for updates by clicking on the different tabs under your newsfeed- here, you can choose to see all updates, or only those filed under “news”, “shares”, and “connections” to give a few examples.

Hopefully this information helps you organize your experience on LinkedIn. Let us know what you think of these tips in the comments below!

In a field of thousands, what makes it stand out? As we’ve discussed in the past, it fills a gap in the market by being a primarily visual site. However, that’s not the only reason Pinterest has boomed in recent months (2012). The fact is, Pinterest very conveniently links with two of the biggest social media giants out there: Facebook and Twitter.  This means that the nine hundred million plus users that Facebook has, as well as 175 million Twitter users, are all potential Pinterest users.

What does this mean for you as a small business? It means a seamless social media marketing approach. Pins can be shared on Facebook and Twitter. Anyone who stumbles across your Pinterest also has the potential to follow you on Facebook and Twitter. Ultimately, it means more followers, and more potential customers for your business.

By linking your Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts, and posting interesting and relevant content, you will reach more people; the ultimate goal of social media.

On the 2nd May 2011, Sohaib Athar (@reallyvirtual) tweeted the Osama Bin Laden assassination as it happened. The Egyptian Blogger Abd El Fattah was released after his arrest during the Arab Spring Revolution when a relentless media campaign was launched demanding his release. The Occupy Wall Street movements had gained momentum in their earlier days by people organising rallies and sit-ins around government buildings. Whitney Houston’s death was broken to the world via a tweet.

The rise of the citizen journalist has been prevalent in the 21st century and with the launch of Twitter, it’s taken on a whole new dimension.

Nowadays it only takes a cursory glance of the first dozen tweets to pick up on something that went wrong in the world somewhere. Every camera phone is a lens, and every 140 characters a news bulletin when people the world over think that someone needs to know something. People can be selective about the news they want to hear instead of wading through the politics and entertainment to get to the sports highlights. So this means that what you put down in 140 characters has to be a message important and impactful enough to warrant some form of urgency.

Myself, I’ve recently been following Lars Bevanger (@lbevanger) a freelance reporter as he posts about the trial of Anders Breivik. With so many people reporting on the atrocities committed, his form of citizen journalism has been very effective and he’s generated quite the following as a result.

The point is, citizen journalism is opening the doorway to you and I more than ever before as disseminators of information. Search around, there are plenty of high quality sources of information that you can follow yourself as you create your own ultimate customized news source.

There are lots of advantages to being online with social media. A big one is the ability to have real time feedback. Real time feedback is something no one should take for granted as a matter of fact astute marketers crave this type of forum; especially considering it’s cost (almost nil)! Using these forums to help you make your business better aides tremendously when going global with your brand. Imagine launching a product in a different state or province or country and in advance announcing a few product/service variations to get feedback before actual production…this type of inexpensive forum for feedback was impossible in the small business arena until now.

Nowadays, people complain and praise different companies everyday through their personal Facebook statuses.  What people may not know is that you can have access to what they are saying worldwide. Using a system called open book (www.openbook.org) you can search keywords, e.g. “social media” and it will bring up the latest things people around the world are saying about social media. You not only get the good but also bad. Knowing the problems and figuring out how to fix them is the next step. Openbook is a great resource allowing you to search all types of keywords, and will even show you the locations of various commentators.

Going global is now within every small business’ reach now, take advantage of it!

Can you imagine a stream/news feed with only content that you’ll find interesting?

We’re as excited as Chris Farley in Tommy Boy to know that once again we’ll be bringing on a few University interns for the Fall Semester! We’ve had a great Summer Semester with our existing crew, so a big Socialish hug is in order as you wind down your last month with us. Yes, we’re looking forward to our internship-ending thank you party!

So, if you’re in Calgary, AB and going to one of these fine schools (UofC, MRU, SAIT, or Olds), and want to work in a fun and lively environment in the marketing/social media field, then check out the internship positions available on our website, here.

Once you have added a few connections, you may begin to notice connections that your connections have contacts that you wish to connect with. In this case, you have an in! Introduce yourself, mentioning your mutual connection, or, even better, request an introduction from your contact. And there you have it- you’re now “linked in”. (Sorry, we couldn’t resist!)