LinkedIn has over 47 million members around the world and continues to add new members at the rate of about 1 per second. Over 50% have management / director / executive titles and executives from all Fortune 500 companies are members. Over 50% of LinkedIn members are business decision makers. LinkedIn is a major social networking website for business people around the world that you can leverage to market yourself, your business and establish valuable business connections.
The first step is to create a complete and relevant profile. LinkedIn is for business networking - complete your profile from a business perspective. Research indicates that LinkedIn members with a 100% complete profile with comprehensive and appropriate business-oriented information are 40 times more likely to receive requests for connections, jobs and other opportunities.
- LinkedIn tracks your profile completeness - get it to 100%.
- Always include a good, recent photo - just you, no pets, significant others, toys or anything else in the photo.
- Include maiden names, nicknames, AKA names, etc. to help people to find you.
- List and provide links to your business-related website(s) and blog(s).
- Include acronyms and spell them out to ensure you are included in relevant searches.
- Include relevant keywords in various areas of your profile to help being included in searches.
- Review your profile - are you representing yourself in the manner you wish to be known?
- Thoroughly edit your profile - no grammar or spelling mistakes or other typos.
- Personalize your LinkedIn URL and make your profile public.
Having a 100% complete profile with comprehensive content is just the beginning - the real value is participating in the LinkedIn community:
- Connect with people. Find business associates, current and former colleagues, customers, etc. to invite to your LinkedIn network.
- Do not try to connect with people you don't know, if several people respond with "I don't know this person" you will be required to know people's emails to initiate future connections.
- Write recommendations for others and ask them to write recommendations for you. Recommendations significantly improve your credibility and network presence.
- Join and participate in relevant groups.
- Start your own group if you are willing to make the time commitment to manage it.
- Answer questions to demonstrate your expertise and build credibility.
- Provide regular status updates of interest on your profile.
- Check the various updates from your community on your home page every day. Find possible participation opportunities and members to invite for connecting with you.
- Add a link to your LinkedIn public profile to your email signature.
- Depending on your business and objectives with LinkedIn, consider whether the additional fee-based services and advertising are worthwhile.
How to use this information to benefit your business
- Think of LinkedIn as your expanded calling card on the Internet - if people want to know who you are or who is behind a particular business, they'll search on LinkedIn or find your public profile via a general Internet search.
- You and your business are intertwined - a good business-oriented personal profile and appropriate participation activity can promote your business.
- Don't be spammy to promote yourself or your business. Participating and contributing to the community and demonstrating your expertise by helping others will produce much better results.
- Check out what your competitors are doing on LinkedIn and who they are connected to.
Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com
Link to original post