Sixteen Business Uses for LinkedIn

Have you read about or even invited to LinkedIn?

Many have signed up for the free service but don’t know what to do now? What good is it? How can I take advantage of this online networking site to grow my business? Is LinkedIn just a new fad like YouTube or MySpace, or is it a useful tool I can leverage for referrals and sales?

Here are sixteen ways LinkedIn help give you a business advantage:

1. Attract qualified referrals. Your connections can send their other connections your way. Since the prospect can view your profile before contacting you, they come to you partially informed.

2. Find contacts in a company you’re hoping to penetrate. Chances are good that you can identify staff that can help you contact the right sales target.

3. Identify career moves of persons with whom you have worked. These people may be good sales targets at their new company.

4. Position yourself as an expert in your field by answering questions posed in the LinkedIn Answers. By making yourself visible on this section, you can attract clients looking for knowledgeable help.

5. Raise your search engine rankings. Since LinkedIn ranks so high, your profile will help the search engines and crawlers find your site.

6. Find outside experts. As identified above, the Answers section helps identify experts. You may need, say, someone very experienced in a certain technology. You can contact them and arrange a business affiliation.

7. Post job openings. Find good candidates for your organization. The search functions can help find those with specific experience and skills.

8. Perform reverse reference checks. As you pursue a position with a company, you can find current and former employees. These connections may help you learn the real climate at the place.

9. Deepen your reference checks on job candidates. The references the candidates give you are the model ones. Want to find others who worked at the organization at the same time? Get more balanced information. The search is simple.

10. Find things or people you have in common with prospects. As you prepare to approach a contact, you can see their interests, their connections, and their job history.

11. Measure the health of the company. Whether you’re hoping to sell to or join an organization, you can see if there is a rash of resignations.

12. Notify your connections of significant news. Announce a big sale, a new product, a new partnership, or any other big news. Invite them to call you for more information.

13. Help your face-to-face contacts find an expert. Assist your local connections by finding them someone who can help solve their problems.

14. Use LinkedIn to easily ping your connections. By changing your profile or announcing news you remind your connections that you’re there. By pinging them you increase the incentive to refer their friends to you.

15. Contact those who live in a city you’re planning to visit. As you travel for your business, you can arrange to meet face-to-face with potential contacts. There is great power in the phrase, “I’ll be in your neighborhood anyway. Shall we meet?”

16. Drive people to your website. Your website is made available to hundreds of thousands businesspeople.

Used effectively LinkedIn can help you make your business can grow substantially.

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