While Facebook gets all the glory (and a fair amount of criticism) for frequent revisions to its service, LinkedIn keeps quietly getting better. Here are six useful features of the favored social network for b2b professionals that you probably didn't know about, but should. (Note: You must log in to LinkedIn to see some of the pages referred to below.)

1. Follow companies. You can now choose to follow companies in the same way that you follow people on LinkedIn and Twitter. Status updates from those companies appear in your timeline, so you can keep track of new job opportunities, RFPs or activities of your competitors. If you have a company page on LinkedIn, you can see who comments and shares your status updates. Shares broaden your reach and identify fans and prospects. Comments can give you immediate feedback on how your news is being received. You can also see who has visited your page and group visitors by job function, industry and company.
2. Competitive intelligence. LinkedIn rolls up information about members to create some intriguing company statistics. Drill down to see the most common categories of jobs at a company, its head-count growth and the percentage of employees who change titles each month. This can yield insight into reorganizations or turmoil at competitors or at companies you might be considering doing business with. The statistics page also tells you who recently changed jobs and who has departed the company, which can be useful information if you're looking for a job. The “most recommended” employees section is useful for recruiters seeking top-quality candidates.
3. Products and services. If you have a LinkedIn company page, you can list descriptions, images and videos of your products and services and ask your customers to recommend them. Posting a recommendation is as simple as clicking a button, but customers can also post detailed comments. There's no downside for you because people can only cast a positive vote. You can also seek out recommenders to serve as case studies and reference customers.
4. LinkedIn Alumni. This recently introduced feature can be a great source of contacts and leads. We know how strong school ties can be; now you can get a page that shows who on LinkedIn attended the schools you did, where they now work and what they do. If you're looking for an opening line to use when approaching a prospect or someone who can get your foot in the door for a job, a comment on the football team's performance last weekend might be a good starting point.
5. LinkedIn Applications. Unlike Facebook's freewheeling approach to third-party apps, LinkedIn maintains a small but growing stable of useful tools to enhance your profile, keep up with news and share with others. You've been able to embed your blog posts, slide presentations and travel plans in your profile for some time, but more recent additions let you monitor real estate listings, find events and collaborate in shared work spaces. All apps take advantage of your shared connections or can be used to burnish your reputation.
6. LinkedIn Signal. This little-known gem lets you filter LinkedIn status updates (including Twitter feeds) by keyword, but the real power is in the feature that lets you narrow results to specific companies, industries, locations or degrees of connection. Want to find out who's seeking legal advice in the Cleveland area? Signal can help.

Source: http://www.btobonline.com/article/20111102/SOCIAL0103/311019996/six-linkedin-features-you-probably-dont-know-about

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Sharing on the web is a good idea to popularize your site or content. Searching for a specific topic can be even better  when people share more recommendations. That is why Google has introduced the +1 button, an easy way for Google users to recommend your content right from the search results pages. The +1 button can help publishers, too. As potential visitors see recommendations from their friends and contacts beneath your Google search results, you could see more, and better qualified, traffic coming from Google.

With many requests, the +1 button is finally available to sites across the web. Sometimes you want to recommend a web page after you’ve visited it. After all, how do you know you want to suggest that great article if you haven’t read it yet? You'll also start to see +1 buttons on Google properties such as Android Market, Blogger, Product Search and YouTube.
 
Adding +1 buttons to your pages is a great way to help your content stand out in Google search. By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your search results and search ads could show up with +1 annotations more often, helping users see when your pages are most likely to be useful.

How to start
To get started, visit the +1 button tool on Google Webmaster Central. You’ll be able to configure a small snippet of JavaScript and add it to the pages where you want +1 buttons to appear. You can pick from a few different button sizes and styles, so choose the +1 button that best matches your site’s layout. In the common case, a press of the button +1’s the URL of the page it’s on.

If your site primarily caters to users outside of the US and Canada, you can install the +1 button code now; the +1 button is already supported in 44 languages. However, keep in mind that +1 annotations currently only appear for English search results on Google.com.

If you have users who love your content, encourage them to spread the word! Add the +1 button to help your site stand out with a personal recommendation right at the moment of decision, on Google search.

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Many websites on the Internet will link to your website if you pay them for the links. Is this a good method to increase the link popularity of your website or is there a problem if you use paid links.

What does Google think about paid links?

Google is very clear about paid links. They don't like them. Google even has an official form that enables webmasters to report paid links to Google:
Links are used to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to your website.
Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating. However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, without considering the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites.
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

A recent problem
A webmaster recently reported problems in Google's webmaster discussion forum:
"Today I found that my entire site has dropped out of site in search results. I have a site that received over 2,000 search visits per day and today that has stopped."
It turned out that the website has many affiliate links and other links to advertisers that looked like paid links to Google. Unfortunately, these links were not marked as paid links and Google penalized the website for having the paid links.

What does this mean for your website?
You should avoid paid links if you don't want to get in trouble with Google. If you do buy or sell links, make sure that the links contain the rel="nofollow" attribute. By using that attribute, you show that the paid link is for advertising purposes only and that you don't want to manipulate your website rankings with the link.

While Google doesn't like paid links at all, they also make clear that links are very important: "Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating."

For that reason, you should try to get as many good links to your website as possible. The quality is more important than the quantity. Links that point to your website are a very important factor that influences the position of your website in Google's search results. The links that point to your website should be from related websites and they should contain the keywords for which you want to get high rankings.

Do not manipulate the links to your website by buying links and do not join automated link systems to increase the number of links to your website. There are many ways to get good links (related websites, blogs, social bookmark sites, directories, etc.).
This article is taken from Axandra.com

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If we asked you to name the company associated with the term "Big Blue" you'd probably reply "IBM" without a moment's hesitation. And in an article at MarketingProfs, William Arruda says that color is one of the most important components in your branding toolbox.

"[S]ome organizations are so consistent and steadfast in their use of color that they practically own that color in our minds," he says. "Think Home Depot, National Breast Cancer Foundation, UPS, and Target."

Arruda has recommendations like these for when you make your own color selections:

* Choose a color that reflects the values of your company and resonates with your audience. Don't pick one simply because it's your favorite, or commit to a certain hue without first testing to see how your target market reacts.
* If you have an international presence, determine what attributes a color might have in other cultures. Colors can mean different things in different countries, and you run the risk of sending a message you didn't intend.
* Be consistent in your use of color. "Always use the same shade and hue," advises Arruda. "Know the PMS, RGB (red, green, blue) and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key) formulas for the specific shade you choose. Your designer will be able to help, and Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign have built-in conversions."

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