Whether you just created your first blog, or you are considered one of the top bloggers in the world like Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, or Tim Ferriss, you are always looking for ways to generate more traffic to your site.  Even more so, you are looking for qualified traffic to your site, (i.e people who are interested in the content you produce).

LinkedIn is a great way to generate free, organic, traffic to your blog.

"But Lewis, isn't LinkedIn just a site to post my resume when I am looking for a job?"

No, wake up people!  Although LinkedIn has been great for job seekers during the most recent economic cycle, it is much much more than that.  Individuals and companies are achieving more professional goals than imaginable on LinkedIn.  For example, LinkedIn can help you:

• Sell products
• Find new clients or employees
• Generate leads
• Receive funding for your company
• Obtain sponsorships
• Sell hundreds of tickets to your professional event
• Get national and local press coverage
• And last but not least, drive massive traffic to your blog and website.
  

Achieving these goals on LinkedIn don't come naturally.  You've gotta work the system on LinkedIn and experiment with different methods.  I've come up with the best ways to achieve those goals.  Here are my top 10 ways to drive traffic to your blog using LinkedIn:

1.  Complete Your Profile:

Numerous individuals have told me LinkedIn doesn't work for them. I always ask them how much time they have put into using LinkedIn, their response - very little.  If your profile is weak people will lose interest quickly and may never click on your website links.

If you want people to read your profile and click on your websites then make your profile concise, compelling and value driven throughout.  Complete your profile 100%, add a great picture of yourself, and take the entire process very seriously.  The more complete and compelling your profile is, the more people will read and visit links you have posted.

This advice goes beyond driving traffic to your blog.  If someone were to Google your name (which most people do when they are researching you) your LinkedIn profile is one of the first things that pop up.  Personally, my LinkedIn profile is the third result, and for Darren Rowse it comes up seventh (before Facebook or Twitter).  Google your own name and check out what position your LinkedIn profile shows up.  You must make your profile compelling.

2.  Increase Your Connections:

The more connections you have, the more people will have access to your profile.  Every time you take an action on LinkedIn (i.e. update your profile, join a group, recommend someone, RSVP to an event, etc... this shows up on the home page of your 1st degree connections).  If you only have 100 connections, this limits the amount of potential clicks on your profile and website links per day. Constantly be updating and adding new connections.

3.  Customize Your Website Links:

When you first create your profile your website links will look like this:

However this is not a "call to action" and you are missing potential traffic because of it.  No one actually cares what your blog is unless it is relevant to them or solves a problem.  Instead, customize your website links to attract more clicks and drive more traffic to your blog.

4.  Answer Questions:

This is a great way to drive traffic to your blog.  The more questions you answer, the better the chances are of that person asking the question to click on your blog to learn more about you. Not only will that one person be more interested in learning more about you, but also others answering that question.  Additionally, when someone rates your answer as "The Best" of the mix, it will improve your thought  leadership status. It moves you up the rankings as a "featured expert" in the category you answered in.  When you are a featured expert people become more aware of your profile, and the chance they will click on your link to learn more about what you have to offer improves.

5.  Update Status:

For you Twitter lovers out there, this should be an easy step to take.  LinkedIn also has a status update feature that is a lot like Twitter, only it gives you 148 characters to work with instead of 140. Why is it so important to constantly update your status?  Because it is the first thing that pops up the home profile for all of your connections.  Check out your home page on LinkedIn and you will see a few status updates of those your are connected to.  If they are smart, they will include some compelling copy with a call to action and a link back to their blog (something I do that drives traffic to mine).

6.  Join Niche Groups:

Whatever your blog is about, there is an audience of people on LinkedIn that share interest with.  To make it easy to find these people click on the "Group Search" tab and type in some key words that relate to your blog.  I have a sports industry blog that focuses mostly on social media with an audience of professionals who work in the sports.  I joined all of the professional sports groups I could find:

Some of these niche groups have thousands of members who are actively involved in connect with other members.  If you are not in the groups where your audience for your blog is hanging out, then you are missing out on the opportunity for new readers, and organic traffic to your site.  Join as many groups as you can after doing a key word search that relates to your blog.

For starters - check out the Professional Bloggers Group.

7.  Post Comments In Groups:

Some larger groups are receiving hundreds of new discussion topics every few days (think of it as a forum).  People are sharing points of discussion, commenting and giving further feedback and suggestions on those comments.  Every time someone creates a new discussion topic, it shows up on the home profile of everyone in that group.  If there are 100,000 people in the group, then you are potentially getting the attention of 100,000 other individuals for your comment.

8.  Add RSS Feed to Groups:

Each group has a section that allows you to add a link to a website with the latest news you think is relevant to that group.  It also allows you to add your own RSS feed or website link so it will automatically update the group every time you post a new article on your blog.  This creates an automated flow of organic traffic that will show up on the home profile of everyone connected in the group.  Again, this gives you more opportunities for people to view your blog.

9.  Create a Group:

This may be one of the most powerful things you can do on LinkedIn.  I won't go into all of the amazing details on how this has helped me, but I will tell you that owning a group drives a lot of traffic to your site. I own several niche related groups on LinkedIn.  For example, I created the Sports Industry Network group on LinkedIn and there are currently over 19,500 members.  When a new person joins the group, they see a brief description of the group, my name as the owner of the group, plus my website url www.sportsnetworker.com.  Since my group gets over 100 new members each week, that's additional traffic from new members alone. That's not even including the close to 20,000 members who are actively engaging in the group, and clicking on my blog links.

10.  Add the Blog Application to Your Profile:

This might be the most obvious suggestion, but I still see some of the top pro bloggers leaving this feature out.  This application posts the title and first paragraph for your most recent articles you have published on your LinkedIn profile.  It is a way to give viewers of your profile a sneak peak of what they will read on your blog.

Go to "applications" and download either the WordPress or Blog Link application and add your URL for your blog.

Wasted time is the enemy of savings and revenue-generation for any fleet

Fleet managers know that driver productivity is a key factor in their important mission to maximize fleet revenue while maintaining the lowest costs for their companies.

A powerful, reliable GPS fleet management system can produce remarkable results in improved driver productivity.

The following are just a few examples of how GPS can help put an end to the wasted time that drains drivers of their valuable productivity:

GPS Replaces Time Clock: An Atlanta, Georgia-based electrical contracting company used a standard time clock to keep track of its fleet technicians' work day. In theory, at the start of every eight hour business day, technicians were expected to punch in at 7 a.m., go on their service calls throughout the day, and return to base to punch out at 4 p.m. In practice, however, the owner would often see drivers hanging around the home office during the morning, long after they had punched in. What's more, at the end of the day, he would see his drivers loitering at home base well before four o'clock in the afternoon. These drivers would punch the clock early, leaving some service calls unfinished or not done at all. These calls would have to be rolled over or redone and charged to the company as overtime, resulting in a double business loss of time and money.

To increase productivity and save overtime, the owner replaced his old time clock with GPS location reports that showed the drivers' arrivals and departures.

After removing the time clock, the owner considered the time that his drivers actually left the office as the start of their day and the time they returned to and departed from the office as the official end of their day. He expected them to be on the road by 7:30 AM and back at the office by 3:30 PM. This new timetable gave drivers eight hours--one half hour to check in every morning and one half hour to turn in receipts in the afternoon. Drivers were allotted one hour for lunch. Drivers knew that they would only get paid for the actual time they spent on service calls completed between their arrival at home base in the morning and their departure at the end of the day. Consequently, the company experienced a positive change in behaviors, a significant reduction in overtime costs, and eliminated loitering at the home office.

A Smorgasbord of Morning Idle: Each work day morning, the eight vehicle fleet of a Colorado-based business gathered at company headquarters. Company drivers would leave their trucks idling for 15 minutes or longer while lingering around the office. Only three weeks after having their FleetBoss GPS solution installed, this company discovered that their fleet had logged over 35 hours in excessive vehicle idling. This fuel and time wasting idle cost their business over $60 per week which equated to idle-related fuel losses of nearly $3,000 annually.

Curbing Behaviors That Kill Productivity: FleetBoss clients have provided numerous examples of innocent or irresponsible productivity-killing behaviors that came to light once they could measure fleet performance using their FleetBoss GPS solutions.

• Morning Breakfasts/Friday Lunch Breaks: Several FleetBoss clients have shared stories about their drivers gathering together for breakfast after morning check-in or for lunch during the work week. While applauding the collegial work environment that inspires these assemblies, employers who use GPS often discover that many drivers travel 30 minutes or more out of their way just to meet with other workers. Consequently, breakfast or lunch breaks last much longer than their one hour allotment, and companies end up paying higher costs due to wasted fuel and lost productivity.
• Increased Liability/Bad Publicity: One business owner explained that one of his drivers had been arrested for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) in the company van. Using his GPS solution, the owner discovered that his driver had been at a local bar for more than 5 hours prior to his arrest. The owner then "edited" the name of the bar in the location column and pulled up a GPS history of that location for the previous 3 months. He was shocked by what he discovered.

Not only had his driver been frequenting this same bar at least 3 times a week but two of his other drivers had also been using their company vehicles to meet at this bar regularly, during business hours and on their way home from work. Apart from lost productivity and potentially serious corporate liability, the bad publicity resulting from official vehicles parked outside a bar during the day was a blow to the company's customer and public relations.

As the preceding examples show, the right GPS fleet management system can be a tremendous tool for maximizing the productivity of any fleet.

Q. Could a kink or tear in the GPS antenna cause bad GPS reception?

A. This could affect the GPS antenna as the damage could be in the interior of coax cable.

If coax cable is bent beyond its limit then damage to the inner construction of the cable may result. Care should be taken to ensure that the cable is not crushed, or likely to be crushed. If the cable does suffer damage in this way, the dimensions of the cable will be changed and it will not maintain its electrical characteristics. Additionally if the dielectric between the two concentric conductors in the coax cable is damaged, then there is the likelihood of a change in its reception.

While on the subject of physical damage to the cable, it is necessary to ensure that the sheath of the cable remains intact. If the antenna sheath is torn in any place, then this may allow moisture to enter causing oxidation and moisture retention within the dielectric which will increase the chances of GPS failure.

Floyd Honeycutt

Vice President of Operations