If you already have a profile created on LinkedIn, it’s a great time to revisit and refresh your presence!

Or if you’re just wondering how to get started, these 5 simple steps will help you make the most of your time and effort!

Why LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the largest professional social network online today, with over 100 million professional users. The average household income of LinkedIn users is over $88,000 per year, which outpaces the average income for the readership of the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Business Week!

If you are a professional or a business owner, you can’t afford to miss out on the opportunity to build relationships with potential customers, clients, partners and peers on LinkedIn. It’s a powerful audience that you can engage, interact with and influence.

#1: Complete your LinkedIn “profile box.”

When visitors first land on your LinkedIn profile, a box displaying your profile highlights fills the screen. Given the importance of first impressions, the information in your “profile box” should be complete, current and optimized.

This is your best chance to make a good impression. In many cases, someone may read through your entire profile, but most people are going to get the information they need from your profile box.

Here are the steps to complete your LinkedIn Profile.

Upload a professional image. This is your very best opportunity to make a great first impression and is essential to attracting connections. No professional photo? No credibility.

Create a compelling headline. You only have 120 characters at the top of your profile to describe who you are, whom you serve and how you help. Use brief, descriptive, compelling keywords so the right professionals on LinkedIn can discover you. Focus on terms that your target markets are more likely to search for. What language do they use? Make your headline text compelling, but use words that resonate with your market.

List your current position and at least two past positions. If you don’t list at least two past positions, your profile won’t be considered “complete,” which can mean missed opportunities to be discovered by prospective clients and customers. Make sure to describe each of your roles in depth, and again use those keywords that will resonate with your target markets! It is also okay to list two or three positions that describe your current role, as I have done in my own profile.

Add your education information. List colleges and the high school you attended in this area. Why? One of the primary search tools within LinkedIn is the ability to locate people with whom you attended school. This is a potential connection point that can open doors for you.

Customize your “website” listings. Under the Websites section of your LinkedIn profile, you can have up to three listed. Choose the “Other” option when setting up each of these links and describe the links to your brand with relevant terms. For example, rather than using the phrase “my website,” I use “Smart Social Pro Blog.” Not only is this more descriptive, it also gives me a better opportunity to rank for those keywords in search.

Include a link to your Twitter profile. Add your Twitter handle to your LinkedIn profile. Visitors to your profile can now follow you on Twitter directly from within your profile box! LinkedIn and Twitter are tightly integrated. You can share your tweets as LinkedIn status updates (best practice: add #in to the end of specific tweets rather than choosing to send all tweets to LinkedIn), and you can share LinkedIn status updates as tweets!

Edit your “vanity” LinkedIn URL. An example is http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniesammons. This will enable your LinkedIn profile link to show up in search results under your name on all the major search engines! It is important to claim those results for your name as they provide a gateway into your personal brand.

Following these seven tips will ensure that you put your best foot forward with a comprehensive snapshot of who you are, what you do and where people can learn more about you. Your LinkedIn profile should serve as one of your most valuable professional digital assets.

#2: Use keywords within your profile summary section

The summary section on your LinkedIn profile is where you have the most flexibility to expand upon who you are, whom you serve and how you help your clients. Although this section is not as visible as your “profile box,” it’s still important.

Write the text in your summary section in the first person, as if you were talking directly to potential clients. Begin with “My name is…” Why? Because your name is a keyword, and this provides a simple introduction to your story. Your summary section should include keywords that describe how you help your clients in language that resonates with them! Try to stay away from industry jargon if possible. Also, don’t stuff your summary section with keywords. Simply use effective keywords and phrases where they fit.

Hint: The “specialties” section of the summary is a great place to list your areas of expertise using descriptive keywords.

#3: Leverage your existing natural network

Your existing contacts—your “natural” network—can provide a rich online networking experience and can help you quickly ramp up your visibility. This foundation network is key to creating a powerful presence on LinkedIn!

To uncover all of your connection opportunities, go to “Add Connections” in your navigation menu, which is listed under “Contacts.”

Thoroughly review LinkedIn’s connection channels.

There are four natural connection channels provided by LinkedIn. Make sure to go through all four connection channels to make sure you find all potential connections who can be a part of your network.

Regardless of how many connections you may already have on LinkedIn, it’s worth your while to go through this exercise monthly because membership growth continues to be very strong on LinkedIn!

1. Send a LinkedIn invitation to connect to existing contacts though the “Add Connections” feature.
2. Review colleagues from your current and past work experience and send invitations to connect.
3. Find classmates from high school and college to connect with.
4. Review the “People You May Know” list. This is LinkedIn’s connection suggestion engine!

#4: Focus on timely and relevant status updates

LinkedIn is a professional business network; therefore, it’s busy during business hours! You should strive to be visible and valuable during that time. Your status updates should add value to your target markets.

A best practice is to update your status two to three times daily. Also, spread out your updates rather than posting them all at once.

A fantastic tool for adding value in your industry is to take advantage of LinkedIn Today. This is LinkedIn’s top news tool available right there inside the network. You can customize your news updates by industry and easily share relevant stories with your connections. Top news is surfaced by the people, not by an editorial staff! Learn how to use LinkedIn Today to find popular content.

See articles shared by your connections, save articles and follow industries.

#5: Join and participate in groups

LinkedIn Groups recently got a major upgrade with the new LinkedIn mobile application. You can now participate in group discussions on the go. This is a great way to remain visible and valuable in your target markets.

Strive to review and participate in group discussions at least once per week. You can join up to 50 groups, but your time will be best spent focusing on three to five at most. Otherwise it will be difficult to keep up with all of the conversations.

By visiting the “Groups” tab on your LinkedIn navigation menu, you can easily find groups to join, access existing groups that you belong to, review and follow existing discussions that you are a part of, and view “groups you may like” suggestions from LinkedIn. In addition, you can use the LinkedIn search function to find groups.

Join groups that are relevant to your business and target markets. For example, if you have a local business, look for groups that are organized around where you live or work! Consider joining alumni groups, peer groups and groups that are organized around professional and personal topics that you are most interested in.

Lastly, think about groups where your target markets might be hanging out so you can find ways to be creatively visible and valuable to them with the resources and insights you share.

Share relevant, resourceful, rich content with your groups that can help other members. Ask questions and respond to comments! Learn more about effectively participating in LinkedIn Groups.

Final Thoughts

There are so many features and tools available with LinkedIn. It is essentially a networking treasure chest for any businessperson, filled with opportunities to deepen existing relationships, meet new professionals and add value to members of your target markets. To take advantage of all of these opportunities, it is important to spend time learning as much as you can.

I hope that these five steps will help you maximize value and minimize time as you ramp up your LinkedIn presence.

What do you think? Could your LinkedIn presence use an overhaul, or are you just getting started on LinkedIn? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.

You can start your own LinkedIn Group based on any of the following categories of professionals: prospects, peers, alumni, geographical, existing organizations, interest and more. You are limited only by your creativity!

In my experience, professional people are busy and if they’re going to participate in LinkedIn Groups, they really only have enough quality time for 1 to 3 groups weekly.

What follows are best practices for becoming a top group for your target market and specialty category.

#1: Choose a narrow niche and specialty category

This is probably the most important key to success for building a group on LinkedIn. You need to have a narrowly defined group in order to attract the right members!

Social Media Marketing is a popular group on LinkedIn.

For example, my target market is financial advisors, but my category is blogging and social media marketing. Just starting a LinkedIn Group based on your target market, assuming you’ve defined one, is not enough. You need to take it a step further and highlight exactly what specialty category you want your group to be known for!

Do some research on the LinkedIn Groups that already exist in your industry, and think about how you can differentiate your group from the pack. Also, think about your ideal clients. Who are they? What do they do? What do they care about? How can you help them?

A narrow niche and category are crucial for building a successful group. You can’t be all things to all people and you won’t get as high a quality of membership if you cast a wide net!

#2: Create a group description that includes the name of your target market and your specialty category

It’s very important to include relevant keywords in the title of your group and in the description of your group so that when members of your target market are searching for groups to join, they will find yours.

If you utilize keywords that describe who you are trying to attract and position the specialty category using words that your target audience uses to describe your category, you will have a much better chance of being found in LinkedIn Group search.

Also be clear what your group is about. I’ve joined groups that have ambiguous descriptions just to see what they are about, and what I’ve found is that in those groups, there is no real focus or value for the member. In many cases, those groups are filled with marketers who are trying to promote their products and services to the masses! Be selective with your descriptions and make sure they resonate with your target markets.

Wired Advisor, my LinkedIn Group for Financial Advisors, shows up first in search results for social media.

#3: Make your group an open group with member pre-approval

When you start your group on LinkedIn, make it an open group and then decide who gets in. Everyone wants to be a part of something exclusive! If you create a group where new members must be pre-approved to join, you’re creating exclusivity and it will make your group more attractive to potential members in your target markets!

An open group gives your discussions more visibility.

I’m very clear with regard to who can be accepted into my LinkedIn Group and it is well-defined in my description and “Group Rules.” Unfortunately, not everyone will read these rules. When you set up your group to pre-approve members, it does take some maintenance to go through and approve or decline new member applications, but it’s well worth it and your members will appreciate it. If you let anyone and everyone in, you’ll undoubtedly end up with significant spam in your group, and you will lose engagement and members very quickly!

When you make your LinkedIn Group an open group, discussions will be indexed by search engines and can be shared on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as well as LinkedIn.

In addition, members will be able to share general information about the group itself on social networks. With an open group, be sure to allow only members to make contributions. Managers have the ability to set this parameter. Otherwise, it defeats the goal of exclusivity if you allow nonmembers to contribute!

Hint: Sharing information about your group and discussions from your group on social networks can increase your visibility and drive new memberships!

Making your LinkedIn Group an open group will also help you gain visibility more quickly, and you can encourage members to share the group or specific group discussions with their social networks and connections as well. Post the invite link to your LinkedIn Group on your blog, email marketing template and other social profiles where you have a presence. In addition, cross-promote your group on Twitter and Facebook frequently.

When you switch to Open Group, LinkedIn will immediately let all members know about the change and future discussions will be viewable online.

#4: Closely manage and monitor your group

If you want to keep your group free from spam and marketers, you will have to not only manage memberships but also closely monitor the group’s activity.

Typically I have to send 1-2 personal messages per week to members who either shouldn’t be members (yes, this will happen from time to time), or to members who have posted something promotional or completely off-topic. There are people who will pose as a member of your target market just to get into your group, when in fact they may have moved on in their careers and are in another related role now.

You can easily send personal messages to members of your LinkedIn group.

I also have a number of talent recruiters and marketers applying to join my group on a daily basis. Just watch out for those individuals who are looking at your group as a marketing opportunity for their businesses. You’ve worked hard to build your group, so you can make all the rules and manage it as you see fit!

From time to time existing members will post their own articles and newsletters. This is OK as long as they don’t auto-post into the group and accompany the message with a question, or a request for feedback to initiate discussion.

If members post jobs, I simply redirect the discussion to the “Jobs” section. If I find that a post is too self-promotional or off-topic, I will flag it and put it in the “Promotions” section of the group.

Manage discussions effectively through the Promotions and Jobs tabs.

Ultimately, the rules and parameters you put in place early on will drive the success and quality of your group. It is very important to establish those boundaries with members up front, as it is difficult to go back later and change the rules!

#5: Position yourself as the leader of the group

In order to position yourself as the leader of the group, you must lead! Empower and engage your members. Challenge them, ask good questions, ask for the opinions of others, provide your unique insight and commentary on as many discussions as you can and contribute content that can spur conversations.

Use your updates to start conversations.

Spend your time giving kudos to group members who start discussions and contribute to discussions by commenting, liking and sharing their posts. Also, share top discussions on social networking sites as you see fit to provide those members with greater visibility.

Each time you start a discussion, keep in mind that in LinkedIn Group digests that go out to members daily or weekly, your name and your discussion topic will appear in that email. If you’re the group leader, you need to be showing up in that email as one of the primary influencers in your group!

There are a few ways that you can safely and softly introduce your business as well as your group leadership. Make the “Manager’s Choice” something that can add value to members and is related to the theme of your group. For example, I offer a FREE “10-tips email coaching course” that members can sign up for that links to a landing page on my website.

LinkedIn also allows group managers to send one customized weekly email announcement directly to members. Be careful not to abuse this privilege. I’ve seen a few group managers blast out their own blog posts through this channel each week when they’ve already posted the article as a discussion in the group. This is redundant and not a good use of the tool.

Use this email announcement functionality for special “opt-ins” and value-added programs that you are providing to members only. They will appreciate it and probably be more likely to sign up for what you’re offering!

The point is, always be a leader in a group that you start. Leadership happens through consistency and conversations. Don’t ever forget that!

An example of how I utilize the "Manager's Choice" section in my LinkedIn Group.

#6: Promote your group to build your membership

There are several ways to grow your group membership, but you must be proactive and consistent in order to do so. However, once you get to over 500 members, your group will begin to take on a life of its own in terms of membership growth!

Make sure when you first create your group that you tell your appropriate LinkedIn connections about it if they fit the profile. LinkedIn will allow you to send out up to 50 announcements per day to your connections. Also, you can upload emails from a .CSV file from your own email contact list and send an announcement to those contacts from your group management dashboard.

Send out invites to relevant LinkedIn connections and business contacts.

Finally, it’s acceptable to visit similar groups of which you’re a member and politely compliment that group while mentioning that you’ve got another interesting group that members may want to consider joining. I’ve had modest success with this, so it may be worth your while to try it.

If you’re successful with your LinkedIn Group, you’ll begin to see copycat groups pop up, which is exactly what I’ve experienced. If you are able to join those groups, I think it’s perfectly fine to mention that you have a similar group that members may enjoy as well, or you could even link to an interesting conversation taking place in your group. The fact is, professionals on LinkedIn can join up to 50 groups!

Spending your marketing time in relevant LinkedIn Groups can be a terrific strategy for engaging with prospects and clients, but if you truly want to be considered a thought leader, you should start your own targeted group and build your own community of members. Not only will you expand your influence, but also you will have a forum that you manage where you can cultivate successful business relationships over time.

I hope this article gives you the inspiration to go out and create your own success! What are your thoughts? Will you start your own LinkedIn Group? Why or why not? Leave your comments in the box below.

What’s New This Week?

Facebook Launches Video Calling Feature: Facebook and Skype have teamed up to provide video calling capabilities fully embedded inside the Facebook platform. Click here for a tutorial. Also, Facebook also announced they now have 750 million active users.

Speak to your Facebook friends all over the world via video chats.

LinkedIn Allows Embedded Groups On Your Website: LinkedIn announced a new API that allows you to bring the power of it’s groups directly to your website.

Here's an example of a LinkedIn group embedded on an event site.

Google+ Closes All Private Profiles on July 31: No private profiles are allowed on the new Google+ platform. The only required information is your full name and gender, but all profiles must be public.

Google is paving the social path for the new Google+ platform by only allowing public profiles.

Foursquare Adds a Notification Tray: You can now keep track of what’s happening on Foursquare with the new notification tray.

Here's what the Foursquare notification tray looks like on the web and on Android phones.

Buffer Adds New Buffering Patterns: You can now create different tweet patterns for weekdays and weekends.

Choose different schedules for your tweets.

Twitter Reaches 200 Million Tweets Per Day:  As Mark Zuckerberg announced the milestone of 750 million users on Facebook, Twitter announces their milestone of 200 million tweets per day. “For perspective, every day, the world writes the equivalent of a 10 million–page book in tweets or 8,163 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Reading this much text would take more than 31 years and stacking this many copies of War and Peace would reach the height of about 1,470 feet, nearly the ground-to-roof height of Taiwan’s Taipei 101, the second-tallest building in the world.”

A comparison of the volume of tweets shared each day.

Here’s a social media network worth noting:

YourBuzz: A new free tool from American Express OPEN to help small businesses manage their online presence, learn what is being said about them, and connect with customers in the places where they are most vocal—social media.

YourBuzz aims to help small businesses master social media.

And don’t miss this:

Get your FREE chapter of Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition to discover the formula Michael Stelzner used to make this blog one of the top small business blogs in the world (according to Technorati).

What social media news caught your interest this week? Please share your comments below.

Lewis shares how you can use LinkedIn for much more than just job search and how he is using LinkedIn to grow his business.  And he gives you tips to integrate LinkedIn marketing tactics to help you grow your business.

Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

• How to create events and promote them on LinkedIn
• How to leverage your group connections by industry or location
• What LinkedIn Groups offer businesses compared to Facebook Groups
• Why you should network on LinkedIn
• How to improve your email marketing with messages sent on LinkedIn
• How to use LinkedIn apps to improve your social media marketing
• How Lewis recommends syncing Twitter updates with your LinkedIn updates and why
• Why LinkedIn is a social media platform businesses cannot ignore

Connect with Lewis on Twitter @Lewis Howes and check out his website LewisHowes.com.

How do you use LinkedIn for your business? What tips do you have to share? Please leave them below.

Content is the fuel for your social media rocket ship and the foundation of any solid presence in the social sphere. Your content cannot be everything to everyone; however, you can be relevant and provide value to your target market.

Generating compelling content that people want to consume can increase your website traffic and help you attract and retain a dedicated following. In order to produce quality content, you’re going to need a good source of raw material to continually draw upon.

Here are 11 proven tactics to help you never run out of content:

#1: RSS Reader: Scan It Daily

A great way to get fresh ideas and inspiration is to sign up for a free RSS reader such as Google Reader. Then use the Google Blogs search option and search blog directory sites such as Technorati and Blogcatalog for blogs that are relevant to your product or service. When you find what you’re looking for, simply subscribe by clicking on the RSS feed and adding it to your reader.

Organize your feeds into folders and sort by category for easy scanning; you can combine topics you find in your industry’s blogs with your own commentary to create posts that stand on their own.

You can read it later, manage your subscriptions and create new folders.

#2: Make Every Employee a Marketer

Encourage employees to contribute to your blog by writing posts on a topic of interest in your industry. Ask your customer service and sales teams about their most frequently asked questions, then have them write blog posts about the solutions. Creating a simple blog template for employees to use can be a great tool to eliminate any objections to writing a post. Click here for some sample templates.

This template will help you get started.

#3: LinkedIn Groups

There’s no shortage of opinions on LinkedIn. You can join up to 50 groups per individual profile. Find the most active groups related to your industry by searching the Groups tab. An easy way to tell which groups are most active is by the number of members and discussions. LinkedIn Answers is also a fantastic place to tap the knowledge of your professional network.

You can search by group name, keyword, company or school.

#4: Forums

If social media has a grandfather, its name is Grandpa Forum. These open and free discussions are a fantastic way to find out what’s going on in your niche. A simple search on Google for “<your topic> + forum” will yield thousands of results.

You can find thousands of articles, blogs and much more.

#5: Make a Tag Cloud

Use entire conversations based around your relevant keywords to build a tag cloud. For example, find 15 tweets that mention your brand, product or industry and drop them into a tag cloud application such as Wordle. You’ll often find new keywords you may not have thought of as well as a few surprise topics of association. This is a great way to really stretch your content dollar and find emerging trends to blog about.

You can create "word clouds" from text you provide.

#6: Eavesdrop

Be nosy. Listen in on conversations offline as well as online. Tune in to conversations while waiting in line at Starbucks or by ear hustling the table next to you at lunch. Find out what people are talking about, what they care about. Carry a small notebook or use Evernote to jot down and keep track of interesting points you overhear and the ideas they spark.

Make it easy to remember things big and small using your computer, phone and the web.

#7: Crowdsource

Post a social networking status or blog asking your audience for content topics and suggestions. Online survey and polling tools can be invaluable resources for collecting and prioritizing these ideas in an organized way. Embedding a survey or poll directly into your website or blog engages your audience in real time, and lets their voices be heard. You can also launch a survey or poll directly in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn asking for feedback.

#8: Audio Books

A wise man once said “Why read when you can have someone do it for you,” and the audio book was born. Because everyone is severely pressed for time these days, audio books are a fantastic way to listen to books on the go. Just listening to 15 minutes in the car or 20 minutes at the gym can spark several ideas for content and enable you to “read” a book or two a month. Check out Audible or eMusic for a nice selection of titles.

A new way to receive information and knowledge.

#9: Google News

Want to keep your content relevant to current events and hot topics in the media? Sure you do. Google News aggregates headlines from news sources worldwide, groups similar stories together and displays them according to each reader’s personalized interests.

Simply search for keywords related to your industry and click on the news. Scanning the results will immediately provide you with headlines to tie your topic to what’s happening in the world.

Google News offers links to several articles on every story.

#10: Attend Industry Events

Meetups, Webinars, Tweetchats, Conferences. There’s a wealth of events hosted on- and offline on a weekly basis with many offering a free exchange of ideas and knowledge. Look for events with topics related to your industry and jump right in. Chances are you’ll leave inspired with new ideas and a new-found vigor to turn them into remarkable content.

These events can help you connect with your social community.

#11: Frankenblogging

“A Day In The Life” is one of the Beatles’ most influential songs and it came together with two seemingly unrelated bits, one written by John, the other by Paul. This is a perfect example of how bringing together two distinct segments written independently of one another can spawn greatness.

Like most bloggers, you probably have a growing number of half-written posts. The idea here is to find a common theme or link between two of them and combine. For example, I took a half-written post about identifying influencers, combined it with another half-written post about using Twitter lists, and came up with a fabulous post about finding influencers on Twitter and following them efficiently using Twitter lists.

Where do you get your content ideas? Have we left anything out? Leave your comments in the box below.

Let’s explore LinkedIn together and see if you can identify new ways to enhance your user experience by considering the topics discussed below. As I’ve done in the companion pieces to this post, 26 Twitter Tips and 26 Facebook Tips, I’ll introduce LinkedIn Tips from A-Z.

These tips will reference both personal and company perspectives. But before we get started, let’s go over a couple of LinkedIn basics—who’s on LinkedIn, creating your LinkedIn profile and developing your list of LinkedIn connections.

Develop a network of relevant connections.

Who’s on LinkedIn?

To put it simply, everyone; full- and part-time employees, contractors, freelancers and key decision-makers from any given industry or company can be found on LinkedIn.

Creating Your LinkedIn Profile

If you’re just getting started on LinkedIn, you’ll want to strive for 100% completeness on your personal profile by adding your current position, at least two past positions, information about your education, a summary of your background/experiences, a profile photo, details about your specialties and at least three recommendations. And if you’ve been on LinkedIn for a while, think about profile changes you can make to further demonstrate who you are and what you have to offer.

Developing Your List of LinkedIn Connections

You can grow your list of LinkedIn connections through webmail contacts (email contacts who are already on LinkedIn), colleagues and classmates, and through networking on LinkedIn groups.

Your connections are what make LinkedIn work for you, so taking the time to expand your reach is time well spent. A unique perspective on connections is offered by Stephanie Sammons in her post, How Connecting Your Connections to Connect with One Another Will Help Elevate Your Social Status.

LinkedIn Tips From A-Z

#1: Applications

As LinkedIn suggests, you can add third-party applications to “enrich your profile, share and collaborate with your network, and get the key insights that help you be more effective.” There are currently 19 applications to choose from. Depending on what you want to highlight, you can give a good example of your specialties, areas of interest, and work samples.

For example, on my LinkedIn profile I’m currently using Reading List by Amazon, Blog Link and the new Publications feature. You can have a total of 15 modules and/or applications on your profile. A message bar will appear at the top of the page if you need to remove an application prior to adding another.

#2: Blog Links

You can bring your blog posts into LinkedIn with applications such as Blog Link or WordPress LinkedIn. It’s a powerful way to engage your connections with material you’ve written and if they hadn’t already been visiting your blog on a regular basis, your posts will make it in front of their eyes when they receive their LinkedIn updates.

#3: Company Pages

LinkedIn has offered company profiles since 2008 and last month the profiles were upgraded to “Company Pages.” Companies can now showcase significantly more about their business. With the new Products and Services tab, companies are able to feature products and services with descriptive overviews. Videos can also be embedded on the page, one per product or service. At this time, you can only upload videos from YouTube, although LinkedIn expects that to change in the near future.

Recommend your favorite products and services on LinkedIn Company Pages

“Since the Company Page roll-out, 20,000 companies are sharing over 40,000 products. Companies of all sizes and industries are using Company Pages,” said Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s director of product management. When a LinkedIn member recommends a company’s product, they share the recommendation with all of their connections.

Ryan spoke about the power of recommendations for businesses, and referred to the Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey, in which Nielsen found that recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising. Ninety percent of consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.

#4: Direct Ad Campaigns

LinkedIn Direct Ads allow you to target ads by industry, company, geography, job function, seniority, gender and age. Ads can appear as a media box, banner ad or text hyperlink. Ads are pay-per-click or by impressions and can be stopped at any time.

#5: Events

With the LinkedIn Events application, you can browse by event type, topic, location and add your own event for users to find, promote and attend. Coree Silvera has a helpful post, Promote Your Event by Using LinkedIn Event Application. As she suggests, you can share with your contacts and also purchase paid advertising options targeting a specific audience on LinkedIn. This would entail going outside your own network of connections using advertising methods such as CPC (cost-per-click), CPI (cost-per-impression) or text ads.

You can also follow LinkedIn events on Twitter.

#6: Follow Companies

Company follows make it possible for you to keep your eye on key events happening at companies you’re interested in. You’ll see information regarding new jobs, new hires and promotions, what it’s like to work there via employee testimonials and how to contact a recruiter.

#7: Groups

LinkedIn Groups are a great way to stay on top of topics of interest to you and to network with others in your field. You can see who was most influential in the group the past week and follow their activities on LinkedIn. To find groups, go to LinkedIn Groups Directory.

LinkedIn has restrictions about whom you can reach out to with a free account. The person has to have been a colleague, classmate, someone you’ve done business with or a friend. One of the best bonus features of Groups is that you can send InMail to group members without having to upgrade to a premium account.

#8: Help Center

You can reference LinkedIn’s Help Center when you have questions and receive step-by-step answers.

#9: Images

As mentioned above, a profile picture is one of the key components that make your profile complete. Keep in mind though that the image can only be 80 pixels by 80 pixels.

Edenchanges has a very good blog post with suggestions for how to take a good LinkedIn profile picture. LinkedIn will permit you to resize a photo, but you won’t be able to do any editing. So choose your photo carefully keeping in mind location, what you are wearing, whether it has good composition and lighting and if it has the artistic feel you want. You can specify who sees your profile picture: my connections, my network or everyone.

#10: Jobs

When looking for a job, you can use LinkedIn to look into companies of interest to you by seeing if anyone you know may know someone at the company. Susan Adams, senior editor at Forbes, gives some useful tips for how to master LinkedIn for a job search in a series of articles. In one post, she discusses how to use advanced search by company, location and title. Check it out if you’re looking for ways to enhance job searches.

#11: Keywords

Use keywords to optimize your profile. Use words that are specific to your industry and skills. You can optimize the specialties section and even include mention of your geographic location to improve the chances of coming up in searches. (Learn more about SEO in #19.)

#12: Link to Your LinkedIn Profile

Be sure to include your LinkedIn URL in your email signature, on your website, info tab on your Facebook profile and blog, as well as on your print marketing collateral and business card.

#13: Mobile

Connect with LinkedIn on your mobile phone. There are apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Palm. For all other phones, go to LinkedIn mobile. The iPhone app for LinkedIn has recently been updated. Learn more about the latest version.

Connect with LinkedIn on your mobile phone.

#14: Network Statistics

With Network Statistics, you can see information about your network, including how many users you can reach through your connections. Your network grows every time you add a connection. To get there, click on the Profile tab, and you’ll see four more tabs: My Connections, Imported Contacts, Profile Organizer and Network Statistics.

#15: Organizer

Profile Organizer is a feature on the LinkedIn premium account that enables you to bookmark LinkedIn searches on profiles, company pages and jobs you may want to apply for. You can save the information to a folder of your choice, and add details and notes that you want to keep track of.

#16: Proactive

Use LinkedIn proactively. Don’t set up a profile and abandon it. In Shama Hyder Kabani’s book The Zen of Social Media Marketing, she suggests four ways to be proactive: 1) gain more visibility by adding connections, 2) increase your rank with search engines by making your profile public and customizing your public profile’s URL to include your actual name (LinkedIn is ranked very high by search engines), 3) get business advice by finding answers to your most pressing questions and 4) conduct market research by asking your potential clients or customers what their greatest needs are.

Enhance your LinkedIn user experience.

#17: Questions

One of the most utilized features on LinkedIn is questions and answers. Questions can be used for networking and marketing purposes. Many people make answering questions a way to demonstrate their expertise. Diana Freeman has a great post where she discusses four unique ways to get traffic to your blog from LinkedIn Answers:

• Create a new blog post in response to a question.
• Answer a question linking to relevant existing posts.
• Create a stand signature for your answers.
• Create a blog post asking a question that includes pictures.

#18: Recommendations

Recommendations are an important part of your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn suggests that users with recommendations are three times as likely to get inquiries through LinkedIn searches. To initiate a recommendation request, go to the Profile tab and select Recommendations. There you will find a list of your jobs and education and you can choose what you want to be recommended for, decide whom you’ll ask, create your customized message and send from within LinkedIn.

Kirsten Dixson, a reputation management and online identity expert, is quoted in a post by C.G. Lynch on CIO.com. She suggests you ask for endorsements from not only the person above you but “all the way around you: above, below and sideways.” Lynch adds that like a recommendation written for the paper-based or email world, a person recommending you on LinkedIn can benefit from some guidance on what thoughts and facts you’re looking to present in their recommendation.

#19: SEO on Your LinkedIn Profile

Mike Volpe shares some great suggestions in the YouTube video below for how to optimize your LinkedIn profile for SEO. Mike suggests customizing your public profile URL to be your name (versus the default LinkedIn URL that has a long string of numbers and letters), and edit the links to your websites. For example, instead of using the default “My company” for your website, you can add the name of your company and keyword anchor text. Watch the video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0glUGk81Kyg

#20: Tools

LinkedIn has a number of productivity tools that you can use to search, build your network and manage your contacts. You can download a toolbar for Outlook, browser toolbar, email signature, Mac search widget and a Google toolbar assistant.

#21: Updates

You can add Twitter to your LinkedIn profile and when you update your LinkedIn network by asking a question, sharing a thought or posting an article, you can choose whether to share it on Twitter at the same time. It’s a very powerful way to integrate the business side of your tweets. Read more about it on LinkedIn works with Twitter, and vice versa.

You can also see all the activity of your LinkedIn connections when you sign into LinkedIn and go to Home Page, where you can take three actions on your network’s updates; e.g., like, comment or send a message.

#22: Videos

The new Products and Services tab on LinkedIn’s Company Pages gives you the ability to add product videos to your page. This is an incredibly dynamic way to showcase and communicate more about your company.

#23: Weekly

Make LinkedIn an active part of your social networking and be sure to update your profile at least once a week; e.g., making a connection, requesting a recommendation, asking a question, adding a slide presentation or adding a new book to your Amazon reading list.

Add LinkedIn updates to your to-do list.

#24: Experience

Use the Summary part of your profile to highlight the most important aspects of your experiences and what you have to offer. Add specific specialties as well.

#25: YouTube

LinkedIn’s YouTube Channel is a great resource where you can see videos and short “in tips” on topics such as creating a 100% complete profile, sharing your basic information, telling your story through your job history, and including details about your education. You might consider subscribing to LinkedIn’s YouTube channel so you can be notified anytime new videos are added.

#26: Zero In on Connections

Patrice-Anne Rutledge, the author of Using LinkedIn, suggests in her post, Seven Ways to Increase the Chance of Being Found on LinkedIn, that users develop a network of relevant connections. She says, “Focus on developing a quality network that can actually help you achieve your goals.”

Final Thoughts About LinkedIn

Researching and writing this post about LinkedIn has truly been eye-opening for me about the number of robust features and possibilities for using LinkedIn. In fact, up to now, it’s been my most underutilized social networking presence and I’m now committed more than ever to enhance my experiences on LinkedIn.

What LinkedIn tactics would you add to this list? Which ones are you already using? What do you plan to look into? Leave your comments in the box below.

Photo credits: Flickr: Bührmann’s photostream, Flickr: Solacetech’s photostream, Flickr: 4_EveR_YounG’s photostream & Flickr: Bark’s photostream

LinkedIn Groups offers one of the best ways to make the most of your social media engagement time, but you must adopt the right strategy to be successful. This article will show you how.

LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups, but you can’t possibly be effective and spend enough time to make a difference in 50 groups.

What works best is to focus your time and effort on a deep and narrow approach in order to build influence within LinkedIn Groups, enhance your credibility and generate new connections.

Here’s how:

#1: Identify the Best Group Opportunities

Evaluate the groups you’ve joined or intend to join and focus on the top 3 to 5 groups that most accurately represent your target demographic. Also, you’ll want to choose groups that don’t have a huge membership.

I recommend that you choose groups that have at least a few hundred members, but no more than a few thousand if you really want to maximize your visibility.

Plan to proactively visit each of your top groups 2-3 times a week. Don’t wait for the daily or weekly updates that come to your email inbox. Identify your best opportunities and plan to make frequent and consistent appearances!

Find groups that represent your target demographic.

#2: Target the Most Popular Discussions in Each Group

The most “popular” discussions within a group generally get the most visibility. These are the topics where members are most actively engaged and they feature discussions that you will want to weigh in on. The most popular discussions are at the top of the group discussion page, and typically there will be quite a few comments associated with them for you to review and learn from.

Participate in popular discussions.

As you weigh in on popular discussions, respond to existing comments, provide an insight or opinion or even ask a thought-provoking question to generate additional comments. You can also “Like” and “Share” these discussions with your connections.

If your comments add value to the popular discussions, members will begin to recognize you as a thought leader within the group.

#3: Start Your Own Discussion

Starting your own discussion thread is also a powerful tool within a group, but you must be strategic with this. I recommend that you wait to start your own discussion until after you’ve spent some time participating in the top discussions first (#2).

In addition, observe the contributions of the most active group members in order to understand their concerns, goals and objectives. What seems to be important to them?

Also study prior popular discussions. What topics have resonated with members? In starting your own discussion, pose a question, ask for help or advice or post a relevant and interesting article or resource for the group’s benefit. Your goal with starting your own discussion is to encourage as much engagement as possible!

Start a discussion by asking a compelling question.

Start a discussion by providing a helpful tutorial for the group members.

If you’re truly engaging members of the group with the discussions you initiate, you’ll have the opportunity to be recognized as a “Top Influencer” in the group page sidebar, which can help you build visibility and authority within the group.

Focus on becoming a "top influencer" for greater visibility in LinkedIn Groups.

Note: It’s extremely important to add value when starting discussions and avoid promoting your own products, services or content. After you’ve earned some credibility within your top groups, it’s acceptable to post one of your own articles from time to time. Just make sure that what you post to the group answers a question or solves a problem with members, and don’t ever post sales-related material.

#4: Follow Up and Follow Through

One of the disadvantages of LinkedIn Groups is that it’s difficult to keep up with updates unless you proactively visit your top groups as recommended. Make sure to keep up with the conversations you’re participating in.

Don’t let too much time lapse and don’t leave a conversation open. Keep your comments fresh and interesting to demonstrate your commitment to your groups.

Also consider handing out “Likes” for interesting posts by group members and share valuable posts as LinkedIn status updates. When you share a group discussion post as a status update, you’re exposing it to all of your connections and giving the post greater visibility within LinkedIn. Promoting and connecting others on LinkedIn can build social influence.

#5: Start Your Own Group

If you’re willing to make the commitment, another option is to start your own LinkedIn Group. If you manage your own group, you have control over many aspects of your group. To an extent, you can control which discussions get more visibility through the “Manager’s Choice” feature.

As a group owner, you will have control over the "Manager's Choice" discussions.

As the founder of the group, it’s actually your job to lead discussions with the group! Ultimately it will be the members who push the most interesting discussions to the top. When you start your own group, make sure that you have a well-defined niche or theme. Otherwise you may not get much traction. Focus on bringing people together who can benefit from sharing mutual experiences and insights.

Using this approach for your LinkedIn Group participation strategy can help you maximize your time and energy on the network. Making a commitment to adding value to a small number of targeted groups on a consistent basis will help you build influence and new connections. In addition, you’ll find that there’s little competition in this strategy!

What strategies are you currently using within LinkedIn Groups? Are you finding relevant groups for your industry where you can truly add value? I would love to hear about your experiences. Leave your comments in the box below.

Simple.  Try networking and nurturing a relationship with social media. This article will help you prospect using the power of LinkedIn and Twitter (together).

#1: Get Your House in Order First

First, you need to do some housekeeping before you put yourself forward, and by that I mean clean up your LinkedIn profile. Take a good hard look at it and ask yourself the following:

• Does my professional headline say exactly what I do, does it contain key search terms, is it a little bit creative and does it make use of the full 120 characters?
• Have I made use of the three free hot links to different pages of my site or sites?
• Does my summary fully convey what I do, why a prospect should use me, and what my point of difference is?
• Do I include some great recommendations from my clients?

When you tweet these four areas, you stand out from the crowd a little. The summary is the most important part of your profile after your recommendations, so take the time to get it right.

Don’t be tempted to write it in the third person; write it as yourself. After all, people want to find out more about you, which is why your prospects are using LinkedIn for intelligence and looking at your profile.

Go Over to Twitter

Now hop over to your Twitter page and make sure that the information in your profile has a similar message. It is OK to add a bit more personal stuff to your Twitter page as it is a little more social than LinkedIn, but if you want to network for business, you probably want to keep it mostly professional.

There’s more great information on Twitter here and LinkedIn here.

#2:  Leverage the Power of LinkedIn Groups

So how do you network with that executive you have in your sights?  Let’s say her name is Jill.

First, find out what groups she has joined on LinkedIn and join one of those groups.

Add value to her world by starting a discussion on a topic she would be interested in contributing to if possible. What better way to show your knowledge in a given area and raise your profile at the same time?

Try to contribute in some way to any discussions that she might be taking part in. Have she asked any questions in the Answers section that you could help her with?

In doing this, you are simply putting yourself on her radar, letting her know you exist.

#3:  Find Out if Your Prospect Is on Twitter

Take a look at her profile and see if she has added her Twitter username into the Twitter field.  Follow her on Twitter too.

LinkedIn automatically links to the Twitter account if it has been filled in on your prospect’s profile page, making it really easy to follow her with the Tweets application.

To add this cool LinkedIn app, simply go to the Application directory under the “More” menu at the top and add “Tweets.” From there you can see the connections you are already following, and also the ones you are not.

You can even add them all into a Twitter list called LinkedIn Connections and each time connections add their Twitter name into the Twitter field, it will automatically update the Tweet list for you. If you are following them, it will update your Twitter list too.

Very cool!

What if they haven’t filled in the Twitter field?

If your connections have not filled out the Twitter field, you will need to go back to Twitter and search for them individually under “find people.”

Once you are following them, either add them to a Twitter list you have created so that you can easily see each Tweet, or you may want to give them their own column, say “LinkedIn Connections,” using Tweetdeck to make it even easier to see what they are tweeting.

When the opportunity comes along for you to contribute to the conversation or you find something they have posted to be worth retweeting, do so. Don’t wait for them to start a conversation on their topic of expertise. It may only be something simple like a conversation on football or the weather; it doesn’t really matter. The point is you are chatting. Put yourself back on their radar again.

#4:  Take the Communication Offline

Everyone knows that the best way to network is face to face, but networking online gives you a starting point and makes the world a very small place. What you now have to do is go to the next level and take it offline. When the time is right, organize a coffee catch-up, and take it from there.

The great thing here is that you have already started to build a relationship, and so when you do finally meet, the hard work has been done. You have turned a cold relationship into a warm one, and probably found some common ground for your first offline conversation.

Of course your style and content will also play a big factor, but the basic principles above do work, and have indeed worked for me.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this simple process and for you to share your success stories.  Leave your comments in the box below.

Are you on LinkedIn?  Do you feel like you’re not “part of the gang?” or that LinkedIn is not for you?  Be sure to share your comments below…

Editor’s note: Be sure to check out more of Sean’s artwork here.

If you want to hang with the big players—a place where connections are made, leads are generated, and deals go down—then you need to spend more of your time on LinkedIn.

Although other sites have their purpose in the business world and many people utilize multiple social networking sites, LinkedIn is still the number-one place to market your business.  Here are ways to use LinkedIn and get results:

#1: Use LinkedIn Groups & Receive Tons of New Leads Daily

How would you feel if you had a sales funnel that brought in roughly 50 to 100 fresh, highly targeted leads every day? You’d feel pretty confident about putting food on the table next week, right?

Well, creating a LinkedIn group gives you the ability to generate an amazing number of leads from high-end decision makers.

Here are some great groups to closely examine:

• Sports Industry Network
• Inbound Marketers – For marketing professionals
• Social Media Marketing
• Tweeple
• On Startups – A community for entrepreneurs

Here’s how to maximize your LinkedIn group:

1. Add keywords in the description of your group to increase your search rankings on LinkedIn’s search section.
2. Add keywords in the title of the group to be found on Google.
3. Add your company website or blog to the group to drive traffic to your site.
4. Add your blog RSS feed to the group so every new article is automatically posted to the home page of every group member.
5. Send a weekly message that adds value for group members and drives traffic back to your site.
6. Connect people in the group by making introductions to those who could potentially do business with one another.

All of these points will help you generate more leads for your business.  If your sales funnel is set up correctly, you will have more than enough prospects to grow your business.

Make sure you create a group that fills a need for the audience you’re targeting in your business field. This will ensure that every person who joins the group is a qualified lead.

#2: Ask Questions & Build Your Credibility

I’ve asked a number of questions using LinkedIn Answers because it’s a great way to get the answers you need from some of the top experts in the world.

One question I’ve asked was, “How often are you answering questions for others on LinkedIn?” I received about 20 responses, but one answer stood out from the rest.

I had an individual share that he spent about an hour a week answering questions and he was getting three to five new clients a month bringing in roughly $3,000 to $5,000 extra in monthly revenue.  Not bad for answering a few questions, huh?

Here are some tips for answering questions:

First, set up the “Answers Application” on the bottom right-hand side of your home page for the subjects you know best.

This image shows a sampling of the categories you can monitor.

Then, when you see a question pop up that you know the answer to, follow these steps:

1. Research the person who asked the question, and find a way to tie in a personal response with something from their LinkedIn profile.
2. Be as helpful and resourceful as possible when answering the question.  Give tips, website links with additional information, or even recommend someone who is the best expert on that topic.
3. Leave the answer with an open invitation for more communication by asking them to contact you privately if they need any extra help.

All of these tips will help you gain the most out of answering questions, and will help you build powerful relationships that will grow your business.

#3: Create Powerful Events

Hosting an event is a great way to build your business (see events under the ‘More…’ news in the LinkedIn navigation bar).  LinkedIn has an events platform that allows you to target thousands of professionals for free.

I threw close to 20 events around the country last year and I used LinkedIn to promote them, getting approximately 500 paying attendees per event.

Due to the viral nature of LinkedIn, once someone RSVPs to your event, it shows up on the home profile of everyone that person is connected to, spreading the message for you.

Creating an event on LinkedIn is simple.  Answer a few questions and start promoting your event.  Send an invitation to the people who would be interested in the event based on region or niche. You will notice a wealth of opportunities from hosting your own event.

This image shows what the events page looks like in LinkedIn.

#4: Run an Advanced Search in Your Target Market

It’s so easy to generate leads from LinkedIn.  The advanced search function helps you get in touch with the exact people you’re going after.

Simply click on “advanced” on the top right side of your home page next to the search box.  This will take you to a clean page where you can input anything you need to find the exact lead you are seeking.  You can search by industry, keywords, company and title, to mention a few.

LinkedIn Advanced Search

#5:  Send Personal Messages

Once you find leads, you want to send them personalized messages.  The best way to drop any walls—and give yourself the best chance of making a sale—is to connect with someone on as many personal levels as possible. Look at their profile, find out which companies they’ve worked for in the past, which school they attended, what groups they’re in, listed hobbies and who your mutual connections are.  Then, write a personal message like this one:

Hi Tom,

I noticed that we’re both connected to Mary, Jeff and Bob; we both played basketball back in college; and we’re both in Toastmasters International speaking club.

I would love to connect with you to learn more about your experiences at Xyz Company. I believe there are a number of ways we could help one another.  Would you be free for a brief chat in the near future?

Looking forward to connecting soon and I’ll be sure to tell Mary I contacted you. I’m sure she would love to know I reached out to say ‘hi.’

Thanks,
Lewis

Personal messages seal the deal and give you a greater chance of future opportunities.

Now Go Grow Your Business With LinkedIn!

If you follow these tips, you’ll begin to understand why LinkedIn is the best social networking site for building your business. There are number of ways to attract leads, connect with powerful decision makers and market your business. LinkedIn’s niche-specific filters and search features can help you reach the right people in your field.

Make a point of staying active on LinkedIn. Continue to update your profile and add new contacts. The more you put into it, the more the entire network will work for you.

Are you using LinkedIn? How is it working for you? I look forward to hearing what success stories your LinkedIn network brings you. Share your comments below.