Integrate your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts

The feature is now available to all of our users on LinkedIn to integrate a twitter account.

On LinkedIn
When you are signed in, check the Twitter box under your Network Updates box on the homepage and follow a few simple steps.

Clicking through the setup process will allow you to specify the Twitter account that you’d like to sync and/or display on your LinkedIn profile.

On Twitter
As part of the setup process, you can choose to either send all your tweets or select tweets from Twitter back to LinkedIn as a status update.

You can choose to share all or just tweets that you tag with #in at the end (similar to #fb for facebook)

Business use of Twitter, Facebook exploding

Study warns that companies should watch out for related security and productivity issues

The use of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to promote businesses has exploded over the past six months, according to the results of a study that were released today.

People using Twitter to get the word out about their company, sales and promotions jumped more than 250% from this past spring, according to a study done by Palo Alto Networks, a maker of firewall technology. The number of companies using facebook for such tasks grew by 192%, the sudy found. The report said that workers are using social networks as promotional vehicles both with and without management knowledge.

But while the two social networking sites have been dramatic upswings in usage, companies have been moving to cut off access to them in the workplace.

Early in October, a study commissioned by Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing firm, 54% of U.S. companies say that they have banned workers from using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace while on the job. The study also found that 19% of companies allow social networking use only for business purposes, while 16% allow limited personal use.

And executives may have good reason to ban employees from using the social networking sites during business hours.

This summer, Nucleus Research, an IT research company, reported that companies that allow users to access Facebook in the workplace lose an average of 1.5% in total employee productivity.

Read full article >

4 Ways News Organizations are Using Twitter Lists

Though Twitter Lists are new to most users, some news organizations are trying to stay ahead of the curve by taking advantage of the new feature and implementing it quickly.

1. Staff Directory

2.Recommended people to follow

3. Real-time curation

4. Follow events

Read full Mashable story >

10 Most Useful Free Twitter Tools for Bloggers

This list has a few that you may know of but also a few you may not . . .

View list >

5 Tips for Getting More From Social Media Marketing

1. Integrate
Feature links to your social media profiles in your email signature, on your business cards, in your ads, and as a standard block of copy in your weekly HTML email newsletter.

2. Amplify
Use your social media activity to create awareness for and amplify your content housed in other places.

3. Repurpose
Making content that appears in one form and twisting it in ways that make it more available in a another, or to another audience, is one of the secrets to success in our hyperinfo driven marketing world we find ourselves.

4. Lead generate
Effectively generating leads from social media marketing is really no different than effectively generating leads anywhere – it’s just that the care you must take to do it right is amplified by the “no selling allowed” culture.

5. Learn
Just listen and learn

Read full article>

Additional Resources:

5 Tips for getting more from Twitter

5 Tips for getting more from LinkedIn

5 Tips for getting more from Facebook

6 Tips to Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter

Today, Twitter has roughly 6 million users and is projected to grow to 18.1 million users by 2010. With all those people, the chances for networking are endless and connecting with new people can lead to career opportunities, so it is essential that your personal brand exists on the service.

By leveraging the Twitter platform to build your brand you can showcase yourself to a huge and growing audience.

1. Claim your Twitter handle

With Twitter continuing its meteoric rise in popularity, it’s no surprise that Twitter account names are starting to be treated like domain names.

2. Decide how you want to brand yourself

Before you start actively using Twitter, you need a strategy, and the first step in developing that strategy is to completely fill out your user profile.
Three techniques for branding yourself on Twitter:

1. Lead with your company

2. Mutual branding – More and more companies are realizing that their employees are on Twitter and that they can be tapped to help promote their initiatives. Some of these Twitter accounts are mutually branded, so that the avatar has the person’s picture and the corporate logo.

3. 100% personal branding

3. Become known as an expert or resource

Essentially, Twitter is a shorter and more viral form of blogging, so the same rules actually still apply, and by constantly writing or tweeting about your expertise on a specific topic, you’ll become known for it and people will gravitate to you and follow you.4. Establish a Twitter marketing planJust like with any other website or blog, just because you build it, doesn’t necessarily mean people will come.
Elements of a Twitter marketing plan:

• Email signature  can turn into a new follower.

• Personal/corporate website

• Blog homepage + posts:

• Email newsletter

• Presentations

• Business Card

• Article writing / guest blog posting

• Networking on Twitter

• Promotional products

5. Utilize third-party applications

There are literally thousands of Twitter applications out there, but only a few that can really help you build your personal brand.

• Twellow

• Tweetbeep

• Tweetmeme

• Hashdictionary

• Ping.fm

• Twitter Grader

• Tweetlater

6. Form a Twitter “Mastermind Group”
Groups of individuals who are committed to helping each other and sharing knowledge amongst themselves.

• Grouptweet

• Twitter Groups

Read full article >

High-performing tweets have two essential features

1. Low friction: friction is the amount of mental processing time it takes to understand what your tweet is about. It’s a measure of how hard readers have to work to get to the value – the useful tip, link, facts, how-to etc. Friction causes reader resistance and must be kept as low as possible.

2. High value: value is the usefulness of the information in the tweet; how desirable it is to the reader; how much it helps them. Value causes reader attraction and must be kept as high as possible.

Read full article>

When Do You Use Twitter Versus Facebook?

There is growing body of people who actively use more than one social network, and do so with quite different purposes. Though on the surface many social networks seem similar, to use them skillfully it helps to better understand the different roles they can play in one’s online activity.

TWITTER

Connecting with Someone You Don’t Know
If I want to connect with someone I don’t know, either for business, social, or personal reasons, I first look the person up on Twitter. I can generally learn much more about them through scanning their tweets than I can in looking at what they choose to show on their Facebook page.

Breaking News
There is no easy way to retweet posts or to discuss the subject with the entire community, as Twitter allows through use of the hashtag.

New Learning and Discovery
Twitter could be seen as one massive introduction system, where users recommend other users both through retweeting and mentioning the person using the @username option.

FACEBOOK
Local News/Events
The effort has not seemed to gain traction, and how to make it easy and simple to access local information is still in its early stages on Twitter.

Connecting with Someone You Know
Facebook allows me to see if the person is on the network at a given time, and I can easily start a quick chat with them

Help on an Issue
Facebook friends are in a much better place to make suggestions.

While on the surface many social networks look the same, there are significant differences, both in their structure and what they emphasize, but also in the attitude that users bring. The more we understand these, the more we can know which social networks to use for what purposes.

Read full article >

7 Secrets to Tweeting Your Corporate Culture

Here are 7 suggestions for establishing a rock-solid corporate culture on Twitter:

1. Share Your History
2. Talk Vision and Mission
3. Reveal Industry Insights
4. Recognize Employees
5. Profile Customer Successes
6. Be Responsive
7. Ask Questions About the Future

So whether it’s an individual talking about their organization or a company tweeting about what makes them special, Twitter can help to define and promote your corporate culture. Even with 140 characters you can say a lot about yourself, your workplace, and what you do.

Read full article >

Post Twitter & Facebook updates at the same time, not all the same content

Tweetpo.st is a FREE service that enables you to post updates to Twitter and Facebook at the same time.

You specify which tweets are posted to Facebook, and you can also track links posted to Facebook using awe.sm
The benefit of this tool is to be able to update Twitter without all the posts going to Facebook.