Over-Graph gives the floor to its users! Today, let introduce Andrew Jenkins, Principal of Volterra Consulting.

• Who are you? What is your job?

Andrew Jenkins, Principal of Volterra Consulting
Volterra specializes in the following:

- social media strategy
- outsourced social media management
- social selling training for B2B sales teams and for salespeople in financial services

Volterra has worked with startups, non-profits, mid and large enterprises.

• On which social networks are you active and why?

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Snapchat, Ello, Tsu. I am most active on LinkedIn and Twitter because I learn the most from those networks and their have helped my business the most.
At first, I join networks out of curiosity and a desire to learn which is why I joined Ello and Tsu towards the end of last year but they have not really garnered more of my interest since. LinkedIn and Twitter have been the most rewarding to me personally and professionally. Personally, I have grown a bit tired of Facebook and how noisy it has become with advertising and sponsored posts but its sizeable membership and reach cannot be ignored. It still has to be part of a social media strategy because of its reach and how it influences SEO.

Having a background in film, I have an appreciation for visual content which is Instagram’s strength and the reason I grow more intrigued with it. Snapchat was another network I joined to understand it better. Because of the work that Volterra does with clients, I am constantly researching and evaluating emerging tools and technology.

• How do you use LinkedIn? What are the characteristics of this network?

To build my personal brand, generate sales leads, and get referrals. From my perspective it is a network comprised of white collar professionals (10 million members in Canada).

A few more things. I use LinkedIn as part of the social selling training I do. When asked about the differences between the networks, I say that Facebook is for my personal life, LinkedIn for my professional life, and Twitter is a blend of the two.

• What tools do you use to manage your presence on social networks, and especially LinkedIn?

Before I learned of Over-­Graph, I predominantly used Buffer, Feedly, Socialbro, Sproutsocial, Cyfe, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Nimble, and Riffle. I used Buffer and Feedly predominantly to source content and schedule posts to LinkedIn. Because LinkedIn has restricted its API to most 3rd party software providers, I am active on the platform directly.

• What do you think about the integration of LinkedIn in Over­Graph?

I would recommend that you extract as much data as possible and present the analytics for actionable insight but LinkedIn will likely restrict what you can export.

• Do you have ideas of new features dedicated to LinkedIn?

One feature I like about Socialbro is the ability to suck in the followers of a competitor’s Twitter account. I would love to do the same to followers of a company on LinkedIn. Also, any data you can extract from an individual’s network to give me competitive intelligence or more referrals would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much Andrew for answering our questions. We love data too, so we will give you our best!