LinkedIn News Sharing: Much More Powerful

22 04 2010

From a perspective of enterprise marketing, LinkedIn has always been especially interesting to me.  Poll after poll has shown that the biggest influencers of opinion in the enterprise world are industry peers and friends.  LinkedIn was built specifically to build trusted groups to connect with, gather opinions and share information – at a professional level.

I really like using LinkedIn for my professional connections and Facebook for my personal socialization.  They are two different worlds, at least for me.

The latest changes to LinkedIn makes News Sharing even more powerful:

  • You get your normal text new update box to fill in.
  • You can also add a link in a separate box.  (Not sure why this is separate?)
  • You can click a box to automatically send the same message to Twitter.
  • You can adjust the visibility: Just your friends, anyone who looks at your profile.
  • Easy re-sharing with groups or individuals.
  • Images and excerpts for articles posted.  This is much more compelling and more likely to get clicks.
  • URL shortener.  You don’t have to go to bit.ly or other services anymore.
  • Better integration with and sharing from other sites such as the New York Times.

Overall, this makes news posts much more informative and useful than the old 12o (or so) character microblog updates.

The panel at the MIT/Stanford was talking a lot about the quantity and velocity of information the other night.  Their take that our best chance to sort through it all to find what is relevant was from systems.  LinkedIn is doing just that by letting us use our trusted professional peer groups to help do the sorting for us.

This is a really useful upgrade.  Full details in the LinkedIn Blog.


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Categories : Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media, Social Media Company, Social Media Marketing, Technology

Social Media: A Wisdom of the (Professional) Masses Example

8 10 2009

Crowdsourcing Blog

First, some personal news: I have accepted a position as an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco and will be teaching an MBA-level class in Product Management next semester. This will be in the evenings, in addition to my other professional work. I can’t tell you how excited and honored I am by this opportunity. They say that you don’t really know a subject until you teach it, and I totally believe that to be true!

My Problem

I started looking for books on Product Management to use in my class and did not like what I was finding. Believe it or not, the first two text books on Product Management stopped at “Product Launch.” Wow!!! When I was a Product Manager, the hard work started there!

Anyhow, I wanted to find some good books to supplement the basic course textbook and to convey why Product Management is a fun profession.

Crowdsourcing

So, I went on LinkedIn and used their “Answers” functionality to send out my question to a number of my professional friends who have worked in or closely with Product Management. The results came immediately (within 24 hours) and most of the suggestions are excellent. Several were books I had never heard of before—exactly what I had in mind when I asked the question.

The resulting book list is so totally awesome, that I am going to share it with you here. (In no particular order)

  • Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
  • The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton Christenson (multiple votes)
  • The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christenson
  • Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model by Mullins and Komisar
  • The Three Tensions: Winning the Struggle to Perform Without Compromise by Dodd and Favaro
  • Crossing the Chasm by Moore (multiple votes)
  • Inside the Tornado by Moore
  • Dealing With Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution by Moore
  • Differentiate or Die by Jack Trout
  • Web 2.0 – A Strategy Guide by Amy Shuen
  • The Product Manager’s Handbook by Linda Gorchels (mixed reviews)
  • Mastering the Requirements Process by Suzanne Robertson and James Robertson
  • The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun (Microsoft)
  • Winning at New Products by Robert Cooper (multiple votes)
  • The Opposable Mind: Winning through Integrative Thinking by Roger Martin
  • The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman.
  • Tuned In:Uncover the Extraordinary Oppportunities that Lead to Business Breakthroughs by Craig Stull
  • Myths of Innovation by Berkun
  • The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge
  • The Elements of Influence by Alan Kelly
  • Groundswell by Charlene Li
  • Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg (Open Source)
  • The Soul of the New Machine by Tracy Kidder
  • The Macintosh Way by Guy Kawasaki
  • Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan
  • Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems by Barry Johnson

A Product Management Site: Pragmatic Marketing (multiple recommendations from around the world!)

http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/books/product-management-books

Conclusion

Crowdsourcing, or Wisdom of the (Professional) Masses really does work! A huge “thank you” to all who sent in suggestions. Now, I will have to pick one or two of these excellent books!

Also, several people thanked me for asking them the question. Lesson Learned: Sometimes the greatest compliment you can pay a person is to ask their professional opinion.


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Categories : Book Review, Enterprise Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan

“Facebook Exodus” Is There Cause for Concern?

2 09 2009

There was an interesting article in the New York Times yesterday, in fact, it was the #2 most emailed article when a friend brought it to my attention late in the afternoon.  The drift of the article was about how people were becoming disillusioned with Facebook and were dropping their participation and profiles.  It was purely anecdotal information but interesting reading.

So, does this mean that Facebook is finished as a social marketing took, particularly for B2B marketing?  It might be a little bit soon to draw that conclusion.  The fact remains that Facebook is growing at a rapid pace from 150 million in January 2009 to over 250 million active users as of August 2009.

Even more interestingly for those interested in B2B, the fastest growth is in the 35 to 54 year old demographic, which experienced a 276% gain year/year in 2009.

Conclusions

  • Applications (like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) will come and go.  This year’s market leader can be next year’s dog meat.
  • Also, check out LinkedIn if you have not already.  It is more business-focused, is also growing rapidly (46 million as of 8/25/09), and has recently added company profiles as well as personal profiles.
  • Social networking is not going away.  It will probably evolve rapidly for the next few years, but it is not going away any time soon.  Social Media fills a fundamental human need.
  • The important thing is to watch the technology space, not the individual applications.
  • In the B2B world, the evidence is overwhelming that the most trusted source of information on products and services is industry peers and friends.  Social media enables these people to connect and exchange ideas.

Action Plan

  • Watch the social media space closely.  It will evolve rapidly for the next few years.
  • Ask your customers and target customers what sources of information and networking they use and target your efforts there:
    • What blogs do they read?
    • Where do they go to do business networking?
    • How do they do their research on a product decision?
    • How do they like to get their information: articles, videos, audio podcasts, etc.

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Categories : Enterprise Marketing, Social Media Marketing


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