LinkedIn For Online Business – How to Manage Your Professional Identity

LinkedIn, a professional networking tool that is 120 million members strong, is a very important ingredient of you social media strategy.  It is also an excellent way to promote your online business. As a business person it provides you with a platform to build and engage with your professional network, to access knowledge, insights and opportunities.

LinkedIn has a free and a paid version and you will need to determine which type of membership that you want. Once you join LinkedIn, there are seven things you should do right away to start managing your professional identity.

1. Complete your Profile: Put up a professional picture on your profile and fill out your profile completely. A complete profile that includes the keywords that you want to be found for, will improve your chances to connect with good people. This is not the time to be private, or anonymous, this is business and you must be who you are and completely honest. Include all your past jobs, your education, your current business information. (Don’t forget to make a company profile too!)
2. Start to network with people that you know: LinkedIn gives you an opportunity to import contacts from your email lists, or else you may want to do a search for people you know.
3. Participate in Groups: Join and participate in groups as often as possible. Joining a group won’t do any good if you don’t participate. Ask questions of the group, answer questions in the group, and offer assistance wherever you can for each group you join. Letting people get to know you, can lead to new connections and new connections can lead to more clients. It’s also fun to participate in groups on LinkedIn.
4. Start a Group: Once you’re established with a lot of connections on LinkedIn, start your own group. Being a leader of a group can establish your expertise in your niche. Create a group for your target market and before you know it, people will be clamoring to be in the group and eventually to buy what you have to offer.
5. Answer Questions: Many groups on LinkedIn are open groups, this means that even if you are not a member of the group, you can answer questions that are asked. Simply do a search within “Answers” using search terms popular for your target market, then answer the questions as expertly and as completely as possible. You can also recommend people within your network to those who ask questions.
6. Ask a Question: Make sure that you also ask questions because this will humanize you and people will trust you more if you also have questions and aren’t just answering them. Be careful not to oversell your products and services during a question. Ask a real question, not a question that is set up for you to demonstrate all your expertise. Letting people feel good about themselves can garner trust in you and encourage people to hire you.
7. Ask for and give referrals and recommendations: When people want to decide whether they want to hire you or buy your products and services, they may want to see how many recommendations you have received from previous colleagues or satisfied customers.

With LinkedIn it’s important to get involved with the entire power of LinkedIn and the LinkedIn community. It’s professional, it’s informative, and if you want to explode your business you can certainly accomplish that with all that LinkedIn has to offer.

And now I would like to invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn and to become part of my online community there.