LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for making business connections and it is important to understand that it is a tool for any business professional of any age. I have used LinkedIn since 2004 and, for the last four years, this tool alone has consistently generated over $80,000 in sales. Here are a few tips to make it work for you:

1. Be clear – whether you are after partners, suppliers, clients, employers… know what you want and make sure that your profile reflects this.

2. Post a face picture – people are statistically more likely to speak to you if you have a face picture. If you meet someone and they try to find you on LinkedIn, they will remember your face – be visible!

3. Your headline is your advert – a LinkedIn profile has your name, your picture, and a heading. Use the heading to communicate what you do and what you offer – keep it brief, keep it interesting!

4. Have a great summary – the summary is about YOU (not your company) – use this to demonstrate to people the benefits of linking with you.

5. List your skills – I rarely connect with someone who hasn’t told me what their skills are.

6. Get endorsed – people in your network can endorse your skills – it is not foolproof but, at a glance, people can ‘see’ what you are about. They can also furnish you with testimonials – use them.

7. Be choosy – whilst you can play the numbers game to build a network, you may be adding the wrong type of person. Your networking strategy should be a mix of online and offline – when you meet someone, ‘Link’ to them on LinkedIn.

8. Business Intelligence – when you are due to meet new people, check their LinkedIn profile – chances are you will be able to see what their role is in their current employer. Also, you can probably see who they are connected to (mutual contacts) and which Groups they subscribe to.

9. Link your profile – there are plenty of ways to promote yourself – link your profile to your Twitter, Google+, personal website – when you post a status update, make sure it updates your Twitter.

10. Post statuses – status updates make you visible to your connections as it appears in their newsfeeds. Remember to hashtag part of the update as it appears in your Twitter feed too.

11. Include media – LinkedIn gives you an opportunity to connect media links to your profile including video, audio, pictures, documents and presentations – make your profile as rich and interesting as you can (without it being too ‘busy’)

12. Add sections – there are sections for you to showcase experience, projects, foreign languages… even if you lack extensive work experience, you still have a lot to offer by adding more sections to add weight to the profile.

13. Explain why you want to connect – when you ask someone to connect to you DON’T use the generic LinkedIn message. Tell them why you want to connect – if you can’t be bothered to explain why… why should they be bothered to say yes to your request?

14. Join the groups – admittedly, some of the groups are full of spam (if the group is a waste… leave it).  Take part – ask questions; answer questions.

15. And finally, remember to keep updating – every time you update part of your profile, it goes into your contacts’ newsfeeds – as we build networks, we see a lot of updates from our connections – so continually improve your profile as a way to feed information to your current network whilst being increasingly attractive to new ones.

source: http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/blog/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-linked-in