LINKEDIN TIPS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

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I don’t need to try and sell you on the idea of signing up for a LinkedIn account; I’m willing to bet that most of you’ve had one for months now. You’ve already filled out your profile, uploaded a beautiful picture, and connected to your colleagues and friends. So…now what?If you’re like most professionals, you’re still using LinkedIn as nothing more then a glorified online address book. What you need to know is that LinkedIn is already a good tool for marketing yourself and your company, and in the past year it’s made some major strides in becoming an excellent tool for this purpose. The reality is, with the state of today’s economy, you can’t afford not to make the most of every tool and connection available in order to create new business opportunities.

Here are 3 LinkedIn tools and features that you should be using, effective yesterday:

Q&A: This is the one of the best areas to increase your chances of scoring new business because it’s where you get to position yourself, and your company, as an industry expert. You can use the search tool to find questions relevant to your field and then dazzle the audience with your infinite wisdom. You can post links in this section, which makes it an excellent tool for driving traffic to your blog or site, and, in some cases, you will have the opportunity to recommend your company services – just be careful not to come across as too self-promotional.

Groups: Like Q&A, LinkedIn groups offer another location to position yourself as an expert by participating in industry discussions, posting relevant news stories, and connecting with others interested in your industry.

Status Updates: Yes, I’ve heard of a little thing called Twitter. MGH WOM uses and <3’s it so I realize this isn’t a groundbreaking concept; however; LinkedIn status updates are a great way to broadcast important professional announcements (new projects, travel itineraries, job postings and so on) to your contacts, including current and potential clients who are not using Twitter. Your status change will be posted to all of your connections as an update in addition to being displayed on your profile.

Here are some new features MGH will be carefully watching, which means you should too:

Applications: LinkedIn currently offers several applications for use, such as the ability to sync your blog into your profile, pull in Twitter feeds with keywords related to your company, collect data through polls, etc. All of the applications are great ideas, however, they still need some work. I’ve experienced trouble when trying to get two of them to install and show on my profile. I recommend you check out these applications, but realize you may run into a few bugs…at least for now.

Company profiles: Currently, LinkedIn pulls in information from third party sources. However, in the future, companies will be given more control and will have the ability to customize their own profiles, creating even more opportunities for you to effectively market your services.