I have found LinkedIn to be a very good tool for networking, sharing information, and business prospecting. Many people who I have interacted with have not leveraged the tool. I have included links in this post that will take to a variety of helpful sites and articles in using LinkedIn. There are also a variety of free webinars and twitter chat sessions to help you with your use of LinkedIn. I thought I would highlight the ones I have used to help further my LInkedIn experience.
Linked Into Business has a lot of great helpful hints by Viveka Von Rosen whose Twitter handles is @ LinkedInExpert. There is also a weekly Tuesday evening LinkedIn chat session #linkedinchat Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST on Twitter where tips are shared and questions are answered. I recommend you use Tweetchat to participate.
Sean Nelson provides a lot of good LinkedIn information in his blog. His blog also covers general Social Media Topics as well as provide Twitter information.
Phil Rosenburg is a great Career Coach and his blog has a lot of great LinkedIn Hints in addition to job search information. Phil also sponsors the below mentioned Greig Wells webinar.
Greig Wells generally has a Free Thursday webinar on LinkedIn Hints. This is actually a free webinar that truly provides real actionable information.
The LinkedIn Blog is a good resource to keep track of newly deployed capabilities and technologies on LinkedIn. LinkedIn tends to not broadly communicate changes they are making to their user base and this is one source of information I have found helpful.
Of course, I will be glad to help any of my readers and friends with their LinkedIn activities.
In my Social Media research, I have read about a lot of places where you can get inspiration for a blog posting. Going over a Direct TV ad was not one that was listed. I noticed that a lot of the Disney Channels came in the lower cost plans while other high interest channels were in the higher pricing buckets. Somehow, this made me think about Disney's pricing strategy. I don't have any insight as to what they actually do, but this process is one many small businesses should use to create overall enterprise value when they have a family of product offerings.
Lets look at some of Disney's Children oriented segments leaving out their ESPN and ABC segments. To attact families with children they have:
Numerous TV Channels via cable or satellite
Theme Parks
Disney Stores
Branded Products
Disney Movies and DVD's
Online Disney
Now my children love the Disney Channels and I would pay more to have them if they weren't in the lower priced bundles. However, by having the Disney channels available to more customers, Disney is generating a brand presence that helps drive demand for their Branded Products that you can find in many retail stores in addition to Disney Stores. It also helps drive demand for Movies and DVD like the Hanna Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place movies. If they had priced their channels so that they were in the higher bundle cable or satellite packages, then they may not have as large an audience to drive sales for their other products.
In other words, they could sacrifice a little yield in their TV channels to generate incrementally more sales and margin in their other segments to increase overall enterprise value. This pricing concept is something small businesses that offer a family of related products needs to consider to optimize their enterprise value.
How does your business balance pricing to drive overall enterprise value?
I took my daughter and some of her friends to see Justin Beiber's Never Say Never movie. It was an interesting experience from several aspects besides the fact that I was the only adult male in attendance. I was probably the only one watching the movie from a different perspective than everyone else in the audience.
1) It was interesting to watch the audience engage with the movie as if they were at the concerts and they all stayed until after all the credits have ran wanting to catch every glimpse. They were really caught up in the movie. Even the movie had shots of the audience waving the light wands in the audience, all the girls in the theater were waving their cell phones with light screens in unison.
2) I had heard how Social Media helped his career; especially YouTube and then Twitter. I think it was fitting for the movie to end with an email snapshot of "check this out" and send being clipped." It demonstrates how audience engagement can help one utilize Twitter. I liked it showing the background behind some of his tweets and the response it generated it.
3) The theme of "Never Say Never" and his approach to life and goal of performing at a sold out Madison Square Garden concert within such a short time frame. While he had impressed some players like Usher with @Klout, his career moved quickly without the Disney and Nickelodeon teen star production machines behind him which put him in an underdog position that he overcame.
There is a lot a business person can learn from this "teen movie".
Interesting video on the need to change our Education Paradigm. While this isn't he usual focus of my blog, this video raises some good points on how our current educational system is formed and why changes are needed. Our Educatoinal System was designed in a different cultural and economic era.
I also enjoy how the speakers comments were animated. This also demonstrates the power of social media as I found this YouTube video on a friends Facebook news stream and now it is on my blog.
Image via Wikipedia
