LinkedIn may have the answer for companies that have been trying to find out how social media will work for B2B. LinkedIn puts their members inside companies like never before with LinkedIn’s company following feature.

By following a company, you’ll know about job openings as they are posted, who’s been promoted and who’s left the company, other LinkedIn members that have joined the company’s network and business opportunities that may become available.

Example:

This feature can be beneficial for the follower and the company being followed.  Here’s a few tips on how to get the most out of LinkedIn’s company following:

Pay attention to your target audience

It may be fun following Starbucks, Google and Cisco, but if you’re a restaurant owner seeking franchisees, save the fanfare for Facebook. Follow companies that are relevant to your business for potential partnerships or referrals.

Add others to your network

If LinkedIn didn’t want its members to network with other business professionals, the company would never have been created in the first place.  Use company following as an opportunity to add more people to your network (refer to the previous tip for help on who to connect with).

Use the feature with Twitter

One of LinkedIn’s best partnerships is with Twitter.  As you add connections on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter if they have an account.  People do not update their LinkedIn account as frequently as they do their Twitter account.

LinkedIn has always been a great way to use social media for B2B communications between companies.  As LinkedIn continues to upgrade their features, social media and B2B communications opportunities continue to improve.

Foursquare limits their application to smartphones (BlackBerry, iPhone and Android to be exact), but despite these limitations, the year-old application has attracted more than 40 million check-ins. In addition, companies have considered making an offer to purchase the geo-location marketing tool.

Why should you add Foursquare to your marketing mix, you may wonder. How can it increase your sales?

By offering customers who check-in at your store, restaurant or trade show an exclusive offer or prize, chances are they will not only tell their friends, but also the people in their social networks.

Reserving the grand prize for mayor’s is a great way to  increase check-in’s and foot traffic.

Despite recent privacy concerns, consumers’ use of Foursquare continues to rise.

People love to achieve goals and receive recognition.  Foursquare provides a way to show your customers that you appreciate their business.

People want to know how you look.

To put it simply, your profile picture provides visitors with their first impression of you.  People will take in your facial expression, clothing (or lack thereof), pets, scenery and body language, then draw their own conclusion of your personality based on these seemingly trivial elements.

As companies and business professionals journey into the realm of social media, selecting an appropriate profile picture becomes more complicated than it appears to be at first glance.

Adhering to the following guidelines should help to simplify the process:

Avoid webcam or mobile phone pictures

Most mobile phones and webcams take low-resolution photos.  The context of the photo is often boring and tends to lack personality.

Invest in a professional headshot

Having a photographer take your headshot is a surefire way to get a quality profile picture.  It shows that you value your career and take your business seriously.  Even if you aren’t a high-powered executive, your profile picture can certainly make you look like one!

Make sure your current picture matches your current “look”

As a social media strategist, I attend networking events and conferences occasionally, and I often try to track people down using either their LinkedIn or Twitter profile picture for reference.  I’ve come to notice that not everyone’s profile picture matches their current “look.” Displaying an updated photo is key to being recognized at events.  If you are noticeable based on your profile picture alone, you are already one step ahead of the crowd at a conference or networking event.

Show some personality

Candid photos display the real you. Vacation, holiday and family photos are good places to start looking for a profile picture.  Just make sure you’re the only one in the photo for a personal profile, and that the subject matter is appropriate for professional purposes.

Maximize your brand

One of the biggest mistakes I often see is a company branded Twitter profile with a personal image and/or background.  You’ve worked too hard to build your brand to not maximize it.  Company logos or products are sufficient for profiles representing a company or product.

Remember: Though it may seem trivial, a profile picture can actually draw people to your page or repel them.

The company, uSocial.net targets “connections” based on your basic demographic preferences.  They’ll bring people to your page so that you won’t have to spend time doing it yourself.

The concept sounds good, but there are potential pitfalls.

Social media is supposed to be social.  The communication between people in your network is the engine that drives the interaction of your network.  Being able to have that one-on-one dialogue at the beginning stage of your page is critical because you really get to know your customers.

A large part of being involved in creating your network is learning how your connections communicate with one another. Learning their lingo allows you to talk with them — not to them.

But what happens when your connections begin to disconnect?

Pages lose “connections” all the time for various reasons.  If you’ve never spent the time trying to get recruit connections, then you’re not going to know how to replace the ones lost.

Ultimately, what are the consequences of paying for connections?  What if the turnover rate proves you wasted your money because you could never establish a real connection with your customers?

A service like this works for companies who are more interested in quantity than quality.

Whether you’re trying to increase your following on Twitter, connections on Facebook or subscribers on YouTube, you want to know who is in your network, what they talk about, and what their “social reputation” is.

Including the purchase of a few thousand “connections” in your social media marketing plan may be an easy way to spread your message, but that page will have to be managed after the initial launch.

If you only saw your connections as demographics in the beginning, how will you value and interact with them once they are brought to your page?

Twitter will never be the number one social tool like Facebook, because Twitter is news syndication.

Newspapers, journals, magazines, etc. are on Twitter and frequently post breaking news stories.  As the story gets retweeted to the millions of people on Twitter, the story eventually reaches you.

Twitter is how news and information is shared, not how people choose to communicate.  We’d rather text our friends or talk to them on Facebook because the communication is more direct. We don’t have to scroll through the hundreds of tweets, or check the reply box every few minutes to know when someone has replied to your tweet.

Sure there is some level of communication on Twitter among your “community”, you can probably list about ten to fifteen followers you chat with on a daily basis. The rest are there to find out information, which is why some people don’t understand, or like, Twitter.

Twitter is becoming the ultimate breaking news tool, even the AP knows it.