Leadpile’s Blog

With Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn it is hard to keep up with the growing social media trends. Over the past couple of years there has been a steady incline in social media users that until recently did not appear to have any end in site.
According to Mashable “The Social Media Guide” Twitter and Facebook appear to be flattening while LinkedIn saw an increase in traffic of 5.68% for the month of September. LinkedIn also announced today that they have now reached over 50 million users. LinkedIn states that 50% of its user are currently based in the US, while 50% are international.
While Twitter and Facebook are expanding their focus and going off in many different directions to attract as many users as possible, LinkedIn has always had the same focus – to connect professionals to each other.
Personally, I have two Twitter accounts, a Facebook and a LinkedIn account…Each for a different purpose. For me, LinkedIn has become a way to stay in touch with former colleagues as well as connect with people who I would not necessarily want introduced into my personal life through pictures or comments on my Facebook or Twitter accounts.
It is all changing so quickly, and hard to keep up with! As soon as I grasp how to connect on one site, it seems like everyone has moved on to the next. Staying “trendy” with social media is a full time job, however Leadpile promises to keep up with the trends!

Sounds like the employees of ESPN have gotten busted by the “twitter police”. ESPN has recently rolled out some new guidelines for acceptable behavior with social networking sites such as Twitter. The goal of these new guidelines was to provide guidance on how websites, blogs and social networking sites should only be used in a way to benefit ESPN.
This brings up a good point about employers and the use of these social networking sites. A couple items come to mind when I think about these guidelines being implemented. First, there are a lot of people that might occupy a lot of work time to keep their fellow “tweeters”/Facebook “friends” etc updated on their daily activities. This affects them in their jobs and performing what they are paid there to do… work not Tweet. Secondly, social networking really has not been a part of our daily lives till recently, so there has to be some sort of guidelines implemented to help control what company information/news can be funneled through the social networking sites. If there are not guidelines, then sometimes the common sense factor will not come into play when releasing possibly some private information. However, there are a lot of companies that will use Twitter as a source of promoting their product or service, and I believe that is a different conversation. Promoting your company’s product or service should be okay, but there has to be guidelines on how much time is actually done doing that while working.
Leadpile does work on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, but in a way that does not violate any information that should not be disclosed improperly. It will not surprise me if we continue to hear stories like this one, because employers are having to set a precedence on how to effectively use the social networking sites while conducting business.

As many of you already know, LinkedIn is a great source for networking.  I was looking over the site and came across and very good article about the benefits of LinkedIn.  I thought I would share this information with the Leadpile readers.  According to LinkedIn blog, there are 10 potential benefits to using LinkedIn:

1. Increase your visibility
2. Improve your connectability
3. Improve your Google PageRank
4. Enhance your search engine results
5. Perform blind, “reverse,”

and company reference checks
6. Increase the relevancy of your job search
7. Make your interview go smoother
8. Gauge the health of a company
9. Gauge the health of an industry
10. Track startups

Leadpile Lead Exchange and myself included, utilize LinkedIn as a great source to network with other companies. If this is not something you are already doing, I strongly suggest taking a look and seeing all the benefits of using this great site. We would love to hear from you on LinkedIn.

If you want to access your LinkedIn on the go.

Working in affiliate marketing you always want to figure out creative ways to get your name out there on the net.  Here are some places that I found to be helpful in building the partners I am working with.

LinkedIn- great place to join various groups and have access to companies in your line of work.  I found that some people I come across in my network are companies/websites that I would not have necessarily located with one of the search engines.  LinkedIn is also great to get some professional advice from all the people in your network.   You create a profile and the website does the work for you!  Great site to get your name out there! 

http://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=hb_home

Glam Interactive Group- womens on-line networking site.  This site allows you to get in touch with women who are always looking for new partnerships and new ventures.  You have a profile on this site and the website does the work of connecting you with other women in the industry.

http://glaminteractivenetwork.ning.com

Ecomexpo- a virtual tradeshow for the on-line marketing industry.  If your company can’t necessarily get out to the tradeshows around the US, then this is a great way to network and meet new potential partners. You can have a booth set up or just be a visitor.  Nice way to get a lot of new contacts in companies that you might already be working in or have wanted to work with.  All the work can be done from your desk.

http://www.ecomxpo.com/

youtube- great place to see some off the wall videos, but I also found it to be a place that you could locate some partners.  There are a lot of affiliate marketers doing videos and talking about various aspects of the industry.  Maybe they are a great candidate to become a partner or they have connections to those that might be interested.

http://www.youtube.com/

Trying to come up with unique ways to get new partners is something I feel that you have to do in order to grow your business.  Using these sites has helped me to come into contact with new people that I might not have ever ran into.