~ Linked in Marketing – an Hour a Day (Viveka von Rosen)
~ The Complete Idiots Guide to LinkedIn (Susan Gunelius)
~ The Complete Guide to Using LinkedIn to Promote Your Business (Gini Graham Scott)
LinkedIn has recently really upgraded their business interface. Gone are the days of just LinkedIn for job seekers. Today, LinkedIn is trying to be the, well, ‘Facebook’ for businesses. With this being said, let’s not forget that having a business website with the help of a web hosting ubc review and other platforms is just as important and beneficial to your company’s growth. Structurally, businesses can now have pages on LinkedIn and those pages can ‘post,’ while users ‘follow’ the company. Similar to a Facebook relationship, your business can now ‘talk’ to customers and potential customers via the news feed. But don’t forget some of the unique aspects of LinkedIn, such as individual profiles and the ability to ‘reach out’ to followers via Inmail, 1st, and 2nd degree connections. Three new books help you through the LinkedIn marketing maze.
By Jason McDonald
Senior SEO Instructor – JM Internet Group
Posted: May 8, 2013
Linked in Marketing – an Hour a Day
This is the best book on LinkedIn of the bunch. Viveka Rosen is clearly a ‘guru’ of LinkedIn, and she really loves LinkedIn – that comes through loud and clear. She also has good pointers to buried resources you might not find otherwise. It has a lot of great technical information, but like Scott, she gets lost in the technical details without giving you a big picture or structural map. None of the books situates LinkedIn in the context of all social media marketing, and while LinkedIn is great for some companies, it is not that relevant for others. However, it can be a great tool to gather information for marketing purposes, whether it’s in great detail or just to see what the competition is doing. The data gathered can always be passed onto a Data Science Agency so that it can be fully understood and applied to the business appropriately.
All of the books would be helped if that had an initial section on ‘social media marketing’ in general and helped businesses and individuals to figure out if LinkedIn matches their marketing objectives before they dive in!
In terms of Viveka von Rosen, in particular, she is so incredibly important and famous on LinkedIn that I felt that at times she lost focus on the ‘little people’ who won’t have her clout or importance. So the good news is she is a LinkedIn guru, and that’s the bad news as well (isn’t that so often the case?).
You can get her book by clicking this link.
The Complete Guide to Using LinkedIn to Promote Your Business (Gini Graham Scott)
Among the three books, this book is perhaps the most technically oriented. It has many good tips, such as using your profile headline as an ‘ad headline’ for yourself vs. using it as your last job title, and it has some good screenshots. Like all of the book authors, however, Gina Scott pretty much leaves you to your own devices to figure out why you are on LinkedIn in terms of marketing. So this book is very strong about tactics, and weak about strategy.
Like all printed books, a book can get out-of-date quickly and this book was published in 2011. It’s still useful, however!
The Complete Idiots Guide to LinkedIn (Susan Gunelius)
Of the three LinkedIn books reviewed, this one is the worst of the bunch. It doesn’t have strong technical details, especially screenshots like Scott’s book, for example, nor does it have many insider tips and secrets like von Rosen’s book. So it’s neither fish nor fowl, in my view. And like the other two books it is lacking in the ‘strategy’ part of LinkedIn. All of these books assume –
- That you know LinkedIn is definitely for you (vs. say Facebook or Google+).
- That you know why you are on LinkedIn and have a strategic plan.
You can get her book by clicking this link.
Free LinkedIn Resources for Small Business Marketing
In addition to the books, there are some good free resources by LinkedIn that you’ll definitely want to check out. You may also want to look into what can casinos teach small businesses as well, to get additional assistance. Anyway, here’s my list –
- LinkedIn Learning Site – LinkedIn Help – very good, although both for users and for companies.
- LinkedIn Marketing Solutions – propaganda by LinkedIn about advertising and marketing on LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn YouTube Channel – also, focused more on the advertising and paid features on LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn Blog – a very good, official LinkedIn blog, but focuses more on the esoteric information.
Finally, don’t miss the LinkedIn Help Center, as it is really one of the very best help centers by any social media about itself. It won’t help you with strategy but it will help you with tactics.
