The-Science-of-Social-Media-2012

ForewordYou hold in your hands (on your reader or on your screen) the science of social media. A projectthat began in early 2012 at digital marketing agency, Fresh Egg, to bring detail to an otherwisewell publicised, yet often maligned marketing service, social media.A believer or a sceptic, it matters not, for social media for business really has arrived and ignoringit is no longer an option.This book was lovingly created by three members of the social media team at Fresh Egg. You’d behard pushed to find three more dedicated, passionate people within social media. But it’s notjust about the passion, it’s about the science behind why things work and why things fail in socialmedia and that’s exactly what this book attempts to cover.You may know how to use Facebook and that’s awesome, but you might not be aware of how toget the most out of it for a business. You may use LinkedIn to find a job, but what can it do for abrand’s digital marketing? Likewise, you’ve no doubt heard of Pinterest, but how do you use it toreally drive effective traffic to your website?All of this and much, much more is answered in this book, presented in plain English and writtenfor all levels of social media manager, whether beginner or expert, there is sure to be many asnippet of learning to be gleaned from the book.With social media set to get even bigger in 2013, this is the perfect way to brush up on yoursocial media skills just in time to hit the ground running next year.We hope you enjoy the book as much as our staff enjoyed writing it over the last 12 months.Adam StaffordManaging director, Fresh Egg.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 2

The complete guide to Google+ Chapter 11. Introduction Whether a veteran or newcomer to social media, it’s a fair bet you’ll have heard of Google. You may even have heard of Google Plus (shown as Google+ from hereon in). Despite the immense reach of Google and the more than 400 million people (at the time of writing), who have signed up to the world’s latest large scale social media platform, it’s fair to say it hasn’t proved to be the most popular. In fact, with fewer than three minutes per user per month activity on site being recorded it’s a wonder the place isn’t already being written off. But that sort of misses the point of Google+, at least from a brand’s perspective. Sure, you aren’t going to build a huge circle of brand advocates and friends overnight and even when you do have good numbers, posts look like tumbleweed with the lack of interaction and “plus ones” (Google’s equivalent to the Facebook Like button). But don’t write it off just yet, even if you think it might be a complete waste of time. This guide will show you why Google+ might just be the most important social network you invest in over the next few years. The social search benefits alone are tremendously powerful and can help trust issues, referral traffic, increase in organic visibility and certainly an improvement in “logged in” search too. If that wasn’t already whetting your appetite, it’s actually rather good. From the usual status updates, to posting awesome galleries of images and links to videos, to newer features like hangouts and circles, Google+ really is surprisingly easy to use and very rewarding when you click with the right people. This guide was put together to provide you with an easy way to start up a personal and brand account in Google+, optimise them and start to enjoy some of the more advanced features to be found. In addition, it will also show you how to help your page, your brand and your website benefit from all those awesome social search signals that Google loves.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 3

2. Setting up a personal account 2.1 Opening an account There are a couple of ways you can open an account on Google+. First, if you don’t already have a Gmail account, you can navigate to plus.google.com and register for an account. You’ll need a Gmail account either way as it is used to link all of your Google products together under one login. If you already have a Gmail account, just click on the ‘+You’ in the top left hand corner of your mail client. You’ll be presented with this screen.From here, simply complete the remaining fields. It will take your name from your Gmail settings,but you can change them if you need to. You should note here that only personal accounts shouldbe used to setup a Google+ page. Brand Gmail accounts should not be used to setup a personalaccount and are usually deleted by Google. Instead, once you have registered a personal account,you can setup a Google+ brand page in addition to your personal account. Brand pages arediscussed at length later in this guide.Once you have entered your details, particularly your date of birth, click the ‘Upgrade’ button.The following page will prompt you to follow some interesting people and pages. You can eitherscroll through these or ignore the page altogether. Our suggestion is that you follow a few peopleand pages as this is partly used to establish if your account is real or a bot. Following other peoplewill also help you kick off your various pages within Google+.As you click on some of the pages and people, Google will auto sort them into pre-defined circles,(see the circles section of this guide), but don’t worry you can alter this later.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 4

2.2 Optimising the profile The third section of the setup process will prompt you to add a number of important pieces of information including:  A photograph  Where you work (employer name)  Job title  Previous schools and years attended  The city you live in Although you might be tempted to move past this screen to get to the good stuff, it’s worth taking a few minutes to get this right as it will help you find friends and improve your chances of being followed earlier.The most important of these points is obviously the photograph. Choose something that isrepresentative of you on a good day and something your friends will instantly recognise.You can upload almost any type of photograph, but try and find one of reasonable size (at least 300x 300 px). Don’t worry about the shape of the photograph, but make sure your face is featuredwithin it and fills at least 50% of the frame when loaded into Google+. Luckily, once uploaded,Google+ gives you the chance to edit, rotate and crop the photograph to make it perfect.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 5

Once you are happy with the results, click on ‘save as profile picture’ and your profile will be up and running!2.3 Adding a cover photo One of the nice parts of Google+ is the way it looks. This is partly down to the clean design, but also the allowable customisations. One of these is the cover photo, which can be changed to reflect you better. You can choose to use a strip of your photographs or display a custom background. Navigate to your profile and hover over the cover photo and then click the link that pops up stating ‘Change cover photo’.Google has kindly provided some high quality images you can use or you can upload your own.If you want to take full advantage of the cover photo area, ensure it is 940x180px.There are also plenty of great sites on the internet which provide covers for Google+, one of whichis http://www.googlecover.com/When you are done, your profile should look something like this.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 6

2.4 About section While most ‘About’ sections are filled with minor information and relatively boring parts of your profile, Google+ is very useful and not just for people to find out about you. There are several very important areas of the About section which means you should definitely take advantage of updating it. To update the section, click on the blue box titled ‘Edit profile’ and you will be given the chance to edit a much larger area of information than during the signup process. The section is very comprehensive and contains additional information you can complete, compared to the signup process. In addition to the items you completed during signup, you can add a tagline and an introduction here. You can also enter ‘Bragging rights’, a sort of promotion area where you can highlight the cools things you have achieved in life.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 7

The most important area however is towards the end of the section with the ‘Other profiles’ and‘contributor to’ sections.In the ‘Other profiles’ section you can add all of your other social media account links, making iteasier for people to verify they have the right person.The ‘contributor to’ section is possibly the most useful area of all. Add any blogs or sites you writefor in here and if that site includes code to take advantage of something called “Rel=Author”, yoursearch results will be improved for any piece you have written on that site.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 8

2.5 Settings Before moving on to other parts of Google+ it’s worth taking a quick look at the Settings section. To get to your account settings, navigate to the grey box with a cog in it (usually found top right of the page). Next, click on the Settings link.This will take you to your account settings, which doesn’t just relate to Google+, but also how yourGoogle account in general will work. This section of the guide however, deals only with Google+settings.2.5.1 Who can send you notifications This section allows you to alter who can see your posts by default. If you want to, you can restrict posts to being seen by only yourself. Just click on the grey box at the end of the section to change the options.2.5.2 Who can comment on your public posts The same options are open to posts you make. You can select from a number of options in the grey box including:  Anyone  Extended circles  Your circles  Only you  Custom2.5.3 Notification delivery This area allows you to set how you receive updates: either by email or telephone (if you have entered your number). You can also add additional emails here and set them to receive notifications.2.5.4 Manage email subscriptions As with any platform, emails do get a little annoying sometimes, so this section is here to allow you to change how you get your notifications. There are only two options, changed via the tick mark at the end where you can turn off updates about Google+ activity from your friends or outside of your circles. Our preference is to turn off the second of these, but it’s a purely personal decision.2.5.5 Receive notifications This section allows a much greater choice and flexibility over what you receive notifications for. Select those items you don’t wish to receive updates for and untick them.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 9

2.5.6 Google +12.5.72.5.8 This turns off the +1 button on external sites (not recommended).2.5.92.5.10 Google+ pages2.5.11 If you use the new operator in Google search with a + in front of any brand name or page name, you can get Google+ to automatically add that page to your circles when you search for it. The box is not ticked by default, so you’d have to turn it on. Google+ games Decide if you want the game notifications in your Google bar. Due to the sheer amount of updates coming from games currently, we have this turned off, but it is turned on by default. Your circles Here you can decide which circles appear in the group ‘Your circles’ so that when you post, the information will reach only those circles you have included here. By default, only your personal circles are added here initially and not those created by Google in the signup process. Photos By default, your photos can be downloaded by those viewing them, but you can change this option here to remove that ability. You can also turn on geo-location information on photographs and find your face in photographs added by your friends (and prompt them to tag you). In addition, you can also change who gets auto approved to link to your profile. By default it is set to ‘Your circles’. Disable Google+ The final option in this section allows you to disable or even delete your entire profile on Google+.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 10

3. Sharing 3.1 Status updates and circles Like many other social networks, the status update is the most important area of Google+, especially at the beginning, as it is the only way people can find out anything about you. You can post almost anything via the status box and although that’s what we’ve called it, it is actually much more than just a short message box. Others, notably Google employees have used it to post lengthy items sometimes exceeding 1,000 words! While we wouldn’t recommend it for writing your next novel, it is important to understand the status box on Google+ is a little different to other status boxes found elsewhere. One of the great things about the status box is that you can send it to custom groups of people or even just one individual. This allows a massive degree of flexibility and also means you aren’t spamming certain friends with information they just don’t care about. This system is so good that within a few months of launching Google+ it was copied by Facebook which introduced its own version of filtering friends on status updates. Simply select the circle you want to send the update to and you are done. You can select multiple circles and you can make the post open to anyone, regardless of whether they are in any of your circles by selecting the ‘Public’ option. You can also add single people and disable comments and lock the post should you wish to do so. Finally, if that wasn’t enough, you can also send an email to your circles selected. This will spam their email inbox however, so use this sparingly and only for the most important updates otherwise you’ll soon be losing friends!3.2 Photos Adding a photograph can be achieved in multiple ways, but the easiest is via your status box. Google+ gives you several options to find photos and add them to your albums. Clicking on the camera icon in the status bar allows you to do the following:  Upload a photo  Add a photo from instant upload  Create a new album  Add an image from Google drive© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 11

 Take a photo! The last of these options is particularly nice as it allows you to take a quick and dirty photo from your webcam or camera source and get it right onto Google+ quickly. 3.3 Links Simply paste the link in the status box and select the image you want to show, add your own comments to the post and share it. Google+ will do the rest. 3.4 Videos Like photographs, the status box gives a great deal of flexibility when it comes to getting videos in to your status updates. By clicking on the video icon, you can upload a video directly, add a YouTube embedded video, add from your own instant uploads and from Google drive. In addition, you can also record a video directly to the status update from your attached webcam.4. Explore 4.1 What is explore? Explore is Google’s version of trending topics, similar to what you might find on Twitter. The righthand side shows trends on Google and your personal saved searches (if you have any), as well as those accounts you might find interesting on Google+. The main stream however, includes posts made on Google+. 4.2 Trends The trends section is a simple, up- to-date list of the current most popular items being discussed within Google+. Clicking on any of the items will deliver the posts in real time, updating in the stream, however you can pause this or check the most recent/best of posts.4.3 Saved searches Using the search bar at the top of Google+ while in the Explore section will allow you to find posts being made about specific topics. For example, checking out ‘F1’ as a search returns a stream of© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 12

information that people are posting about F1 and also gives some suggestions of people and pages you can follow. You can also save these searches, by clicking on ‘Save this search’ on the navigation menu on the righthand side of the page. These will then appear under your trends when you next log in making it easier to have the news you want filtered to you.4.4 Ripples Inside Explore, Google+ has something called Ripples. These show the flow and pattern of a trending topic within Google+ to give you statistics and visibility of the people who shared something. This is a fantastic feature that lets you connect with highly influential people as well as get ideas for writing pieces that might go ‘viral’. To access Ripples, simply click on the drop down menu in the top right hand corner of a post in the Explore section, like below. This will take you to a section where you can see the spread of a particular post and how it was shared, including the timeline (which you can also play back). This is really useful as it will show you how something begins to trend on Google along with how people share it and what their circles do for them.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 13

In this example, you can see how widely this picture has been shared and the timeline of its success.You can also zoom in and out of the diagram to reveal people’s names and size of their following.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 14

5. Events 5.1 What are events? If you have ever used events on Facebook, you won’t be in completely unfamiliar territory when it comes to the Google+ version, but there are some subtle and important differences that make using Google+ events a much better experience. Generally speaking, you can add an event for almost anything. A birthday, a party, a meeting or a major sporting event, it’s really up to you and it doesn’t matter if it’s online or offline, Google+ events caters for it all. Perhaps one of the best things about events on Google+ however, is the brilliant capture of photographs in one place from all those who have signed up to attend. 5.2 Creating a new event Creating an event in Google+ is painless. In fact, the customisation and ease of use make it really easy to set up an event and almost enjoy doing it! First, click on the event icon on your side task bar and then click on the red button found in the top right corner titled “Create event”.You’ll be given a popup box to create the event. Within this box are a number of extra fields you canadd alongside the standard, expected ones like Event title, date and location.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 15

First thing’s first though. You can add a theme at the very top of the window which allows you tochoose from a large number of pre-formatted themes. You can also upload your own theme (940 x280 is perfect), and in most cases you will want to, especially if this is a corporate or company event.This can have a few benefits including increased trust that a brand is running things, confirmation tothe user they are on the right page and generally good brand awareness.TIP: Leave a 50 pixel gutter on the right of your image if you add text to it as it will be cut off byGoogle+. Likewise, leave at least 60 pixels at the bottom too or your writing in the image will becovered by the top of the invitation page when it’s published.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 16

Our event is starting to take shape, but we are holding this event offline (you can add online eventstoo!) so we have a bit more information we’d like to add. To get these extra fields, you can click on“Event options” and then “Show additional fields”.In this instance, we’ve got information on the website, ticket sales and parking, as well as wantingto include a promotional video shot in preparation for the event and to get people excited!© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 17

Our final finished entry is shown below and includes detailed information, dates, a video, parkingdetails and information on where to get tickets.We’ve also added two sets of people to target, one of which is general public, (which you need toset if you are going to share the page on other social platforms) and the other is a set of friends inMy circles. You can also set this to specific sets of circles, just like you can an ordinary post onGoogle+. When you are done just click the “Invite” button and the page will be created.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 18

Our finished page is now up and running. It has the invitation at the very top and then the hypevideo followed by general information. It also has a Google map link to the location and importantlyon the sidebar those who are attending or not. Luckily for us, people are already signing up!Don’t worry if you made a mistake either. You can alter anything, add anything and delete anything,including the theme in the background, which can be edited by using the “Actions” menu on the topbar.If you have photographs already, these can added too at any time during the event by anyone whois signed up to attend, allowing all the great photographs taken to be stored in one place: a vastimprovement on Facebook events, for example.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 19

5.3 Party mode Party mode is activated when you have said you will attend an event on Google+ and the timeframe is during the event itself. It effectively means you are actually at the place in question, as are all of the other people who signed up. Google+ will display an icon on your mobile device alerting you to being in “party mode” like this: . When in party mode, any pictures or videos you take and upload to Google+ will automatically be shared to the event page! Unfortunately, at the time of writing, party mode is not available via iOS machines, but hopefully they will figure something out in due course.5.4 Past events stream Your previously invited events are shown in the events page and give you a retrospective chance to tell Google+ if you attended or not, as well as check out the content related to that specific event, even if you decided not to go.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 20

6. Photos 6.1 Uploading new photos and creating albums On the photo section, you will be given several options, one of which is to upload a new image. The image upload system on Google+ is actually very good and easy to use. Most of the pages are self- explanatory, but initially you’ll be presented with the chance to upload to a new album. If you already have albums created and want to add the photograph to the existing folder, just click on the option next to the free text box and select it from the drop down menu. You can either drag and drop the photographs on to the upload page or search via your hard drive. Selecting multiple photographs is fine too; Google+ will just upload them all in a batch for you. Once uploaded, simply click on the “Upload” button and the album will be created. You’ll be asked to tag the images, but once that’s complete the file will be in your designated album. 6.2 Sharing settings This works the same as posting status updates. You simple choose which circles are allowed to see the photographs you just uploaded. It’s worth noting you must select at least one group, which makes it tricky to keep pictures private. You can get around this by creating a circle called “private” which has no one in it and then selecting this circle group when posting an image you don’t want public, but do want to store on Google+. 6.3 Tagging people As with other social networking sites, tagging is simple on Google+. Just click on tagging in any photograph in your albums and select the head area of the person you want to tag in the photograph. A circle will appear and a drop down menu will be presented. Just start typing the name of the person you want to tag and click on their name.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 21

6.4 Editing Google+ photos do allow you to make edits which is useful if you don’t own a photograph editing package. Even if you do have photo editing software, sometimes you’ll just want to get the photos uploaded fast and come back to making them look perfect later. Again this is something you can do on Google+. In any of your photographs you’ll be presented with a small menu in the top left corner like this: In here you can rotate the image, delete it or turn on “Autofix” (the small wand) or edit the image fully. Click on “Edit photo” to take you to the full editing tools. While the photo editor is no substitute for a good photograph editing software package, it does have some neat tricks and filters. You could just use the auto fix, but the results differ greatly between different photographs. For the greatest control over the end result, it’s always best to have a play around yourself in manual mode. If it doesn’t work out, don’t panic, you don’t have to save the changes, you can just revert back to the original. The basic options include:  Resize  Sharpen  Colours  Exposure  Rotate  Crop The most useful of these is probably crop, where you can get rid of the oddities from your original shot and make sure you focus on the real highlight even better. The Effects section is a little like Instagram where you can place filters over your original image. There is a good selection of filters and more are promised in the future. Two of the least used functions are “Text” where you can add text to the image and “Decorate” which allows you to add a variety of ‘Comedy’ extras such as false beards, comedy hats and various random eyes and fangs… Once you’ve completed your editing, just click on “Save” in the top right corner and don’t forget there is an “undo” button available too!© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 22

7. Circles 7.1 How do they work? Put simply, circles are a way to filter your friends into groups. This helps tremendously when you post updates, pictures or videos, especially if you have an eclectic group of friends. For example, posting about video games might not be everyone’s cup of tea, so you can create a circle of friends who like video games and when you post about that subject, only select that particular circle to send the update to. 7.2 Creating new circles The creation of circles is straightforward. You can either click on the blank circle at the start of your circle line, or drag and drop someone from your friends list into a circle and it will then prompt you to create a name for that circle. Friends can appear in multiple circles too, so don’t worry about dropping someone into a circle and then realising they also like something else that relates to your other circles. Just drag them in to all circles that apply. 7.3 Organising people Organising your friends couldn’t be simpler either. Just drag and drop them from the top list of friends into the circles below. 7.4 Finding people The search system within Google+ works much like the rest of it. Just start typing a name and it’ll make suggestions as you type, refining as you keep typing. It’ll also make suggestions of people outside your circles too.7.5 Actions The action list makes it easier to select multiple people, which you can then drop into circles. You can also view any blocked or ignored users in this menu.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 23

8. Hangouts 8.1 What are Hangouts? Effectively, Google+ Hangouts are a way to connect, via video webcam with up to 9 of your friends. Unlike a video call however, you can have multiple people involved, all able to interact with each other at the same time. 8.2 Starting a new Hangout Starting a Hangout is easy. Simply click on the link on the left hand navigation column to take you to the Hangout section. To start the Hangout, click on the red box marked ‘Start a Hangout’ in the top left corner. This will open a new window (allow popups), which will allow you to add the names of people you want to chat with and name the particular Hangout. If you have a YouTube account, you can also click the ‘enable Hangouts on air’ option and broadcast the Hangout to the general public. It will also record the session and upload it to YouTube for you. Once you are ready, click on the blue button marked Hangout. Note, if you want to restrict the chat to adults, you can do this by changing the settings under ‘Hangout options’ highlighted in blue on the same page.8.3 Settings Once in the Hangout, you should be able to see people on their webcams and they will be able to see you. If you have any problems with sound or vision, you can click on the cog for settings, found in the top righthand corner of the window, to make adjustments. You also have access to a wide range of extras in the lefthand navigation menu. One of the things you should definitely check is that you haven’t muted your microphone, otherwise no one will be able to hear you! Likewise, when using Hangouts remember that your microphone is usually live all the time and therefore anything you say will be heard by the others in the Hangout. Some of the additional extras include: 8.3.1 Chat Allows you to talk by text to someone in the room. 8.3.2 Screenshare Allows you to share your screen, for example, to show someone what you are working on. 8.3.3 YouTube Connects you to YouTube. 8.3.4 Google effects Silly hats? Yes that’s right those comedy geniuses at Google have given you silly virtual hats to place on people. 8.3.5 Google drive© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 24

Connects you to Google drive so you can upload documents and view them. 8.3.6 View more apps Currently this section is blank but you can add other applications for Hangout interaction by utilising the ‘Add apps’ feature just below. At the time of writing there are about 20 or so of these applications, ranging from Hangout toolbox to doodling apps.9. Games 9.1 Gaming on Google+ It would be wrong to completely ignore the gaming section on Google+, but we aren’t going to cover it in any huge depth here. The section is starting to grow with some notable games making their way on to Google+, including Zynga Poker and Angry Birds, but the entire offering is substantially smaller than that found on Facebook. Beware though, playing the games becomes quickly competitive as it shares your scores with friends in your circles and updates you on their high scores when they beat you: you could be there for hours! 9.2 Directory Clicking on the navigation box at the top of the section will allow you to pull up the directory where you can search for games in categories or just click directly on the game title. Hovering over the image will bring up a short synopsis of the game and will include any of your friends who may have played the game. Click on the ‘Play’ button to get started.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 25

9.3 Notifications The game notification area will contain those all-important updates on your game stream, but unlike other social platforms, it remains only here instead of polluting your main stream information. Just adjust the slider found in the page to set this from showing anything in your main stream, or if you feel the need, adjust it to show limited, most or all information in your main stream.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 26

10. Brand pages Having a Google+ brand page may seem like yet another drain on resources and when compared directly to a Facebook page for example, may also seem like a waste of time. You’d be wrong for thinking this however, as Google+ has a number of critical social search benefits that make it one of the most important social networks for a business to take advantage of. We already know Google has been taking social signals from Twitter and Facebook into account when it comes to delivering a better search engine experience, so it makes sense that they would also include those signals, (if not more so), from their own social network at Google+. You may not see much action, responses or interaction to begin with, but stick with it; the social search signals you will be providing Google with are reason enough to use Google+ every day, but in time you’ll also be building up a loyal and tech savvy set of followers. 10.1 Creating the page Navigate to the very end of the left hand navigation column and click on ‘More’ which should reveal a new icon marked ‘Pages’ and click on this. On the next page, click on the red button marked ‘Create new page’. The next step is a decision on what type of page you want to create. Depending on your selection, you’ll get a number of different options in the following pages. In our example, we are going to create a company page, (as that is what most of you reading this will want to do!). In this instance, clicking on the Company, Institution or Organization button prompts for a category underneath it. Once selected, click on ‘Next’.The next part of the process will be to name your page and enter the website page. You’ll also needto consider who is allowed to view your page, (by age range), and select a suitable group of people.Once you have agreed with the Page Terms, click on Continue.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 27

The final part of the process is to give your page a logo (usually your avatar, at a size of 250 x 250 minimum, but ideally square), a cover photo and then describe your business (page) and enter a contact email address (this is public, so usually something like [email protected] etc).10.2 About section This is where you link your Google+ with your website (a really important part of using Google+), but is explained in the social search section found later in this guide and titled REL=publisher. Other than adding a good Introduction, there is little more to worry about in this section.10.3 Cover image As with the personal profile, you have the option to upload or use a different cover photo from the default provided. Remember this shouldn’t contain any marketing information, but can be about your brand. The same pixel dimensions are used in this section as those used for personal cover photos, making it easy to find custom covers if you don’t have time to create one yourself. That said, if this is a business page it is essential to use a cover photo which matches your brand colours and image.10.4 Getting more fans This is one of the trickier things to do on Google+ compared to other social platforms, as there is no two-way reciprocal following. Instead, you have to wait for people to add you to their circles before you can add them back. This makes adding friends particularly difficult on Google+ but there are other ways of attracting fans. Most of the following ideas are offsite, but you need to be posting interesting and shareable content via Google+ on a regular basis, ideally once a day at least. However, some of the following ideas will help you gain new fans.  Add the Google+ badge to your homepage and ideally throughout your website. This will encourage people to add you on Google+ or at least alert them to the fact you have a presence on the network.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 28

 Add the Google+ icon to email footers on internal mail Advertise your Google+ presence on other social networks Engage with others in a strategic manner on Google+, (comment on their posts using your brand and press the +1 button often) Share content from known influencers on Google+ through your Google+ page Use Google+ notifications to alert other potentially interested people to your posts Make sure your posts are set to “public” to reach the Google SERPS too© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 29

11. Social search elements 11.1 REL=Author Google added a new piece of code recognised by their search engine crawler this year. The addition of the code to pages, (particularly blogs), allows for a small image of the author to appear in organic searches. Investigation by Fresh Egg has shown that the addition of this code can improve click- through rates regardless of organic search position. That is to say, if a piece ranked at position #3 and has micro formats from the REL=author tag included (see example listing below), it is likely to receive more traffic than those ranked above it, bucking the usual trend for organic listings where the #1 result usually receives the lion’s share of the traffic. An example of a fully optimised listing utilising ReL=Author code is shown below:The organic listing in position #1 is a regular post, but the Fresh Egg post in position #2 can be seenwith an author image and additional information pulled from Google+. This not only makes the linkstand out, but has also been shown to increase the click-through rate.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 30

Implementation of the REL=Author code is relatively painless. However, it does need to beoptimised for each person that contributes to your blog or news section and the authors must havea Google+ page where they need to add the website URL in the section marked ’Contributor to’.This section is found in the ‘About’ page of your profile. The code itself is placed in your blog or news site, ideally in the header area. An example of the code you can use is shown below, but make sure you change the ID to your own! <a rel=\"author\" href=\"https://plus.google.com/115179959674547797830\"/> As long as you add this code to the header of your page AND the original author adds the link to your site on his/her “Contributor to” section of their Google+ profile, you’ll get the enhanced listings. Don’t expect them to show up rightaway though; it usually takes a few days to see them in the SERPS. In addition, you won’t see them all the time or in any consistent manner, as Google keeps us guessing as to what makes them show up or not.11.2 Enhanced listing box Enhanced listing boxes appear for those brands that have an active Google+ page, are featured in high quality authority sites (such as Wikipedia and IMDB) and post on a regular basis. This is an important box as it appears at the top of the page on the right of organic listings and also includes (usually) the brand logo, making it a prime piece of virtual real estate that can drive significant brand traffic. You can, in most circumstance, force this box to appear using code called REL=publisher, (see later in this section on how to implement this). An example of the enhanced listing box is shown below for Marks & Spencer.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 31

11.3 Google+ Direct Connect Google+ now offers the chance for users to find brands by using the ‘+’ operator. Those brands which have verified their brand account and adopted a full Google+ strategy of posting regularly can be found by using the operator and the brand name and for the result to lead directly to the Google+ page. An example of this enhanced search can be seen below for ‘Just Eat’. Frustratingly, there is no way to force adoption of this feature, at least not yet. Google says it will roll it out further in time, but has not done so to date.11.4 REL=Publisher This Google patented piece of code works in a similar way to the previous code explained above, however it has a number of benefits to a ‘publisher’ rather than an individual author. Google uses the information provided by REL=Publisher in the following way:  It recognizes your Google+ page as the \"official\" page for the brand, and gives it search preference over any impostor pages  It provides eligibility for Google Direct Connect, which takes searchers directly to your brand's Google+ page when they search for the brand name with a \"+\" in front of it It provides increased +1s, because now, all +1s given on the site, on the G+ page, in search results, and on AdWords ads, will be aggregated  It begins to build a topical relevance and trust profile on your site as a brand, its web content, its Google+ activities, and other social media activity linked from its profile, which may influence search results Implementing the code and making it work with Google is, like REL=author, relatively straightforward. Make sure you use a business page and not a personal page in the link and use the code below (replacing the link with your own). <link href=https://plus.google.com/115448178771458850371 rel=”publisher” />© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 32

Now, in the section of your Google+ business page marked ‘Website’ add your home page link tothe section. This will alert Google that this is the official page for your brand and link it to the codeyou placed in the header of your site’s main page. Make sure you click on the link marked ‘Linkwebsite’ which will attempt to link your website with your Google+ page.You’ll need to wait a little time, sometimes weeks, before it shows up in Google search, or you couldcheck it using the Google rich snippet testing tool, however we’ve found this to be a little unreliable,returning false positives. The only way to test is to do manual searches for your brand name once aweek for a few weeks. If however, nothing has changed in four to six weeks, it’s a sure bet there issomething wrong and you’ll need to go through the process again.If you are successful however, you should start seeing enhanced listings like the one shown below.11.5 The +1 button Unless you already use a 3rd party plugin, implementing the ‘+1’ button on your site, particularly on news and product pages, is essential. Even though they aren’t clicked on nearly as much as other social media sharing buttons, the power they provide to logged-in search, and the signals they send to Google about a page, are important. The easiest way to get the right button is to visit the Google+ developers’ page specifically designed for the job. The page allows you to tweak the look and feel of the button, its size and how it appears on your page. Tweak the buttons until you are ready and then copy the code provided into your website. It really is that easy!© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 33

By default, the button will be set as asynchronous. You should not (in almost all cases) disable this,or you may face increased page load times on your site. Asynchronous allows the page to loadnormally even if there is problem pulling the button information into the site and thus won’t affectyour SEO on the page.11.6 The Google+ badge If you haven’t already, make sure you add the Google+ official badge to your header area on the front page at the very least, if not throughout, your site. This is a passive button that links back to your Google+ business page. It’s important to add this to your website as it will help you build your circle of fans. You should also consider adding the badge to your email footers, cross-linking to the page via your other social media properties and generally promoting your presence wherever you already promote your other social media profiles. The badge, like the ‘+1’ button also has a dedicated developers’ page which makes it easier to place the code and the badge in your site and allows you control over its design. There are different designs available, from simple button to fully interactive boxes prompting your brand to be followed, like below. There is no preference from a social media perspective, it will mainly depend on how much room and what existing design limitations are in place.Badges that link to Google+ profiles allow people to easily find you on Google+ and add you to acircle directly from your website. Badges that link to Google+ pages include these features and addsome additional functionality. Importantly, they help Google consolidate +1s from your website andyour Google+ page, and make your website eligible for Google+ Direct Connect.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 34

12. Extras 12.1 Google+ syntaxThe above shortcuts were taken from Simon Laustsen.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 35

An introduction to LinkedIn Chapter 213. Introduction It boasts more than 150 million professionals and has now been around for several years, yet LinkedIn still remains something of an enigma to many businesses. How do you get the best out of something that is so obviously geared towards recruitment if you aren’t a recruitment business? The following guide is part one of a two part series intended to show how to use and leverage LinkedIn for your business, almost regardless of its industry. Whilst it is unquestionably true that the social media platform for professionals can be massively helpful for recruitment agencies, it would be foolhardy to dismiss it even if that isn’t your business. The platform has a multitude of fantastic resources, excellent groups and discussion areas that, used in the right way, can not only help improve brand awareness but increase traffic and conversions. Unlike other social media platforms, however, LinkedIn is very much geared towards personal users, so part one of this guide will kick off with a simple set of instructions on how to setup and make the most of your personal profile. If you are already there, however, just skip to the next sections that cover optimisation, hints and tips on how to get the best out of LinkedIn and a complete guide to expanding your profile in readiness to using LinkedIn for business. Part one of the guide specifically covers:  Setting up a profile  Optimising your profile  Account settings and privacy issues  How to get recommendations  Prospecting for new connections and experts  Navigation of LinkedIn  SEO benefits14. Setting up a personal account Without a personal account, there is little to no benefit for your business. This first section runs through the basic setup of an account, what to watch out for and how far to complete your profile. If you already have an account, why not skip through to the next section or review the setup section for any hints and tips on improving your profile? Allow up to two hours to complete your entire profile and ensure you have an up to date CV to hand before you start!© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 36

It’s important to understand how LinkedIn works. Unlike other social media platforms, there isno admin system and no “log in as a business” process; everything comes through your personalaccount. Don’t be tempted to setup a dummy account just to look after your business page,either; it is imperative you use your real name and personality as the account holder. Thereasons for this are many (not least that it complies with the site’s terms and conditions) and willbecome clear the more you use the site.Before you start adding to your profile, there are a few things you should be aware of: Update your CV or create one BEFORE you start your profile on LinkedIn; it will not only save you a ton of time finding out dates and correct company names and titles, but will also ensure you can walk through this guide without stopping and starting Only enter factually accurate information Be honest with the information you put about yourself Ensure everything you add is genuine and, if possible, has a source or reference Set aside a couple of hours to complete the profile and gather the data14.1 Sign up Simply head over to www.linkedin.com and complete the opening page with your first and last name, a valid email address you have access to and a suitable password. Ensure you use a personal email address and NOT your work email account. You can always add an additional email address later if required, but if you switch jobs the last thing you want is your old email address being only way of recovering a password! Note that when you start a company page you will need to ensure you have added your work email address as well as a personal one. Sign up for a LinkedIn account using your PERSONAL email address and NOT your work email; you’ll thank us when you move jobs and need to recover a password! You can always add your work email later.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 37

An example landing page for LinkedInOnce you have completed this page, you will be asked to input some basic information about whereyou live (country and location code) and whether you are employed, a job seeker or a student.Depending on your choice, you will also be asked to complete further information which mayinclude current role and company, whether you are self-employed or which university you study at,together with the dates involved.Rather oddly (considering you already gave them it!), you are then asked to add your email address.This is so that LinkedIn can make recommendations as to who you should connect with. You can,however, skip this step to begin with.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 38

To complete the initial setup of the account, you’ll be asked to confirm your email address. You cando this in one of two ways (depending on what type of email provider you use). If you used a Gmailor Google email account, you can connect it directly, but otherwise you’ll be prompted to send aconfirmation email.Once confirmed, LinkedIn will continue with the set up process, with step 4 allowing you to shareyour decision to join LinkedIn with your social media profiles. Once again, this step can also beskipped if you prefer.The next section of setup asks you to decide what kind of account you want. LinkedIn offers apremium service which starts from $24.95 and gives access to a number of features not offered inthe free version. For most people, however, the free version is just fine and doesn’t restrict any ofthe features and recommendations made in this guide. The majority of the extra features are greatif you are a recruitment specialist or intern on making the most of job opportunities.Click on the ’Choose basic’ button to continue. At its most essential level, your LinkedIn account isnow set up and available for your friends and fellow workers to find you., However, there is a lotmore customisation to do if you want to ensure your profile is found and interesting for others toclick on.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 39

15. Optimising a personal account With your account setup, there are a plethora of customisation options available to improve and enhance your personal profile. Luckily, LinkedIn offers its own optimisation suggestions and guides you through them in an easy to follow system of prompts. Unlike other sites which do something similar, LinkedIn has worked very hard to make these useful and reasonably intelligent. We recommend taking the time to work through these series of prompts to bring the profile up to a good standard of completion. Alternatively, you can optimise your profile manually by hovering over the ’Profile’ link in the main navigation bar and selecting ’Edit profile’. LinkedIn also gives you an idea of how much more work your profile needs, with a helpful side box where you can add more information directly.To begin with, our profile looks like a digital wasteland with tumble weed blowing through it, sowe need to do some initial work on improving it aesthetically as well as factually.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 40

15.1 Adding a profile image Almost every account on LinkedIn will have at least a profile picture and yours should be no different. Adding a profile picture is straightforward, and is done by clicking on the ’Add Photo’ in the dummy photo box. You’ll be prompted to upload a photograph of yourself in JPG, GIF or PNG file format. We prefer PNG as it looks less degraded once posted. You’ll need to ensure the file is no more than 4Mb in size but at the same time, make sure that the picture is good quality. While the end photograph will display at 80x80 pixels, it is better to upload the largest photograph you can find (preferably with a square dimension) subject to a maximum of 4000x4000 pixels. Using a professional headshot image improves your profile and increases click through. If possible, get a portrait photograph from a professional photographer: its money well invested. The best photograph is one that has been shot professionally but, failing this, a good shot of you from the shoulders up should be sufficient. Remember that your photograph is the first thing anyone coming to your profile will see and this is a professional network: pictures of you intoxicated on a night out might not be the best idea!© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 41

Above are two very different photographs for our user profile. While the one on the right may befunnier, the left one is much more suitable for our LinkedIn profile!Once uploaded, you will be given the chance to crop the photograph (so that it appears perfectlysquare in your profile) and decide who will be able to see your photo.15.2 Add a position You may have already added your current position during the initial setup phase but, if not, now is a great time to do so. Simply click on the ’Add a current position’ in your profile page. You’ll be prompted to enter company name, title (your position), location and the time period you worked for the company. At the end, you’ll be given a box to explain what the job involved and what achievements you had. LinkedIn gives some examples of the type of information you should look to include such as:© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 42

 “Brand development, web site traffic growth, web site UI and advertising revenue. Developed brand strategy and statistics systems.”  “Strategic consulting, including business plan and sales strategy development.”  “Advising new businesses on formation of corporations and business structures, drafting privacy policies and structuring commercial transactions.”  “Generated new development deals for a real estate development company that focuses on multi-family residential projects, including real estate market analysis.”  “Comprehensive database management and migration from SQL to Oracle.”  “Instruction on workstation setup for prevention of eyestrain, repetitive strain injuries, and back pain. Gave onsite and offsite classes.” These are just suggestions, so make sure to include other achievements or highlights that you think are appropriate for each role. You don’t have to present your entire working history here, but it is recommended However, if you do add every role, you don’t have to explain in detail what you did, especially if it isn’t relevant to the role you are doing now. To add older roles, just click on the ’Add a past position’ button and complete it in the same way as a new position but include the “to and from” dates.15.3 Adding schools and colleges Next up, you should add your education history. This is another important section to show a timeline of your work and education background and can also have the potential to link you to some old friends who may prove to be useful connections now. When you add a school you’ll be prompted for school name, degree (if appropriate), field of study, dates attended, grades achieved and any societies or activities you were part of. You can include any charity work in this section too and any other additional notes you feel would be beneficial to your profile.15.4 Adding additional information 15.4.1 Websites In this section, you can add up to three additional websites and their address. The drop down in the first box allows you to choose from certain types of website, but if none fit just select ’Custom’ and you’ll be able to enter what you would like to call it. URLs in this section require the http:// reference at the start to work. 15.4.2 Interests Add interests that both relate to your job and are from your personal life such as photography or fishing etc. You should use short form names in this section and separate each with a comma. 15.4.3 Groups and associations If you belong to specific groups or associations, add them here. 15.4.4 Honours and awards This section is relatively new, but allows you to add specific awards or honours you may have achieved. As this is a free form box, it’s a good idea to add the year of the award as well as the name (and, if not obvious, which industry it relates to).© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 43

15.5 Adding personal information This section is entirely optional and would not be considered amiss if you left it blank. Indeed, many people feel uncomfortable entering details such as telephone number and/or address and it is perfectly fine to leave out the things you don’t wish to share. 15.5.1 Phone number You can enter a personal, work or mobile number in this section. If you have a direct line at work, this would be the most ideal number to use. However, some are happy to include their mobile. Just remember that if you accept a connection from someone you don’t know, they can see this information. 15.5.2 Address The address section is a freeform section and, again, you can choose to leave this blank (and many do). 15.5.3 Instant messaging The instant messaging services supported include: AIM, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ and Gtalk. The most popular of these are Windows Live or Skype, and if you have one of these services you should definitely enter the details in this section as it makes you much more contactable with a degree of privacy built in (they don’t see your phone number of personal address). 15.5.4 Birthday and marital status These items are, as some of the others above, not required unless you would like to add them to your profile. Adding an age does help with proving to a user looking at your profile that you are legit, however!15.6 Add social media properties It doesn’t matter what job you do: this section is critical to the success of your LinkedIn profile. You’ll be amazed by just how many people end up following you on other platforms having found you on LinkedIn first. Failure to add your social media platforms here makes networking a lot harder. That said, many are not happy adding their Facebook as it can be used very much for personal reasons and not commercial, but failure to add your Twitter should be considered a crime! This section allows you to add the following networks: o Twitter o Facebook o Google+15.7 Adding sections This is a really cool addition to LinkedIn that allows you to add a whole host of achievements or other content. Maybe you have a patent for something cool; you can add that by adding a custom section. Polls can also be added here as well as certifications, courses, languages spoken, organisations, projects, publications and a ton of other work-related achievements and skills.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 44

Another winner for SEO is the ability to add an additional blog link via the custom sections in addition to the three added in your main profile. Simply click on the ’Add sections’ link just under the main boxed profile area (as shown above) and you will be given a huge selection of custom sections to choose from. Adding custom sections can also allow you to add additional URL’s to a blog site.15.8 Add a summary Think of the summary section as the introduction to who you are; it allows people to quickly work out if you are the person they are looking for. A good example of a summary would be as follows: “Financial exec with broad experience in all aspects of accounting, auditing and financial management. Direct experience with real estate, financial consulting and venture capital. Interested in early stage startups as well as companies ’on the bubble.’”15.9 Changing your contact preferences Towards the end of the profile, you’ll see a section which has already been pre-populated but is less than personal to you or your background. Instead, you should edit this section by clicking on ’Change contact preferences’ to suit. You can also decide what type of mail you will accept here, either introductions and InMail (LinkedIn’s version of onsite messages) or introductions only. You will also be prompted for opportunity preferences. If you aren’t interested in a job, you can change these or restrict them to those which are appropriate. And finally, you can enter free text in the box at the end which tells people how you would like to be contacted, for example: “I don’t accept InMail, but you can contact me on Twitter @PaulChaloner”.15.10 Skills and expertise There are several critical sections within your profile and this is another of them. Add a skill by simply clicking on the ’Add skills’ button. You can then enter the name of your skill and, as you type, suggestions will pop up (which you can use or choose to ignore). When you click on ’Add’, these will© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 45

populate the box below. You can now add up to 50 skills but a healthy selection of eight to ten is usually enough if they are fairly specific. 15.11 Custom URL See the SEO benefits for full information on how to utilise this excellent option.16. Account settings Hover over your name in the top right corner of LinkedIn when logged in and you will be given some extra options. Clicking on ‘Settings’ will allow you to alter the way your account is used and seen and can be considered the most important next step after optimising your profile. The link will take you to the following screen:16.1 Overview Your settings are hosted in four different sections related to your profile, email preferences, groups, companies and applications and your account. Clicking on each of these will bring up more options on the right-hand side. We’ll cover the most critical below as most are self-explanatory.16.2 Privacy controls These are arguably the most important settings in your control panel. Here you can decide on a whole host of public/private options to get LinkedIn working the way you want it to. 16.2.1 Turn on/off your activity broadcasts© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 46

This is turned on by default and broadcasts to your feed any changes and updates you make to your profile such as a new job, new photograph or any following companies. To turn this off, untick the option. 16.2.2 Select who can see your activity feed This allows you to tailor who sees your feed (if it’s turned on). You can choose from your connections (the default setting), your network, everyone (not recommended) or only you, which effectively makes your feed private. 16.2.3 Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile This is a really important section if you regularly view people’s profiles or are checking out potential experts, blog writers or someone to employ. This section allows you to alter what shows up on their profile. You can leave it as it is, which will display your full details and profile picture, choose to make it anonymous but allow small amounts of information to go over such as location or make it completely anonymous. 16.2.4 Select who can see your connections By default your connections can see your connections! If you want to block this, use this option and select ’Only you’. 16.2.5 Change your profile photo and visibility You can upload a different photograph here as well as decide who will see it when you message them. It also selects who can see your photo; by default this is set to everyone. You can alter this to be restricted to your network or just your connections. Of course, if you don’t want anyone to see the profile, you can delete the picture, but anyone on LinkedIn without a picture can be considered someone who “doesn’t really do LinkedIn”! 16.2.6 Show/hide ’Viewers of this profile also viewed’ box This can be ticked or untick (to disable it). It is turned on by default and simply leaves a historical trail of which profiles people have viewed.16.3 Settings 16.3.1 Manage your Twitter settings If you’ve linked your Twitter account to LinkedIn, you will have several options, all of which are turned on by default. Simply click on the option and you will see the following box appear:© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 47

From here, you can add another account, remove the current one, display your Twitter account on your profile, share tweets that contain the hash tag #in on your LinkedIn feed and show your rich link display. If you have a particularly good Tweet to send out and you think it would be appropriate on LinkedIn, just include the #in hash tag when posting and it will automatically post to your LinkedIn feed, too!16.4 Email preferences The email preferences section is very powerful and, if you have had issues with spam messages, this is the place you can restrict who messages you and why.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 48

In addition, you can also restrict the type of people who mail you by clicking on the second option marked ’Select who can send you invitations’ and choose from anyone on LinkedIn (the default) or only people who know your email address or people who appear in your imported contact list. This section also handles how you can be contacted and what information you receive from LinkedIn.16.5 Groups, companies and applications Managing groups, which companies you follow and application control can all be found in this section. Most are self-explanatory, although pay special attention to the extra privacy controls contained here which set your third party applications’ access to your personal data. You can also allow/disallow third party plugins’ access to your data in this section.16.6 Account security The final section allows you to control the security settings on LinkedIn such as changing a password or using the site in secure mode (HTTPS). You can also turn off third party advertising so that you don’t see adverts for LinkedIn on other sites.16.7 Email changes Don’t ignore the change/add email option, either. If you have only a single email address on your account, you can add your work email here, too, and manage which is the default.© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 49

16.8 Account type Finally, you can alter your account type here, including upgrading to premium (but that part of the guide will have to wait for another time).17. Recommendations Gaining recommendations on LinkedIn is relatively easy and should be considered a must for anyone who wants their profile to be taken seriously. A personal recommendation can really help improve your profile, give it extra gravitas and improve your chances of job-finding (if you are indeed in the market). Even if you aren’t looking for a job right now, asking for recommendations now will pay off in the long run, and you can never have enough recommendations! Fortunately, LinkedIn provides an easy way to gain recommendations. Simply click on the ’Ask for recommendations’ link on your profile to get started, however we strongly recommend considering the following tactic before sending out your first request. Instead of simply spamming all of your contacts for a recommendation, strategically pick out a dozen or so colleagues or people you know you have done a good job for in the past and add them to a manual list. If you have their phone numbers, give them a call instead of sending them an email or a LinkedIn request and talk to them about providing you with a LinkedIn recommendation. Explain to them you will be contacting them via LinkedIn for a recommendation so they aren’t surprised or will dismiss the request when it comes through. The majority will not only write you a nice recommendation, but usually do so within 48 hours. This tactic works really well and you are likely to get 80% or more success, weighed against a 10% success rate on simply spamming those you are connected to. Once you have received the recommendation, you’ll get a LinkedIn mail alert where you can read the recommendation and choose whether to display it on your profile or not. Note that until you have rejected or accepted this recommendation it will NOT appear on your profile, so make sure you check your LinkedIn mail!© 2012 Fresh Egg Limited – The Science of Social Media 50