It’s been busy here at Matizmo and now we are beginning to wind down for Christmas. We’ll be closed from 24th December to 3rd January.

We’d like to wish all our clients a Very Merry Christmas and look forward to a productive 2012!

My Mentor was Vicky Reeves from ChameleonNet.

Okay, so my first mentoring session is done and dusted. When I was told to turn up at no12 Cock Lane I thought it was some practical joke, but luckily a happy smiling ChameleonNet employee was there to greet me.

I was somewhat apprehensive as I was about to tell a complete stranger everything about me and my business, but Vicky was extremely friendly and we chatted easily. I won’t go into detail about what we discussed for obvious reasons, but rather some of the key overarching feelings I had when I left the meeting.

Vicky is seriously well connected. That is something I am definitely missing in my own business. If I am to grow my business I need to be better connected. Better connected to my customers, prospects and the people I can turn to when I need them.

It was great to hear some stories about how she grew ChameleonNet, they were inspiring, but at the same time not dissimilar to some of the challenges I am facing with Matizmo. It was good to have somebody to listen to what I had to say. She’s a good listener which is such a rare attribute.

I feel good about how we’ve done and where we are going, but I know that I need to act upon the good advice that I have been given. I think that is the key takeaway; My mentor has acted upon the opportunities that she has been given, which is a whole lot different than intending to act upon them.

There are some really great people out there who can help your business grow. Mentoring is a great opportunity for any business owner.

The test was from UserTesting.com, an online user testing company offering inexpensive recorded user tests, so you can see how users interact with your website. There are others available and this is NOT an affiliate blog post!

Setting up your test is easy, and the process allows you to give the tester tasks to perform, such as testing a purchase path or a sign-up process. Then you can assign a set of questions to ask the tester.

It only takes a few minutes to finish and submit your test. A single tester usually costs $39.

I sat back and waited for the results to come through. Results arrived in my inbox after only 42 minutes, which is pretty impressive.

So, what did they tell me? Okay, so lets realise this is only one test, so I would be inclined to do a series, or set of concurrent tests to really get some value. This is the experience of one person, so I would not base all my actions on one tester.

Let’s have a look at the video.

I was quite surprised at the detail the tester went into. I like the way everything he was thinking was blurted out for me to hear. If i’d shown one of my colleagues my site they would probably have um’ed and ar’ed a bit and said they liked it, rather than explaining how they were thinking while they were browsing. It is great that they have no prior knowledge of your test, they have no preconceptions or outside influence to skew their responses.

My user test showed me a few things that I had not considered, and to be quite honest I was quite surprised. When you are so close to something it is very difficult to see the wood for the trees. An outside perspective is such a useful tool to help you back on the right path.

The tester also completes a short questionnaire with responses to my initial questions.

This kind of user testing isn’t new, but it is now available for small businesses for a relatively small fee, and I think it is a great option when building or reviewing your site. I would recommend my clients use a service like this to test their sites or landing pages in a very short timescale.

This quick test (which took me no more that 5 minutes to set up) has been a useful experience and better than I anticipated. You no longer need to spend thousands of pounds on simple user testing, when it is so easily available.

I have one free user test if anybody would like to try it.

It is easy to see why consultants work with us. They get a valuable extra revenue stream, a dedicated design team with no overheads and a full range of design services. What more could they want? It is no secret that we’d like to work with more consultants, so I wanted to create a quick landing page to highlight that fact and try to drive requests.

I wanted to do something in one day, as quickly as I could with minimum fuss. It is quite a useful strategy as it restricts your options so you make decisive decisions easier, rather that leaving the hard bits until tomorrow (manana, manana).

Copy

So, this morning I scoped the page and its contents.

I wanted the following key elements on the page:

attention-grabbing headline
a short paragraph with key bullets
an image
testimonials
a short form
a call to action.

I wrote the copy and edited it down so that it was nice and concise. I fired it over to Wordy to have it copy-edited (which took 16 minutes).

Wordy is quick and reliable

So my copy was done, but I now needed to turn my concentration to an image of some kind.

Imagery

I had in my head an old video from my Apple TV when it started up, a video of lots of images like a bank of TV screens. It has been done quite a lot, but for some reason I still really like it. I wanted all the small images to be work we had done, but I didn’t have time to create all the individual images. Our website has some portfolio items, so I decided to reuse these.

To get the effect I wanted I could have used Photoshop, but I only had a short time frame. So I fired up the App Store on my Mac and had a quick look. I figured if I could make a quick collage of images from our portfolio items, I could find another app to bend it into the required shape and output a nice .png file. I found both on the App Store. The first makes very simple collages from images (Collage Creator – FREE) and the other bends and reflects images (3D Image Commander – £5.99).

Building the image was pretty quick

I dragged images from my website into a folder, dropped the folder into Collage Creator, exported a .png file, dropped that into Image Commander, and then exported another .png file of the final image. The whole process took about 30 minutes including downloading the apps. So, image done!

Build

Now I had to build the landing page. Here at Matizmo we use Unbounce, an excellent landing page platform. Normally for clients we create pages to their exact requirements to match their existing website and brand. In this case I wanted a quick fix, so I selected one of the Unbounce templates, a dark template that I was going to use as a starting point (and modify significantly).

Unbounce is fantastic

I uploaded all my images and my copy and built the page — I was relying on a quick sketch I had done in my pad to put everything in the right places. I set the form to deliver the request to my email address.

I had no time to worry about finite details. The site worked and looked pretty good. I had a concern that the main image was a bit too big in terms of file size, but I could fix that at a later date if it became a problem.

I created a custom sub domain and added a CNAME to my hosting provider so that the site would look on-brand.

I did a few quick tests and put the site live.  You can see it in all its glory here: Matizmo Consultants Landing Page.

Ta da! And here it is!

So all this took most of the day, and I still had time to write this blog post. I must stress that this is not perfect, but it’s done and live, rather than being on my to-do list still!  Sound off in the comments and let me know your thoughts.

There really is an app for everything. We have our listed our favourite below.

WordPress – Where would the world be without WordPress? If you have a blog and want to stream it through to your Profile then upload this Application and it will happen. It is an opportunity to show people how you are driving the conversation.

Display your portfolio – As we said, we believe that sites like LinkedIn will be the new corporate websites. With apps like this that allow you to display portfolios then it is not surprising that more companies are migrating this way. For design focused companies like ourselves this is a must have.

Presentations – Did you write a particularly fabulous presentation and want to share it with your network? Install the Slideshare app and you can do just that. It is a great piece of content marketing kit.

Company Buzz – this app allows you to eavesdrop into the conversation that is happening out there in the real world about your company. The more you know what is going on, the more you can respond to it.

Secure online workspaces – Behold the cloud. This app allows you to collaborate with other LinkedIn users to create whatever documents you need.

And as if that was not enough to keep you going, if you are on LinkedIn and have an iphone then get the iphone app. This means all your contacts are available to you at the touch of a phone button.

We hope you have enjoyed our series on LinkedIn and how all its many features can be leveraged for your own individual success or that of your company.  For more information, or to find out how we can help you make the most of LinkedIn, call Matizmo on 01285 643180.

Company Profile – Company profiles are like personal profiles. Make sure you add logos, information about the company and contact information – basically all the things you would put on your personal profile. The company can stream tweets and blog posts through its LinkedIn profile so if your company does this be sure to utilise it. Above all, remember what you are using the page for, it should not be some dry page created because you read somewhere in an e-book that it would be the right thing to do. This is another means for clients and potential employees to learn about and contact you.

Company Pages – Companies can create more than one page on their profile. That means they can display job opportunities, perhaps some news or write further information about their services as a company. If you believe, as we at Matizmo do, that corporate websites are the thing of the past then spending time creating and maintaining your profile on LinkedIn will stand you in good stead for the coming years.

Company Stats – On your company page are the company stats where you can look at how “LinkedIn” employees of particular organisations are. For an example check on the LinkedIn company stat page, they certainly practise what they preach. In order to create these stats information is pulled from the profiles of those who say they work there. So get your staff to link to the right company!

Ways to promote your company – Many of the methods we would suggest you use to promote your company are exactly the same as how we recommend you promote yourself on LinkedIn. These include joining or creating groups, going to events, using polls, answering questions, connecting to people. Additional ideas such as posting jobs, advertising via LinkedIn or using applications to promote your company will work above and beyond this.

It has been suggested that in years to come many companies will just have their own profile pages on LinkedIn or other social networks as a means of communication. I’m not sure that is exactly true, but you best jump on the bandwagon now.

Most great business leaders have had somebody to mentor them, whether it is just to gain valuable information at a time of growth, or to help build a vision for the future. A mentor is a person who has more entrepreneurial business experience than yourself, who you can ‘tap into’ and gain valuable insights from. They tend to become long term relationships, rather than one-off meetings.

I for one realise my limitations, my experience and my closeness to my business. I don’t feel in any way threatened by inviting someone into my business space; on the contrary, I feel strangely liberated by the prospect of my forthcoming mentoring programme.

Last week the government announced a project called StartUp Britain. A privately funded initiative to help aspiring entrepreneurs develop their ideas and start or grow their businesses. I was initially sceptical and I have never really got on with government initiatives. StartUp Britain is different and contains many different businesses all offering some kind of help, (it is a private initiative being championed by the Government rather than a Government initiative). These businesses range from offering one month’s free line rental (not interested thanks), to more interesting help such as internships and mentoring.

Very mod.. the StartUp Britain logo

It was the mentoring that caught my eye. It looked as though it could offer some real value (more than one month’s free O2 contract!). So I duly contacted the organisers, who seem like a very helpful bunch. Mentoring has been pledged by The Supper Club members; a group of successful entrepreneurs who share knowledge, experience and contacts in the spirit of give and take. The Supper Club’s founder, Duncan Cheatle, is also a founder of StartUp Britain.

My application has been processed and I have received details of my mentor. They try to match a mentor’s business as closely as possible. My mentor is Vicky Reeves who runs a company called Chameleon Net, a web development and design agency based in London. A quick Google search reveals that Vicky is an extremely successful entrepreneur who has won awards like: ‘Best Woman in Technology’ and ‘Female Entrepreneur of the Year’. Her business has grown and she now employs 30 people and has some amazing clients. I think it could be a good fit, although we are not primarily a web agency, we are likely to face many of the same issues and opportunities as Vicky has already overcome in the history of her business. It all sounds very impressive, and I am pretty excited to be meeting her.

I’ve decided to blog about the mentoring experience, the good and the bad, so readers can see if mentoring is for them. My mentoring meeting is set up for early May, so we’ll see what happens and if my mentoring relationship with Vicky is to be long term or not.

Another aspect to the programme is to ‘pay it forward’ (just like the film), so I will need to offer some kind of mentoring to other people. I’ve not quite worked that bit out yet, so I’ll update you when I have further details.

So, this is part one of my experiences and I hope to bring you more information as and when.

In the meantime check out a few relevant websites:

Start-Up Britain
Mentoring Programme
The Supper Club
Chameleon Net

Use the Website Links opportunity in your summary box – On your profile you can link to three websites. The majority of people do not know that you can link using anchor text thus providing a fantastic back link. For example, rather than us writing Matizmo and then providing our URL, we could write Matizmo B2B Marketing thus capturing one of our keywords in the back link. This strategy of using a keyword in your anchor text can get you very good quality back links.

Use relevant keywords throughout your profile – This is fairly self explanatory but people forget to do it. If you want people to search and find you, make sure you are helping them do so. Keywords that relate to you and your company will do this. In the specialities box in particular, this is an opportunity to make your profile keyword rich.

Pay close attention to your job title and location – again, this is one of the key things that someone will search on. Make it describe what you do, not just a boring job title that does not mean anything. Obviously, don’t change the essence of what you do but you can tweak.

Customise your public profile name – again, many people do not change their public profile from a series of numbers that LinkedIn provides to their name. Your face is your fortune, make it read like your name. Or if you are feeling daring you can customise it to your company or product name. It all helps with back links so do as you will.

Answer Questions – This is a fantastic opportunity to get back links to the pages on your site or profile that you want people to see. Obviously, it helps if they are relevant questions to what you are trying to drive people to.

SEO is hard enough without wasting good quality opportunities like the ones you are gifted on LinkedIn. Use it or lose it.

Next time we discuss how you can use LinkedIn to enhance your company’s profile.

Genuinely, people use LinkedIn to learn about their industry. You can find all manner of specific industry insight across the site that will both inform your understanding of your subject and give you practical tools and advice as to how to tweak business practises for the better.

Groups are a great place to find such insight. Again it comes back to how people want to position themselves. Many key pieces of research, white papers, case studies and articles are placed on LinkedIn as a content marketing tool. Remember for these to be effective, they have to provide some value. Also remember, that you can be the one that benefits from this value – not just try to provide it. For a novice LinkedIn user, groups provide ripe picking ground for information they can read and reuse in other conversations – either online or off.

If you have some industry insight that you are keen to share with customers and colleagues, Groups and Events via LinkedIn can really give it the exposure it needs.

Two other tools on LinkedIn that either allow you to garner industry insight or dispense it are LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Polls.

LinkedIn Answers – This is a great forum to either post or answer questions about your business or industry. Of course it is used as a normal Q & A forum is, but to get the best from it either ask thought provoking (not provocative) questions or provide well thought out insightful answers.

LinkedIn Polls – Does what it says on the tin. It allows you to create or respond to polls via LinkedIn. To be honest, many of the polls are highly unscientific but again, it is interesting to see views across a number of industries being collated and reflected this way.

Information and Insight is only potential power. You need to use it effectively for it to be any kind of use for you. That means reading it, absorbing it and either acting on it or adding to it.

Next time, we talk through opportunities on LinkedIn and SEO.

LinkedIn can help you establish yourself as a thought leader in a number of ways.

Use of content marketing – We have already covered what content marketing is, and where and how it can be used on LinkedIn. However, if you are trying to position yourself as a thought leader some extra consideration has to be given to what material you want to use as part of your content marketing strategy. For example, if you have an answer to a problem or challenge that affects your industry, laying out a reasoned argument in a white paper would be a far better use of the medium than jotting down some bullet points in a blog.

Remember to be effective, content marketing is part of a marketing mix, it is not the only thing you do to position yourself.

Events – Running your own events is another way to position yourself as a thought leader. For them to be successful, they must add value to the audiences understanding of a subject. They should not be about pushing your products and services; they should be about your industry, its challenges and solutions to those challenges. Push marketing pushes people away.  Running successful events brings other opportunities too such as being asked to be a speaker in another environment.

Starting of Groups – Again, this has already been mentioned but it is worth stressing what a good tool it can be to position yourself as a leader if that group is run properly. You as the facilitator are instantly associated with the success of the group.

Recommendations – If you are seeking to demonstrate you are the “go to” person for x, y or z then one of the most powerful tools you have in your armoury is a recommendation or five saying what a good insightful person you were. If indeed you are, then you should have no problem getting the recommendations.

Thought Leadership is a complex field and many people who start out trying to position themselves as a leader fail. Why? Quite simply they don’t have the relevance, experience or balls to carry it off. To be authoritative you have to be knowledgeable. With the industry insight and information floating around LinkedIn for free, you’d be a fool not to make use of it. And it is to Industry Insight we turn our attention next time.