But you also want those posts to show up automatically on your LinkedIn profile, right? So here are a few steps to make sure all your LinkedIn connections know what a thought leader you are. (Or at least that you’re publishing regular blog posts.)

LinkedIn makes it easy to add an RSS feed to your personal or company pages. Each time you publish a new blog post or news piece on your website, it will also be published in LinkedIn.

We are often asked how to do this, so we’ve compiled some easy to follow instructions for both your personal account and your company page.

How to Add An RSS Feed To LinkedIn Personal Account

1. Copy the URL of your blog or news feed. This can be found by clicking on the RSS icon on your blog or website. It should look something like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourcompanyname or http://yourwebsite.com/feed.

2. Log in to your personal LinkedIn account.

3. Hover cursor over “Profile.” A dropdown menu will appear. Select “Edit Profile.”

4. In the edit profile area, scroll down until you see the “Applications” section. This may be at the bottom of your profile. It may be higher. Select “Add an Application.”

5. In the applications area, select the WordPress application by clicking on the blue title.

6. Select “Add Application.” Be sure both boxes for display on profile and LinkedIn homepage are checked. They are by default.

7. Paste your feed url in the text field. Be sure “Show all recent posts from your blog.” is selected. It will be by default. You will then see how your feed will display. You may need to select “Save.” If you do not see the “save” button, you have successfully added the feed to your profile.

8. Verify installation by selecting “View profile” from the drop down nav under “Profile.” You should see your new WordPress blog widget displayed on your LinkedIn profile. To move the placement of the widget, select “edit profile” from the drop down nav and you will be able to select the widget to drag it higher or lower on your profile.

How To Automatically Publish An RSS Feed To A Company LinkedIn Page

1. Repeat the above instructions for getting the feed URL for the blog you want to display on your company LinkedIn.

2. Login to either your company page or your personal page (if your personal account is set up as an admin on the company LinkedIn). Open the Admin tools drop down menu in the right hand corner, and select Edit.

3. Once you are in the Edit screen, scroll down until you find the box called Company Blog RSS Feed.

4. Now simply paste the RSS Feed URL for your blog into that space and click Publish. Your blog posts will now appear as updates on your company LinkedIn page.

And there you have it. Your blog posts will now show up automatically on your LinkedIn when you publish them to WordPress. Still have questions? Ask us in the comments, or get at us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Happy blogging!

Meet Pinterest

First of all, you need to be invited to use Pinterest. If you want an invite, shoot an email to your most stylish female friends, or anyone planning a wedding. There’s probably a good chance they’re using it already, and they can invite you. (Pinterest seems to be very much still a girls’ club, but I think as it gains cred as a sharing space for design, photography and art, we’ll see the demographics even out).

You’ll need to set up an account. You can choose to link with your Facebook or Twitter account or leave it separate. You’ll create a user name and password, and then Pinterest will prompt you to select from some areas of interest (Design, Architecture, Film/TV, Women’s Fashion, etc.)

Once you select these, Pinterest will automatically set you up to follow some users in those categories. If you set up your account through Facebook, it will also add any of your Facebook friends who also have their Facebook and Pinterest accounts linked. You can always unfollow these users later.

Start Pinning

The next step is to create your pinboards. Pinterest will prompt you to create five boards (you can have as many as you want, this is just to get started). You can categorize these any way you like. I made one for design inspiration, one for fashion, one for DIY projects and one for books I’m reading. Next, you’ll want to add a “Pin It” button to your bookmarks tool bar. In Firefox and Chrome, all you have to do is open your bookmarks and drag and drop the “Pin It” button onto the toolbar. You can now use this button as you’re surfing around the web, to “pin” things to your pinboards. When you find something you want to pin, just click the button. Pinterest will open up a page asking which item on the page you want to pin and which board it should be pinned to. The whole interface works very smoothly, and only interrupts your Web browsing for a few seconds.

Find People

If you selected some areas of interest when you set up your account, your homepage will already contain some pins. If you like these users, do nothing, but if they don’t fit you, just unfollow their pins by going to their page and hitting the big unfollow button beneath their profile picture. You can also choose to follow only certain boards by a user.

Make Connections

Now is the time to start thinking like a social media marketer! Pinterest is a great forum for creatives like interior designers, photographers, fashion designers and retailers…the list goes on. Start finding accounts that are similar to you, and accounts that could be potential sales leads. What does a potential sales lead look like on Pinterest? Well, that depends. If you’re a clothing designer, you want to be looking for people like fashion bloggers and editors, buyers for stores and other people talking about fashion and design. If you’re a wedding photographer, start following wedding magazines and the many, many Pinterest accounts that are devoted to wedding planning.  (You get the idea). If you understand Twitter, you can understand Pinterest–in fact, Pinterest is a lot like a visual version of Twitter. You want to be pinning your work and things that inspire your work, and you want as many people as possible to see, like and re-pin your posts–especially your original ones. Curate the pinboards you follow, and use the comment and re-pin function to engage.

We love that Pinterest is intensely visual, making it a perfect place for creative people like designers and photographers to share their work. It also makes it incredibly easy for people to share your posts to their followers, which means it’s easy for something to go viral. Pinterest doesn’t have the widespread base that Twitter or Facebook gives you, but depending on the kind of business you have it might actually be easier to target your audience through Pinterest. For example, if you’re a florist who does a lot of weddings, you’ll find that Pinterest offers you a huge community of potential sales leads that’s already curated for you. To see some local businesses doing cool things with Pinterest, check out Gus & Ruby Letterpress, Concetta’s Closet and Pixels and Pulp.

And it’s not just great local businesses taking advantage of Pinterest. Check out these seven brands who are burning up Pinterest with their marketing awesomeness (post via @hubspot).

In addition to that, people who pin tend to pin a lot. If you come up with something that people on Pinterest like, you’ll have many passionate “pinners” sharing your work all across the site. Pinterest definitely won’t work for every company, but we think that for a certain types of businesses it has incredible potential for social media marketing.

Are you using Pinterest, either personally or for your business? Do you find that it helps you generate leads, find interesting companies, or something else? We’re just getting started on Pinterest so we’d love to here how you’re using it and what you think! Tell us in the comments or talk to us on Facebook or Twitter.

The fact is that social media just does not work for in-your-face marketing. Your account will be unfollowed rapidly if all you use it for it is telling people to buy stuff. But if you already actively use social media to share fun stuff and original content, and to have conversations with people interested in what you do, then you’re ready to put social media to work for you. Here are some tips for taking your hard-won followers and fans and turning them into new customers.

Draw people with a promotion

Use Twitter and Facebook to promote special offers or contests your business is running. Create a sweepstakes or contest for something that will pique people’s interest– a free estimate, a free personal training session, a free manicure, etc–and have followers enter online. It’s also great to bolster interaction with your company by creating a contest that requires people to participate in an active way. For instance, ask something like “What’s your favorite Acme ice cream flavor? One respondent will win a pint of their favorite flavor!” or “Why do you love Acme Diner? Tell us, and our favorite answer will win breakfast for two!” It’s especially interactive to run promotions like this on Twitter, because you can give participants a hashtag, which they can then use to see what their friends and others on Twitter are saying. Twitter’s contest guidelines are also more permissive; see “Keep it legal” below. (No idea what a hashtag is? Check out out Twitter tutorial).

Stay connected

You can’t just flip a switch and start promoting your business left and right (sorry). Introduce special offers and contests gradually, and be sure that you’re staying engaged with your fans and followers on a personal level. The Red Arrow Diner, which has locations in Milford and Manchester, does a great job of this. Their Facebook page and Twitter account ask fans to send in recipes for a cookbook, name a new restaurant (with a $100 prize to the winner) and share their favorite comfort food. They also interact: congratulating newlyweds, thanking their vocal fans, cooing over cute babies, and, importantly, apologizing sincerely when someone complains. The car sharing service Zipcar has a university-specific Facebook page that is also a study in effective use of social media–they offer deals, get fans to post pictures, respond to fan queries and occasionally share a good old fashioned puppy pic.

Offer exclusive deals to your fans

Special offers can be as simple as this: “20% off all cupcakes today for our Twitter followers! Just mention you saw this tweet.” Easy, right? Plus, offering deals like this will keep your frequent customers tuned in to your Twitter and Facebook feeds to watch for deals. (But again, keep these thoroughly mixed with the chatty and/or interesting updates that aren’t trying to sell something). An awesome deal will get your followers through the door initially, but frequent, smaller ones may keep them following and coming back.

Keep people coming back

As much as possible, be generous with the small Twitter and Facebook offers like the one above–a contest might get someone in the door once, but if they can stop by and get 15% off their lunch because they saw the offer on Twitter, they’ll keep following you. Also be sure that your already established customers know that they can follow you for deals, news and updates about sales. If you have a retail location, a sticker on your door or a placard by the cash register can tell your customers that you’re linked in to the social media sphere.

Be sure you’ve got the right followers

Sure, you may have lots of followers, but are a lot of them spambots, competitors, or random, inexplicable dudes in Romania? If you find that your promotions aren’t getting the response you want, you may need to tweak the people who are following you. This means some more work for you such as finding the people you want to follow you, interacting and hopefully showing them that you’re somebody worth following. For more on this, check out our blog posts about using Facebook and Twitter for business, and our post about fine tuning your social media strategy.

Last but not least: keep it legal

Facebook prohibits most contests that take place directly on business Facebook pages. If you want to run a contest or sweepstakes, you’ll have to take entrants to a website separate from Facebook. Be sure to check out all of Facebook’s promotion regulations before you post. Twitter is less regulated, but there are still rules. Make sure your contest or offer checks out.

What do you think? What approaches have you used that have helped keep your social media accounts healthy with engaged interaction? Feel free to comment below.

Here at NH Web design firm Vital Design, our awesome developers and designers can help you set up sweepstakes on your website; and our social media experts can help take your social strategy from boring to buzzing in no time. Follow us on Twitter, “like” us on Facebook or contact us via our website to get connected with Vital.

Facebook recently made some changes to their business pages, which have made Facebook into an even more effective tool for reaching potential clients and customers. Facebook business pages give your company a home on the most visited website on the Internet. That means that you have a huge number of potential fans, but also that it’s easy to get lost. So if you want to start tapping the true potential of your Facebook page, here are five things that your business page needs:

1. Smart promotion

Don’t just send your Facebook page to everyone in your personal friends list. Put a link to your Facebook page in your business email signature so every email you send is accompanied by a reminder to “Like” your business. If you have a email marketing list, send out reminders about your page and encourage clients to join the Facebook page. Send these out repeatedly. Make sure that there is a blurb on all your printed materials touting your Facebook page. If your business has a physical office, put a small sign on the front desk or the window reminding visitors to become Facebook fans.

2. Personal involvement
If you host events, take plenty of photos and encourage fans to tag themselves in those photos, or tag them yourself. Don’t use the page strictly for serious marketing–encourage fans to send questions and comments, and occasionally just throw out a fun question for your fans. (i.e., “We’re ready for summer here at Vital Design–what’s your plan to beat the heat?”) Letting fans know that there are real people behind the Facebook page will help fans feel connected to you and your business. And yes, this will take some time, but remembering to log in every day and spend even a short amount of time updating the page and communicating with your fans makes a big difference.

3. Widgets
Facebook now lets you put “Like” buttons and other Facebook widgets on your business Web page, so that everyone who will be reminded to like your Facebook page every time they visit. If you have a Facebook page, you must promote it on your homepage–these widgets are a great, graphically appealing way to do that. You can get the plugin in the Facebook Developer’s page here, and there are more advanced tips about adding and tracking social media buttons at Yoast. (Thanks to Vital’s Jesse Rand for the find).

4. Link up with personal pages
Put a link to your business’ Facebook page in the “Something about myself” box under your Facebook profile photo. You can also link to your business Facebook page in a status update using the @ function. Putting an @ before your business name will tag your business page in the post, which will put a link right in your status. (Check out the new stuff we’re up to at @Vital Design!) Encourage the staff of your business to do this too, if they’d like. Also consider using a program like HootSuite or Tweetdeck that will allow you to share news and links to all your social media accounts at once.

5. Mobile connectivity
Fans can link up to your Facebook page from their phones if their phones are verified as a mobile device on their account. You’ll need 25 “likes” and a verified username. Then people can just send a text to 32665 with the words fan (your username). This could work great if you are hosting a mobile event because attendees could like your page from the audience. Texting to Like a page is also useful in TV and radio spots.

What do you think? What strategies have you used to make your Facebook Page a more effective way to communicate with your audience?

Want more? Social media marketing is one of the things we do best. Contact us on our website or at 603-766-1902. And of course, don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

As you all know, social media is exploding. Almost everyone has either a Facebook, Twitter (although my wife may think it’s stupid), and/or LinkedIn account, if not all three. YouTube is becoming an everyday resource for tutorials etc. If you still think this social media thing is just a fad, you may be surprised to learn that in January UNH will offer it’s first Social Media course.

Facebook is kind of a big deal, and surprisingly enough the fastest growing demographic of Facebook users is those 35 years old and older. What started as a platform for students to communicate, has evolved into a highly sophisticated marketing tool with more than 300 million users worldwide. Major companies are taking notice, and it’s showing up everywhere. The other night I noticed that Honda is using their Fan page url, facebook.com/honda, in commercials rather than www.honda.com. It’s an interesting concept. Honda is trying to get their customers to build strength in the Honda brand socially through, “The Experiment.” A project attempting to prove that, “Everybody knows somebody who loves a Honda.” Seeing if we can all be connected through Honda Love.

Other companies like Walgreens, Coca-Cola, and Red Bull are using it too. It makes sense, go to where your customers are rather than making them come to you. There are 128,940,004 daily users already familiar with the Facebook functionality, becoming a fan of your company is just a click away.

So you have a Facebook page, you picked a custom Facebook URL and have started to add content. But your page is still just a Facebook page with your content, and not nearly as impressive as Coca-Cola’s customized page.

How do you create a custom Facebook page?

Static FBML is a Facebook application that allows you to add custom HTML code to your Fan Page giving you the ability to brand the page or pages however you want. Ideally, a professional looking custom designed and developed landing page will make the viewer want to become a fan of your business.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to add the Static FBML application to your page. How to set up your code so it works correctly. And how to set your new page as the default landing page for visitors, rather than your wall.

Here’s what you do…

Go to www.facebook.com and Login to your Facebook account.

At the bottom left of your screen click Applications.

Then click on Browse More Applications.

In the search box type in Static FBML.

Click on Static FBML.

Once on the Static FBML page, click Add to my Page select your page from the menu by clicking Add to Page.

Next, return to the Fan Page you are editing and go to the wall. Click Edit Page from the options under the logo/image box.

Scroll down to the FBML application, and select Edit.

This should bring you to a page that has two empty boxes. In the Box Title field, enter the name you want to display on your new tab. In the larger box, paste in your HTML code. When you are done click on Save Changes.

NOTE: The code should be from opening to closing div or table tag and contain no opening or closing body or HTML tags. Image/flash files etc. need to contain the full url and all styles need to be inline.

Setting Your New Page as the Default Landing Page

Go back to the Wall of the Fan page you are working on. Click Options, and then click Settings.

In the “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else:” option, select the tab that you have just created.

That’s pretty much it. Log out of Facebook, go back to the Facebook Fan Page you just created to see how everyone else will view it. And remember, if all else fails… we can do it all for you! Contact us to learn more.

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