Some of the biggest changes include a new cloud that shows the concentration of a person’s contacts within certain companies, the ability to see what companies and news streams a person is following and the ability to search through your contacts’ connections.  But one of the most exciting changes was rolled out today: You can now integrate video into your profile!

Adding video to your profile is easy.  You have the option to add links to video, images, blogs, documents, presentations and more anywhere on your profile where you see the square with a plus sign icon.  This includes the summary, experience and education sections.  Simply click on the icon in the specified section, copy and paste your link into the dialogue box, complete the title and description, select save and you’re done.

This is a great way to integrate video and other content into your LinkedIn profile.  See below for step-by-step instructions.

Step One: Select the Add a link to a video, image, blog, document, presentation icon.

Step 2: Copy and paste the link into the dialogue box provided.

Step 3: Edit the title and description and select save.

You now have now created a professional gallery with video!

For more information on social media training, including LinkedIn training, visit the Global Marcoms events page.

Mark Zuckerberg’s status update announced Facebook is now 1 BILLION strong … and growing.

— Global Marcoms (@globalmarcoms) October 4, 2012

Facebook has now officially crossed over the 1 billion mark … that’s 1 BILLION, with a capital B.  Here are a few fun facts about the largest social media network on earth directly from their news room:

One billion – key metrics

Facebook reached 1 billion monthly active users on September 14 at 12.45 PM Pacific time.

Since Facebook launched, we’ve seen:

• Over 1.13 trillion likes since launch in February 2009
• 140.3 billion friend connections
• 219 billion photos uploaded
  • Data was pulled on 9/10/2012, and represents the total # of photos currently on this site – in other words, it excludes deleted photos.  If we wanted to include all photos ever uploaded, the estimate we have is 265 billion. Photo uploading launched fall 2005.
  • Includes location-tagged posts as well as check-ins. Data was pulled 9/10/2012, and represents total location-tagged posts & check-ins since launch of the product in August 2010
  • Data was pulled on 9/11/2012, and represents song plays since the launch of music-listening applications in September 2011

• 17 billion location-tagged posts, including check-ins

• 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times – that’s about 210,000 years of music

Characteristics of users joining the week Facebook hit 1B

• The median age of the user is about 22
• The top five countries where people connected from at the time we reached this milestone were Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the United States (NOTE: in alphabetical order)
• Facebook now has 600M mobile users

Characteristics of users joining the week Facebook hit 500M users (July 2010)

• The median age of the user at that time was about 23
• Top five countries where people connected from at the time we reached this milestone were Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and the United States (NOTE: in alphabetical order)
• Users signing up at this time now have an average of 305 friends

Characteristics of users joining the week we hit 100M (August 2008)

• The median age of the user at that time was about 26
• The top five countries where people connected from at the time we reached this milestone were Chile, France, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States (NOTE: in alphabetical order)
• The user signing up at this time now has an average 334 friends

Characteristics of users joining the week Facebook hit 50M users (October 2007)

• The median age of the user signing up at this time was about 26
• Top five countries where people connected from at the time we reached this milestone were Australia, Canada, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States (NOTE: in alphabetical order)
• Users signing up at this time now have an average of 321 friends

Characteristics of users joining the week Facebook hit 25M users (January 2006)

• The median age of users signing up at that time was about 19
• The top five countries where people connected from at the time we reached this milestone were Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States (NOTE: in alphabetical order)
• Users who signed up at this time now have an average of 598 friends

Written by LinkedIn trainer and Global Marcoms president Kelly Quattlebaum.

LinkedIn is an amazing tool for any professional, but seems to have certain qualities and attributes that lend themselves particularly well toward speakers.  LinkedIn is all about networking and who you know … and who they know.  For speakers looking to expand their reach and gain more exposure, LinkedIn is a great resource.

As a LinkedIn trainer and public speaker, I would like to share with you five tips that will help you sell yourself on LinkedIn by providing information that is of value to others and using techniques that will draw people to you.  Developing a few good habits and incorporating some new tricks will help you leverage LinkedIn to its full advantage.

CRAFT AN ENTICING HEADLINE

The first tip I want to share with you is to customize your headline.  The headline is what people see when they search LinkedIn for potential speakers.  This is your first impression; your opportunity to entice them to click through and read your profile.  While it might be fun to be creative and include your own unique expression or title, remember that people will search for speakers using the term speaker.  So consider your keywords carefully and try to think like a client who is looking for a speaker via LinkedIn.

KEEP YOUR NETWORK IN THE KNOW WITH STATUS UPDATES

Let your network know where you are and what you are doing. Status updates feed to your connections’ home pages.  This could passively trigger interest and keeps your profile fresh with current information.  Remember to thank your clients after your engagement by posting a thank you update to your profile. Chances are they will visit your profile after you present, so be prepared and welcome them to your profile with a personalized message.  Always respect your client’s privacy and ensure they authorize you to mention their name prior to posting.  In cases where privacy is an issue, craft a general update that protects the client’s privacy while promoting your engagement.

BECOME SLIDESHARE SAVVY

Embed your latest PowerPoint presentation via the SlideShare application to provide added value to your visitors.  Mention this during your speech to drive traffic to your profile.  SlideShare is a fabulous application that was recently acquired by LinkedIn.  Use it to its full advantage by incorporating relevant tags that will attract other potential clients looking for a speaker on that topic.  Include your contact information and headshot to entice viewers to contact you, but remember that all of the information you publish on SlideShare will be available on the Internet to everyone.  Disabling downloads and including your copyright notice will only protect your information so far.

REV UP RECOMMENDATIONS

Ask your audience to connect with you on LinkedIn and invite them to write a recommendation if they enjoyed the presentation.  This is a fabulous way to build credibility and gain referrals.  Not only will the recommendation appear on your profile once you approve it, but it will also appear on the profile of the individual who wrote the recommendation as well as their activity feed, which means extra exposure for you.

Never marginalize a recommendation coming from someone who you don’t perceive to be a decision maker; you never know where they will end up or what influence they may have in the future.  I was a guest speaker at a Collegiate Conference last year to an audience of students.  One of the attendees recently graduated and remembered me from my presentation a year later.  He has since recommended me twice to his current employer and I have already given one presentation to their sales team.

GO VIRAL THROUGH VIDEO

According to Mark O’ Toole, contributor for The Boston Globe: “Video is getting easier and cheaper to create, and websites and social networks now show and share video seamlessly.”  He’s right!  LinkedIn resisted incorporating video into its site for a number of years, and still does not provide video hosting; however, you can now share video in a variety of ways to bring life to your personal and company profiles:

-         Status updates are the easiest way to add a video to your personal or company profile. Simply write your comment, attach the YouTube link and voila!  Your video is now in a prime location for easy viewing via the embedded video player, keeping your viewers right on your profile.

-         Use SlideShare Pro to add a welcome video to your personal profile.

-         Add video to your company page under the Products/Services tab. You can add a unique video for each service.

Hopefully these tips will help you get more bookings using LinkedIn.  I would be remiss if I did not invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out and please mention SpeakerMatch in your invitation so I will know how we “met”:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyquattlebaum

I look forward to connecting with you!

KELLY QUATTLEBAUM – BIO

LinkedIn trainer Kelly Quattlebaum is the President of Global Marcoms, a full-service marketing and communications company based in Atlanta that offers social media and Internet Marketing consulting and training, as well as marketing, public relations and business development support for businesses. Kelly is an expert on social networking, specializing in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and foursquare. She shares her knowledge with others as a social media trainer and public speaker, hosting a series of seminars that provide social media training for executives. Her passion is the art of communication. With more than 10 years of international business experience, Kelly has a deep understanding of intercultural communication and speaks English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.

“Hey I’m Katharine Pike. I just finished a workshop with Kelly Quattlebaum of Global Marcoms. What we learned here was how to enhance our profile on LinkedIn.  Oh my gosh, I learned so many cool things.  There’s a way that this profile on LinkedIn can be an amazing resource for business connections in a way that I had no idea, so we learned all kinds of cool things about what we really need to include about ourselves, but also our company and all kinds of ways to connect to other social media outlets and what difference it makes, for example, even to do a simple update on our profile. It helps people to keep connected to what we’re doing and what we’re up to.  There are other cool things we can do that add value to anybody who goes to our profile. Such as we can put in a presentation slideshow that we maybe presented to clients and we could share that with people who just want to kind of find out what we’re doing.  There are also other things we can do for updates such as interesting articles, or interesting thoughts, or things that come across our desks that would be interesting to share with others. What I got out of that was it’s similar to Facebook, but it’s very different because the audience is completely different and what we would be sharing is different.  I learned how to leverage the power of groups on LinkedIn.  I didn’t even know there were groups on LinkedIn.  You may know that, but I didn’t, so that’s pretty cool for me.  I learned how to enhance my company profile so that what people are getting and what people are really understanding about what I do for business is delivered in a completely new way and a powerful way and not a way that I would have come up with on my own so I really appreciate Kelly for that. And I also learned how to track the click-throughs for the links to my website and other things on my profile. So there is a pretty cool way to find out if the language that I’m using is effective and then I can be updating that language as needed.  Those are just some of the cool things I learned at today’s workshop.  I can imagine that this could be a lifetime of learning and I feel really empowered to make some immediate changes now to what I’m doing on LinkedIn that is going to make a big difference in my business. Thanks, Kelly.”

Katharine Pike | Eat to Achieve | http://eat-to-achieve.com/

As always, Facebook has done an amazing job of introducing its users to the new features.  You can preview the new layout for your page prior to March 30^th and the Facebook tutorial will walk you through most of the design changes.

DESIGN CHANGES

Facebook has introduced the cover to its pages.  This is part of Facebook Timeline and ads some great benefits for companies in terms of branding.

The Facebook Cover is 851 x 315 pixels.  The logo dimensions are now fixed to 180 x 180 pixels (32 x 32 thumbnail), as opposed to the old dynamic version that enabled you to include an elongated design.  As before, you can still position your thumbnail or scale to fit as needed.

Keep reading to learn about the new features like highlighting photo positioning, an element of design and branding.

LAYOUT AND NAVIGATION

Facebook navigation has returned to the top using a horizontal layout with up to 12 spaces for additional tabs via the dropdown menu (3 rows of 4 tabs).  The About and Photos tabs are permanently set, with Photos being the static first tab in your list.  Other tabs can be added and arranged in any order by swapping positions with another tab.

While you can still incorporate a custom page via your tabs, you will no longer have the option for a custom landing page.  The default landing page is now the timeline.

FUNCTIONALITY

There are quite a few changes in terms of functionality, including new features like highlighting, pinning, milestones, photo positioning and change date.  The admin panel has a been upgraded as well, including a new activity log view that enables the admin to view posts and updates in chronological order.  You can now choose whether or not to allow your visitors to send you messages (disable this feature under Edit Page / Manage Permissions) and you can choose whether or not to include a box for “Recent Posts by Others” on your page.

– Highlighting –

Highlighting allows you to expand a post, photo, video or link to the width of your page.  To highlight or remove a highlight, simply mouse over and click on the star in the right corner of the box for that particular update.

– Pinning –

Pinning allows you to select a particular update or item to remain statically at the top left of your page for 7 days.  Pin any update by selecting Pin to Top from the Edit or Remove dropdown for that post.

– Milestones –

The new milestone feature allows you to add information, including a date, location, description and photo, for significant events to be highlighted on your page.  Milestones can be created via the status update box.  As you are creating retro milestones for your page, you can select the “Hide from News Feed” radio box to keep them from cluttering your Page’s news feed.

A completed Milestone will be automatically highlighted and will look like this:

– Photo Positioning –

As you add photos to your Page, be sure to take advantage of photo positioning.  You can reposition any photo on your page by selecting Reposition Photo from the Edit or Remove dropdown menu.  Just drag and drop the photo into place.

– Change Date –

Another Facebook Timeline feature is the ability to change the date of a post.  Simply select Change Date from the Edit or Remove dropdown menu.

MORE INFORMATION

Global Marcoms is an Atlanta-based company that provides individual and group training for social media tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube and WordPress.  For information about upcoming seminars, go to www.globalmarcoms.com/events, or send a message via our Facebook Page or website to arrange a private training session for yourself or your group.  We are also available to help you roll out the new Facebook Timeline for your Facebook Page.

For more information about the Facebook Timeline for pages, Facebook has some great resources:

• For information about new features, start with Facebook’s Pages Overview Guide (PDF)
• If you’re new to Pages and want to know how to get started, check out Facebook’s full Pages Product Guide (PDF)
• Walk through key features with Facebook product experts in the Pages Learning video
• To find answers to specific questions, visit the Facebook Help Center

“I highly recommend Kelly Quattlebaum with Global Marcoms for Social Media Training. I just completed her LinkedIn seminar in Atlanta today where I learned a lot about setting up my personal and company profile. She was very good at explaining and pointing out the important details of LinkedIn. Thank You Kelly, I look forward to your next Social Media Training seminar on LinkedIn this coming November.

In addition to marketing and communication support, Global Marcoms offers private social media training for individuals and groups, customized to meet your needs.”

David Grubb | Shepherds Loft | http://shepherdsloft.com/newmedia/

As always, Facebook has done an amazing job of introducing its users to the new features.  You can preview the new layout for your page prior to March 30^th and the Facebook tutorial will walk you through most of the design changes.

DESIGN CHANGES

Facebook has introduced the cover to its pages.  This is part of Facebook Timeline and ads some great benefits for companies in terms of branding.

The Facebook Cover is 851 x 315 pixels.  The logo dimensions are now fixed to 180 x 180 pixels (32 x 32 thumbnail), as opposed to the old dynamic version that enabled you to include an elongated design.  As before, you can still position your thumbnail or scale to fit as needed.

Keep reading to learn about the new features like highlighting photo positioning, an element of design and branding.

LAYOUT AND NAVIGATION

Facebook navigation has returned to the top using a horizontal layout with up to 12 spaces for additional tabs via the dropdown menu (3 rows of 4 tabs).  The About and Photos tabs are permanently set, with Photos being the static first tab in your list.  Other tabs can be added and arranged in any order by swapping positions with another tab.

While you can still incorporate a custom page via your tabs, you will no longer have the option for a custom landing page.  The default landing page is now the timeline.

FUNCTIONALITY

There are quite a few changes in terms of functionality, including new features like highlighting, pinning, milestones, photo positioning and change date.  The admin panel has a been upgraded as well, including a new activity log view that enables the admin to view posts and updates in chronological order.  You can now choose whether or not to allow your visitors to send you messages (disable this feature under Edit Page / Manage Permissions) and you can choose whether or not to include a box for “Recent Posts by Others” on your page.

– Highlighting –

Highlighting allows you to expand a post, photo, video or link to the width of your page.  To highlight or remove a highlight, simply mouse over and click on the star in the right corner of the box for that particular update.

– Pinning –

Pinning allows you to select a particular update or item to remain statically at the top left of your page for 7 days.  Pin any update by selecting Pin to Top from the Edit or Remove dropdown for that post.

– Milestones –

The new milestone feature allows you to add information, including a date, location, description and photo, for significant events to be highlighted on your page.  Milestones can be created via the status update box.  As you are creating retro milestones for your page, you can select the “Hide from News Feed” radio box to keep them from cluttering your Page’s news feed.

A completed Milestone will be automatically highlighted and will look like this:

– Photo Positioning –

As you add photos to your Page, be sure to take advantage of photo positioning.  You can reposition any photo on your page by selecting Reposition Photo from the Edit or Remove dropdown menu.  Just drag and drop the photo into place.

– Change Date –

Another Facebook Timeline feature is the ability to change the date of a post.  Simply select Change Date from the Edit or Remove dropdown menu.

MORE INFORMATION

Global Marcoms is an Atlanta-based company that provides individual and group training for social media tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube and WordPress.  For information about upcoming seminars, go to www.globalmarcoms.com/events, or send a message via our Facebook Page or website to arrange a private training session for yourself or your group.  We are also available to help you roll out the new Facebook Timeline for your Facebook Page.

For more information about the Facebook Timeline for pages, Facebook has some great resources:

• For information about new features, start with Facebook’s Pages Overview Guide (PDF)
• If you’re new to Pages and want to know how to get started, check out Facebook’s full Pages Product Guide (PDF)
• Walk through key features with Facebook product experts in the Pages Learning video
• To find answers to specific questions, visit the Facebook Help Center