Linking in to LinkedIn Effectively
LinkedIn was one of the first social networking tools that I ever joined online. The concept was simple: you know people, those people know people, and maybe, just maybe, a connection of yours might know someone who can help you with a particular problem.
Its search engine is especially useful, allowing you to see people who you might not know directly, but might be able to connect with through someone in your network via an introduction. For example:
- As a sales tool, you can seek out prospects based on a few keywords (e.g. web design, pharmaceuticals, insurance, etc) and see who in your network might know someone who could need the services you offer.
- For job searches, you could look for keywords in the industry and find people in your network to whom you could get introduced that might be able to find you your next dream job.
- If you’re seeking new services for your own business, you can use your network to find a good referral for the service you need. Connecting with someone you need through people you know has an obvious advantage: the referral.
Unlike most other social networks, LinkedIn is driven purely towards the business user. Sure, Facebook and Twitter have business uses associated with them and are, in fact, heavily used by businesses these days to connect with customers, but the intent of LinkedIn is to help you build a picture of your professional network and construct an online resumé of the skills you have and, if applicable, the services your business offers.
So how can you use it effectively as a promotional tool?
- Complete Your Profile – Unlike other social networks where privacy may become a concern, I’d recommend you fill in your LinkedIn profile so that it’s 100% complete. LinkedIn doesn’t ask anything too personal, it just correctly guides you towards filling in the information a business connection might care about.
- Connect – Be sure to build your network. LinkedIn is about giving people in your network the opportunity to see who you else know. You could become a gatekeeper for many people and a valuable point of contact. People have to know you, like you, and if you’re lucky, do business with you.
- Interact – If you’re just going to use LinkedIn as an online contact manager, you will be limited in terms of the way you can interact with the people outside of your network. With the free service, you can only contact people outside of your network via an introduction by someone inside your network. However, there are other ways that LinkedIn can give you the ability to reach beyond the scope of your own personal network.
- Groups – If you join groups relevant to your field, you can create discussions and refer articles that other people might find interesting (including articles that you write). Be sure to participate in the conversation that might arise from one of your links, or look through other links to see if there’s anything on which you can comment.
- Answers – LinkedIn has an area called “Answers,” under which users can post questions they might have pertaining to a particular topic. If you can answer a question based on your expertise or experiences, it builds your credibility both in your network and out.
- Jobs – Helping people find jobs, posting job listings, referring a job to a friend, they’re all well-done on Linked In. If you’re applying to a job, it’s especially neat that LinkedIn allows you to see not only where you’re sending your resume, but also shows you who else you might know in the company through your connections. If you’ve fostered those relationships, you should be in good shape!
- Link in - LinkedIn now allows you to post a status, and that status can be directly linked to your posts on Twitter. You can direct exactly which posts get displayed on your LinkedIn status, or you can have all of your tweets update your LinkedIn status. I’m not sure the latter is appropriate for LinkedIn, but it’s an option.
LinkedIn is unlike other social networking tools because I don’t believe it’s something you have to visit as often as others to build your credibility among your connections. Instead of being like a party, my colleague Cliff Moore at The Brand of “Me” aptly described it as a networking mixer for a Chamber of Commerce. You need to be professional, you have to occasionally attend the mixers, and you have to provide value without expecting anything in return in order to build confidence that you’re the type of person with whom your peers should do business.
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Good article, Mariano. Useful information and very approachable for both beginners and advanced users. BTW, what’s a “URI”?
–David