Business to business social networking site – Linkedin - hit a new landmark today, by signing up it’s one hundred millionth user.  They created this infographic to make the occassion, which tells the story pretty well.  You can read their blog about it here.

Of all the on-line networking sites, Linkedin has stood the test of time.  Based upon a business model of being the ultimate feeding ground for the recruitment industry, it’s evolving its business model beyond straight recruitment and much more into connecting people with wider products and services.

Of the 100M users, there are around 1.3+ billion connections between members and around 79 million job transitions/changes have been tracked by the site.  That’s one hell of a database, so you can see why that would be of value to marketeers.

Beyond just storing your profile and connecting with people, many folk don’t ever really unearth some of the real benefits that Linkedin can bring a B2B organisation.  I’ve previously blogged about Linkedin maps visualiser and researching customers/competitors, two features which most people are amazed by, when you mention them.

In addition, you can create closed communities for customers, common interest groups, get questions crowd-sourced answered, aswell as do the obvious, find new people for jobs.

It’s an out and out B2B platform. Most small businesses don’t realise how powerful it can be for search.  Set up a company page, add your products onto it and then get users of the products to provide endorsements.  That sort of information is loved by the search engines.   If you want to take it to a really sophisticated level, you can start to point products at people with specific job titles, highly targeted.

If you check the infographic, you can also see, that the platform is primarily used during the working day, or on mobile devices – post work, indicating that it’s seen as a serious tool, particularly in America and Europe.

It’s no surprise to me that Linkedin continues to grow. I find it a great platform for researching and keeping track of people.  Most people I know only do the basics, profile and connect with people that they might know.  That’s often where it ends.  However, with a bit more time invested, you can get an awful lot more from it.

I think Linkedin will continue to grow unchallenged by the likes of Facebook and Twitter.  It does a completely different job, in a B2B environment.  Their user subscriptions will continue to grow as they expand into new markets and I’m sure it won’t take them too long to hit the 200M mark.

Lastminute.com.  One of the big dotcom success stories of the late nineties.  Founded by digital entrepreneurs Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman.

Seizing the opportunity to see Martha Lane Fox deliver a keynote in London last night in her capacity as the Governments Digital Champion,  I wasn’t entirely sure what my opinion of her was, pre-lecture. 

I’d seen her picture a lot in the media.  I’ve heard of the highs and lows of lastminute.com from foundation to flotation.  I was impressed that she replied within a few minutes of my mentioning her on Twitter.  Like anything, you really get to see more of a person – in person - so was keen to form my own opinion of her.  Immaculately turned out, she looked every inch the ambassador/stateswoman.

Background

I hadn’t known (until I did a bit of desk research on here), that she’d survived a horrifying car crash in Morocco in 2004 which nearly left her dead (breaking 26 bones in the process), that she sits on the boards of M&S and Channel 4 aswell as having numerous other business interests in the charity sector.  She is Chair of a Karaoke business she founded called Lucky Voice (must pay them a visit) and graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford where she read ancient and modern history.  More details on Wikipedia here.

Last nights keynote was governed by Chatham House rules, so I won’t detail anything here that doesn’t already exist in the public domain that she may have repeated last night.  I will comment however on her speaking style, which I found relaxed, articulate, engaging and informative.  A masterclass in holding an audience.

Backing Digital

She passionately backs all things digital and is the brains behind the Race Online 2012 initiative whose aim is to address the 10m people who don’t have internet access and get them online. 

Urging businesses and government to take more risk in this area, both financial and non-financial in the name of competitiveness, Lane Fox seeks efficiency improvement and to reach out to all areas of society.  Privileged and underprivileged. 

My thoughts – I agree.  If the UK is to compete on a global stage then we have to turn the heat up here, reduce our costs, make services accessible and transcend through the process of high-touch to low-touch public service transactions.

Crossing the Divide

Whatever the future holds, we have to accept that the web will continue to dominate working practices, divide and unite societies, countries and social groups.  A passionate advocate myself, what I liked most about Martha Lane Fox is the realisation that these tools are operated by humans, for humans to ultimately give us more opportunity to do the things that matter.  Here here. 

Wandering back to the hotel after the lecture, my reflections were that the Government needs people like Martha within it, around it, advising it and keeping the mandate going about lower transactional costs to serve, simplification and accessibility, to us, the taxpayer.  She’s a credible voice, with a “been there, done it”  t-shirt to boot. 

Post-lecture, she’d more than convinced me of her ability to energise, question and create momentum in the projects she is running.  To come back from such a serious accident, shows guts and a steely determination.  If you get a chance to hear her speak, turn up.

I posted the other day about the benefits of blogging.  Don’t be mistaken that it’s hard to get a blog going, because it’s not.  Here’s how my 12 year old son set up a blog in about 12 minutes over the weekend.  Seriously, if a 12 year old can do it, you can too.

-Go to blogger com.
-Make up a name for your blog (if it’s already taken, choose another).
-Choose a template.
-Get blogging.

If you want to get really fancy, you could choose a dedicated URL for your blog by visiting somewhere like 123-reg.co.uk and buying yourself a name, then pointing that name to the URL of your blog.  I’ve recently done this with my cycling blog, whose previous URL was http://philsroadbikingblog.blogspot.com (bit of a mouthful) to www.race-pace.net (shorter and punchier).  URL costs me £10 a year.

So, back to my son.  He wanted to sell a few books and things to friends at school.  So, we set up a blog.  Bought a URL for £5.99 and off he’s gone.  You can see the result of his work so far at www.epicprices.co.uk.  He’s even added some Google advertising on to earn a few pennies (that’s my boy) and is sharing the link in Facebook to give exposure to his friends.  It really is as simple as that.

So, whether big or small.  Have a think about what a blog could do for you.  You could be up and running in under twelve minutes.

Small businesses. Got a product or service which is unique or some specialist knowledge? Yes?  Are you writing a blog? Yes (finish reading here).  No (read on).

Blogs are a powerful tool.

More powerful than most small businesses might imagine.  Google will love you. Google loves new content, which is unique, rich and gets better results for its searchers.  The more specialised your blog, the better.  So if your knowledge or product is quite specialised, you will get found more often and go higher up the search rankings.  The more you post, the more visits you get, the more quality visits you get, the better you begin to rank in the future.  Simples.

People trust authentic, well written blogs more than they do adverts. Sharing expertise, offering knowledge, solving problems is what it’s all about.  Don’t forget that the second most popular search platform on the planet is Youtube.  Creating Vlogs (video blogs) is another great way to drive traffic to your site and grab a high ranking.  If you look at a standard google search page nowadays, you’ve given the option of web, images, blogs and video, each one offering different results.  Use your unique photos and ensure they are tagged, that way people searching for images will also be drawn back to your site.

Getting Started

I’ve previously posted my top tips for bloggers, check it here.  One tool that I’ve used since then is Google Wonder Wheel.  A brilliant way to establish what the key search terms that people are using.  Here’s an example relating to road cycling.

The Power of the Wonder Wheel

In the search term you can see the term “road cyling blog” and the search results will appear underneath as normal (guess what at time of writing, my cycling blog is ranking #1 on Google – proves it works).  If you look at the left hand navigation, look underneath shopping and hit the link which says “Wonder Wheel”.

What this then reveals are the top alternative terms that people use to get that result.  As you can see, terms like “road cycling blogger” and “cycling training blog” appear.  The trick is to then use these terms in future blogposts.  Not all of them, couple at a time.

The more you click on each of the spokes, the further it drills down, so you can really get to the nitty gritty of your subject and the phrases people are using.  This is powerful stuff and will really help you to match your future content, to the search terms people are using.

Keep it Short and Sweet

Notwithstanding this post, which is a bit longer than I would normally write.  If you keep your blogs, short and snappy, with original content (don’t copy and paste someone elses, use your own knowledge and expertise) you’ll be surprised at what impact they can have.  Often large Corporate sites don’t have content which changes regularly, this is where you can steal their thunder by posting up to date news/reviews and thought leadership.

Another example.  Last week top bike brand Boardman launched a new range in London.  I got wind of this, quickly researched the new range and got a blogpost up.  For the first 3 days I was #1 on Google for anyone searching for the new model “Boardman Road Pro Air 2011“.  It’s dropped down to about #4 now as the big cycling sites with massive traffic kicked in, however I’m still there – front page on general search but #1 on blog search.

My point is.  Without a lot of effort, you can intelligently drive more traffic to your website, by blogging.  More traffic means more impressions, more impressions should lead to more conversions if your sales funnel is right.

I love to play with words.  One of my most recent creations which I used at the How-Do Brand on Demand event on Wednesday was “ME-conomics”. 

I used the word as a descriptor for the changing nature of mobile business, personalisation of goods, growth of personal branding and how marketeers need to pay attention to these trends in their marketing mix in order to monetise them (economics bit).

There was widespread agreement that the world is moving pretty quickly at the minute.  Mobile applications are motoring along at a terrific pace.  Innovation is rife.  Here’s a great factoid – 60% of Apple’s 2010 sales came from products that did not exist three years ago.  Scary!

Mobile-ME

Retailers in the states are now providing free wi-fi in store as a way of being able to geo-locate their customers, find out more about them and send hyper-local advertising to them, fire real-time coupons at their customers and track their physical paths through the store.  Interesting stuff, totally driven by the technology.  Mobile search gives local retailers a real chance for cut-through, as long as they get their proposition right.

Pay-Off

It’s evident that those businesses that get their plans shifted to accomodate the mobile revolution will be big winners in the game.  Mobile enabled websites, mobile enabled e-commerce, mobile enabled search.  I talked about the world shaking down to the big convenience platforms, Amazon, i-Tunes, Facebook, eBay – as they offer the ultimate in convenience to the attention poor individual on the move.

What’s clear, is that ME-conomics is a big trend.  There are other elements to it, I’m saving those for a keynote I’m doing in a couple of months in Berlin.  More to come.