LinkedIn is a valuable social network geared towards gaining professional contacts. It is a gold-mine of prospecting opportunities for any sales representative willing to take the time to understand it and use it correctly. The following list provides seven rules anyone in the sales profession should keep in mind when using LinkedIn as a prospecting tool.

1. Make sure personal profile is always up-to-date. You want to provide as much information in an efficient manner to prospects who might be viewing your profile for future business. Your LinkedIn profile should include a link to your company website, as well as any other business social media links. Many prospects will want to “check out” what services you provide and more details about your clients and business before they contact you in order to not waste their valuable time.

2. Run an internet search on businesses that may benefit from product or service offerings. On many company websites you may find names of managers/leaders to connect with. Most management people, those who make buying decisions, will be on LinkedIn. Having a social connection can prove much easier for you to gain appointments with leaders without having to go through their gatekeepers first. People tend to manager their own individual social network accounts rather than have them monitored by someone else.

3. Help out contacts because reciprocity works. Whenever one of your LinkedIn contacts meets with you or arranges an introduction for you, be sure to thank them. Also, get into the habit of giving your contacts endorsements and more importantly references. LinkedIn makes endorsing other’s skills of others easy and adding personal references shows you really know the professionalism of others.

4. Research new contacts before accepting an invitation to connect. Checking out the potential LinkedIn contact will ensure they are a qualified fit for your business. In other words, you can receive random invites from people who would not further your business opportunities or who may only want to build their own contact list. In those cases, it would not be to your advantage to connect. With that said, think about their possible connections in their company too. Just because they are not in upper management, they still could be a good person to connect with due to the fact that they can link you to an appropriate decision-maker.

5. Check out the connections of those already connected to. When you have connections, LinkedIn can let you know others whom they have recently connected to. Be sure to review the recent connections as they might be potential customers in businesses you have not thought of yet. Many people have friends that are in upper management positions at other companies and that can work to your advantage.

6. Join groups that would enable more business prospect matches. Joining specific LinkedIn groups that are in your target environment or industry will increase your chances in identifying true prospects. You can be as specific or vague as you like in these group additions and can also go back in and add or delete groups to increase your target. Sign-up for digests of group posts so you can keep track of questions asked and provide solutions to get you noticed.

7. Realize that other social media sites are for personal interaction. Keep your LinkedIn account professional to increase the chance for potential business opportunities. In other words, keep family and friends off your contacts here unless they can further business opportunities for you. For example, if you have a family member that can provide prospects, then by all means have them on your LinkedIn. If not, then you should choose another social media site to interact with them.

Sales professionals who use the preceding seven rules should easily the common sense provided in them and better understand how they can use it as a great prospecting tool to increase sales. Sales representatives should take advantage of the social network of professional connections LinkedIn offers and the functionality it can provide to find the golden opportunities that may be waiting there

Lord, where do I even Start with this one!

My fellow ladies. I’m disappointed and utterly disgusted. Why? Because LinkedIn has become an online version of a New York City street.

When I joined LinkedIn, I did so because I wanted to network with other professionals and further my career. But instead, LinkedIn has become a go-to place for guys to yell at me about my looks rather than my portfolio.

I’ll elaborate.

Here’s a LinkedIn message a friend of mine received last week. My friend is an attractive blonde, UCSB graduate, and tech recruiter in San Francisco. She had never met or heard of this guy before – this message was entirely out of the blue.

Subject: Cute Smiles

What a cute smile you have on here (on a nice profile) you look resplendent in such a way that intrigues everyone that views your profile. I was actually browsing through the list of my connections when I came across yours, pulsed and couldn’t resist to say hi having seen such unique beauty.

I sincerely apologize for writing such personal message to you as I understand that this Professional Networking site prohibits it, but just like I said, I couldn’t resist to say hi.

Please do you mind staying in touch? I would love to know more about you.

Hope to hear from you soon.

WARMEST THOUGHTS.

If this had been said in the workplace, it would be classified as sexual harassment.

While many of us will probably just laugh it off, why treat a professional networking site any less professional than the workplace?

Females have worked hard and come so far to be treated equally at work.

Now, this isn’t to say women aren’t hitting on guys on LinkedIn, too. And not all men are creepy LinkedIn nerds. This is just my personal experience. However, after speaking with a few friends of mine, I KNOW this happens regularly with a lot of women.

Guys (and girls), if you find yourself wanting to hit on someone, that’s a-okay. We all need love.

Only next time you want to get your cyber creep on, follow these directions:

Close LinkedIn

Download Tinder

Download OKCupid

Download Coffee Meets Bagel

Troll as much as your heart can handle

See how many alternatives there are? They are sites actually intended for dating. Unlike LinkedIn. Hell, OKCupid even has a filter so you can find someone within a specific income bracket. See, it’s a lot easier to keep the online dating messages within an online dating site.

Unless, of course, LinkedIn has a “hot woman” and “at least an 8 out of 10” filter. Possibly that’s a Premium feature?

And of course, if you want an even more dependable piece of advice, GET OFF THE COMPUTER! Hit on a girl in person. As long as it’s friendly and funny, we love that shit!

One last little thing

Hence, to prove my point, I did a little experiment of my own.

Simply by posting one modeling picture of myself once a day for the past 5 days, I have received over 1600 new connection request. ALL FROM MEN! My profile views went up from 200 a day to well over 1,000 a day. And of course the utmost disrespectful messages I have ever seen in my lifetime! It is beyond deplorable. But hey, at least creeps are consistent!

Please feel free to comment, good or bad.

Businesses which use LinkedIn to grow are deliberate about planning for success.

The other day, I was approached by a business man who said he hadn’t yet seen any economic results from his LinkedIn profile. When asked how often he reviewed his plan and engaged with others on LinkedIn, he said “I don’t have a plan but I visit the site every six months”. Unfortunately this is a common scenario.

Many businesses don’t know how to effectively use LinkedIn as a lead generation tool. To help solve this problem, I’ve compiled a listing of LinkedIn best practices to help you accelerate revenue growth this year.

1. Make a list of 10 Thought Leaders

Identify 10 thought leaders in your industry who share high quality content which is valuable to your clients. Include friends and partners who will help you by cross promoting. Connect with them on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter, join their Google or Triberr groups. Set up a process to review their content and re-post to your network.

2. Refresh Your Monthly LinkedIn Goals

What are your LinkedIn lead generation goals for this month? How did you do last month? Now is a great time to review goals, and fine tune strategies and metrics. What get’s measured get’s done.

3. Identify 3 Industry Leaders

Create a list of the top 3 leaders in your industry that you would like to meet. If you’re in sales, these could be prospects. If you’re looking for a job, it could be employers. If you’re a business consultant think about non-competitive joint venture partners. Make a list, and then go learn about them. LinkedIn and Google are great places to get started.

4. Review Social Dashboards

Evaluate the effectiveness of your current social dashboards. Are you using them effectively? Do you need to refresh settings, or adjust posting criteria? Is the expense a worthwhile investment? If you are not yet using a social dashboard consider signing up for one. My favorite is Hootsuite. It’s easy to use, will post to a multitude of accounts and is less than the cost of a cup of designer coffee every month.

5. Download LinkedIn Connections

Do it now. It only takes two minutes. Go to your LinkedIn contacts list and at the bottom of the page, you’ll see “Export Connections”. Export to outlook and save as a .CSV file. It can be opened in Excel. Why is this important? Connections are a business asset. LinkedIn has closed profiles without notice so protect your asset. While this is unlikely, disasters are equally unlikely yet you still buy insurance. Think of this as free insurance: set up a reminder to download your list.

6. Protect Your LinkedIn Asset

Download your LinkedIn profile. You’ve worked hard to craft just the right message, and gathered details from the past like years graduated, papers published, and accomplishments. Log into LinkedIn and go to your profile view. Just to the bottom right side of your profile photo is an edit drop down menu. Look for the ‘export to PDF’ choice. Click on it and it will save to your machine.

7. Update Your Profile Summary

Go to your profile summary and read it from a client’s view point. Is it compelling? Does it inspire you to reach out and connect? Is it memorable? Do you feel like it’s written exactly for you the reader? Is it written in first person? Can you easily find their contact information? Update based on information you learned during the last month about your industry, or clients. Did you lead a webinar? Teach or take a class? Help a client achieve an amazing goal?

LinkedIn is an amazing social media channel for professionals. You are probably well aware of that; however, what you may not be aware of is how much LinkedIn actually has to offer. It offers some features that are not so well-known but if you start to use them, you will not understand how you ever did without them in the past.

For the benefit of the user
It is not uncommon for business people to use LinkedIn in the most basic manner. That may be because they feel that they get what they need from those features and everything is fine or it might be because they are not aware of how much LinkedIn actually has to offer and how much it can benefit their businesses. Now is the time to delve more deeply into LinkedIn's features, common and less common so that you can bring your business to the next level.

However, it is important for you to understand that those LinkedIn features are not apparent when you go to LinkedIn. You will need to work to find them.

• The recommendations and endorsements feature: When it comes to your professional relationships through social media, recommendations through LinkedIn are an essential contributing factor to your professional success. The same thing applies to endorsements. If a person is trying to find information on what you happen to offer, a great way for that person to determine if you are the person with whom he or she should interact, recommendations and approv will elevate you to the top of the search engine page .

  The reason for that is probably obvious. It gives you and your business credibility and it makes the other person feel that he or she can trust that you know what you are doing because you are positioned as a subject matter expert. The truth is that it is generally pretty simple for you to obtain endors and recommendations. Of course, that is, assuming that you have a strong enough connection with the other person that he or she is willing to give you an endorsement or a recommendation. Of course, you have the control, once the recommendation or the endorsement has been written, to display it or to hide it (and to use it when you feel it will have the greatest impact. If you wish to hide an endorsement or a recommendation , go to profile (at the top of your screen) and select "edit profile."

  Once you have done that, you will see "Skills and Endorsement and it will allow you to make changes to your profile. At that point, you should select" manage endors. "At that point, you can eliminate what the skill (s) that you don't want to show. However, it is important for you to realize that your recommendations create a very important perception in the eyes of the other person. You want him or her to view you as knowledgeable and you want that person to come to you before anyone else when he or she needs what you are offering.

• Contact information tab: In this tab, your online connection can enter his or her contact information. That is a beautiful thing when you want to synchronize your contact list on your smartphone with your contact list on your computer or other devices. Everything will be pulled into the right places. How convenient is that? In some cases, you will even receive an alert about certain pieces of information, such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc. With this tab, the chances of your losing the connection with the other person is slim to none. Indeed, you are probably well aware of how important those connections are.
• A personalized portfolio: The whole idea of ​​using social media is that it gives you a way to stand out against your competition and it allows you to let numerous people know why they should build relationships with you. One of the effective ways to do that is by displaying a sample of your work on your LinkedIn profile.

  If you happen to have a large number of portfolio items, you may want to choose the one that you consider the best. A portfolio should feature the best of your creative talents. Too much may not necessarily be a good thing. There are a few ways to show off what you can do. One is by adding still images. Another is by creating a video or a slide show in which you show off what you can do.

• The feature to show how you are connected to your LinkedIn connections: This tool, which is on your profile page, will allow you to connect with other people who are second-tier (or beyond) connections to you. This is a great way to get to know those people and to begin interacting with them. This feature lets you see your connections' connections.

  In addition to communicating how you are connected to your first-tier connections, it also allows you to see how other people are connected to their first-tier connections. After that, you can go about acquiring introductions to the people with whom you would like to interact.

Conclusion
LinkedIn is a fabulous social media tool that has tremendous capabilities and it is up to you to leverage whatever you feel is effective and appropriate for your particular business. It will be worth your while to study all that LinkedIn has to offer and then you will be in a position to pick and choose what you think will work best for your business.

LinkedIn has many wonderful attributes and a ton of capabilities and possibilities. You may have a LinkedIn account but, perhaps, you are not leveraging it as much as you can or should be. If you haven’t done so already, the first thing that you should do is to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is complete. Undoubtedly, people will check out your profile and you want to make sure that they are able to get to know you through your profile, want to connect with you, and interact and engage.

Leveraging LinkedIn to Manage Your Clients

You may consider your LinkedIn profile a detailed business card. Well, you are correct to a point. However, it is so much more than that and if you are not aware of all (or most) of its potential, it is time for you to become educated about all that LinkedIn has to offer. The fact is that everyone needs to manage their clients, whether you use some sort of sophisticated tool to accomplish that or not. LinkedIn can definitely do that for you. You just need to figure out how to make it work for your business.

When it comes to online social networks, LinkedIn is the one to use for professionals. You probably have all sorts of valuable connections that you may not even be aware of. One of the great things about LinkedIn is that after a person has created a profile, they are generally reachable at that particular URL for eternity. You will most likely find that to be a really great (and helpful) feature. In fact, not only does that information stay the same but it also gives you other valuable information that you will undoubtedly find useful. It tells you when your LinkedIn connections are having birthdays, work anniversaries, etc.

You may be surprised at how far a simple birthday or anniversary wish will go in your relationship with the other person when it comes to your solidifying your relationship with that person. You have probably noticed that there are two versions of LinkedIn: one that is free and one that costs money. In some cases, the one that costs money is superior to the free one. However, in the case of LinkedIn, the free version is perfectly acceptable and the chances are really good that you can get everything that you need from the free version without missing anything.

Turning to your LinkedIn connections for help

You may experience many times when you have a question that plagues you. You may not have the resources for that particular issue and you are not sure where to turn. Well, LinkedIn can certainly help. If you have a question without an answer, all you need to do is post it to your LinkedIn connections. The chances are really good that at least one or two people will respond to you. You may not get the answer that you are looking for but the responses that you do receive may bring you closer to the answer that you need.

You will see that people are generally willing to help you if you need them to. All you need to do is ask. Of course, there will be many people who just don’t know the answer to your question. However, there will also be many people who can offer their help to you. Having a robust network is a wonderfully supportive thing. You can thank LinkedIn for that.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is not only an amazing social network but it is also a wonderful way to manage your customer relationships and it has tremendous capabilities that can really bring your business to the next level. It allows you to connect and stay connected with your valuable online connections. It not only helps you to gather valuable information but it also allows you the ability to make the most of that information and to use it effectively for your business. You should learn about all that it can do and take advantage of all that LinkedIn has to offer.

LinkedIn is a fabulous online networking tool that can help you grow your connections and business.

The problem is because it’s online, there are a lot of lazy people out there who rely on the standard request:

“I’d like to add you to my professional network.”

How many times have you received one of these requests to connect from someone on LinkedIn that you’ve never heard of before?

They’re maddening, aren’t they?

I’m not the greatest at remembering names, so I guess there’s a slim chance that I may have met them at a conference or networking event.

The problem is, by sending LinkedIn’s generic invitation if you’re “unknown” to the recipient, it’s probably going to be ignored.

Make it personal

It’s my understanding that the only way you can personalise your request is if you click on “connect” from the person’s LinkedIn profile from your desktop or laptop. You don’t get the option when using the app.

From my point of view, if you want to connect with me, you need to tell me why.

There are a lot of folks out there that want to make themselves look well connected by sending requests to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

What’s the point in that?

LinkedIn loses its effectiveness as a potential marketing tool if you’re connecting to random people.

No. If you want to get the most out of it and want to connect to certain people, give them a damn good reason why they should accept.

How to be personal

It goes without saying your LinkedIn profile should carry a professional photo of you. Leave the ones of you cycling, running, or dancing on tables for Facebook.

Then you should always start your request with a greeting bearing the recipient’s name (spelt correctly).

Tell them how you know them. Perhaps you have mutual acquaintances, follow each other on Twitter, or met at a networking event, conference etc.

Once you’ve done that tell them why you want to connect with them followed by a short description about what you do.

Finish off with a bit of flattery about their work (not so much that it’s creepy or embarrassing) and sign off in a friendly way.

Personally, if I get the generic connection request, it’s very unlikely I’ll accept (especially if I don’t know the sender) and I’m sure I’m not alone.

If you want to make an impact and some valuable connections, put in the effort to make it personal.

I previously wrote about recognizing influencers in order to increase your business’ reputation. The other side of the coin is how to achieve LinkedIn influencer status yourself so that you can positively influence other businesses. One thing that you should keep in mind is that there is influencer status and then there is influencer status on LinkedIn. The two are not the same thing.

What do you need to do to gain influencer status on LinkedIn?

Of course, in order to go through the process of gaining influencer status, you need to start with content, just like you always do. Not only do you need to create content but you need to create fresh, compelling, engaging content on a consistent basis. The more top-quality content you produce, the higher your status as a LinkedIn influencer will go. It will also help you to boost your professional reputation in general, which is one of the main things that you are after. As is always the case, you will want to stay away from doing a “hard sell” on anyone. You will succeed at selling your products and/or services by building your reputation, credibility, trust, and by positioning yourself as a subject matter expert. Of course, remember that the writing of your content not only needs to be top quality but it also needs to be interesting. You need to connect with your reader on a human/emotional level and the story that you tell with each and every piece of content needs to resonate with your reader.

Getting started

The content that you share with other people should be a combination of curated and original content. If you aren’t sure about the virtues of curated content, the only thing that you need to know at this point is that curated content is beneficial because it widens your perspective and adds value to the postings that you share with other people. Of course, your original content is just as important (if not important) for your business. There are people who feel that clear, concise, short content postings are the way to go. However, there is a lot of merit in posting longer articles as well. One of the positives of a longer post is that you are able to provide details that you just cannot supply if you have a strict word limitation. A longer post will allow you to connect with your reader in a different way than a shorter one. Of course, the issue with a longer post is that the reader has to stick with you for a longer time and you have to hold that person’s attention for a longer time. That is not always easy, of course. However, if your post is really well written and captivates the reader, you should have no problem holding his or her attention. All you need to do is wow the reader with your knowledge and expertise. You can accomplish that in your sleep!

The next step

Once you have written your extraordinary post, that content will establish a connection with your reader. That is the first way to successfully connect with your reader. However, you shouldn’t think that you are home free when it comes to your influencer status. That is only the first step. The second part of your journey is your ability to successfully engage your target audience members. The way to accomplish this is by interacting with your reader. You can leave an interesting comment or a thought-provoking question. You can be confident that other people will respond to you. People love to offer their opinions and if you make them understand that what they think matters to you, you will have them hooked. The more you interact with other people, the stronger your relationship will become with those people. It is important that you take a long, hard look at your content and make sure that the content is appropriate for as broad an audience as possible. Always ensure that your content is appropriate for anyone who might read it and also make sure that you captivate those people who are reading what you are sharing and coming back for more.

Gather followers

Quality versus quantity is a very important concept here. You want to have a relatively wide sphere of influence; however, you need to make sure that those people who you allow into your social circle(s) are connected to you for the right reasons. LinkedIn lets you connect with other people and it lets other people connect with you. That is a part of your journey to becoming a LinkedIn influencer. You can have interactions with other people on topics of your choosing and of theirs. It is very important for you to get a good sense of what other people want to read about and discuss. Your content will be driven by the results of those discussions. It is a great idea to search for other influencers to see how they do things and what makes them influencers. You can learn a great deal from them and you should take whatever makes sense as it applies to your business.

Continue to write

Remember that you need to continually post new content. Once you have established a connection with the other person, they will look forward to reading more and more from you. It is very important that you use a consistent voice in your writing (original writing) and that you do the same with the commentary that you add to curated content. It is not a good idea to simply share curated content without adding your own spin to it. Your contribution to the curated content is the reason that people visit your website. Otherwise, they would just read the article on the author’s website without any involvement from you. Always strive to do as good a job with your content as you possibly can. It will elevate your status on your journey to becoming a LinkedIn influencer and you may even make it to LinkedIn Pulse, which will elevate you even further.

Conclusion

Being a LinkedIn influencer is a wonderful thing for your career. Other business owners are constantly trying to connect with influencers because it helps their business. In turn, being an influencer will help your business and the businesses of other people. Although it requires a lot of effort to become an influencer, it will be well worth it because it will elevate your professional status in so many ways. However, one thing that you need to keep in mind is that although you must accomplish a great deal to reach influencer status, you still need to be invited to hold that position. It is a prestigious position to be in.

As you may or may not know, businesses are quite active across most of the major social networks; Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

In this article, we are going to focus on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is currently the largest professional network in the world, with more than 150 million users across the world.

For anyone who uses LinkedIn on a regular basis, you know how powerful a tool it can be when used correctly.

For those of you who do not know how powerful a tool LinkedIn can be, this is the article for you!

So, for now, let’s start with 3 very important tips:

Tip 1 – Get your profile to 100% and include your keywords. When people type in, for example, ‘Accountant’ in the search bar, if your profile completeness is 100% then you are 40X more likely to show up in search results. What’s more, if you have included your keywords in your profile (without cramming loads in!) then you are even more likely to show up in the search results.

Tip 2 – Groups and Answers are your strongest weapons of attack.If you really want to use LinkedIn to it’s full potential, you will never be able to do this without Groups or Answers. Groups is where you can ask for help, or share information you think the audience would find useful (which helps grow your reputation on LinkedIn as an expert in your field, as well as attracting visitors to your website). Answers are where you can either ask a specific question, or even answer other people’s questions. Put it this way; wouldn’t you be more likely to sign up an accountant who had already helped you with a financial/tax problem without you having to pay them?

Tip 3 – Using LinkedIn Search to create a hit-list of potential customers.LinkedIn’s advanced search features can be extremely useful for you and your business if you know how to use it. You can filter the entire LinkedIn memberbase by industry, company size, seniority level, geographic location, number of staff, and much, much more. After spending a little time with LinkedIn Search, you will develop a hit-list of people who match your ideal client profile. Now it’s time to research them and make contact.

And there you have it; 3 tips that will help you to use LinkedIn to win new customers and grow your business – now get on LinkedIn!

A simple underutilized account will never serve the purpose of the account holder in LinkedIn. Users need to follow simple basic steps to fetch the required attention and visibility for their LinkedIn profiles that make an impressive impact to the visitors.

1. Basic inputs for the profile: A person's LinkedIn profile is the reflection of his / her professional image online. Hence it is important to fill all the required fields of profile basics to convey a positive personality to others.

• To make an impressive visual impact the 'display image' must look professional. It is important to upload an image of higher quality, well-lit head-shots of 200 * 200 pixels.

• The next important step is to customize the 'profile URL' so that people can find you easily. For customizing the 'profile URL' the first step is to click the 'Me' icon at the top of the LinkedIn home page and after that select 'View profile'. The user then needs to click 'edit public profile & URL' to the right of their profile page. The next step is to click the 'Edit' icon next to public profile URL and then inserting the name without spaces and then click 'Save'.

• Another crucial step is to optimize the 'headline' which appears under the name of the profile user as the headline is the most searchable and visible thing. The character limit of this field is 120 and it is important to use relevant keywords that are frequently used by the target audience.

To add or to make any edit in the 'headline' click on the 'Me' icon at the top of the homepage and select 'View profile'. The next step is to click the 'Edit icon and' then enter new content into the intro dialogue box and then click 'save'.

• The next very step is to customize the 'contact information' as it rewards the user with more visibility. Click on the 'Me' icon to add contact information and then select 'View Profile'. Click on the 'Edit' icon in the right hand next to Contact and personal info.

• At LinkedIn, professionals can introduce them and their work and achievements through 'video'. A video is an excellent medium for introduction as it immediately makes a difference with others. One can also upload an introductory video to a host site and then share the link of the video to LinkedIn.

To add video introduction to the LinkedIn profile an user need to click the 'Me' icon and select 'View profile' and then click the 'edit' icon and then scroll down to the 'media' section. Then paste the link to your video and then click 'add'. Then enter title and description of the video in the media dialogue box and then click 'apply' and 'save'.

• The next awaiting thing for the user is to earn 'recommendations and approv'. A user needs to use high volume search phrases to showcase their skills and ability to get endorsed. The first step to get endorsed is to add skills by clicking the 'Me' icon and thereafter select 'View Profile'. Then add new skills in the skills and endorsement section and then click 'Add'. The recommendation is important in building prospects. To get recommendations, click on the 'Ask to be Recommended link', fill out the field and send your request.

• The next big thing is to share the qualification certificates, awards, and professional certificates as it is the vital aspect of a LinkedIn profile.

To add details about qualification, click the '+ sign' in the education section. Enter the details in the dialogue box about your school, colleges, and degrees. One can also add a video that is relevant. To add accomplishments or certifications, click on the '+ sign' in the accomplishment section and select from the list. One can also enter required details in the dialogue box.

2. Refining the communication:
For a LinkedIn profile, it is important to be personable as the user is communicating with the visitor directly. So it is important to write in the first person as if you are speaking directly with the person you are willing to proceed in professional terms.

LinkedIn users can maximize their profile visibility by contributing articles. Open the 'LinkedIn publishing tools' by clicking on the 'Write an article'. To edit the drafts, click the 'Me' icon and then select 'posts and activity'.

For more exposure, you can also share your article on other platforms like Twitter by asking LinkedIn editors to feature your articles tweet "tip @ LinkedIn editors" along with the link to your article.

3. Expanding network:
You can expand your network on LinkedIn by applying several strategies. Use the 'Search' feature to find your target audience or you may also include a link to connect to your e-mail, signature, blog, and website to direct the target audience.

If you are happy with the list of people in your network send them an invitation by clicking 'Add Connection'.

LinkedIn also recommends groups for you to expand your network. This professional social site has all kind of groups that will give you a wide exposure to your target audience.

Start searching for your "Group" by inserting keywords or group name in the search box and click 'search'.

4. Generate prospective inbound links:
Importing inbound links to your LinkedIn profile from anywhere on the web will make your profile more credible. If you publish blog or article on any popular site, link it back to your LinkedIn profile. This will increase your profile appearance in the search results.