Thursday, April 9th, 2009
Before we start focusing on the Group functions in Linnkedin, I thought you might enjoy an short article on ways to use Linkedin in your business by Peggy Murrah. Enjoy.
Al Hanzal
www.successfulmarketingtools.com/wordpressblog
Social Media Tip of the Month -5 Ways LinkedIn Can Help Your Business
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By now, you should be familiar with all of the social networking aspects that LinkedIn offers. LinkedIn has helped so many professionals get in touch with each other and forge new relationships. Many jobs have been found through the use of connections and members have been well placed in their respective company networks. LinkedIn remains to be one of the largest networks of professionals seeking to build their careers.
LinkedIn is, however, more than just connecting with others and building relationships. Here are 5 other ways that can help you as a member of LinkedIn.
Have your questions answered
Similar to Yahoo! and Google Answers, LinkedIn offers an area where members can type in questions that can be seen by all members of LinkedIn regardless of connections. Since LinkedIn is a network of professionals, you can expect to get better answers than other sites like forums.
Conduct reference checks
LinkedIn is a great source for looking up companies and individuals for reference purposes. All you need to do is fire up the Reference Check Tool and just search for a person or company to see some information about how long they worked there and other backgrounds. It is great for crosschecking the legitimacy of profiles since LinkedIn is officially networked to some top resource sites like BusinessWeek.
Obtain information on competitors
Knowing your competitors’ progress and connections can be advantageous in taking your team above them. By taking the time in getting information on individuals and their connections belonging to rival companies, you can highlight their main strengths and weaknesses and find ways to work around them.
Get indexed in search engines
Since LinkedIn has a high Google page rank, you can take advantage of this by setting your profile on public and filling it with as much information as possible. What happens is all that information is indexed by Google and other bots while taking in keywords in the process. This gives you an opportunity for non-registered LinkedIn users to see your profile just by doing simple searches that may match your profile’s description. It also makes it easier for people to find more information about you and don’t know where to look. You can even use this to advertise other websites and gain exposure through LinkedIn.
Find more information about people you’ll meet up with
If you are going to have a huge meeting with a few top executives of a company, try to learn more about them by searching in LinkedIn. Even if their profiles may not be listed, you can do other checks such as searching for the company and see any familiar names there. It is important to know the backgrounds of the people you are about to do business with so you can make better decisions and judgment.
These 5 ways are sure to help and encourage you to use LinkedIn more for any business related tasks. Use these methods to your advantage so you can have the edge over competitors and other people in your network. You can really stand out if you utilize the LinkedIn network using your own creative ways.
http://www.linktoprosper.com [murrah@linktoprosper.com]
