Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Any PR firm working with a big business client today will advise that client’s public face to become, well, more public. This means going digital, either on social media or in corporate communications designed to get internal teams and investors excited. But what about going a step further and creating editorial content in the interest of becoming a digital thought leader/business strategist a la Richard Branson or Tony Hsieh? (It’s not enough to write a book anymore.)

We ask because, before today, we’d never heard of JetBlue Airways chairman Jeff Peterson. But now we don’t just know who he is—we know that he has some ideas about how to make his industry more efficient. You can see by the numbers that his LinkedIn post on “A Common Sense Solution to Slow Airline Boarding” has been quite successful....

LinkedIn Groups: how to find relevant groups, build credibility and make new connections that can ultimately help grow your business. With over 1.5 million LinkedIn Groups, it can be difficult to find relevant Groups and determine which ones might be the best for you to join. It’s also important to find Groups that are well-managed.

...Not to worry, I’m going to give you some insights on how to find the quality groups you can leverage most for your LinkedIn strategy! How many groups should you join? You can join up to 50 LinkedIn Groups. However, it’s difficult to gain traction in 50 Groups as well as find the time to participate in that many. I recommend that you go ahead and join up to 50 Groups, but select 5-10 Groups to spend your time on in order to get the most benefit out of your participation.... 

... As mentioned last week in LinkedIn: 5 Important and Often Neglected Profile Areas, “LinkedIn is one of the most important social networks for new business owners looking to build their reputation, brand awareness, influence and network of contacts, particularly for business-to-business companies and those whose clientele tend to be white-collar.” Last week’s article provided five important and often neglected tips to setting up your LinkedIn profile:

- Create ‘Your public profile URL’

- Use a Professional Photo

- Customize the Professional Headline that shows below your name

- Add three ‘websites’ and Twitter to your profile

- Write a Background overview/summary role that is interesting, informative, concise and typo-free.

Now that you’ve got the bare bones of your profile set up, here a few other areas to pay attention to as you develop your LinkedIn profile and online reputation....

My company uses content marketing for a number of purposes to promote our business and build relationships with customers. But one of the particularly effective ways we’ve used content marketing is to increase the membership of our LinkedIn Group, “Manage Your Leads,” a group focused on lead generation and B2B sales....

If you’d like to start a LinkedIn group of your own — or boost the membership and raise the profile of a LinkedIn group you already have — here are five time-tested B2B content marketing tips that we’ve used to drive traffic, attract new members, and increase the engagement of our group...