LinkedIn is the social network for business professionals. You won’t find any wacky home pages or vampire widgets on LinkedIn. What you will find is the top people in almost every industry, and they’re on LinkedIn to network. Here are eight tips to make best use of LinkedIn:
Create a Profile
To start networking you need to crate a profile. It’s free and quite simple. To begin you should at least fill out the experience and specialties sections. Also pay attention to the headline. The default is probably something like “Owner at Your Company, Inc”. You can change it to something more catchy like “Internet Marketing Expert” or “Best Selling Author”.
Upload Your Picture
In a sea of names a picture stands out. And if you’ve only met somebody briefly at a conference a picture of yourself will help them remember who you are.
Add Your Websites
You can add up to three websites to your profile. You can select from categories like “My Website”, “My Blog”, etc. I recommend that you chose Other because then you can add your own description or keywords that you want your site to be associated with.
The links to your websites show up on your public LinkedIn page. Currently the links are not marked with “nofollow” which means that you get full search engine credit for them. Powerful!
Edit Public Profile
For privacy reasons you may not want to display all your information on your public profile page. Use the check boxes on the edit public profile page to limit the information displayed.
Make Your Profile Public
LinkedIn’s public profile pages rank very high in search engines for your name. This is a good reason for making your profile page public.
You don’t want your public LinkedIn URL to be something like /pub/0/a22/908, edit the URL to something meaningful like http://www.linkedin.com/in/nickdalton
Start Networking
With your profile in place it’s time to start networking. Just enter the name of a person in your industry that knows you. If it’s a common name you may get several potential matches. Click on the name to view their profile and then click on Add to your network.
An email is sent to that person inviting them to join your network. Add a personal note to the email so that the person receiving it is sure to recognize who you are.
Important: Only invite people this way that you know well and who know you. The LinkedIn application trusts you initially to not abuse the network. But if a recipient of your invite indicates that they don’t know you, then you’ll have to enter the recipients email address for all your future invites.
Once a person is in your network you can see their contacts. See who you know directly and invite them to your network. Keep growing your network this way.
Recommend People
If you’ve done business with someone and it was a good experience, write a recommendation for that person. Click on the Recommend People link and then select a person in your network or search for the person by name and email address.
Write something specific, short and sizzling. The person you’re recommending is likely to be flattered and immediately add you to their network. You will also build up some goodwill that you can use when in the future you need help with connecting to someone in their network.
Connect With People in High Places
If there is a person in your industry that you want to approach for a joint venture or employment you can use LinkedIn to get connected.
Search for the person by name and company, then view their profile to make sure that you found the right person. The profile will show how you are connected and how many degrees there are separating the two of you. If it’s more than 3 degrees then you probably need to do some more networking before you can get a good introduction.
When you are ready to connect click on the “Get introduced through a connection”. Enter a message to the person you want to contact. Make it a very good message because you only get one chance. You also have to include a brief note to the person who needs to connect you. Make sure that the person acting as the intermediary is someone you know well. You want them to forward your note with a warm recommendation.
Keep in mind that the object of networking is to establish meaningful relationships, not to collect the most names.
What are your best tips for networking using LinkedIn?
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