However, whenever I conduct social media training sessions for groups of professionals, the platform that they always request we spend the time most time on is LinkedIn. It is the platform that they’re the most familiar with and trust the most. They can clearly understand the benefits of putting time into LinkedIn. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and the other social networks require more convincing for them to grasp the value that they can extract, besides any personal value such as staying connected with family and friends.

Have you kept your LinkedIn profile updated? When was the last time you provided a recommendation for someone? Are you taking time to explore Groups and Answers?

If you’re like me then you could be spending more time within the LinkedIn ecosystem using it more effectively, reaping benefits and building your foundation prior to needing your network. As with many things in life, what you get out of LinkedIn will only be as good as what you put in. So, here are 8 tips to get more out of LinkedIn that you can start doing today. Heck, you might even get a few extra sales out of using LinkedIn.  They may seem like basic tips but sometimes refreshers are good to remind us to keep up with the basics.

8 Tips to Get More Out of LinkedIn

1. Fill out your profile completely including customizing your URL with your name. It’ll only take 4 minutes to optimize it.
2. Connect with colleagues, friends, and others in your profession and areas of expertise/practice.
3. Find relevant Groups to join and begin participating in them.
4. Post relevant, helpful information via status update such as industry news and important updates.
5. Search Answers for questions relevant to your industry and your areas of expertise. Provide thoughtful and helpful answers to show expertise in subject matter.
6. Follow companies to receive regular updates on their status.
7. Search on general terms and industries to find new industry peers to connect to.
8. Write recommendations for colleagues and others in your network. Also, ask for recommendations, where applicable.  Need some tips on writing a good LinkedIn recommendation? Here are a few.

If you’re looking for even more tips on maximizing the potential of LinkedIn, I’d go grab a copy of Lewis Howes‘ book, LinkedWorking (affiliate link).

Do you find LinkedIn to be valuable? What other tips would you add to this list?

Oh yeah, and if we’re not connected, come find me over on LinkedIn (http://linkedin.com/in/justinlevy). Use this email address: linkedin [at] justinrlevy [dot] com.

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Photo Credit: mariosundar

Working out doesn’t have to be that difficult.  First of all, if you’re intimidated, embarrassed or concerned, try hiring a trainer, even if it’s just for a single hour.  I promise, it will be helpful.  Even though I workout 4-6 times per week, I still try to add in other ways to stay healthy and get in a little extra workout whenever possible.  It helps to keep me focused and as long as it doesn’t interrupt the rest of my life, why not?

So, today I have 7 tips for you that are simple, fast, and won’t take longer than a few minutes extra each day, if even that long.

7 Simple Fitness Tips

1. Unless you work on the 103rd floor, consider taking the stairs.  Just by taking the stairs to the 4th floor where I live, I add an extra approximately 11,000 stairs to my daily routine per month.  For me, it is usually faster than the elevator, doesn’t make me tired, but does keep me active.

2. Unless you’re going to a professional sports game where the parking lots are miles long, park a ways away from the front door.  I park approximately 500 steps away from my truck at my house even though there is parking approximately 50-100 steps from the front door.  This adds an additional 22,400 steps per month to my activity, if you account deduct the 100 steps per day I could be walking.

3. Buy a pedometer.  You can find them for relatively cheap, around $20 or so, and if you’re a competitive person like I am, it will become a game against yourself.  Set your goal for 10,000 steps per day.  If you buy a little fancier one it will even calculate miles and calories burned.  Track your progress in a simple Google Docs spreadsheet and try to improve a little more each day.

4. Buy a bluetooth headset for your office.  If you’re usually stuck at your desk all day long on conference calls, buy a bluetooth headset for your office phone.  Then, take your calls from the headset and walk around your office if you don’t need to be behind a computer screen.  If you’re going to try this, make sure you get a Plantronics set.  They’re the best, bottom line.

5. Pick up workout bands.  You can hide these easily in a desk drawer or carry them in your bag when you’re traveling.  These little bands will allow you to get in a decently intense workout when you can’t make it to the gym.  Even if you do make it to the gym regularly, you should add these into your workout.

6. Go for a walk around the building at lunch.  Take 10 minutes at lunch time and take a walk around your building.  Just this little additional exercise will help to energize for the long afternoon ahead and will add a couple more thousand steps into your daily routine.

7. Do a set of pushups or situps.  It’s mid-day and you’re tired.  You’ve been staring at your screen for what feels like 60 hours and it’s not even lunch time yet.  Hop out of your chair, pop down and knock out a set of pushups.  Nothing crazy so you don’t mess up your office attire, just 10-25.  Even if you did 25 pushups only 3 times per week, it would add up 300 extra pushups per month.

As you can see, none of these suggestions are particularly hard, take up a lot of time, and are all meant to give you an extra burst of energy.  Whether you workout constantly or don’t even know what the word “gym” really means, adding any one of these tips into your daily routine will help you out.

What easy things do you do to try to keep in shape, stay healthy, and stay energized?

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Photo by: Phillip Klinger

So, below are a few tips that will help you when developing your next internet press release:

1. First and foremost, read The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott.  While waiting for the book to arrive, start by reading the New Rules ebook.  These two resources will provide you with the fundamentals needed to dive into internet PR.
2. Optimize your press release with relevant keywords that your target audience will use when they are searching for what they’re looking for.
3. Use links in your press release to drive your potential customers to your website or to other relevant pages such as a recently published positive-related article, whitepaper or ebook which is referenced in the release.
4. Include your contact information including phone number and website so that potential customers have a way to contact you directly from the press release.
5. Submit your press release within approximately 7 days of when you want to begin creating buzz.  We typically see that our customers receive the most headline impressions and pageviews during the first 7-28 days that the press release is distributed.  However, a benefit of web-based press releases is that they will continue to live on the internet instead of a traditional print press release which is only beneficial during the immediate time after release.
6. Use a distribution service who will distribute your release to a wide network of media outlets including opt-in journalists, bloggers, television, radio, newspapers, and broad range of other resources.
7. Utilize social networks such as Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon to gain even more traction especially among those already interested in your blog, website or company.
8. Post your press release on the media/press section of your website.  By posting the press release to the media/press section of your website, you create more linking between your keywords and your website as the search engines crawl your site and index this information.
9. Submit press releases often and about any newsworthy event that involves your company, your products or your people.  As I have mentioned in a previous post, you should use internet-based PR like you use Twitter.
10. Optimize the landing page that you direct your potential customers to within the release.  On this landing page you could have an interesting and informative video, a field to capture opt-ins to a newsletter, an RSS link to your blog, and/or any other information which will take that visitor and turn them into a potential customer.  An example of an excellent landing page is the home page of personal branding expert, Dan Schawbel.

While I could go into greater depth about each of these tips (and will in future posts), this will help you to start developing a successful internet-based PR campaign.

To learn more about why it’s beneficial to distribute a search-engine-optimized press release through the internet as opposed to traditional print channels, take a look at this video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, here are some more resources on internet-based press releases:

• Brian Solis of FutureWorks wrote a guide on how to write social media press releases.
• Todd Defren of Shift Communications developed a social media press release template to help guide you during the development/writing process.