1. Login to your Linkedin account

2. In the top navigation, hover over the “Contacts” tab and click on “Connections”.

3. In the top hand right side of the connections section, you’ll see a link that says “Remove Connections”. Click it.

4. In the “Remove Connections” section,  click on the letter in the left hand column that corresponds with the name you’d like to remove, click the check box next to their name and then click the “Remove Connections” button on the right hand side.

Cancelling invitations to connect

If you’ve used your Gmail account to invite your contacts to connect and accidentally clicked on all contacts, you may have sent Invitations to people you don’t want to connect with on Linkedin. If this is the case, you can also cancel an invitation that hasn’t been accepted yet. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Go to your Linkedin inbox

2. Click on the “Sent” in the left hand column and then “Sent Invitations” in the top heading.

3. From here, you’ll see a list of all of the Invitations to connect that you’ve sent. Find the ones that you’d like to cancel and click into the email. At the bottom of the request, you’ll see a button that says, “Withdraw. Click it.

1. Login to your personal Facebook account that you used to create your Fan Page at www.facebook.com

2. On the right hand side of the screen, click on the drop down link labeled “Account” and click on Manage Pages.

3. A window will pop up after you click “Manage Pages” with a list of pages that you administer. Click the page you want to work on and you’re done!

With the emergence of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, there is always a conversation going on about your industry and possibly even your company. Are you part of that conversation?

Whatever your goal is, if you’re using social media as a means of communication, having the tools to monitor what’s being talked about in your industry, about your company, and about the content you are producing is key. It provides you insight and an opportunity to respond to comments, make suggestions and become recognized as someone who is in touch with their audience.

With the tools I’m about to mention, you can create keyword alerts that send updates by RSS or email on your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, a developing news story or on your competition.

Here’s what I use for monitoring the job market, my competition and my companies:

• Google Alerts: creates alerts by RSS or email from a keyword search that you create and then notifies you whenever a site on the internet mentions that keyword or phrase.
  

• Search.twitter.com: Like with Google Alerts, Twitter Search allows you to create a saved search that updates you when new information on that search appeal on Twitter.

• Social Mention: “Like Google Alerts but for social media.”

If you’re already using an RSS reader, you can create RSS feeds with all of the tools listed and add them to a folder in your reader. I label my folder “monitoring” and place all of my feeds in there. If you don’t already use an RSS reader, I suggest signing up with Google Reader.

It’s super easy to stay up to date with RSS! Whenever a new web page or social media site mentions the topics you’re monitoring, you’ll be instantly updated in your reader.

Does anyone else use any interesting tools to monitor their brand?