All my LinkedIn contacts are 3rd degree – how can I connect?

We got an enquiry from a reader who asked this question “I’m utilizing LinkedIn for meeting clients but currently everyone seems to be a third degree. what are some ice breakers I can use to introduce myself.”

As you know, it’s very difficult to get peoples’ attention as they are busy professionals.

Here are some suggestions for you.

  1. Become the ‘go to’ person for interesting articles online about the topics relevant to your clients’ interests.  Share these using Linked In Groups.  Don’t use these groups to promote jobs you are recruiting for.
  2. EVERY DAY check who looked at your LinkedIn profile.  Send them an invitation to connect saying ‘hey, you looked at my profile, did you notice the articles I’m sharing about XYZ.  If you connect with me you get these sent to you as I publish.  Thanks and best wishes.  Use this article we wrote to find their names for 3rd degree connections 
  3. When they connect with you, you can see their email address; add them to your email list of folks who receive your shared articles, get their permission to mail them, and set up a newsletter outside of LinkedIn (we recommend FeedBlitz.com) to send out these messages, preferably linked to a blog of your own.

If you would like to work with Creative Agency Secrets and let us coach you as you build your skills, organize a skype call with us to give us a fuller brief.

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The Art of Infographics for biz dev

It’s no secret that images help to enhance your blog content. But infographics will take this further, by combining content and images into one neat, shareable package.

An infographic about inforgraphicsNot only are infographics shareable, but they can take complex information and simplify it, as well as attracting the attention of those who don’t have the patience to read a long form blog article to get the same information. They are also more likely to go viral, which is another huge plus.

But the problem is that too many people have seen the power of the infographic. Infact, this article about 9 reasons to include infographics in your marketing strategy shows that searches for infographics on Google increased by 800% between 2010 and 2012. So now everyone is trying to pump them out in the hopes that their content will go viral or their website will see massive traffic growth. This means it’s getting to the point that simply creating an inforgraphic isn’t enough. You need to take a controlled and thought out approach in order to capture interest and maintain it.

If we look at this from a blogging perspective we can highlight some ways to make your infographic stand out amongst the crowd.

When you look at a blog post, you’re drawn in by the headline. Something in those few words has sparked your interest, enough to get you to react, and read what the author has to say. Infographics are no different. I remember a time where I would look at any infographic I found, regardless of subject matter, simply because it was visually appealing, and I often learnt something from it. Now I don’t. Now if I look at an infographic it’s highly likely the headline has caught my attention. This means that considering the title/headline for your infographic is important. Give your audience a reason to want to look at it, and you will see more success.

After the headline, comes the content. When blogging each sentence must keep your reader engaged, so that they move onto the next one, until they eventually consume your entire message. They want to find the value that was promised to them in the headline. Infographics have a similar principle. Yes, the content must be relevant and provide them with the value that was promised. But, it must also be readable. Your layout, your colour scheme and the way you adapt your information must all be considered. Without considering these factors. Your infographic will lose potency, readers will drop off and all the benefits you envisioned when you begun creating it, will be lost.

These are simple principles that can be applied when creating infographics that will help your content to stand out. Because if you don’t, you risk being overlooked, because you simply blend in with the crowd.

Want some more considerations? Here’s an Infographic that outlines considerations for making an infographic.

So, you’ve decided to go ahead and make an infographic

If you’re still here and think that you’ll be able to create an effective infographic, then the next consideration is how you will do it. There are two options here, do it yourself, or pay a designer.

Now doing it yourself may seem a bit daunting, especially for those with limited artistic talents. But there are a range of tools that can be used to create a thing of beauty. Here’s SEOmoz’s list of 10 tools for creating Infographics. Going through this list, you should find something that will suit your skill level and needs.

The alternative is to hire a designer. While this will cost you more, you will get greater flexibility in how it’s designed and looks. You can use sites such as eLance to find freelance designers from all over the world, that can help you to create an awesome infographic for your company.

Lightbox or New Window?

I’m sure many of you by this stage have either heard of Lightboxes or have already attempted to implement them on your own website. Lightboxes have replaced “tabbed browsing” as the fresh alternative to opening a new window. This post will give a quick pros and cons list of Lightboxes and discuss both the everyday frustrations and pleasures they bring. In my next post I will advise the best times and places to use Lightboxes based on what I have discussed here, because contrary to what you may read further down, there is a place for them.

A word of warning, if you’re an avid fan of Lightboxes you may want to close your eyes now…

The overwhelming number of reasons to not use Lightboxes surely disheartens even the most passionate fans. By my count, Lightboxes are down 2-10 to opening a new window… Not off to the best start then.

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Starting off with the cons (so we can end on a sweet note) Lightboxes are both immovable and modal. This means that if a user wants to open multiple links at once to run a comparison as I often do, this is impossible. What often happens to me though, is I do want to open a Lightbox but it blocks out what I want to compare it to on the regular page. “Open a new window” however does not suffer these issues as they can be moved, minimised and often you can interact with the original page.

Probably the biggest issue any SEO-conscious webmaster would have with Lightboxes is that Lightboxes cannot be bookmarked but more critically, have no search engine crawlability. This means that your users will be unable to find any information you have stored in your Lightbox and worse still, on the off chance they do find it, there is no way of directly bookmarking the Lightbox. From personal experience I can tell you how awkward it is to send a link to a friend and have to add “click the link ⅔ of the way down the page” to my email as it’s near-impossible to link directly to the exact part of information located on a Lightbox.

A major issue faced by novice web-users is that Lightboxes operate in a different way to regular web-browsing. For the novice, it means yet another system to learn and navigate. My grandfather recently acquired an iPad (his first steps online) and while he is making good progress he would never figure out a Lightbox (at this stage I haven’t even told him about tabbed browsing – each time I see him I close his 40-50 open tabs…). My point is that novice users struggle enough with regular web browsing.

So while a major issue for novice web-users is the change in operation, for more experienced users there are equal frustrations – the main one being suddenly the ‘back’ button no longer does as it always has. Rather than simply removing the Lightbox as we expect, it actually takes you back to the page before the page which contains the Lightbox. This is a real concern for anyone hoping to keep potential customers/readers on your site and may account for a low ‘average time on website’ figure in your analytics. Imagine someone Google’s your company and from that search enters your site. If a Lightbox appears and the user accidentally pushes ‘back’, they will be taken back to Google’s search results – which for me personally would be reason enough to not return to that site.

Lightboxes further suffer from often being “too” pretty with their animations etc  that it takes an eternity to actually load. Nothing frustrates me more than a slow fade in for every bit of data or picture that I want to see – It’s right up there with the Powerpoint individual letter fly-in animation. It is largely due to this that Lightbox struggles to encourage long-term usage.

Finally, and perhaps an ever-increasing problem are the compatibility issues Lightboxes have. The main one being on mobile devices. Lightboxes just don’t play nice with many mobile devices, obviously a pressing matter as more and more people browse the web on mobile devices. A more minor aspect is that users who disable javascript won’t be able to view your Lightboxes either (however there is a fix – have the link point to a real page, then use javascript to prevent the link from opening and instead open a lightbox). This may also fix some of the issues with mobile devices as well, however it just means more work for you, the webmaster, having to manage content on two locations as opposed to one.

Well, you’ve survived my rant. Just to help even up the score I’ll give the positive comments a larger font.

There really are only two reasons why you’d consider using a Lightbox over opening a new window, however both are critical. The first is Lightboxes offers a cleaner more professional look than opening a new window. Whilst this is purely based on preference, the general consensus is that Lightboxes look better. The second is perhaps the biggest overlooked benefit: it shows the selected content instantly. With many people opening multiple tabs and windows it can often be a decent amount of time before they actually view the selected link. With Lightboxes however there isn’t this problem as the content opens on the same page.

In my next post I’ll discuss How To Use Lightboxes On Your Website. Be sure to leave your own comments on the value of Lightboxes below!