Social Machinery

 LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network with over 40 million members and growing rapidly. Is great place for connecting you to your trusted contacts and helping to exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.

One of the great benefits about LinkedIn is the ability to get visibility from other professionals or business partners and therefore create new opportunities for your business without investing much.

 I would like to share 8 ways for using Linkedin as a business development tool for your business.

1. Create a strong personal brand – Your profile is key!

Most important step on LinkedIn is to create an strong business profile that enhance your personal brand. Treat your profile like a website making sure it is formatted, clean, and most importantly, filled with search engine friendly keywords.

Also consider creating a vanity URL for using it in your email signature or other company information. Don’t forget to include links to your website or blog. Update your status regularly with relevant information about your business. Things like trends or specific areas that your currently working on could be a way to attract other people’s attention. Usually LinkedIn is more formal than other social networks like Facebook, so try to keep it more professional driven.

2. Enhanced your personal brand further

After your build a strong profile and start connecting with your network, encourage customers and partners to give you a “recommendation” via LinkedIn.

This is one of the most strong points for enhancing your personal brand. Having a large number of customer recommendations create a solid perception about your company and works perfectly as a reference. To get those recommendations choose people in your network that you’ve worked with and could write an honest statement of recommendation.

 3. Try to create a broad social graph

LinkedIn is a great tool for networking with industry professionals all over the world. Even do your business focus may be local, don’t miss the chance to get a broad network that includes colleagues, peers, customers, clients and vendors.

By having an extended social graph you can share and drive a more broad and deep discussions that could benefit not only your knowledge about latest trends but also show to your customers your position in the industry

4. Become a LinkedIn expert

LinkedIn provide a powerful Q&A feature , where you can get expertise levels by answering questions and getting rated by users. By answering questions thoughtfully you can demonstrate a given expertise while potentially engaging contacts that related to your business.

By answering questions related to your product, brand or service you are promotion your personal brand to  large targeted audience and effectively “soft selling” your ideas or products to potential customers. Also being in the top expert list for a specific topic increase your visibility in the network.

5. Use groups for testing your ideas

You can create or Join theme related groups and utilize them as a way to start discussions about industry topics. This could work as a focus group for your new product ideas. Since you are placing your thoughts to a large community of professionals including senior management executives, creative agencies or experience professionals you can get precious feedback for free!

6. Ask questions

By asking questions, you can drive  conversations and engagement about topics related to your business. Is also a great way for enlarging your network base.

7. Lead group discussions

An interactive tip to position your personal brand on LinkedIn is to launch a group and lead discussions and networking on a specific topic of interest. If you take this advice and put some effort you can gain strong influence with your network and also enlarge it. Building a group around a company brand is also a good way to group prospects together.

8. Use widgets available

There are several application developed specifically for this platform. Some of them can help you to get the most of LinkedIn networking:

Tripit - See where your contacts are traveling and when you will be in the same place as your network.

BlogLink – Displays your latest blog posts on your profile page.

Box.net –Create links to files such as resumes and marketing material.

Slideshare – Embeds slideshow presentations.

Company Buzz – Search twitter tracking your brand or other topics

Polls - Leverage the wisdom of millions business professionals on LinkedIn