As I’d mentioned earlier, I work with many of my social media counterparts at sharing best practices on LinkedIn and I was thrilled that we could get both Kodak (Thomas Hoehn) and Samsung (Esteban Contreras) to launch their brands’ Company Pages on launch date. Brian Nizinsky from Kodak briefly describes his Company Pages experience in the above-mentioned article:

Another feature recently launched is “Company Pages,” extremely similar to Facebook Pages. Companies have jumped on the feature like a starving hyena on the fresh carcass of an elephant. Just in one week, more than 40,000 companies signed up, since now marketers can use the page to promote new products and …yes, engage with their customers. Kodak said the feature is relatively new for it, but hopes to expand on its capabilities. “We have been able to add more information about us and our products/services,” said Brian Nizinsky, online marketing manager at Kodak. “This gives our audience more ways to interact with us and that should only increase as the LinkedIn user base starts using those features more.”

I’ve also had a couple of great conversations with Brian in the past (unrelated to the above article) on LinkedIn Groups and how it could be the starting point of your B2B marketing strategy, and was glad he shared some of his insights into LinkedIn groups here as he has with me:

LinkedIn groups have often been downplayed as LinkedIn’s less-successful features, bringing in low traffic. But Kodak had a different take. “We have found that LinkedIn Groups have been a great way to both start and participate in online discussions that are happening only on LinkedIn,” Mr. Nizinsky said. “We know that the people on LinkedIn use it for business networking and career enhancement so they tend to be more engaged with our content. We make sure we are members of the most active groups that are relevant to our B2B audience — for example, the digital-printing group with over 11,000 members. Once we are part of these groups, we often share content and make sure to respond to any questions and comments that people post.”

I think we could all learn a thing or two from Kodak’s successful experimentation with LinkedIn Groups. I’d like to also provide you a few more insights on that topic. Stay tuned.

In the meanwhile, if you’ve a question on LinkedIn groups or LinkedIn Company Pages, leave a comment or @mariosundar me on Twitter. <<Disclosure: I’m LinkedIn’s Sr. Global Social Media Manager, since 2007>>

What are the hottest digital media startups right now?

Here’s my answer. If you’re on Quora, I’d appreciate it if you’d vote my answer up. Thanks!

Instapaper is the dark horse when it comes to digital media, and I suspect they could do to news media what TiVo did to television.

If Marco Arment (formerly w/ Tumblr) can scale the service right and market it to the right audiences, I suspect we could have a decent business brewing.

+1 to a couple of names mentioned on this thread. I think Tumblr & Quora  in particular, are nailing it.

I find myself starting my day on these sites to consume content that’s both geared towards my personal interests (tumblr) and career interests (quora), similar to how I felt with Twitter, Facebook and WordPress. I didn’t mention LinkedIn, since I work there.

That said, Tumblr is having it’s Friendster moment as it keeps struggling to stay afloat and online. Not a good sign. If they can handle it, they could turn out to be THE digital media upstart to watch out.”

BTW, moving forward, I hope to re-blog select Quora answers on this blog here. This one’s tagged under “future of digital media”.

If you write for a career blog, I’d highly recommend your reblogging it on Quora, since it helps you surface your content to yet another targeted audience. Think of it as yet another channel for the valuable content you create. More on that later.

If you’ve questions on Quora? Leave a comment or find me on twitter  @mariosundar / Mario Sundar.

Note to self: Never go to bed on an unpublished blog post, esp. one that I was tremendously excited about. Cos, when you wake up you realize someone has written up an awesome piece on those ideas. Well, I did think Gizmodo articulated very well, how FB could create your ultimate priority inbox. After the jump, my original post with my thoughts.

if Facebook adds email, then they will inevitably try to make it social. Otherwise there's no point for them to add it.—
Andrew Keen (@ajkeen) November 12, 2010

There has been a ton of twitter chatter on Facebook’s looming launch of an email system or a revamp of their messenger system. Of course, there are rumors of their partnering with Microsoft to incorporate Outlook email as the foundation for this email.

Facebook’s Priority Inbox will beat Gmail’s lame Priority Inbox

Despite its best intentions, Gmail’s priority inbox is still a melange of mistakes that I’ve to keep training and fact is it never learns, cos it really does NOT know the people I’m communicating with. Instead the algorithm does a bad interpretation (I’m guessing) based on frequency, senders, etc. And, that’s the problem with email. The senders range from people we know, trust to the spammer next door.

Enter Facebook’s social graph.

Since Gizmodo, articulated this so well, here’s Jesus Diaz’s speculation about Priority Inbox.

Moreover, it’s not only about separating what is important and what is not. Their data tracking and analysis could allow them to do many other things. For example, they just have to analyze who is tagging you in photos, who is with you in those photos, to know who are your real friends, and categorize mail accordingly. They can automatically classify mail from the person who just became your fiance or lower the priority of that ex who keeps mailing you. The possibilities of using your social interactions to enhance the mail experience are endless.

“People tagging” emails will kill the suckiness of group emails

In addition, I think Facebook could use their secret weapon – tagging – to help reduce noise and clutter in your email as well. They’ve  used tagging most famously in photos, but also notes, groups, status updates and places to spread “targeted virality”. The art of tagging offers a targeted high to the individuals who then come back to the site to use it more. The red alert sign on the top left hand corner probably elicits a pavlovian response from its users by now. Y’know it does.

This is something I aggressively requested from Tweetie (before they were Twitter, nearly 18 months ago) but still notifications is not a well thought out twitter mechanism. But on Facebook, imagine, if you could tag just the friends you wanted to respond to an email even when you send a group email. That way the red alert symbol in the top left hand corner will constantly remind you when you actually have priority emails from folks in your social graph or could feed into the social algorithm that prioritizes your email.

I’m sure there’s so much more FB could do to make emails less sucky, but this would be a start. [Would love to hear from you how you think FB email will change email? Comment away!]

Updated: I just stumbled upon a perfectly timed TechCrunch post from Steve Gillmor on this same topic:

What happens now is that these stream objects are lit up with transactional properties. Code gets run based on incoming events, pulling it out of the teeming inbox before we see it and converted into actions predetermined by our inference engines and workflow rules. This is not AI or smart computing; it’s harvesting social signals in the context of realtime economics. If Facebook reinvents email by submerging it in the stream, they’ll have something to announce.

This reminds me of a couple of things, the notifications do mean that your Facebook stream will now contain messages from your FBmail Inbox. But, I do think these notifications could be far more targeted, valuable and productive given hints you give Facebook on your usage of their different social apps (photos, etc.) as well as explicit permission you give it through tagging.

Techmeme also just picked up the thread.

Yes / No? You don’t think this will be the case. Discuss in the comments section or @mariosundar me.

Steps 2 and 3 are key. A lot of folks don’t perform these steps thoroughly enough and wonder why it doesn’t work. For starters, learn how to do an “Advanced Search” (http://www.linkedin.com/search) on LinkedIn correctly (trying out many permutations is key, much like searching on Google) while others ignore the power of a mutual intro.

If you’ve a friend who’s looking for a job, please pass on this video. And, check out other LinkedIn tips I’ve gathered here.

If you find this content useful, subscribe to my blog, or talk to me on Twitter!

Key points:

• More B2B companies (than B2C firms) dabbling in social media cluelessly (will explain)
• Those B2B firms are less active on social media than their B2C counterparts
• B2B firms also have less executive approval, less budgets and more of them think it’s irrelevance (uh!)
• Looks like Facebook and LinkedIn were ranked as the top two social networking sites that these B2B companies have tried out (Yes, I work at LinkedIn)
• Those that do measure social media ROI (half of them) find online marketing more effective than traditional (and I’m guessing online – encompasses social)

That’s your stats for the day. Hope you enjoyed it. I’ve got a couple more interesting posts lined up. So come back tomorrow for more.

And, the only thing I’d add is – whether you’re a B2B or B2C firm, NEVER start with the tools in mind. Always, start with goals and ROI. Here’s a post I wrote on the very same topic when corporate blogging was all the rage among companies.

If you find this content useful, subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter!

Here’s a great case study (via Smart Blog on Social Media) on how the Carlton group of hotels sourced new business worth $180K in 90 days. What’s even more useful for you (if you’re in sales) is how they did it:

• Build a closely held network. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Freesource (the consultancy that helped their client – Carlton group of hotels) recommends only connecting to people you really know and trust. Managing tightly held, individual communities on LinkedIn will maximize the value of the platform and the quality of in-bound/out-bound business opportunities for your representatives.
• Teach sales representatives how to benefit from search engine optimization. Encourage sales reps and staff to identify with the hotel’s offerings on LinkedIn and align their profiles to meet their goals. Have them incorporate strategic keywords into their job titles, summaries, specialties and job descriptions to benefit from increased Web hits.
• Learn about your prospects. Use LinkedIn for “social CRM” throughout the entire sales process, Freesource recommends. Active, daily use of LinkedIn will give employees a better understanding of their current and future clients — turning cold calls into warm handshakes, shortening sales cycles and giving you greater share of wallet through stronger relationship management.
• Create prospecting efficiencies. In-depth knowledge of Boolean strings, LinkedIn’s basic and advanced search capabilities, as well as its newly revamped ”Company Pages” will help a sales team find new, qualified leads faster. Lastly, use tools such as LinkedIn’s SlideShare application to provide virtual property tours so that the profile can bring in leads around the clock.

My $0.02:

Don’t do one-offs. Stay the course on LinkedIn.

We recommend many of these tips to our users (connect with people you know, SEO benefits, prospect management), but I think it’s worth reminding businesses that the key to success on LinkedIn is a consolidated strategy that spans your entire team that will bring you success both in the long term and the mid-term (see above story).

Be creative.

I’d also add, be creative about your usage of LinkedIn. There are a lot of untapped resources as well as new features on our site. A case in point: using our slideshare application to provide virtual property tours. Or, using our newly redesigned Company Pages, both of which can be put to best use in this situation. If you’d like to keep track of the latest product innovation, bookmark this.

If you find this content useful, subscribe to my blog, or talk to me on Twitter!

I’ve always been a strong advocate of companies proactively creating and sharing social media guidelines within their organizations to encourage their employees to both build a strong brand for themselves on social platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn but at the same time, help them avoid painful pitfalls.

HuffingtonPost just picked up a New York Times piece that shone the spotlight on a “ground breaking case”. The National Labor Review Board called the firing of an employee (on the basis of a Facebook post), illegal.

He said. She said.

A company fired an employee for disparaging remarks she made about her supervisor on Facebook. They quoted their social media policy “that bars employees from depicting the company “in any way” on Facebook or other social media sites in which they post pictures of themselves.“

And, the National Labor Relations Board now accuses the company of illegally firing the employee, arguing that “workers’ criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements.“

What does this case mean for companies?

It remains to be seen how this case pans out as it’s pending review on Jan 25th. That said, if you’re a small business or a corporation, first check if you’ve a social media policy or guidelines but more importantly, have you shared this information across your organization, the larger you are – the more complicated that may be.

As for this case, the resolution could go either way if the company can make a good case for defamation. That said, it was super-interesting that the supportive comments the employee received from her colleagues is what made the labor board equate this with a union, which they argue is protected speech.

As a company, there’s not much you can do over your employees’ usage of social media in their personal time. That’s a given. But, trying to get them to understand what responsible usage of social media is, can and should be done.

Education is better than a cure.

Having a social media policy is mandatory. Tip: getting your employees to help craft it collaboratively is ideal. At LinkedIn, over a year ago, we hosted two brainstorm sessions where we invited all interested employees to learn, share and help craft our guidelines. This led to our first set of social media guidelines which we socialized internally, but guess what. Since then we’ve more than doubled in the # of employees and so we now include the guidelines during orientation.

Also, keep in mind all your global teams and the international laws that are in play here. Stay tuned for more how-to posts on this topic. In the meanwhile, check out my other posts on social media guidelines here.

Does your company have a set of social media guidelines? Leave a comment.

For more thoughts from my peers in this space. Check out Techmeme.

Just last week, I was chilling on a sailboat with my friends in San Francisco. And, here I am writing this post from a hotel room in Toronto, the culmination of a week of hectic activities that’s been months in the making.

My LinkedIn story, continues…

I’m stoked at the continuation of a super-exciting journey I began at LinkedIn close to 4 years ago (here’s a video Jeremiah took when I just started out here), and boy, what an awesome roller coaster it’s been. The opportunity to work with some of my favorite social media peeps in the world, a mentor from whom I’ve learnt a ton, a CEO who truly gets social media, some really smart, funny, entertaining, colleagues, and a chance to change the way our users and companies perceive and use LinkedIn.

But, I digress… So, what am I doing in Toronto at LinkedIn’s Canada office? My role moving forward, will be to take LinkedIn’s social media marketing efforts global. Toronto, is the central hub from where I can work with our global teams at creating a new paradigm for our marketing and PR efforts across the globe.

Moving forward, my focus areas at LinkedIn:

1. Global blog editor of the LinkedIn blog

• When we started the LinkedIn blog, our primary goal was to not just create the source of information around LinkedIn but more importantly to create a dialogue between the folks behind LinkedIn (product, engineering, design, developers, etc.) and our users. Since then we’ve had over 80 contributing bloggers from within the company and over 8000 conversations.
• The goal now is to tailor this information to users in different parts of the world as well as craft content that’s more in tune with users in different countries. For starters, we’ve LinkedIn in 6 different languages, and half of our users are from outside of the US. So, that’s a starting point, right there.

2. Localization of social media strategy globally

• As my good friends Lionel Menchaca and Jeremiah Owyang say repeatedly, you always find where your users are and engage with them on their platforms of choice. We’re currently engaging with our users on multiple channels including LinkedIn (of course), Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube.
• The next goal would be to create a comprehensive strategy around content and engagement on these different platforms, whether it be better integration of social with our blog or better routing of this feedback with customer service (for e.g.). Jeremiah just hinted at how 2011 is going to be the year of the social corporate website and I’m sure corporate blogs will be no exception to this development.

3. Working with companies on how-to do LinkedIn right

• Increasingly, I’ve been having conversations with my social media peers at different companies – Tom Hoehn (Kodak), Esteban Contreras (Samsung), James Musick (Genentech) for e.g. – to share LinkedIn and social media best practices. Something I’ll continue to share these with you on this blog.

And, now with Shannon Stubo leading our PR team back in HQ, the ever dependable Krista Canfield – my colleague, friend and “shoe fanatic” (it’s true), and some new additions to our team, it’s the right time to take this program global and I’m excited that I get to do that from a city as vibrant as Toronto.

So, if you’re a professional in – Marketing, PR, HR or Customer Service – come back to the blog for more information on topics like: business blogging, ceo communication, employee engagement, linkedin tips and more.

And, if you or your team is responsible for social media in your small business or corporation, I’d love to hear from you. Leave me a comment or @mariosundar me.

Wanna follow my adventures in Toronto – find me on Twitter? Want to learn more about social media and corporations, subscribe to my blog.

Web site performance monitor AlertSite tracks site reliability and uptime for social networking sites. This past quarter, LinkedIn came up tops with “near flawless availability” of the site (via PC World):

Delivering near flawless availability (99.97 percent), LinkedIn soared to the top of the rankings after grabbing the #4 spot in the second quarter. While more than 19,000 measurements were recorded during Q3, only six errors were noted.

YouTube came in second, with 99.96 percent availability.

… and looks we came in a close 2nd to Facebook in site response time as well. Impressive!

For the second consecutive quarter, Facebook has proven itself to be the fastest social network, shaving 0.02 seconds off its Q2 average response time to bring its number down to 1 second flat — its lowest quarterly response time recorded this year. YouTube, too, experienced its quickest response times to date in Q3 at 1.60 seconds.

I think this is pretty critical, especially since sites like LinkedIn are becoming essential productivity tools and being up and running could help you, the user, get your job done better and faster. Alright, that’s about it. Now back to regular programming on this blog. Stay tuned.

• The growing increase in the effectiveness of sharing on social networking sites – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter

When someone shares an event with their friends through social media, this action results in real dollars. Our most recent data shows that over the past 12 weeks, one share on Facebook equals $2.52, a share on Twitter equals $0.43, a share on LinkedIn equals $0.90.

• The resilience of email

…and a share through our ”email friends” application equals $2.34

That’s not bad at all. In terms of effectiveness, they’re ranked – Facebook, email, LinkedIn and Twitter. And, here’s the methodology:

We use a custom suite of social analytics tools that we have developed entirely in-house. Our reporting lets us track and analyze not only which sharing options our users leverage, but where on our site each share action takes place. These tools also tie back into our conversion funnels, so we are able to attribute ticket purchases to the specific social distribution channel that drove them. So, for example, we can compare not just the value created by a Facebook “Like” vs. a tweet, but also the performance of shares initiated before or after a purchase.

Reminds me of a post from Dan Yoo on the LinkedIn blog, where he talked about the effectiveness of Groupon.

“You can see the initial spike in revenue in the graph below. That’s to be expected after distributing a coupon. What we found even more interesting was the “new normal” that resulted. Even after the bump from Groupon, our revenue has leveled off to almost 50% higher than before.”

Of course, Dan works at LinkedIn and was profiled in our Talent series, where we feature employees who do cool stuff outside of their day job at LinkedIn. And, if you haven’t guessed by know, by way of disclosure, I work at LinkedIn.

Are there other studies that compare sharing ROI around? Let me know in the comments section.