LinkedIn is one of the industry leading social networks and online communities in use today across multiple businesses and industries. LinkedIn’s focus on business-to-business networking and facilitating the sharing of ideas and strategies has won the trust of business professionals globally. Not unlike many of their counterparts, LinkedIn does have privacy challenges according to many CEO level executives. Many organizations are now reviewing their policies related to LinkedIn and how information propagates through this business social network.

More and more business professionals are turning to LinkedIn because of its overall effectiveness in the marketplace. However, many are unaware of the apparent risks to corporate contacts when setting up their LinkedIn accounts. There are many settings that are on automatically allowing for browsing of contacts and also leaving a trace of who visited another profile. Many organizations as part of their social media acceptable use policy are now requiring specific changes to LinkedIn privacy settings be made ensuring business contacts and information are kept confidential.

LinkedIn is build on a community and like many other online networks; they embrace the sharing of information and contacts. How do businesses balance the foundations of LinkedIn with the compliance and confidentiality measures of business today?

Read my white paper on the two required LinkedIn security settings.

Thank you to everyone for all the emails lately.  Many of you who have been used to getting my blog posts delivered via email have emailed me concerned about the slow down or the drop off in the frequency of the emails.  Thanks for that.  The reality is this, I have just been very busy.

Ulistic is growing and expanding.  We have welcomed Frank Allen as one of our sales reps and are currently in discussions with another amazing person who will become a vital component of our team just like Frank.  Ulistic is blossoming into a Internet consulting firm across Canada and the United States.

Next week, David and I are heading back down to Los Angeles for a couple of days and then come home right in the middle of Stampede.  No Microsoft WPC for me this year. Going to miss seeing everyone who I have become friends with in the Microsoft community but it will also be great to spend a week networking in the Calgary business community.

All is well with me.  Trying to get back into my routine of working out, working on the business and working on my own personal goals and family.  It is truly a fine balance.  I haven’t even watched much World Cup Soccer.  Football however during the month of June kept us busy and it will again come August.  Football even reduced me business networking where I had to just pop in to say hi to those colleagues in a local Calgary Oil and Gas Meetup group.

All is well…just busy.

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Ulistic focuses on serving the needs of Canadian Small Business, REALTORS, and Information Technology firms across Canada and United States. Helping your business understand, deploy and leverage social media, search engine optimization and online communications to generate business opportunities and make an impact inside your community and industry.

My business partner David and I are business professionals first. We understand what it takes to run a successful small business.

I invite you to reach out to me personally at 403.775.2205 or email Stuart at scrawford@ulistic.com.

Over the past few weeks I have been studying the analytics used to track this blog amongst other sites under the careful eye of our team at Ulistic. I keep asking myself if Search is really all that important in today’s new Internet?  In the early days of the Internet, back in the days of webcrawler.com (which was my search engine of choice), searching for information was a hit and miss affair.  Sure some days you would find what you were looking for and some days maybe not.  Was that because of poor search engine optimization?  My spidey senses say no…maybe just a plain old lack of information online.

Then Google came along…and everything changed.

A new form of Snake Oil Salesmen was invented, “the search engine optimization guru”.  (Today we have social media gurus) Don’t get me wrong with every business comes which is popular attracts Snake Oil Salesmen.  Today, they are everywhere.  Someone looking to make a quick buck scaring small business people into thinking that they business will go under if they don’t do something now.  There isn’t a day that passes where I get solicited from someone who fails to truly identify themselves via email offering to put my site on the first page of the Google search engines.

Your business must have balance…you need to get out and shake hands, get some Vitamin D, go to people where the work, network, have a balanced website, effective search strategies, social media activities and much more…you can’t rest on search engine optimization alone and expect to survive.

Here is my side of the story – I am in the business and work with a number of IT firms, small businesses and others across North America and even I can’t guarantee to you that we will put you on the first page of Google.  Why?  Lots of reasons.  If you follow the best practices that professionals recommend, you have a much better chance of surfacing on the top of the search table. However, who is to say your competitors down the street isn’t after the same goal or that company on the other side of the globe who has repeatedly cut your grass over the past six months.

SEO is something that you firm must invest in.  But, like I said earlier it has to be part of the overall strategy and balanced with everything else you do.  SEO needs to be part of your overall marketing plan just like your business networking, your direct mail pieces and other marketing activities.  It must be part of the long-term vision of the organization and the management team of all organizations who wish to achieve success online must take ownership and be included in the process.

Yes, Search is crucial in today’s business world when it is balanced with all your other activities.

What about social?  Is Social Media the new search?  Will Facebook become the next big search engine?  My crystal ball says “Facebook has the potential”.  Now, search is on a whole new level.  Search enters social and social enters search.  Does it make sense?  Just looking at the web analytics I have to say I am impressed how much traffic comes from linkedin.com, twitter.com and facebook.com on a number of keysites under our watch at Ulistic.

Will we be saying…and then Facebook came along…and everything changed.

For the past couple of years I have been involved with a really great group of guys who help each other with marketing and personal development.  MAX is the name of our group and a number of great Calgary companies are part of this marketing exchange group. Our group meets once a month for a couple of hours and also have regular networking events for our members and clients.

Trico Homes, McLean and Partners and Karo Design are just a few of the companies who are part of this core group, including us at Ulistic.  It is great to have the leadership of these great firms to help guide us in the right direction.

Why is it important to have a core group like this?  Well, it is easy…we all get stuck!  Where can you turn to when you are stuck and simply need a bit of a shove in the right direction?  Recently, I asked our group about business networking and where can we turn to use our time better while networking in Calgary?  Also, they provided some amazing direction to help with something I was struggling with.

It is a good idea for you to search out who and what group can help you.

Why must you use social technologies to market your business today? Pretty valid question in today’s world of Facebook, Buzz, Twitter, Foursquare, Blogs, Podcasts and everything else out there.  On a good day this has the potential to confuse the brightest marketing expert.

What can you do now to create a social networking impact?

When you think about it, no one is forcing you to use online technologies and you don’t have to even consider it if you are happy where you at today.  But really think about it, how social technologies fit into your business?  It is not that important if you build strong and vibrant online communities which feed into your referral sources is it?  No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to engage in online strategies to grow your business, are they?

You don’t have to do any of this.  Look around you though.  Do you competitors have blogs?  Are they influencing the community?  Are they posting feedback on your Chamber of Commerce Facebook fan page?  Are they out there hosting meetup groups?  What are they doing that you are not?

Join Calgary Social Media Consultant Stuart Crawford (that’s me) on Feb 24th at 9 AM Pacific or Noon on the east coast for a very special Microsoft Partner 5W25 session on Social Media.  This is not a death by “presentation software” webinar.  You will get “down and dirty” on discussions on how your business can use social technologies daily and how you can build a strong following online which will spill over to the face-to-face community.  How can you influence those in your community?  You see social media is simply a communication tool to get people to call you, email you or fill in some form on your website.  It is something very crucial to the success of your business and when done right can have a huge upside.

Here is a question for you.  If you are not out there, how will anyone know you are there?  This goes back to the core basics about business networking.  Sit behind your desk all day, no one will call you.  Don’t get online and share information, no one will know you exist.

What will you learn in this Microsoft 5W25 webinar on Feb 24th?

What will we be covering in this one hour webinar with the fine folks at Microsoft?

In my last talk I pretty much laid the ground work for this discussion.  Back in October we covered a bunch of boring theory around social media and the tools available, no one liked it they wanted more, more life stories and lessons learned from the trenches, more real life examples of success and more meat around this subject.  This time you will have your meat and potatoes on how you can use Social Media in your business.  Not fluffy stuff, real life examples of stuff I did and what some of my peers have done online.

We get to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty this time around.  Social Media is critically important but for reasons that are not shared now.  You need to tune in.  However, it is more than just letting people know you published a blog via Twitter or you helped a client out via Facebook.  Social Technologies and the effective use on online tools and services goes far deeper than simple status updates.

You have to tune into the webinar to get the full story.

This Microsoft 5W25 seminar is open to most Microsoft Partners around the world.