Linkcrafter.com – Blog

Rob Duncan

Rob Duncan is Keynote speaker, author and consultant in the areas of team building, leadership development and marketing intelligence. He is the authors of two great books : Haul Away!: Teambuilding Lessons from a Voyage Around Cape Horn and Competitive Intelligence: Fast, Cheap & Ethical. Currently Rob is Director of Applied Research Liaison Office at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) and CEO at Great Capes Consulting Vancouver, Canada.

When Rob is not sailing 12,000 ocean miles rounding Cape Horn and crossing the Atlantic on a square-rigger, he is passionate by innovation, and beyond innovation the critical issue of innovation commercialization. He dedicates tremendous energy at British Columbia Institute of Technology to helping entrepreneurs and faculty inventors get new products to market through the effective use of marketing intelligence and planning.

British Columbia Institute of Technology

Recently, Rob has made available several presentations to helping less skilled networkers to leverage the power of professional networking websites to grow their social capital, and boost their marketing.

We highlight here Rob Duncan’s secrets for a successful networking on Linkedin, or any other professional networking website :

The Power of Small Favors
Help 50 people with:

• Answers
• Recommendations
• Expert suggestions
• Leads
• Introductions
• When you need help, 50 people will be there for you
• Give generously; the “getting” flows indirectly from your investment in others

TIPs:

• Answer questions frequently and generously; think of yourself last
• Put a Web link in your answers (draw people to your Website, books, or blog)
• Earn expertise rewards & build reputation
• Visit Q&A daily and answer as many questions as you can, insinuating your web address where possible
• Update your status strategically (“Rob is looking for entrepreneurs to assist”)
• Connect 2 people who can help each other
• Be generous with your contacts
• Give more than you get

Rob is a great guy, one that is both inspirational and encouraging. His participation on a project always raised the bar. As a prolific networker Rob is always kind enough to share his knowledge and expertise to show others how to use forums to build networks and grow business. you can reach Rob at this email address : greatcapes [@] gmail.com.

Grant Laing, CEO of BlendediT

Grant Laing is the CEO of BlendediT in Ann St Brisbane Australia. His company offer a one stop shop for complete and tailored Information Technology and Communication solutions in Australia.

Blended IT Solutions is a dynamic company, that has experience in many areas of the ICT industry and in delivering customized solutions to small and middle size companies.

Begin Your Own Profitable Leads Group Today. Leads group are the most successful marketing effort for your dollar that you can find anywhere.

The major advantage of choosing leads groups as a way to expand your business is that they are a highly focused, results-driven method of marketing and promotion. In leads groups, individuals are highly motivated and are able to track their results more accurately.

The economic downturn had completely changed the way that people approach networking. Most realized they needed to “cut the fat” out of their business models, which meant doing away with pricey ad campaigns and meaningless memberships in professional organizations.

Old networking organizations don’t cut it anymore, because they can’t accurately keep up with the fast-paced nature of the Internet. Many people are dissatisfied with the current state of professional memberships and organizations, especially when those memberships aren’t brining in any new business.

This is where online leads groups come in. While leads groups have always been immensely successful in building mutually beneficial relationships, combining them with social media has taken them to a whole new level. People are finally getting excited about referrals again!

The vast power of social media connects people from all over the globe and delivers real-time results. Members and managers don’t even have to leave the comfort of their own home or office to take part in rewarding professional relationships. It’s easier than ever to keep in contact with leads and ensure that groups stay focused and motivated.

Leads are vital to the success of any business, so why not get back in the game today?

It has yet to be seen what potential online leads groups truly have in the renaissance of professional networking. All we know is that the smartest business people are getting in on the ground floor of leads groups and even starting ones of their own. There’s no limit to what they can do for those willing to participate! It’s the wave of the future, and we can’t wait to see where it goes.

The renaissance of leads groups means that business people spend no money on advertising and less time in networking, yet grow their sales, visibility, and brand awareness.

Linkcrafter sits on the nose of this revolution. In less than 3 months, Linkcrafter became the #1 leads groups and referral networks utility in the USA and in Europe, managing more than 30.000 leads groups in the US and around the world.

As a leads group manager, you need to innovate. The world of leads groups is changing fast. Most interactions are taking place online through social media. Old fashioned leads groups are losing ground, and more and more members are quietly questioning the benefit of annual membership fees and the value for time and money of the monthly meetings.

Why are more and more members of old-style leads groups joining online leads groups in droves? Because they have the opportunity to obtain more sales leads and business opportunities with less effort, less expense, and less time wasted in social networking that has no immediate impact on their business.

We urge you to join Linkcrafter today and secure your group name and category before your members join groups created by competitors. The Linkcrafter utility will help you create value for your members, while keeping the local ground and social gathering a useful place to build relationships and reinforce trust.

On February 11, 2009, John Fitz, a leads group manager in Aberdeen, South Dakota, experienced first-hand what is happening with most leads group around the nation. He had just returned home from a trip to Yankton, SD, to see his wife’s family. Sitting in front of his computer, he read the e-mail that would change the course of his life forever.

It was from Elizabeth, a member of his local leads group, writing to say that the majority of his group members had left to join another group! Elizabeth said that she wanted to maintain a working relationship, but unfortunately, she would be joining the other group as well.

Needless to say, John was devastated. He had worked day in and day out for five long, hard years, scrambling to schedule meetings, arrange sponsors, and share leads. He quickly found himself lost and floundering, wondering where to go from there.

The world of leads groups is changing fast. Most interactions are taking place online through social media. Old fashioned leads groups are losing ground, and more and more members are quietly questioning the benefit of annual membership fees and the value for time and money of the monthly meetings.

Why are more and more members of old-style leads groups joining online leads groups in droves? Because they have the opportunity to obtain more sales leads and business opportunities with less effort, less expense, and less time wasted in social networking that has no immediate impact on their business.

As a leads group manager, you need to innovate. Linkcrafter sits on the nose of this revolution. In less than 3 months, Linkcrafter became the #1 leads groups and referral networks utility in the USA and in Europe, managing more than 30.000 leads groups in the US and around the world.

We urge you to join Linkcrafter today and secure your group name and category before your members join groups created by competitors. The Linkcrafter utility will help you create value for your members, while keeping the local ground and social gathering a useful place to build relationships and reinforce trust.

If you join today, we guarantee you can promote your products for free with all the powerful tools on Linkcrafter!

I met Felipe Patino 10 months ago all by chance. I posted a project on the freelancers portal guru.com. I received more than 15 bids, among them Patino’s bid. I’ve been working with Guru system for more than 3 years, and I can testify how difficult it’s to find a good and honest freelancer, who will commit to your project and deliver the kind of results that will help your business.

Our project was a 3D animation work to illustrate Linkcrafter concept. We have tried 5 freelancers and digital agencies before, but we were totally disappointed by their work. We looked so helpless after these bad experiences that we were close to stop the video project and move to something less ambitious like a simple slides show with voice over.

Then came Felipe Patino. After visiting his website Interactive Visualisation, I came to the conclusion that we have met our savior. And Patino was our Savior.

We awarded him the project, an after few iterations, Patino provided us with a full creative input, and a voice over script. For the animation, he is a master. He is the best of his class. Everything went smoothly. He and his team listened carefully to our requests, proceeded to suggest variant to illustrate our ideas, were opened to necessary changes, and delivered to us a fantastic 3D video. You just don’t meet such a great team everyday. Beyond business, we are deeply grateful to Felipe and his team.

We will work again with Patino. If you ever have an animation project go straight to the guys at Interactive Visualisation. They are simply the best. You can see the two videos they did for Linkcrafter at our home page.

You can check for yourself their portfolio here: http://interactivevisualization.net/

Patino works with architects, real estate developers, manufacturers, home builders, and entrepreneurs to provide pre-visualization of their projects, which are used for presentations and design analysis purposes.

You can reach Felipe Patino  at : info(@)interactivevisualisation.net, +1 312 543 2901, Chicago, IL, USA

Excerpt from Patino’s portfolio:

I know lot of web Design companies  in Europe and in India, and I’ve worked with many. I love designers, and people with a crazy drive for extreme creativity and innovation. The CEO of Kryptis, Vaiva Lukminaite is one of this fantastic and fanatical people about design and business marketing. She has been recommended to me by a friend who is an accomplished designer.

The first time I’ve meet her I was more than impressed. Vaiva is a business woman with an awesome brain power,  and a sharp mind; after few minutes of discussion she  totally grasped our needs, even the unstated one, and said something very beautiful “We can’t take your project at this stage. You’ll lose money and time as your business “unique selling position” is not fully expressed. I’ll help you and your team with documentation and Free advice, and when this first step will be finished, then we could proceed to the next step. I love your project, and it’ll be a success when we will be finished. Trust me”.

In the weeks following our first meeting, Vaiva sent us carefully selected documentation and some ideas for our marketing. Our team worked hard for several weeks and dramatically  improved the basic marketing concept, then we went back to Vaiva.

The results we obtained for our business was impressive: a more convincing business positioning, and complete suite of design work. It’s not only us who has had great experience with Kryptis, take a look at the company portfolio. Its clients include well-known international brands (Le Meridien, The V Golf clucb, Citroen, The Whale Yachts,  Russian Hotels) and small businesses. Kryptis has created more than 570 websites and other digital medias during 11 years of history.

In brief,  Kryptis is an integrated digital media agency formed in 1998 in Lithuania (The biggest of the 3 Baltic countries). The seasoned team assembled by Vaiva could help any client with marketing strategy, design and innovative technology all together to create Internet solutions that drive sales and extend brands online.

If you’d like to outsource design work, digital media creation to some eastern Europe countries you’ll happy to hire the people from Kryptis. You can join Vaiva Lukminaite at this email address: vaiva@kryptis.lt or follow her on twitter: http://twitter.com/vaivutis

Kryptis’s team is fluent in English and Russian.

MarketingSherpa has just released “Marketing Wisdom for 2010″. It’s a real source or marketing wisdom. It compiles the best advice on topics such as social media, search, email, lead generation, testing, and more.

70 Marketers and Agencies Share Real-Life Stories and Lessons Learned.

You can download your Free copy here: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/Wisdom2010.pdf

Below 3 excerpts of lessons learned by fellow business people:

REWARD CLICKS WITH A GOOD OFFER
We got a doctor’s website on the first page of Google through paid search and watched his traffic increase by 400% in one month. He still was not getting new patients. We added a new patient form to the home page of the website. He still was not getting new patients. Remember this: No one will ever give you their name, email and phone number if they don’t get anything in return.
So, if you have the new patient form on the upper-fold of the home page of your site, offer your visitors something for giving your their information. The doctor offered discounted services to those that filled out the form, and he has now had three record breaking months of new patients this year and is on track to break his record for most new patients in one year.
Stuart Draper, Get Found First LLC
www.GetFoundFirst.com

SEGMENT LEADS BY INTEREST
Instead of including leads in every campaign, we decided to segment them into campaigns by their areas of interest. To do this, we divided leads by their past activities within key topics and solutions (white paper downloads, webinar registrations, previous campaign responses, etc.) then slotted them into campaigns centered on those key topics and solutions. As a result, we experienced a significant increase in conversions and more than a 300% increase in our response rates, including clickthrough rates and open rates. At the end of the day we are able to better communicate with our leads with messaging relative to what they are interested in as well as run multiple campaigns simultaneously.
Farrah Hylton, Ariba Inc.
www.ariba.com

DON’T OVERLOOK COMMUNITY PAPERS
While daily newspapers continue to struggle, a portion of the publishing industry is not only surviving, it’s thriving. And yet community papers are often overlooked by marketers. This year in particular, community newspapers offered a major opportunity. As resources continue to get cut, many papers are increasingly turning to outside sources for content, including public relations agencies and trusted article-placement services. Marketers who are able to deliver compelling content and story ideas can take advantage of the loyal audience, hyper-local focus and popular online presence that community papers provide.
David Olson, ARAnet Inc. www.aranetonline.com

This booklet could be a source of leads generation through business networking, leads groups or advertising.

There has been a recent surge in the popularity of leads groups as viable business opportunities. As more and more people flock to the new movement, outsiders have begun to wonder why leads groups are so hot right now. We’re prepared to bring you the answer in today’s blog.

The major advantage of choosing leads groups as a way to expand your business is that they are a highly focused, results-driven method of marketing and promotion. Many people are dissatisfied with the current state of professional memberships and organizations, especially when those memberships aren’t brining in any new business. In leads groups, individuals are highly motivated and are able to track their results more accurately.

Joining or starting a leads group is an organic way to connect with like-minded individuals who can help you. The free flow of information can be exhilarating for those who haven’t experienced it before. New leads can breathe a surge of life into a dusty ad campaign and pump up the volume on a lazy promo team.

The world of business has always been fueled by a unique type of entrepreneurial spirit. When powerful people get together, powerful results are bound to occur. The good vibes are contagious as members feed off one another’s energy. There’s nothing like getting those first few great referrals, and the effect is addictive. Leads are vital to the success of any business, so why not get back in the game today?

Linkcrafter sits on the nose of this revolution. In less than 3 months, Linkcrafter became the #1 leads groups and referral networks utility in the USA and in Europe, managing more than 30.000 leads groups in the US and around the world.

Leads groups have enormous potential in our current economic climate. They give you the opportunity to make real connections with other professionals and see identifiable results almost immediately. All of this begs the question: why not start your own leads group today?

The reason most people don’t start their own leads group is because they’re afraid. Others tell them that their idea will never work and that they will fall flat on their face. But the truth is that many people have done it and taken their business to a whole new level.

The advantage of starting your own leads group is that you get to be the decision-maker. By leading the group yourself (rather than passing the role around), you’ll form a solid foundation for your members. This sense of stability is what is lacking in many groups today, which means that you have the chance to build a working model that will be successful for years to come.

Starting your own group is totally free, so it’s relatively low-risk. You can hand pick all the members to ensure that they will be reliable associates with high-quality referrals. You can also manage the sub-niches in your category to ensure that there is no competition between members.

Anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit can excel at starting a leads group. Take your future into your own hands and start your own group today!

The renaissance of leads groups means that business people spend no money on advertising and less time in networking, yet grow their sales, visibility, and brand awareness. It’s the wave of the future.

Linkcrafter sits on the nose of this revolution. In less than 3 months, Linkcrafter became the #1 leads groups and referral networks utility in the USA and in Europe, managing more than 30.000 leads groups in the US and around the world.