How do you connect with influencers online?

And does it matter if that person influences just 2 people or 20,000 people?

Well that was the subject discussed today on the For Immediate Release live show hosted by Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz.

The following article summaries the live conversation. If you just want to read my summary guidelines for blogger outreach go to the end of the article.

This is a very long article and for the benefit of some readers who may not be interested in the full story, I have split the post - so click on ‘continue reading’ if you want to access the full article.

BACKGROUND

The show came about as a result of an email that Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library TV has instigated (he asked a member of his team to send) inviting bloggers to connect with him around the launch of the first of his 10 book deal later this Summer. As a side note you will find Gary on Twitter – and he has approaching 600,000 followers!

The email, while sent in the first name to people was a form email and as a result John Cass posted the email in full on his personal blog criticising the email pitch. The post by John instigated a conversation online.

The conversations which also extended on Social Media Today where John’s blog is syndicated were less than positive and could have been considered by some to have negatively impacted Gary’s personal brand and reputation.

On the live show today with Shel and Neville were Gary and John and they were joined by Connie Reece (a previous guest on Biz Growth Live) and Kaitlyn R. Wilkins of the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence Group.

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Many businesses are discovering the benefits of business blogging to help them get found in the search engines. And increasingly more and more customers and consumers are turning to the search engines to research products and services before they make a decision to purchase.

When we write our articles so that we increase the chance of being found online we need to consider the key words what we use.

From today, determining those key words when blogging just got a whole lot easier thanks to Wordtracker who have just released a plug in for Firefox called SEO Blogger.

It is free to install and you can type into SEO Blogger the words that you are considering for your blog post and it will provide you with research about your key words and alternative key word phrases so that you can add them to your blog post.

SEO Blogger sits on the left hand side of your screen and what I noticed is that that meant that my screen for Wordpress was minimised. It also won’t work if you write your blog posts in an offline editing tool as I do - you would need to check your blog against your key words before you publish online when looking at your draft post in the Firefox browser.

The SEO Blogger will also help you identify how many times a chosen keyword has been used in the blog text - key word density is something that we need to be aware of when writing our articles. But do take care to make sure that you don’t over burden your articles with key words so they are not as compelling and engaging for your readers.

If you are using Firefox and author a business blog I would certainly recommend testing SEO Blogger - and remember it is free.

What other tools do you use to help you identify the key words for your blog posts and articles?

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Note: This blog post is relevant if you’re in the south of England and is being posted as a favour to my good friend and colleague Mark White.

My children love to sing and dance and I am always on the look out for new places to visit and activities for them.

Recently they enjoyed a great afternoon learning circus skills – here you can see my youngest learning how to spin plates which is a life skill I think we all need!

One event that I wish I could take the children to on the 28 and 29 June 2009 is taking place at Waddesdon Manor near Oxford (England). The Manor itself is a National Trust property, and yes they have joined the world of social media communications with a new blog to help spread the word about their events and news from the Manor.

The event this next weekend has a host of performances – from brass bands to ballet, choirs to story tellers taking place in the gardens of the Manor house.

And there are also workshops in which you can participate.

I hope they set up a Flickr page too to share more photo’s of the weekend which certainly looks fun – and it’s all for a good cause – to continue to support the Manor. Details of how to get to the event and admission fees are detailed HERE.

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As your network grows on social networking sites, you will no doubt find that your time online will increase if for no other reason than responding to the requests to connect and answering questions from people in your network.

Within LinkedIn one of the requests you may find is that people ask you to connect them to people in your network or even people one or two degrees of separation away from you.

In my LinkedIn for Business workshops we discuss case studies of what makes for an effective connection and referral request.

I am noticing however that I have had an increase in the number of situations where I have declined the request to refer someone to another person in my network.

Here are three situations where I have declined to connect someone - each time I have sent the person a note to explain why I have declined:

1. There is a lack of information explaining why the person wants to connect and what the benefit will be to the person they want to connect to

2. The person connecting (who was two degrees of separation from me) was a recruiter and wanted to connect to someone in my network - as a matter of principle I won’t connect someone to a recruiter unless their profile said they were open to such connections or I know they are looking for a new role

3. The request to connect did not look relevant to the person I was being asked to connect someone to.

This got me thinking about my connection policy for referrals on LinkedIn - it’s not something I have documented but it is something I do consider each time I am asked to connect to someone in my network.

Do you have a ‘connection policy’ for referrals in LinkedIn?

What guidance formal or informal do you follow?

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Earlier this month I was delighted to gift a free scholarship to the the Greenhouse Limerick Social Media workshop.

The winner of the scholarship was Mary New of PaperCocktail.com Wedding Stationery Specialists based in County Wicklow. Her business was established just 5 months ago.

Here is Mary’s guest blog post and a review of the event:

As someone new to the world of social media, I was delighted to receive Krishna’s De’s scholarship to the Greenhouse Blogging and Social Media for Business Seminar at The Absolute Hotel in Limerick on Saturday 13th June 2009. The event was organised by entrepreneur, Evert Bopp of the Greenhouse Start Up Incubator Project who had lined up an expert panel to address this seminar.

While familiar with some of the nuts and bolts of social media and blogging, despite much research, I was severely lacking in knowledge on how to use the tools available effectively for business. In this regard,  I would like to thank Krishna De (Biz Growth News), Campbell Scott (IGO People), Fred Cabellero (Channelship), Bernard Golbach (Tipperary Institute of Technology) and Peter Donegan (Donegan Landscaping) for their contributions at the seminar which I believe have provided invaluable knowledge and insight in respect the effective use of  social media and blogging for business.

The speakers on the day explored a number of key concepts in this area as well as providing many practical tips and specific information about the networks, software and tools that are available.

It would be impossible to capture and summarise all that they shared in this post so I will confine myself to indicating just a few of the general points that I have taken away with me:

1)    Developing and protecting your online identity while being true to yourself is key

2)    We have the opportunity to develop relationships with our customers and fellow professionals through social media platforms such as LinkedIn (professionals), IGO People (Ireland’s network for individuals, businesses and organisations) and Twitter . Talking at people, making announcements or simply advertising to your target market via social media will not have the impact you may expect if you are basing your predictions on the effect of traditional mass media campaigns. The professional and often cold face businesses have shown to their marketplaces in the past have led to an element of distrust (think financial institutions!) and now is the time to explore and develop more meaningful and open relationships with customers. Through social media and blogging, when utilised correctly, we can enhance our business relationships and ultimately grow our businesses in a customer focussed manner

3)    Exploring video as a medium of communication is not as complex as it may seem and can add a valuable dimension to your business’ online presence

4)    Online communication via social media and blogging is most effective when it is informative, interesting, insightful, interactive and individual.

I understand that Evert intends to organise future seminars on the above topics and would highly recommend that any business regardless of scale, that is either considering using social media for business purposes or that like many others is struggling to plan and develop their use of social media in an effective manner, attend one of these events.

It is in listening to people with in-depth knowledge of a subject and a passion for imparting same that you will gain far more insight, understanding and practical advice than the many hours you will spend trying to find your way through the world wide maze (or web) on your own!

Note From Krishna: It’s always terrific to see scholarships for social media workshops go to people who then actively take insights from events and put them into place in their business. Mary has been busy engaging in social networking since the event and you will find her on Twitter @PaperCocktail – we wish Mary all the best in bringing her brand to life for her new business through social media in the months ahead.

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