Rounding UP

Its a wrap now, the blogs have been diligently done and the design and corrections have been equally done too. I will be putting a link to the assignment on the wiki-dot website for official submission.

Julia's Personal Project Diary: Let's bring it all together

Finally all submitted content was uploaded this Tuesday. Because of the delay of content delivery and upload the last view days were full of work on the blog. I structured the content, made sure nothing is doubled up and did rewrite the work to bring it into useful content that is round and consecutive. I checked all articles and made recommendations to other team members' work in case of references, image copyright, or missing parts which were necessary to underline statements.

We decided which creative commons license we want to use and included it in the blog.

I think the final result of our work is an informative presentation of LinkedIn's business focusing on the new Sales Navigator.

Robyn's Personal Project Diary: Final remarks

It has been an incredibly stressful week, but we have made it through and produced our blog- LinkedIn: An E-Commerce Case Study.

Yesterday things finally came together; we all seemed to be on the same wave length and were communicating consistently over Facebook over the course of the day as we edited each other's work and brought all the content together on the blog. I focused on fixing the grammatical errors, sentence structure and lack of coherence in some of the content, as well as making sure everyone used the same referencing- which we decided would be just to use  hyperlinks to our sources, as this is most real to most other blog-publishing I'd seen. I'm really happy with where it is now, especially considering where it's come from over the last few days.

In hindsight, there were definitely things that I could have done better; stuck to the schedule more precisely and made sure I spoke up about my opinions and ideas more. However, I feel like we've overcome any issues and come together as a group to produce a great source of information. I don't know if this is the best we could've done had we known our direction from the outset, but I think we have managed to pull off a very successful project all things considered.

Robyn's Project Diary: Bringing it all together

On Friday I submitted my content to the blog in a rough format so that we could get the ball rolling on creating a read-able blog. Today I finished and published my info-graph on a brief financial history of Linkedin. It's available to view here.

I'm slightly concerned about the state of the group and the direction of the blog at this point. We only have a few days of our extension left and we still don't have a clear financial focus in the content on the blog. I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed at this stage because I think we've lost the 'point' of this assignment and there seems to be tension building in the group. Hopefully everything will come together for Friday.

David's Project Diary: Incorporated Feedback from Team Members

I got some feedback from team members this week and incorporated them into my work. Apparently we got an extension of one week, this will give us time to review all the work done so as to get rewarding marks.

Julia's Personal Diary: Some thoughts about Risks and Privacy

Today I received this email from LinkedIn:

	Hi Julia,
	At LinkedIn, we want to help you make the most of your professional life. Part of that is showing the world more about who you are and what you know by sharing ideas, starting conversations, and inspiring others with your work.
	So, that raises a question: who owns all of the content you post on LinkedIn? You do, and you always have. We've updated our User Agreement (effective October 23, 2014) to reinforce our commitment to respecting what's yours. Whether it's an update, photo, comment, post, presentation, portfolio, or anything else, we want to make it clear that you're in control of your content.
	Here are some highlights (you can read more in our blog post): You're in the driver's seat. We'll always ask your permission before using your content in third-party ads, publications, or websites. We've always done this, but now our User Agreement specifically spells it out. You decide when your content goes. If you delete something from our platform, we won't use it anymore. Share wherever or whenever you'd like. We don't own or have exclusive rights to your content. It's yours, so feel free to repost it anywhere, however you want.
	We also want to give you even more control over your account so we're introducing some new tools: Now there's a single place to see everywhere you're signed in to LinkedIn and manage those sessions. You can now export your LinkedIn data, including updates you've shared, your activity, where or how you access LinkedIn, and more. The emails we send when you change your password now include info about the place where the action was taken, so you can rest assured your account is secure.
	Lastly, we've clarified our Privacy Policy (effective October 23rd, 2014) to provide you with more clarity and reflect recent changes to our business. All of these changes are part of our commitment to put our members first. With these updates, you can feel even more confident about who controls your content and personal data on LinkedIn: you.
	Thanks for being a member!
	The LinkedIn Team After I've read this some ideas for the 'Risks' section came into my mind and I want to share them with the rest of the team: When we talked about the risks the Sales Navigator brings with, we almost forgot about the most important point: privacy! Especially if we upload all our data from Sales Force it is all about keeping our data and not sharing any of it with LinkedIn. Of course, LinkedIn will be able to track anything, but, most important is, that they are not able to do anything with our knowledge about our customers, which we can collect with comments within the application, without permission. Also databases are something extremely valuable for each company. Not to forget about addressing it to a 3rd party without client permission could be against many policies.That again underlines how important this new linkedin data regulations are. If they would have i.e. facebook user agreement, the risk for companies to import and share their valuable data would be too high as LinkedIn could just use it in public. Anyway, as more as I'm thinking about I find the sales navigator is a very smart company step. Even if the user still owns all content, LinkedIn knows not only anything about him anymore, they also know client backgrounds now, company insights and futur client plans as this will be found in the comment function at every potential clients profile after the first couple of sales contacts and notices. They could even know how many phone calls and contacts the Sales Person needs to fix the deal as people can use the kalender and feminder function. This could be an extremely high value and brillian opportunity to highly increase LinkedIns CRM system and targeting in the future. But it could also stop companies to subscribe the Sales Navigator or not to use this tool. The point is: we don't exactely know chat Sales Force data LinkedIn saves in the background if we connect it to each other. Do they have fully access? Every company would give LinkedIn full insights in their most holy system.

Team Meeting 8/10/2014

So far approximately 70% of the content is submitted, but details has to be researched for deeper analyzes.

We talked about the ROI and that we want to view the whole companie's revenue but also have a closer look at the business services premium, talent solutions and marketing solutions. About sales solutions there is no information available yet.
But, regarding to LinkedIn's Account Manager Anthony Tsang, there are 6 x more sales professionals on the network than recruiters. So naturally, the company sees a potential to create a tool that can help sales professionals to sell better. And with that the potential for a positive ROI is high. 

The blog's content structure is following: 

Firstly we describe LinkedIn, what it is, how people can use it, and also have a look at the history and how it developed such a successful business. 
This followed by an overview about the business services and different subscription models. 
From there on we focus on LinkedIn Sales Solutions and introduce the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. We explain what social selling is and why the sales navigator is such a great tool to increase sales and can make work easier for Sales Professionals. 
 Followed by the introduction of the target group, the social buyers and their behaviours. 
Finally we point out the advantages and differences between LinkedIn Premium 'Professional' and LinkedIn Sales Navigator 'Team' and why it is worth to spend the money. 
We end the Sales Navigator report with risk analyzes like trends, that we are just at the beginning of a social sales era, but not every sales professional is there yet. It is also quite expensive and must be treated well otherwise the functions are useless (same as every other CRM system). If users are not happy, they won't subscribe or not extend subscription. 
One of the last articles is going to be the ROI analyzes. LinkedIn provides quarterly plans. 
We finish the case study with a lookout for future development/plans/opportunities.

All content must be provided until Friday, 10th October 14. Robyn will include it in the blog and we can edit and structure it until the new submission date 17th October 14.

David's Project Diary: Parts Submitted

Last week I submitted on our Facebook group page  my parts as stipulated in the project schedule for feedback from team members. Parts include social selling, ROI, Return of Investment and advantages of sales navigator

Robyn's Personal Project Diary: Getting into the swing of things

After our last meeting regarding the change of focus, I personally feel a lot better about the direction of the blog. I like that there is a more specific point to the research. It's been really enlightening learning about LinkedIn as a company- there are so many aspects of it as a business that I had never thought about and this project has definitely forced me to look at and analyse internet businesses in a completely different way. I also think the new blog layout will make for a more extensive look of LinkedIn as a business- this will allow us to really grapple with the vastness of LinkedIn's business structures.

Julia's Personal Project Diary: Content submitted

Yesterday I submitted the content via our Facebook page to Robyn ready to design. For my research I used mainly the information LinkedIn provides on its blog including webinars about Sales Solutions and my own experience clicking through LinkedIn navigation and tools provided. Also blog posts found via google were helpful to confirm my experience.

To provide a short overview I introduced the different business services and for what they are useful. Afterwards I picked the Business Service 'Sales Solutions' to focus on its new application, the LinkedIn Sales Navicator. I explained the key features, how it works and the different subscription models to use it including prices.
I also lined out how the Sales Navigator can be used for collaborative team work and why targeting social buyers promisses to be such successful.

As LinkedIn offers currently a number of differnt subscription tools, I also listed them for keeping the overview and to prepare the change to the next content which is prepared by David, the comparisson between LinkedIn Premium and LinkedIn Sales Navigator and if its worth to spend more money (advantages).

Team Meeting 6/10/2014

After a conversation with Ainslie at the team meeting at class Robyn and Julia decided today that we change the presentation of the team report from Prezi to a blog which allows us to go deeper into the topic and we could carry on after the assignment.

Today I received Davids introduction about Social Sales. I would work out the point how CRM helps to build trust and how this converts into sales leads. Also why it is so important to avoid cold calls and why it is so helpful using LinkedIn to convert them into appointments.

Robyn is going to set up the blog and to implement the collected work. Afterwards we can edit and work out more details if necessary to make it all fit together for a proper business overview.

Change of topic and new Project Schedule

Project Schedule - Edited Version 2

During my research I found a new tool on LinkedIn which was launched on 31st July 2014 and is just going to be introduced in EMEA on the 15th of October 2014 via a webinar; means that they are still in the first promotion period. 

'LinkedIn Sales Navigator' is a reaction on the big demand for sales using social media, called 'Social Sales' and how networks influence social buyers.

In consequence to this news, our team decided to change the Project's focus in the last minute and to analyze how social selling changes the business world and how LinkedIn implemented this demand to increase company revenue. We will give a quick overview to LinkedIn's Business Services and Subscribtion models and work out the advantages comparing Sales Solutions to Premium Upgrades and analyze the influence onto LinkedIn's ROI.

The new Project Schecule can be downloaded here.

Julia's Personal Project Diary - What is LinkedIn?

Today I submitted the content for the introduction of LinkedIn as a Word Document via our Facebook group, ready to be checked by each team member and Robyn can layout it in Prezi.

I included a couple of figures about the social network and explained how to use it. Furthermore I explained LinkedIn Types and their relationships and used a graph to showcase it. I selected the picture with copyright in mind to make sure I am allowed to use it. Sources are going to be attached in the presentation.

On top of that, I gave a quick overview about the available profile upgrades and the business models LinkedIn is constantly developing.

As my source I mainly used LinkedIn itself and also the media LinkedIn developes to support new features. They have a great blog with plenty of content to gain knowledge from.