You may already have a LinkedIn account. Are you using it in the manner that you should be to get the maximum benefit from it? Itís important for your profile to be complete and then you must leverage the connections you have made.

If you find LinkedIn isn’t doing a whole lot for your business, you may be concentrating your efforts in the wrong place. A common mistake is to spend all your time building your online connections so that you are able to strengthen your visibility and credibility. That is important; however, that is not your toughest challenge. A much larger challenge that you face is to take the connections that you establish and deepen them so much that those people are buying what you are selling

The success of all social media relies on relationships, and LinkedIn is no different. Meaningful interactions are a must to the success of any business, whether that interaction occurs face-to-face or online.

You need to pay close attention to the connections you are making and what they are doing. You are connected to them online, so it is highly likely that they will be posting the events they plan to attend. If you see that those events are occurring in your region, you should also plant to attend them. If the events are live, you should attempt to set up an appointment where you can meet face to face. It will do wonders for the growth of your business.

Your timing is of the essence. The goal is to build deep relationships with the most important of your connections. In a perfect world, you would do this with all your connections but initially start with the connections that you feel can have the greatest value to your business.

Don’t be afraid to ask for advice on LinkedIn. There isn’t anyone who doesn’t just love to get their opinion in there. Everyone wants to feel valued and important. You will be quite surprised at the number of very good responses you receive. When you reach out you are able to communicate with one of your connections and begin to build a relationship with that person.

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for building strong business connections providing you understand how to use it properly and maximize your relationships on LinkedIn. We’ve started you down the right path. There is plenty of other helpful information available online so make use of it!

You can also find more helpful advice on the Blog or on our Facebook page.

If you have any type of professional life, which most of us do, you should have signed up at LinkedIn. You will create a profile just as you do on other social media sites. However, just setting up your profile is not enough. You need to make sure your profile is complete and working effectively so that you get the most benefit and value from it.

LinkedIn is recognized as a very effective way for professionals and businesses to build relationships that eventually will lead to business opportunities. It is also recognized as a great way to strengthen your network, maintaining it and keeping it strong, and ensuring you get the most out of your business.

To begin with, you will establish connections that will help you increase your exposure online and help you to boost your reputation. Make sure that you have filled out the business profile so that those who are surfing and visiting the site can check it out. You should include people from within your company that you work with.

Once you connect with others, you need to do more. To build a relationship you have to go deeper. If you just connect but you never interact, there will be nothing for either of you to gain from the experience. Itís critical that you interact if you want LinkedIn to be a successful component of your business.

You might be surprised to learn that it is all in the timing. As soon as you make a new connection, you respond to a question, you are introduced to a business associate, etc. you need to make the move to communicate directly with this person. There are tons of ways to bridge that gap and open up communication. You can ask a question, show interest in what they are saying, give advice, etc.

Make sure that you make the most of every event. Pay attention to events and activities that are happening in LinkedIn and that you are involved in. There are likely a number of events that you business could benefit from. Try to find live events in your area, or follow web events.

Be a resource to other LinkedIn members. If you know how to listen to other, it can be a very valuable tool. Sharing your expertise with others is an excellent way to build significant relationships within LinkedIn and these relationships are far reaching to your business and may eventually translate to revenue.

Knowing how to build meaningful relationships on LinkedIn will help you to create a viable tool that can benefit your business in many different areas.

LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals and it now has more than 100 million users. Almost 60% of LinkedIn users are in consultant positions or at the executive level. As a result, LinkedIn has the highest number of decision makers in one place over all social media networks. LinkedIn is one of the fastest growing sites and one new user arrives every second, which is around one million new users every week.

Just as you would with other social media sites, you need to use the white hat approach. Rather than transparently advertising your goods or services or outright asking for work, try to interact, help, and engage people.

Your LinkedIn goal should be to establish yourself in your niche or your industry. Take the time to connect with colleagues, and customers that you have already established a relationship with and then build on that relationship.

Groups are one of your most popular tools on LinkedIn. You can drive traffic to your website and reach an endless stream of targeted professionals. There are more than 870,000 LinkedIn groups with memberships varying from 1 to 400,000. Most of the groups are business related, although there are nearly 130,000 corporate alumni and academic groups.

WordPress is one of the favorite LinkedIn groups because of its knowledgeable and engaging members. You can easily get your questions answered, and you can participate in a lively discussion. Every application you use will have a LinkedIn Group that represents it. The same applies to every type of job you might do, there will be a group for it. Whether you are a photographer, an illustrator, a Photoshop user or maybe a marketer, there is a group for you.

Are you already on LinkedIn? If you have not yet signed up to use LinkedIn now is a good time to do so. LinkedIn members are not there to look at their friends photos or to give their friends a minute-by-minute description of their day. Rather, it is an excellent place to make the types of connections that can grow an income.

Take the time to update your profile so it clearly and concisely explains what you are all about and what it is you have done. Make sure that you take the time to get at least a couple of recommendations. The best way to do this is to offer to write a recommendation for someone else. Now start driving traffic to your site.

There are plenty of social media sites out there and LinkedIn is one of the most popular. Unlike Facebook, which caters to users of all ages over 13, from all walks of life, and with all kinds of interests, LinkedIn is far more focused. LinkedIn is the best social media site for professionals, businesses, and freelancers alike. There is no room here for teens or hobbies. This is a site that allows you to promote yourself and your company and to network with other businesses within similar markets.

One of the powerful tools that LinkedIn has to offer is the ability to search. When you know how to get the most from your LinkedIn searches, you can truly get the most out of the site. LinkedIn is built on a highly evolved platform with a well-developed search platform that is broken into six separate sections. Each of these sections will offer you a mix of suggestions as you type. The advanced search is a very powerful tool.

The search bar is found in the top left of the screen, and the each section can be selected from the drop down option to the right of the box.

Searches can be filtered by checking the required boxes to the left hand side.

6 Sections for Advanced Searches

Here is the brake down for the six individual sections for your advanced searched.

1. Updates
   You can filter your results based on your connection level. You can set updates from your immediate network from friends of your friends, friends to friends, or your third level marketing. You can also filter by time, location, range, etc.
2. People 
   You can filter by relationship, location, school, and industry. There are several more options available if you have a premium membership.
3. Jobs
   You can filter by how current the jobs are, the industry they are in, the experience that is required, etc. There are a number of other search options available in this section.
4. Companies
   You can filter by industry, location, company size, relation, fortune, etc.
5. Groups
   In groups you can filter by language and category.
6. Answers
   You can filter by categories, and you can even add multiple categories.

With so many options, you shouldn’t have too much difficulty seeking out exactly what you need, especially if you also use the search Boolean operators. Using these operators, you can exclude words, add words, combine two or more phrases, and add that final touch to your search. Tweaking ensures you get the exact results you were looking for.

Understanding how to use the LinkedIn searches to their fullest capability offers you stimulating opportunities that will inspire you to search more creatively not just on LinkedIn but on other social media sites too.

There are many different social networking sites. However, When it comes to professionals and businesses there is no question that LinkedIn is the leading site. There are tons of opportunities here that will let you build your own brand, advance your career, and market yourself. Letís look at some of the tools that LinkedIn provides to help you market yourself.

Your Profile

In addition to creating your own personal brand, you should list your other qualities in the subtitle. For example, you are a blogger, you are an entrepreneur, or you are a writer. Make sure you post only designations that are relevant to the market you are targeting. You should also make sure you list your experience. You can list yourself as the CEO or Founder of your company if you are the owner. This will help promote yourself.

Use the summary section to introduce and describe what it is you are offering. Use it to describe your service, your product, your blog, whatever it is you are promoting. You should also customize all of your website links. Turn to your external profile links to connect your profile viewers to your blog directly or any other offers you are sharing.

Your Groups

It is important that you join groups. LinkedIn lets you join around 50 groups. There are groups from every industry so finding groups that are relevant to what you are doing, your product, your services, etc. There is more to it than just joining. You need to participate and openly discuss issues at hand. Of course, we are assuming you know something about the topic and so your expertise will bring you rewards in the form of new customers.

Make sure to participate in the conversations and posts that take place. Engaging in an open dialogue will help you to build your presence. When these posts are 100% relevant, you quickly begin to build credibility.

You might even want to start your own group if there a niche that isn’t currently being covered. Even if there is another group, there may be room for your group as well. Running your own group provides you with an excellent marketing tool.

Marketing with LinkedIn is a skill that once you develop can take your business far. You will grow and prosper as a result of the work you do on LinkedIn. That’s why all these large companies can be found on LinkedIn as they already know the secret and are reaping the benefits. Now it’s your turn!