As business-to-business (B2B) sales cycles are getting longer the most effective social network for prospecting is LinkedIn by a wide margin. According to this business-oriented site was rated a 3.1 out of 5, compared with ratings of 2 for blogs, 1.9 for Facebook and 1.8 for Twitter. LinkedIn's effectiveness in this area has translated into significant increases in usage. Nearly one-half of respondents said they were using the site more for prospecting and research than had been a year before. Around one-fifth of those polled were also upping their prospecting efforts on blogs, Facebook and Twitter, but majorities of B2B sales professionals did not use those sites for research at all.

Most people have a profile on LinkedIn but again, most people don't know what to do once they get set up either because they're overwhelmed with all the options or simply don't have the time. The following are effective and time efficient action steps that can help you build your reputation.

Getting Set-Up

• Optimize your profile. You need to go beyond merely completing the when and where. You need to pay particular attention to your ACCOMPLISHMENTS and spend less time talking about your duties. How have you or your company helped other people or companies? What results did you achieve? Have you received testimonials? Ask for recommendations from trusted colleagues or customers.

• Modify your settings. Make sure you have included multiple email addresses. Why? Should you switch companies, you want to be able to maintain control over your LinkedIn profile. So have at least your business email and one of your personal email addresses. Also modify your Email Notification settings as you see fit.

• Pick a few applications. Applications are a great way for you to distinguish your brand/profile and share additional content with people viewing your profile. Applications are added to your homepage and profile. Consider applications like BlogLink which allows your blog posts to be automatically posted to your LinkedIn profile and SlideShare Presentations app which allows you to share pdf's or power point presentations that can be created for individuals to see some of your thought leadership as well as what you and your company has to offer. Another great application to add is the Twitter LinkedIn application. Leverage the power of both platforms to share your message. In the LinkedIn application area (bottom right of the home page or in the nav bar), you can add the Twitter application which at the outset doesn't look that much different from the twitter feed in other Twitter tools like Tweetdeck but there are some additional features like:

  • You can easily follow your LinkedIn connections in Twitter (if they've provided their twitter address). You may find that there are a bunch of your LinkedIn connections that you're you are not following. Click on "Connections" and then on "Not following" and start selecting the people in Twitter you want to follow.

  • You can create a Twitter List from your LinkedIn contacts. This allows you to easily interact with your LinkedIn contacts on Twitter. In addition, the list is dynamic and LinkedIn will keep updating the list as your LinkedIn network grows.

• Join Groups. Joining groups allows you to communicate with people in the group that may not be part of your LinkedIn network. This can be prospects or people you're trying to recruit. Identify who your target audience is and then, based on personas, identify which groups they are most likely to be members of. You can join up to 50 groups and there are all kinds of groups from Professional Groups to Alumni Groups. Check out the Groups Directory and use the Search Groups feature on the upper left-hand side.

Perpetual Tasks

• Ask Questions. This allows you to have a much bigger footprint within your network and to communicate in different ways with your 1st degree network. For example, at least once per month ask a question about a problem you faced recently or if anybody else has heard of a particular vendor that called you the other day. If you have a big network, you can ask questions more frequently.

• Answer Questions. This is a great way to profile you or your brand and to generate leads and real business. Remember, to be considered an "expert" in any particular area, you only need to know more than the person reading the answer! Get in there, search for questions that you think you can answer and answer them. To make it really easy to follow Answers of interest, you can create RSS feeds for specific sections of LinkedIn Answers and track new questions through your favourite RSS feeder tool.

• Start Group Discussions. Once you've joined some groups, go in there and participate in discussions that are happening or start group discussions. Remember that these are targeted audiences and people have joined these groups for a specific reason. Don't just join the discussion and start talking about your company; rather listen to what they are talking about and think about any value add input or insight that you can add to enhance the discussion. You can also set up notifications within the group so you get a digest of discussions that are happening within the groups you've joined.

• Do An Advanced People Search. In the upper right hand corner click on Advanced. Search for titles of people or people at companies that you may want to connect with. For example your sales team could use this feature daily by searching for "marketing" titles at companies they're trying to penetrate.

• Search for Companies. In essence, this is competitive intelligence. What are your competitors doing? Who should you be connecting with? What content are they publishing? There's a great new feature that was launched this year called Follow Company. This feature "allows you to keep up on occurrences within those companies by sending you updates through your LinkedIn account" and gives you something to talk about with the contacts that you find. This is also great if they have had turnover at their company, allowing you to know who or what accounts could be prime pickings for you.

• Update Your Network Status. Do this once per week. Remember, this is not Facebook but status updates serve a similar purpose in a business context. Status updates are essentially mini performances. When you post a status update, you're giving your network information about yourself or your brand. Remember that you are trying to position you and your company as a valuable resource for your prospects company so try to add content that is relevant content that prospects would find interesting. What this does is tell your prospects that you are in the know and that you have access to information that might help them. Your status update has elevated your profile in the mind of your prospects as a possible expert in this area.

• Share content on LinkedIn. This is an easy tactic that anyone on LinkedIn can do. If you have an upcoming webinar, event or new white paper, encourage people within your company to post a profile update on LinkedIn. Typically, marketing drives this effort. While you can recommend text that should be included in these updates, encourage your company to use slightly different messaging so your organization doesn't appear like a bunch of robots all saying the exact same thing. Social media is all about showing your human side so don't forget that - allow for creativity.

Remember to stay focused. Try not to waste time on other extraneous things within LinkedIn. It's easy to start browsing and get lost. Stay focused. Your competitors will be taking these actions soon (if they're not already) so if you take these actions now, they will help you share your brand and generate business in a different way.