Author: Christian Karasiewicz

15 Tips on building the perfect LinkedIn Profile – Infographic

Are you seeing the results you would like on LinkedIn?

Do you wish your profile could do more for you?

Today I’m going to provide you with tips on how to build the perfect LinkedIn profile to help improve your chances of standing out.

Why is LinkedIn important?

When people talk about different social networks they are on, they often mention Facebook and Twitter but not LinkedIn.

This is most likely because LinkedIn is often considered to be a digital rolodex and not a true social network.

While we connect with friends and people we meet at conferences on Facebook and Twitter. On LinkedIn, some people limit their connections to just work colleagues and recruiters.

This is not the best practice because when you do this you limit the opportunities you have to grow on LinkedIn.

Don’t get me wrong, it is definitely important to look at each invitation you receive to connect to make sure you are not adding people you don’t share any interests with.

But if you want to build a presence, you need to be connecting with other LinkedIn profiles.

So why is having a LinkedIn profile necessary?

LinkedIn profile stats

The average LinkedIn user spends just 17 minutes per month on LinkedIn . This doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but you have to look at the type of people you are connecting with.

LinkedIn is primarily made up of business-minded associates who have limited time.

Therefore, you are not going to see many people posting family photos or sharing more personal details.

Instead, you can expect to see posts that are sharply written updates and focus on sharing articles and blog posts related to their professional background and qualifications.

So how do you compete for such a limited amount of time on LinkedIn? This is where having the perfect LinkedIn profile can help.

Here are just a few of the benefits when you have a great looking profile.

When building the perfect LinkedIn profile, be sure you are using the correct social media dimensions. This way your profile looks its best and it gets seen more.

Besides these benefits to having a great LinkedIn profile, which areas of your LinkedIn profile should you be focusing on if you want your LinkedIn profile to get more attention both in search and in recommendations to other users?

This infographic from Link Humans covers each area of your LinkedIn profile to help you build a perfect profile!

Building the perfect LinkedIn profile

Continue reading 15 Tips on building the perfect LinkedIn Profile – Infographic

10 Animated GIF tools to help excite your audience

How many of you have seen animated GIFs on Google+ and Tumblr?

While animated GIFs aren’t new, (they’ve been around since the 90s), many social networks are starting to allow them to be shared.

Recently, Twitter added support for animated GIFS like Google+ and Tumblr.

Here’s an example:

Note: According to TechCrunch, Twitter is converting animated GIFs.

This is great news if you are a Twitter user.

Now you can now include others types of media in your tweets besides just text.

Here are some examples:

By incorporating animated GIFs into your messages, you can make them more engaging for your audience and help get across a point better.

For example, instead of including a written tutorial, you can simply link off to an animated GIF!

So how do you create your own animated GIFs?

To help you learn how to create your own animated GIFs, I put together my favorite animated GIF tools.

10 Animated GIF tools

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How to install LeadPages in WordPress

It’s no secret, I’m a big fan of LeadPages. In fact, I often get asked a lot how to install LeadPages in WordPress.

Having been through the process, I thought it would be helpful to create a tutorial that walks you through the steps needed to install LeadPages in WordPress.

Perfect harmony

While LeadPages provides users with their own custom LeadPages URL, some users prefer to use their own website address.

Not only does this help with branding, but it makes it easier for people to remember.

This is where using LeadPages with WordPress can come in handy.

Let’s get started learning how to install LeadPages in WordPress.

How to install LeadPages in WordPress

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How to double Pinterest followers in 5 minutes – Infographic

Do you wish you could build a stronger presence on Pinterest? What if you could double Pinterest followers in just 5 minutes per day?

While Pinterest is primarily used by women (80% vs 20% for men), it can do amazing things for your business when done right!
Here are a few reasons to consider using Pinterest.

Benefits to using Pinterest

  • Drive website traffic
  • Increase sales
  • Generate leads
  • Build your brand

Brands on Pinterest

While Pinterest can help grow your website traffic and your business, just because the primary audience on Pinterest is women doesn’t mean your brand can’t benefit.

In fact, here are a few brands that do extremely well on Pinterest.

Some of these are big brands and you would expect them to have a strong presence on any social network that they join.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be a big brand to develop a large following.

You just need to be consistent with how you use Pinterest.

Growing your following on Pinterest

By performing just a few simple actions in just five minutes per day, you can start to engage with other users and help grow your businesses presence on Pinterest.

Items you can do right now to double Pinterest followers.

  • Repin others – 80% of pins are repins on Pinterest
  • Be active and comment on pins you find interesting
  • Follow other Pinterest users who share similar interests
  • Pinterest produces 4X more revenue than Twitter and 27% more than Facebook
  • Display Pinterest boards on your Facebook Page

While these are just a few of the ways you can double Pinterest followers and to make your effort on Pinterest count.

The team at Who Is Hosting has put together an infographic featuring even more actionable items to help you double Pinterest followers and develop a stronger presence on the site!

How to double Pinterest followers in 5 minutes

Continue reading How to double Pinterest followers in 5 minutes – Infographic

How to increase YouTube engagement by 374%

Are you struggling with finding ways to increase YouTube engagement?

What if you could make a few changes to your videos to increase YouTube engagement by up to 374%?

If you’re not yet sold on using YouTube in your content marketing, I want you to think about this.

Where else can you can get a consistent number of people search and watching videos month in and month out?

If you already have a YouTube channel and you are already doing content marketing using YouTube videos, but you aren’t seeing the results you would like, I have some techniques for you on what you can do to increase YouTube engagement on your existing content.

If you have at least thought about using your YouTube channel in your social media strategy but aren’t yet convinced, I’m going to share with you some stats on why you should use YouTube in your content marketing to help increase YouTube engagement as you begin to post more video content.

YouTube best practices

If you are not happy with the results you are seeing on YouTube, here are a few tweaks to consider making:

Videos that have a thumbnail get 154% more clicks by women. #VideoTips #infographic

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If you have put off adding a thumbnail image to your videos, here’s a tutorial on adding a custom YouTube thumbnail image and a free template to get you started.

Videos longer than 1 minute generate 40% higher engagement. #smm #VideoTips #infographic

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When I first started creating YouTube videos, my videos were too long. What did I do to fix them?

I looked at my YouTube analytics to get an idea on where people were stopping in my videos and on future videos, I shortened them!

Today, I average a few thousand views per day as a result!

One other area you want to focus on to increase YouTube engagement is to use your email list!

Emails that embed a YouTube video get 96% higher calls to action #VideoTips #infographic

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While these are just some of the ways you can increase YouTube engagement, there are even more things you can be doing.

If you’re ready to start using YouTube to improve your engagement and drive more traffic to your website, consider making these changes to your videos in this infographic from Quicksprout.

How to increase YouTube engagement by 374%

Continue reading How to increase YouTube engagement by 374%

7 Social media trends to watch in 2014

Do you know what the top social media trends are in 2014?

If you answered like-gating Facebook Pages, it may be time to update your social media marketing tactics.

While that is still a good way to get fans to like your Facebook Page, there are many more important social media trends that you want to pay attention to that can help drive a lot more traffic and engagement for your business.

For instance, are you using visual assets such as infographics and memes in your social media marketing efforts?

Visual content is a popular trend.

70% of marketers plan to use visual content in their social media marketing. #infographics

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In addition to using more visual content, another trend for social media is the resurgence of podcasting.

33% of marketers plan to create their own original audio content such as #podcasting in 2014.

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Do you have your own podcast or plan to create one in 2014?

If you started one and never got around to creating content for it, 2014 might be a good time to revisit it.

As far as social networks are concerned, most marketers want to learn more about Google+.

65% of marketers want to learn more about leveraging Google+ in 2014.

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While it is still growing rather slowly, Google+ can impact your search results so this is an important area you’ll want to keep your eye on.

Besides the increase in creating more visual content and shift towards using other social networks besides Facebook, what other social media trends do you need to know about?

Social Media Examiner has put together an industry report on some of the most popular social media trends. Let’s take a look at all seven social media trends that you can start putting into action in 2014.

Social media trends

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5 Hashtag tracking tools to help track and measure social media performance

How many of you are use hashtag tracking tools to help you identify and plan out your social media campaigns?

Recently, I was giving a presentation on how to leverage hashtags and spent a lot of time answering questions from people wanting to know if there were social media tools to help identify which hashtags they needed to include.

In this article, I am going to cover five hashtag tracking tools you can use to find the right hashtags to use with your social media campaigns.

What are hashtags?

For those of you new to hashtags, hashtags are a way to group conversations together.

For example, I conveniently use the hashtag #AskCK to make it easier for users on Twitter to ask me questions.

This also makes it easier for me to track the conversation by simply clicking on the hashtag.

Hashtags are also very useful when you want to insert your information into other larger conversations.

An example of this is using the hashtag #BizTips when sharing updates that are business related or using #Socialmedia when sharing content that is social media related.

Benefits of using hashtags

As I mentioned, by including hashtags in your discussions, it makes it easier for people to follow the discussion that is taking place.

For example, many events create their own hashtag so that attendees can see who is saying what at an event.

If they did not include hashtags, it would be difficult to follow all of the conversations taking place.

The same holds true when trying to measure how effective your social media campaigns were.

Imagine having to go through thousands of conversations. By including a hashtag, you can quickly filter the conversations to only show conversations using a specific hashtag.

This way you can quickly see the conversations and measure your performance.

5 Hashtag tracking tools

Now that you are aware of what hashtags are, how do you identify which hashtags you should be using in your social media campaigns?

Fortunately, there are a number of hashtag tracking tools you can use to help identify, analyze, and measure the effectiveness of a social media campaign.

Continue reading 5 Hashtag tracking tools to help track and measure social media performance

25 Social media tools to help grow your brand

Do you find it challenging to know which social media tools to add to your social media toolbox?

There are literally thousands of tools to choose from.

How do you decide which social media tools you need to help with your social media efforts?

Today I’m going to cover 25 social media tools you need to be using to help you grow your brand.

Aren’t all social media tools the same?

When using social media to grow your business, you can’t just focus on knowing how to use the networks.

That’s important; however, if that is all you focus on, you will spend a lot of time just learning the mechanics and not really know if you are making an impact when you post content.

This is where it is important to have a few social media tools available to help you quickly figure out this information.

To help you out, this list of 25 social media tools is broken down into the following categories.

1.  Social listening tools

Social media tools to help your business learn about conversations happening about your brand, your competitors, and keywords.

2. Social conversation tools

Tools to help you locate and respond to customer inquiries and comments.

3. Social marketing tools

Tools to help you create campaigns and contests for your business.

4. Social analytics tools

Tools to help your business measure and analyze the performance of your social media marketing efforts.

5. Social influencer tools

Tools to help identify social media influencers.

Now that you know how the social media tools are broken down, let’s take a look at 25 of the best social media tools.

25 Social Media tools

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How to add a menu to your Facebook Page – Video

Do you run a restaurant? Would you like to learn how to add a menu to your Facebook Page to display your restaurant’s menu to customers? 

Currently, there are a number of landing page tools such as Shortstack, or Tabsite that you can use to add a menu to your Facebook Page.

If you don’t want to use another tool, Facebook now let’s restaurants and cafes include a menu on their Facebook Page without using any extra tools.

Adding a menu to a Facebook Page
Example of a menu on a Facebook Page.

To add a menu to your restaurant’s Facebook Page, follow these instructions.

How to add a menu to your facebook page

Continue reading How to add a menu to your Facebook Page – Video

An 8-step strategy to generate leads with social media – Infographic

There is a lot of talk about how you can generate leads with social media.

But a lot of times when you look at your own social media channels, things don’t exactly add up.

You put in the work, but you don’t see good ROI on your investments or many leads coming from your efforts on social media.

If you aren’t generating a lot of leads from your social media channels such as Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter, it’s time to look at how you can change your social media strategy so that you are!

Today we’re going to go over tips on how to generate leads with social media.

Which social networks should you be on?

When social media first got started Facebook was the primary channel that everyone was on.

Today, it is best to be on multiple social networks – provided your business can commit to updating them regularly with unique content.

If you struggle to find time to manage your social media channels, check out this guide on Social media management in 60 minutes per day.

If video is your thing, the social video starter guide can help you learn to use video channels such as Vine or YouTube and YouTube Video Cards to generate leads with social media.

How can social media help your business?

While social media can help generate leads, it isn’t the only channel you should be focusing on when you are trying to generate leads for your business.

Besides using social media channels, you also look to use videos, your email list, as well as your own blog to continue generating more leads and filling your funnel!

Here are a few stats on how people are spending their time on social media and what it can do for your business.

Try these tips for generating leads using some of your favorite social media channels.

Generating leads with Facebook

If you want to generate leads using your Facebook Page, you can create a Facebook landing page using Shortstack and then drive fans to your landing page by sharing a link to your landing page tab.

Here is an example on how to use a Facebook landing page to generate leads with social media.

Generate leads with Facebook
A Facebook landing page to collect email address can be a great way to generate leads with social media.

Generating leads with Twitter

You can also use social media sites like Twitter to generate leads. They offer a lead generation card that can help you quickly collect email addresses for your business.

Twitter lead generation card
Example of Twitter lead generation cards.

Besides using Facebook and Twitter to generate leads, it starts with having a good social media strategy to generate leads.

The team at QuickSprout put together a great infographic complete with an eight-step plan to help you generate leads with social media. Check out the following infographic.

How to generate leads with social media

Continue reading An 8-step strategy to generate leads with social media – Infographic