LinkedIn for business - make the most of it by Sarah Santacroce, certified Social Media specialist on 04-Jun-2013

Many people still call LinkedIn the most 'boring' of the three social networks. For sure there's not as much action as on Twitter and not as many visuals as on Facebook, but LinkedIn has really done a great job over the last year in order to keep up and maintain its position on the top three podium. If used right, LinkedIn is probably THE network for small business owners. Research by Hubspot revealed that LinkedIn has the highest visitor to lead generation at 2.73% (almost 3 times higher than Twitter). So you get highly targeted traffic to your site from LinkedIn, traffic from people who are in a business mind-set.

Not seeing those leads yet? Have a look at the tips below and see if maybe you haven't implemented all of them yet ...

1. Optimize your headline
   
   
   This is the title that shows on the very top of your profile, next to your picture. It is probably the most important piece of real estate on LinkedIn, it defines you and tells people what you bring to the table. Make sure it contains some of your keywords as it is indexed in LinkedIn's search engine. CFO or VP is not distinctive enough, that's not what people are searching for.


2. Use your keywords
   The headline is not the only place that needs to contain your keywords. Other places include: the current and past job positions, your summary, your specialties, your experience and your skills. Don't write these texts just for the search engines, that would be overkill, but try to strategically place some of your keywords here and there. In my example above 'small business', 'Social Media Marketing' and 'Online Presence' are some of my keywords.


3. Get more visible
   In order to get more views on LinkedIn, you need to be more visible. There are different techniques to be more visible on LinkedIn. Here are a few:
   
   1. Sharing valuable content via status-updates: Just like on any of the other social networks, the idea is to share valuable information with your network. Have you just published a blog post? Or read an interesting article? Or viewed in inspiring video on Youtube? Then just share it with your network on LinkedIn! Most of the time you'll find a 'LinkedIn share button' but if you don't, you can always post it manually.
      
   2. Use Groups for discussions or to share your content: Groups are an excellent way to position yourself as a thought leader in your field by participating in interesting discussions or sharing your blog posts on relevant groups.
      
   3. Recommendations: When you recommend a person on LinkedIn, that recommendation gets seen by your network and the other person's network. There's no better way for increasing your visibility. Well, maybe receiving a great recommendation would top that, but in order to receive you need to give first, we all know that.
      
   4. Comment on other people's status updates: Last but not least, interact with your connections via your newsfeed. You can like, comment on and share people's updates. With each interaction you are increasing your visibility, since you'll appear on the newsfeed of your connections.


4. Profile views and outreach
   Views are nice, but connections are better. So if someone has viewed your profile, but didn't actually invite you to connect, maybe the person was just too shy to reach out to you. Why don't you take the first step, invite them to connect and personalize the default LinkedIn message by saying something like "I've noticed you took a peek at my profile and I did the same. Why don't we connect here? I'd love to add you to my network". Once in your network, your connection will now receive your updates on their newsfeed.

Would you like to know more about how to use LinkedIn for your business? During the month of June I'm running The LinkedIn Challenge: every other day you will receive a FREE LinkedIn tip, directly to your inbox. Curious? Find out more here

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