LinkedIn – the popular business networking site – has launched a new feature whereby users may save profiles of potential contacts in an easily managed Profile Organizer. Previously, adding a contact involved several steps and was not especially user-friendly. Thus, the idea is to make LinkedIn more appealing to those who are on-the-go.

Several users have found this to be quite useful as the “notes” tool provides a quick and easy way to jot down comments regarding potential business contacts. These notes can then be reviewed before meetings or conferences to keep track of past discussions and behavioural characteristics! The downside? You need to have a paid version of LinkedIn to benefit from this useful tool.

The blogs featured on this week’s BAMroll offer opinions on LinkedIn’s newest feature.

Duct Tape Marketing Blog offers great insight into the development. They delve into the differences between researching and contacting when using LinkedIn’s tools and explain the benefits of this improvement.

WebProNews Blog explains the Profile Organizer and even offers a video introduction to the feature. Moreover, they offer explanations from LinkedIn’s Elizabeth Reaves about the feature and its usability.

See you next week!

We are in the era when ‘a little birdie told me’ is a well-respected source of information, and not just a sarcastic phrase. That’s right, it’s Twitter Time! Our vocabulary has come to adopt the new wave of online jargon that includes such comical terms like tweet, thumb, sphinn, and digg.

As social media becomes a major player in the online world of business and networking, these ‘little birdies’ are tweeting their ways into the lives of you and me. However, it is not as easy as one might think. Although the bare essentials can be mastered by children, creating a following and retaining them is quite a difficult task.

Thankfully, these two blogs help shed light on the methods and strategies necessary in order to maximize your Twitter practice.

• This blog ‘Here’ was created and is written by Kieron Donoghue who also owns and operates UK Offer Media Ltd. His blog How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Online Business is an informative tool with some great tips for those who are interested in Tweeting. His experience is focused primarily around affiliate marketing but he specializes on online marketing in general.
• Chris Frost aka Frostie on the A4U affiliate forums is an experienced online marketer and affiliate. He has been very active in the UK affiliate marketing and PPC arena over the years and is well-versed in the social aspect of networking. His blog, Increasing your Twitter Following, gives insight into what has worked well in the past and things to consider for your own Twitter page. Moreover, he has several blogs pertaining to Twitter and maximizing its potential.

If you are interested in keeping up-to-date with informative blogs that are featured here, you can download the OPML file on our BAMroll page.  We also have badges for your blog, if you’re already a BAMroller.

The marketing potential of social media is not as some kind of hyper targeting tool that you can use to advertise your products/services to consumers. Rather, the value of social media lies in how it can help brands and affiliates build trust and a reputation with their target market. And that trust, in turn, can not only help you gain added customers, but actually retain them. After all, when a consumer feels like they have a relationship with your or your brand, they are that much more likely to become a loyal customer.

That being said, when many marketers first wade into social media, they can often make. Here’s an overview of 5 common social media mistakes:

1. Trying to dictate the conversation: trying to censor the conversation will rob your communications of the authenticity that makes social media so powerful. Besides, it’s not very social when you talk at people.
2. Putting on a false front: outright lying to consumers can backfire spectacularly. Just imagine if one day you found out your best friend was never who they said they were. Would you ever trust them again?
3. Failing to prepare for the flood of customer communications: once you get a conversation going with consumers, you need to take responsibility for answering queries, addressing complaints and updating content. You can’t engage consumer and then just give them the silent treatment.
4. Mistaking social networking for traditional advertising or corporate comms: social networking is about forging connections, creating credibility and building relationships rather than hard-selling, so injecting some personality into your communications will help you seem more inviting and engaging.
5. Thinking that they’ll come if you build it: you need to put some effort into marketing your social networking presences, and even more importantly, you need to give people a reason to want to engage with you..

The original post, of course, goes into more detail on each of these. But suffice it to say that social media marketing is similar to many other acquisition channels in that it is not a get-rich-quick, overnight-conversion scheme. Rather, it’s something that takes time and planning to do correctly.

The return social media marketing, however, can be many times greater than the investment. After all, not only will make back your time and effort in conversions over time, but you will also gain the trust and respect of consumers, which will help you retain them.

For an affiliate, the potential contained in social networks is enormous. With their rate of growth, the possibility of gaining new customers and establishing relationships with potential partners within specific verticals is endless.

A large number of networking sites make it easy to find users that are interested in similar topics, which means a marketer can find profiles and networks of users suited for their particular vertical(s) with relative ease. Generating profits from social networks, however, requires a proper understanding of these social portals. Here are some tips to help you do just that:

• Start by getting to know the biggest and most popular networks.
• As you get more comfortable, identify social networks within your vertical(s).
• Become an avid participant in the area(s) you have identified.
• Make sure the site you’re trying to attract users to has original content and is in tune with the target audience.