Brainstorm Design Blog

This guest blog has been written by Tim Watson

In the last quarter LinkedIn earned $33.3 million from Premium membership subscriptions. That’s 20% of LinkedIn revenues and its grown 87% in the last year.

Persuading more of the 90% of free members to upgrade is a major revenue opportunity for LinkedIn.

LinkedIn are using email to convert members, sending a free one month trial offer. I am a LinkedIn member and after many years still on the free package. As an early adopter of LinkedIn this makes me a target for Premium membership upgrade.

Just as I was putting the finishing touches to a new email copy & creative training deck of 87 slides a LinkedIn upgrade offer dropped into my inbox. It demonstrates several of the principles I’d just covered in the slide deck.

LinkedIn have optimised

What happened next was even better. I found a copy of the same offer from last November in one of my email folders (LinkedIn have tried a few times to convert me).

The difference between the email now and from last November is an excellent case study in email optimisation, so let me share the key elements of what changed and why.

With many of us working full schedules, we know how difficult it can be for you to get out of the office. With this in mind, Brainstorm Digital are proud to announce our first online social media seminars.

Like a real seminar, you'll be able to interact with me, ask any questions you have and even talk to other delegates. All you need is an internet connection and a webcam. To give you a taste of what we have in store for you....

• Wed 9 May: How to engage with customers and build loyalty on Facebook
• Thu 10 May: Using LinkedIn groups to connect with potential clients
• Mon 14 May: How to convert Twitter followers into clients
• Mon 14 May: How to develop a Twitter strategy for your brand
• Tue 15 May: How to use LinkedIn to get introduced to new clients
• Fri 25 May: How to promote your brand on your LinkedIn company page
• Tue 29 May: Optimising your LinkedIn profile to get you noticed
• Thu 31 May: How to promote your brand on Facebook
• Tue 12 June: How to convert Twitter followers into clients
• Thu 14 June: Developing a Twitter strategy for your brand
• Thu 14 June: How to use LinkedIn to get introduced to new clients
• Tue 19 June: How to promote your brand through your LinkedIn company page
• Thu 21 June: How to use Youtube to promote your brand

If you would like to view our full list of seminars, click on the button below (site requires registration). Alternatively, please call us on 020 8953 8820 or email us at info@brainstormdesignltd.com.

In a recent study of over 5,000 businesses, HubSpot found that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, almost 3 times higher (277%) than both Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%).  

Which social media platform generates the most business for you? Why not take part in our poll!

This guest blog has been written by Tim Watson

There are many excellent social media blogs providing great content to keep you up-to-date with the latest social media marketing trends and advice.

SocialMediaExaminer is one of these sources of great information. So its no surprise they have 47,513 followers on Twitter and 76,391 people have liked them on Facebook, however they have a secret weapon.

In fact this same secret weapon is used by the top 7 of the top ten best Social Media experts as judged by SocialMediaExaminer themselves that they picked from over 600 nominations.

So, what is the secret weapon? Email communications! Whilst their Twitter and Facebook stats are impressive, their email following is bigger at 129,329 people.

They are so keen to have you as a subscriber that the email sign up gets the prime real estate on their home page.

On Wednesday 25th April, I will be at Regus Borehamwood discussing the various ways that LinkedIn can be used to sell to other businesses. I will be demonstrating why LinkedIn is 277% more successful than Facebook and Twitter at lead generation. The briefing will cover...

• How to promote your business on your LinkedIn profile
• Using LinkedIn company pages
• LinkedIn Events
• Promoting your business on LinkedIn groups
• LinkedIn advertising

The session will end with a Q&A session.

The other day, I initiated a forum discussion asking people how they attracted followers on Twitter. One participant proudly explained how he went from 230 to 2300 followers in just a couple of months.

Well I have news for you. It really doesn’t matter how many followers you have. It’s the quality of followers that counts, not quantity. 

Do you have an enquiry form on your website? Here is a tip to help you increase the number of enquiries...keep it simple!

I am amazed by the number of websites that have complicated forms with lots of compulsory fields: your address, what time would you like an appointment, how would you like us to contact you...etc. The longer the form, the less likely it is that visitors will bother filling it in. 

All that really matters are three things:

1. A  name
2. An email address
3. A phone number

As long as you have some basic contact details, you can call / email the client back and get all the other information you need. 

Like many of us, I spend a lot of my time on the move, either out at meetings or travelling between meetings, so I rarely use a landline. Ever needed to call a "freephone" 0800 number whilst on the move? That's 20p a minute if you're an O2 customer. And the charge is the same for a "non-geographic" 0845 or 0870 number. What's even more frustrating is that a lot of "customer service" departments employ these exorbitant phone numbers.

These are the usual two excuses I hear from companies that employ "non-geographic" phone numbers....

1. "We want to give the impression of being a larger company than we really are" - But there are so many one-man bands out there that use 0870 / 0845 numbers, that argument no longer washes. People are no longer fooled by a phone number.
2. "We serve the whole of the UK, not just a a local area" - But with increased mobility and use of the internet, how many companies these days only serve a local area? In fact, most callers have no idea which local area your dialling code represents unless they actually live in the area. And even if you have a "local" phone number, it's increasingly meaningless as more and more numbers are virtual. There are offshore businesses that have a London dialling code. 

In the world of social media, a few months is a long time, so it may come as something of a surprise if I told you that Pinterest is the next big social media phenomenon, and that it has already celebrated its 2nd birthday.

Help, what's Pinterest?!

Pinterest is a social photo sharing website. It allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections of photos of any subject. The sites mission statement is to "connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting." 

Development of Pinterest began in December 2009, and the site launched as a closed beta in March 2010. By February of this year, Pinterest had over 10 million users. The majority of Pinterest's users are women.

On 30th March, all business Facebook pages will use Timeline. https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline . Here are the key ways that it will affect your Facebook page: