I am often asked to present to networking groups about Social Media.  To me, Social Media is all about engaging with your contacts using the tool or tools that are most appropriate for your business and your audience.

An effective tool could be, if used correctly, a newsletter.

A newsletter allows you to talk directly to those customers who already like or use you.  They may have already worked with you, or they may have chosen to hear what you have got to say.  What better audience could you ask for?  I get either positive feedback or sales from each newsletter I send.

Newsletters (like all engagement) can backfire if you don’t get it right – consider the following points:

1. Interest

Think about who you are talking to – what do they want to hear?  I try to include both news about Concise Training as well as tips & tricks that my audience might find useful.  It is important to make sure that your newsletter is easy to read and interesting.

2. Contacts

To whom are you sending your email newsletter?  Ask permission to add somebody to your list to avoid being thought of as a spammer.  Encourage people to join up to your newsletter through your website as well as using other forms of Social Media.  I have grown my contact database slowly and carefully over the past year or so.  I get few unsubscribes and a good percentage of clicks and opens.

3. Regular

Decide how often you are going to send the newsletter and stick to it as much as possible.  I send my email newsletters out monthly – quarterly may work better for your business.  It is a decision based on your resources, your availability of interesting articles and your audience.  Once you have decided on a timescale – stick to it!  Yes, it can be a pain having to write it – but make the effort – the results make it worthwhile!  In an ideal world, you would map out what was going to be in each newsletter 6 months in advance!

Think about the time of the week you send your newsletter out. Is it appropriate to send it out in the evening – or would your audience be more attentive during the week?  What day is more likely to work for your audience?  You may want to send the same newsletter out to different samples of people at different times to test the audience.

4. Professional

Remember your newsletter reflects your brand and values of your company.  A newsletter full of spelling or grammatical errors can be worse than no newsletter at all.  Take the time to check that the words are correct and the links work.  If you can, include your brand, colour and logo.  As a starting point, I would recommend creating your own newsletters using MailChimp which is a great application, free to send to up to 2,000 contacts.  Due to time constraints, I now outsource my newsletter to David Burn of Marketing Research Projects.

5. Measure / FollowUp

Once you have sent the newsletter out, don’t forget to check who clicked on what link and how many times the newsletter was opened by the same person.  This might be a clue that you ought to follow up this person with a call?  Compare the click through or open rates over time – identify any newsletters that were / were not successful as try to identify why.

How successful have you found your email newsletter? – or why have you decided that this form of marketing isn’t for you?  Let me know.

Have you ever looked at the CountIF function in Excel?  I think it is one of the most useful functions available for quickly analysing data – and it has become even more useful in the 2007 and 2010 versions of Excel.

In its simpliest form, the COUNTIF function will allow you to count the number of rows which meet a certain criteria.  In the following example, I want to count the number of sales greater than £1000.

To do this, I put the following formula into a blank cell, =COUNTIF(G2:G13,”>1000″).  This will return the answer of 3.  I have had several clients who have used this function to analyse the results of survey data.

In Excel 2007, the COUNTIF function has been made even better!  COUNTIFS allows you to count the number of rows based on two or more criteria.

So, in this example, we could count the number of rows where the Total Income is more than £1000 and the product sold was a Monitor.  The formula would be = COUNTIFS(G2:G13, “>1000″,C2:C13, “Monitor”).  This will return the answer of 2.

What do you think, when would you use the COUNTIF or COUNTIFS functions?

I spent last week with a lovely company doing some Intermediate Excel training for their staff.  They were particularly interested in the different ways you could analyse a set of data – Excel 2007 has some different options so I thought a general summary might be useful.

1. Graphs

Graphs work really well when you need to present data.  Don’t forget you can select data that is not next to each other by selecting one set, then holding the CTRL key on the keyboard and selecting the second set, etc.  Do make sure that you select the same number of items though or it might go horribly wrong!

2. Tables

Excel 2007 has a facility to format a list of data as a table.  This automatically adds filters to the column headings and you can add a total row to the bottom by clicking the Total Row option in the Design Tab (appears when you click on the Table).  What is particularly good is if you have a table from Columns A to C, but then add a function in column D which uses cells in A to C, Column D is automatically included in the table and the function is copied to all relevant rows.

3. Conditional IF Statement

To keep track of my bank account, I use an Excel spreadsheet.  Everytime I put something in or out of the account I write it on the Excel spreadsheet and keep a running total so I know how much is in the account at any one time.  When I check the bank, I add a y next to any item that has registered in the bank account (OK, so I’m a bit annal!).  I can then SUM all the totals that have a ‘Y’ next to them so I can quickly check whether my total matches the total from the bank.  I do this using a SUMIF.  (COUNTIF is also useful).

4. Conditional Formatting

If you have a set of numbers, it is a good idea to be able to see quickly whether certain numbers are better than or worse than expected.  Conditional formatting has always been available in Excel 2003 – you can set numbers to be red if they are below a set number or blue if they are above, for example.  In Excel 2007, you can use more complicated rules and you can use icons (flags, arrows, etc) to visually denote the results.

5. Filters

Set filters on a set of data to be able to only show the data that corresponds to set criteria.  For example, a set of sales figures can be filtered to show sales by salesperson or area or department.  Multiple criteria can be set, so show Sales by TOM in the NORTH or SOUTH.

6. Advanced Filters

You can use the same idea as above but you can set more complicated filters.  Using advanced filters, you can show Sales by TOM in the NORTH and SAM in the SOUTH for example.

7. Pivot Tables

This is the traditional way people think of analysing data in Excel, but many find it difficult to understand.  Although it is easier in Excel 2007 and 2010, it still forms part of my advanced course as I think there are easier ways of analysing data as described above.

Do let me know if you use any of these methods – or if there are other methods you prefer.  Of course, do let me know if you need further information on the mechanics of the analysing!

Have you noticed when you go to edit your profile on LinkedIn, there is a section just above your summary entitled ‘Personalize your profile’? This gives you the ability to add an additional five new profile sections to your profile:

What are the new sections?

1. Publications – Add any work that you have written that has been published. This really gives your ‘expert’ status some weight.

2. Languages – Indicate your expertise in lanaguage. If you speak Mandarin, German and French like a native, make sure they are listed.

3. Skills – This section allows you to list how many years experience you have in various skills. Choose from a long list of skills from accounting to zoning and everything in between, choose a proficiency from beginner to expert and enter the number of years of experience.

4. Certificates – A list of qualifications you have achieved.  A good way of listing sought after qualifications that are achieved outside University or School.

5. Patents – Any pending or granted patents that you have.

How does this apply to me?

At first glance, it looks like these changes are aimed at people looking for jobs but it is a great way of displaying more detail about you and if you have patents, publication, why not shout about them  on your profile.  It also gives you more opportunity to get keywords into your profile.

For example, I have added ‘ECDL Advanced’ certifications to my profile – not keywords that I had anywhere else in the profile as it wasn’t relevant to other sections.  Now, if you search for ‘ECDL Advanced’ I am included in search results.

I can see recruitment companies in particular using this, though it would be better if you could search specifically by these sections. It may also be relevant for people looking for a very specific skill set.  What do you think?

Many jobs are found using LinkedIn as a job searching, advertising and networking tool.  I am surprised how many recruitment consultants aren’t using this powerful tool to its potential.  Recently, I was delighted to be asked to teach the staff of a Hampshire based recruitment consultancy how to exploit LinkedIn.

The recruitment consultants had two reasons for using LinkedIn – to advertise themselves and their company as experts in their field and to find potential candidates to fulfill vacancies.

We created an individual profile for each member of the team and also created a company profile that they were all linked to.  It was interesting for me, to get a slightly different perspective on how the profile should look, from people who were experts in looking at CVs.

Update: 20th October I’ve just noticed this article from Computer Weekly stating that 25% of FTSE 100 Companies hire through LinkedIn.

Fortunately they agreed with my ideas regarding how the headline and summary should look – though they suggested that it was  a good idea to mention any past ‘household name’ companies that you had worked with/for in the summary rather than just as part of the ‘experience’ section.

There was a general consensus among the group that they should keep their contacts private from their network.  Generally you can see all the contacts of anybody that you are directly connected to.  My group of recruitment consultants were very concerned that this would comprise the privacy of their contacts, so we changed this setting (by clicking settings > connection browse).

We talked about the potential to upgrade their account to the premium level of LinkedIn.  This currently costs from $50 / month.  This gives access to more profile results and allows you to see full profiles even if you do not have a connection to the person.  Interestingly they felt that at least initially they would spend the time to build up their own networks and groups to contact people.

It was felt that the costs to advertise jobs on LinkedIn was very reasonable compared to other internet sites and this was an area that they intended to exploit.

It was great to see that before I had left the client, the consultants were already building their network and finding suitable candidates. If you are a recruitment company, will you be using LinkedIn?