Several days ago the MJ2 team visited our good friends at Fathom to take part in a LinkedIn seminar. As LinkedIn becomes more relevant in the business to business sphere it is important to understand the intricacies of their platform. Fathom is a respected member of the community and it was an honor to learn from their professional team.

SEO
As we explored the LinkedIn platform it was interesting to see the various takes on SEO within the community. With the growing user base, being found in search results is of utmost importance. LinkedIn’s search algorithm has not been made public, but it is clear that keywords in the “About” section are weighted very highly. Knowing this, it is important not to turn away a visitor with copy that is full of keywords, but has little to no content.

Pages vs Groups
As a professional, both LinkedIn pages, and groups can be very useful tools within the community, though the two function very differently.

A page is your business’ portal to the community. It’s uses include:
● Syndication of content from your company blog or outside sources. These tend to be most effective in the early morning, or around lunch time.
● Advertising your business to potential clients using the “Products and Services” section.
● Attracting new hires to your team via the “Careers” section.

A group, on the other hand, is simply a community of users, focused on a single topic. Potential uses of a group include:
● Engaging your community with relevant questions and discussion.
● Learning about your users in a friendly forum environment.
● Organizing your employees for various events using subgroups.

Advertising
Because of LinkedIn’s professional client base, targeted advertising can be very effective. Whether you are looking for new clients, or trying to fill an empty position at your company, the right ad campaign can be crucial to your success. Our friends at Fathom are very experienced running targeted ad campaigns, and we definitely learned a lot from their team. The most important things to know are LinkedIn’s .02 click through rate requirement, the $10/day minimum, and the ability to run varying versions of an ad in one campaign.

Thanks to Fathom for teaching more about the LinkedIn platform! MJ2 is confident that LinkedIn will be a very important part of the business to business sphere moving into 2013, and as such we are dedicated to providing the best services we can offer.

Our team combined with the Fire-Dex Marketing Department in Medina, Ohio, have built a supportive, active social community by using Facebook and the Fire-Dex blog.  This Facebook page growth over the past 18 months went from 273 fans when we assumed the account in January of 2011 to its current count of 12,488 and growing.  Over the past several months, we had been experimenting with Facebook and blog questions to gather feedback from the firefighters.  We knew we had their attention and their support to help Fire-Dex manufacture the safest, most comfortable turnout gear.  Our initial goal of building the brand page has shifted focus to utilizing these portals for solid, intuitive feedback from the end user.

Enter sharp idea #1: Let’s use the 2012 Olympics to begin a branded campaign of our own, called the Fire-Dex Olympics, complete with contests, giveaways and “huge” prizes.

Enter sharp idea #2: Utilize the current email portal and build an in-depth survey to be sent to active duty firefighters.

Enter sharp idea #3: Marry the two together to gain coverage, interest and RESULTS!

And results we have received! The original goal was to have feedback on the survey from at least 1,000 firefighters.  To date, with 10 more days of the campaign, Fire-Dex has received 1,085 responses with 859 linking from Facebook.

Critical success factors? There are many! Here are a few tips that might help you with integrating your social with gaining qualitative customer feedback.

1)  We used a Facebook app for the Fire-Dex Olympics, which helps land in more newsfeeds via mobile and desktop.  Further, we used Promoted Posts within Facebook at optimal user times.   Our goal was to drive as many fans to interact with the page as possible with hopes that they would continue to see the Fire-Dex Facebook posts.

2)  Make sure that your email client is fully integrated into all your social channels, and you have the correct technology to marry the two for easy click through.

What integrated efforts have you used to combine a brand campaign to gain valuable customer feedback?