The key element of the Panda upgrade is a shift in emphasis from Google that increases the importance of fresh content (e.g. blogs) and interesting 3rd party content (e.g. guest blogs) in gaining search positions. Google seems to be pushing popular sites to behave like publishers – which increases the importance of having regularly updated blogs and news integrated into your website.

Blogging for Search

So how should you write your blogs to be search friendly?

The first point to make is that you should always write content for blogs or websites for your human audience. Adding numerous key words into your text (or spamming as it’s known) will be spotted by Google and ignored.

But that doesn’t mean you should ignore your keywords. Keep them in mind. Use them in your headings and sub-headings and, for example, if your key search term is “web development” then make sure that word is a link to a page on your website that describes web development.

If your blog enables you to tag your content (e.g. WordPress or Blogger) then make those tags relevant to your key search terms. And use social media (particularly Twitter) to create links to your blogs. Tweet the links yourself and encourage contacts to retweet the links to a wider audience.

The Importance of Google+

Google has repeatedly tried to break the Social Media market and with Google+ it seems to have hit the mark. The key benefit of Google+ is that it is tightly integrated into search results so that if a Google+ friend has recommended a site it will appear higher on your search results.

That alone makes adding Google+ to your social media armoury a good idea – but its use of social circles makes it a very intuitive platform – we’ll publish a full Google+ review very soon.

Next Steps for Search and Social Media

With Google+ and the Panda upgrade, Google has clearly signalled that social media and search are now intrinsically linked. With a little planning, your blogging and creation of a corporate Google+ account, you can take advantage of this change and improve your search results.

On my LinkedIn group – The Financial Times Guide To Business Networking – we have been discussing the best ways to get your blog noticed.

Good question. Your practice has gone to all that trouble of writing and maintaining a blog, surely the world deserves to know about it AND read it? After all, why else write a blog?

Writing your blog is the easy bit, getting it noticed by sufficient numbers of your target audience is the hard bit.

So, how do you get your practice’s blog noticed?

1. Place it where your target audience will see it

Yes, it’s common sense, but this is perhaps the best way to get it seen. I have a large twitter following, so if I want my blog to get seen I tweet about it – and ask others to tweet about it. In fact about 50% of my blog traffic comes from my use of twitter. Posting your blog in a couple of LinkedIn groups may work for your practice as well.

2. Give it a ‘must-read’ title

As the saying goes you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. The same goes for your blog. If it doesn’t have a title which incentivises them to read it, or pique’s their curiousity, they are not going to read it.

3. Put links to it in your e-mail signature

Enough said really…

4. Comment on others blogs

Very simple, if you make intelligent useful comments on other people’s blogs, they will often pop over to your blog to have a look around and return the favour.

5. Put links to your blog on forums and other people’s blogs

As well as commenting on someone else’s blog or discussion post, do share a link to a relevant blog post on your blog. This is a great way to get interested and qualified readers to your blog.

6. Put links to other people’s blogs in your own blog post (and blog roll)

Like many people I have a set of search alerts for certain keywords. I will also look at my back link report to see who has backlinked to my blog. If I see someone’s blog post I will normally have a look, at the post it’s linked to.

What would you add as number 7?

It brings you closer to clients
The first major benefit of social media is that it will bring you closer to your existing clients. Connect with your contacts on LinkedIn (and perhaps Twitter) and you immediately gain more information about them. To start with LinkedIn will give you a mini profile of each contact; it will highlight their current interests, past triumphs and provide the kind of data that you would have spent years collecting to add to your CRM system.

Once connected, you are ready to keep your contacts up to speed with activities, events and offers. By updating your LinkedIn status or tweeting, you’re free to exchange ideas quickly and easily online. Rather than making hundreds of phone calls, one quick note can reach potentially hundreds of LinkedIn contacts and Twitter followers… as well as the wider online world of billions of people, but more of that later.

It generates referrals
First let’s look at how you can use your existing (online) network. Connect with a contact and you’ll see their contacts; usually this will mean their suppliers, often your competitors (check out who’s chasing their business!) and professional contacts who often hold similar roles in similar businesses. This is an ideal starting point for gaining referrals; for example if you’re connected to the Marketing Director in XYZ Ltd and they’re connected to the Marketing Director of ABC Ltd, it is very likely that you’ll be able to persuade them to arrange an introduction.

Just as important is the reputation you build online by posting ideas and information that is interesting to the wider world and that positions you as an expert in your particular niche or area. When the question arises, do you know an expert in Care Home Fees recovery, I can happily say – yes; I met her on Twitter and so the referrals start.

It builds rapport with prospects
So now you’re connecting and conversing with clients and building a referral network. But what about your existing warm prospects; the people you know, who like you but who have not quite taken that final step to become clients. Using social media to connect with this very important group of people can be very rewarding. First, you are likely to glean more pertinent information; from their views on a business topic to their love of Arsenal. Understanding more about a person makes those ongoing phone calls easier – and if you can get hold of complimentary Arsenal tickets, they may not do any harm. But more importantly, you can exchange comments and thoughts with your prospects; this keeps you in their mind’s eye and enables you to build an even stronger rapport so that when they’re ready to purchase, you are the name that springs to mind.

It’s your broadcast platform for the World
And now to the most notorious element of social media. Twitter and to some extent LinkedIn are both public platforms; publish your ideas and you’re not simply talking to your contacts, you are potentially broadcasting to the world. The key word here is potentially. If what you are saying is inspiring, controversial or just plain daft it is much more likely to be picked up beyond your existing contacts. Being honest, in most cases it won’t – and this isn’t really the point.
For example, Tweet about Lady Gaga and it is likely that your message will be seen by millions (albeit very briefly). However, Tweet about the finer points of property law and the audience maybe narrower and smaller but is also more likely to an audience that’s interested in what you have to say and who are more likely to get in contact.

But surely this isn’t for us?
Here are some of the objections that I’ve heard recently from senior managers about social media…

It’s what my kids do. None of my clients use social media. I’ve looked at Twitter, it’s juvenile nonsense. I don’t want to know what Stephen Fry had for breakfast. It’s risky. We’ve tried it, it takes loads of time and we got nothing from it.

Here at realityhouse, we’re successfully using social media to win new business. And we’re showing a huge range of businesses how to do the same. 18 months ago, we would give you the theory; now we can show you concrete examples of how social media will deliver. The challenge is how to make social media work for your specific requirements and, without wishing to sell too hard, that’s where we come in. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Business plan? What business plan?

Strategy for growth? What strategy? (or even strategy for survival!)

Very often, I am finding that many firms don’t have a three or five year plan. Let’s be honest, having a business plan or vision would be a start. In case you are thinking.. “but our practice has revenue targets for every partner“. This is not a business plan or strategy.

At this point in time, the professions are changing. Clients are becoming less loyal and wanting more discernable value from their advisor. Both the accountancy and legal world are facing significant change. Legal services act anyone? Online accounting software anyone?

Far too often a practice is a collection of partners doing their own thing tied together by common overheads and letterheads. When this is the case, often leadership – the very thing needed for the firm’s survival – is lacking. It’s this leadership, it doesn’t matter from which partner it comes from, which will gel the partners together to decide on the firm strategy, business and marketing plan for the next 3 to 5 years. And more importantly, it will be this leadership which means that the firm actually works toward the business plan rather than paying lip service to it and letting it get dusty in a drawer somewhere. Without this common vision for the practice, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the daily challenge of client demands and lose sight of the bigger picture.

It’s this bigger picture which will ultimately be the difference between your practice surviving and thriving during the next five years… or not.

Does your practice have a 3 or 5 year business plan?

To start with there are no games, no embarrassing pictures (well okay, a few of those profile pics – you know who you are) and your company and personal profile are very much business focused.

Recruiters have been successfully mining the 135m members (8m in the UK) for candidates for several years. And with 2 new members signing up every second there is unlikely to be a shortage of talent any time soon. But what does LinkedIn do next?

The universal CV and beyond…

LinkedIn wants to be the place that your career develops. It is your CV (and you can now use your profile to apply for jobs – see the realityhouse mobile recruitment sites) and if someone searches for you by name on Google, your LinkedIn profile is likely to top the results.

According to LinkedIn the next step is to further enhance the individual skills sections on profiles as LinkedIn wants to be the place that you search for a “commercial lawyer with franchising expertise” or “a recruiter with accountancy knowledge” widening its scope to be a business resource.

Plus LinkedIn will be further refining ‘Insights’ – its news services; the goal is to deliver key news and information to your profile and your inbox based on your key interests and expertise.

LinkedIn Company Profiles

One weakness in LinkedIn in until recently was company profiles. But these are changing – particularly with the introduction of product and services tabs and the inclusion of company testimonials. And of course the vacancy tab enables jobs to be posted.

It is the move into corporate recruitment that potentially offers the biggest shake up as the cost/hire of direct recruitment using LinkedIn can really produce savings as evidenced by Invensys, Boots and ITV at the recent Enhance Media conference. And this despite the frankly eye-wateringly expensive LinkedIn corporate packages.

So is LinkedIn the future of recruitment?

LinkedIn is clearly going to play a key part in recruitment over the next 5 years. It’s ability to help attract passive candidates (rather than the active jobseekers reach by job boards) offers huge potential. The best people have so many options and LinkedIn can help to build a relationship ahead of the need for the employee.

In other words LinkedIn is moving into the arena of talent management and relationship building. You engage with prospects and when they’re ready for a move they will come to you. Top recruitment consultants are already heavily using this technique and in our view this is where the future of recruitment lies.

LinkedIn – tips to start using it effectively
Millions of professionals use LinkedIn, most get no business from it. Others use it as a rich source of leads and develop powerful business relationships with it.

What can LinkedIn do for you?
LinkedIn can help you, in your target market, find new prospects and discover more about them before you even have to “sell to them”.

How can increase my sales by using LinkedIn?

1. Getting more people to connect with you is a key part of the process, but first you have to have a good profile. Get your profile right, before attracting people to it!
2. Once you have a great profile, start to build connections, search for the contacts that you want to develop, demonstrate your expertise, and get to know people in your target market and participate in group discussions.
3. Have a contact strategy so you take the development of key relationship offline at a relevant point.

The profile headline and the most common LinkedIn mistake
Your profile headline is the key statement to get people to read your profile; it shows underneath your name, every time people see you. Write something to get the reader to keep reading. What do you do (not job title–what do you do)? Job title and company do not make good headlines.

Imagine somebody asking “what do you do”. An unhelpful reply would be “I am partner in xyz”, more likely you would tell them what you do and for whom. Ideally in such as way as to get them to say “that’s interesting, tell me more”

What should I put into my summary?
Using the language of your target audience, talk about your useful skills, how you help people. Don’t forget to make it keyword rich, readers will find that easier to read (so will Google). It is normally a good idea to write about you and your practice within the summary – but in separate paragraphs for clarity.

I hate my photo; do I really need one on LinkedIn?
Yes, I’m sorry but you do. We are human and make quick decisions looking at faces. This is a business forum; the photo is one you should happily share with prospects. A professional head shot, not a distant portrait or logo.

LinkedIn allows me to show 3 websites, I have only one?
Do you really only have one website? How about a blog? Are there any specific pages on your website which may be directly interesting to readers, (e.g. commercial and family law)?

Change the words “My website” for something meaningful (e.g. your company name or what the page is about).

What are applications?
A well written profile will attract people in your niche; adding applications can make your profile stand out more and make more detailed information available to those that want it.

Things to consider adding are:

• One of the blog applications – so your latest blog posts show and can be read
• Boxnet and/ or slideshare. Slideshare can allow you to start showing video on your profile. Boxnet can allow you to share documents that you already have.
• Amazon reading list. Show that you are knowledgeable and continuing to develop your knowledge.

Look in the mirror.

1. Re-read your profile, aloud, slowly.
2. Does it explain, succinctly, why someone should ask you for business? Reading it aloud will help you tell if it sounds right.
3. Then get somebody else to do the same exercise and check your grammer and spilling. Tipos look reall bad.

With a great profile you are well placed to develop your professional life.