How Your Small Business Can Succeed Using LinkedIn

1. Set your company apart. Keep a detailed company profile to present a clear vision of your company to the world. Your competitor’s vague profiles will pale in comparison. LinkedIn recently partnered with BusinessWeek to show links to LinkedIn company profiles when they are mentioned in its articles.

2. Showcase your expertise. Answer questions in your subject area and encourage your employees to do so also. Prospective clients will love to see who is the thought-leader in your area and when your answers are highly rated, they know who to call for the next job.

3. Keep your connections strong. Utilize your new, current, and past connections. LinkedIn was designed to network, so utilize those connections to find new clients, search for new talent, and get business in unexpected ways. Stay updated with their status changes and keep them updated with yours.

4. Stay on top of the latest in your industry. What better way to keep a pulse on the ideas and trends in your industry than in a discussion group? Learn about events and conferences, leads and prospects, new products and services, and other information to keep you ahead of the curve.

5. Find great service providers. Utilize LinkedIn’s service providers page to find people who come highly recommended from people you respect. Typically, we rely on the opinions of others to find a good provider through word-of-mouth—with LinkedIn it’s on-the-page.

6. Discover new talent. Comb through your network to find great new talent or utilize the Jobs page to recruit new people to your organizations.

Adapted from How to Succeed in Business Using LinkedIn: Making Connections and Capturing Opportunities on the World’s #1 Business Networking Site by Eric Butow and Kathleen Taylor (AMACOM 2008).