LinkedIn’s advantage over other social networking sites is its culture of professionalism. There’s a strange juxtaposition using a corporate Facebook page – trying to present a professional brand the same place people take quizzes about what Disney princess they are. The same can be said for Twitter, which is used to share minutiae, profundity, and everything in between.

LinkedIn, however, doesn’t really cater to that type of discussion – although it’s certainly tried. About a year ago (although I could be totally off on that; I only remember it about a year ago) LinkedIn began offering applications for users. They could connect their Twitter account, blogs, and other networks all from their LinkedIn account. There didn’t seem to be any real purpose in this, especially since I wouldn’t want any potential employer to see the kind of stuff I tweet about.

This, in my experience, is the huge downside to LinkedIn; they don’t really know what they are. They don’t seem to be entirely sure what service they’re offering to their users, but instead just seem to be piggybacking off other current trends.

I bring up all of this because LinkedIn is preparing to IPO. They’ve been able to generate a huge amount of buzz, and the expected initial price of their stock has risen significantly over the past year.

Now, I don’t know much of anything about the stock market or IPO or stuff like that, but it seems odd to me that people are willing to invest so much into something that may or may not pan out.

To effectively use online marketing to grow your business, start with the online community network which is specifically targeted at connection business and corporate individuals around the world, and build yourself a LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn is a unique online community, and you can’t approach it with the same casual tongue and cavalier attitude you use on the social online networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Instead, you need to carefully consider the following tips to ensure your business reaps the rewards of your LinkedIn profile.

1 – Complete your profile

LinkedIn users are often more discerning in making connections than those Facebook users you will see with hundreds, if not thousands of ‘friends’. Therefore, you need to make sure your own profile is descriptive, appealing and interesting, to encourage a wide network of useful connections.

The LinkedIn profile structure gives you ample room to highlight your expertise and interests, where you use the standard framework of the site to add your own information. You can extensively profile your career and also make mention of your current position, past positions and education. You can also have other LinkedIn users offer their recommendations of your services or business, for all users to view. Also part of your LinkedIn profile is a list of the connections you have made with others, and the websites which relate to your business which can include your blog and social media sites.

2 – Target your connections

Just like other online communities, LinkedIn is all about making connections, and it is an easy and effective way to make and maintain contact with businesses and individuals who can help your business, or eventually become customers. Therefore, as soon as you create a LinkedIn account, start targeting the people you want as part of your network.

Your networking plan may target individual customers, companies or certain positions within a range of companies, and LinkedIn allows you to search users by their industry, their current or previous job title, or even by post code. Once you have identified the people you want to target to become part of your network use the most trusted route to make contact, and that is through a first degree connection – asking the person to connect with you. You can also ask for a referral if you are already familiar with the person.

3 – Use LinkedIn to enhance SEO

Take the time to carefully complete your LinkedIn profile for appeal to other users, as well as to search engines. Anything your business lists online needs to be search engine optimised from your website to your You Tube video and your LinkedIn job description to your recommendations. When clients and potential customers search for your business or your industry, you want to be able to saturate the search results with your business presence, so make sure that your LinkedIn profile is just another place online pointing to your business. You can even employ the services of an SEO copywriter to help enhance and target the text in your profile.

4 – Keep updated on your network

The LinkedIn Network Updates email is sent every week, so make sure that you are opted in on your email settings. This is an important message you need to filter from the hundreds of other emails you receive each week as it summarizes the important posts and changes your network has made in the previous week.

You can view changes to a profile if one of your connections has landed a new job, or view the new connections made to see if there is one useful to you too. There are also polls and apps which can be highlighted through the network updates email, all delivered in an easy to read and digest format. Also remember that making changes to your profile and sharing an update on LinkedIn will keep you in your network’s mind as they read their weekly updates about you.

5 – Connect with other decision makers

As you work to grow your business using your LinkedIn network, you are the one driving the campaign, making the decisions and initiating the networking. However, not everyone on LinkedIn is in the same position of control within their company that you are, so make sure that you understand that connecting to someone in a company you’d like to work with won’t necessarily get your foot in the door if that person doesn’t have any decision making abilities.

Instead, look at who is the decision maker in the business, and who can influence decisions about whether your services are adopted, and find a way to connect to them. Look at the job titles of each person within an organization, as well as getting more accurate information from others within the company.

6 – Ask for recommendations

The recommendations which other users make about you become a permanent fixture on your LinkedIn profile page. Therefore, every time you work with a satisfied client, ask them to write a recommendation for you. Then, anyone who visits your LinkedIn profile will see these glowing words, and word of mouth is after all an excellent form of advertising.

7 – Follow your customers and their career

Since LinkedIn creates personal profiles, not linked to a company, when your connections change jobs they remain a contact, but move to a new company. It can be useful for your networking to remain aware of these changes as a contact moving to a new company can give you access to a whole new client base in that company, where you never had a lead in before.

It can also be important to have more than one contact in a company because while a contact moving to a new company provides a leg in somewhere new, you have lost your connection to their old company – unless you maintain contact with people there too.

8 – Share expertise on LinkedIn

As a business owner it is important to keep up to date with the latest technology, news ideas and information in your industry and the business world and you can use LinkedIn answers to search a rich resources base, or pose your own question to seek the help and advice of other users.

You can also begin to position yourself as an expert in your chosen field by responding to questions which relate to your area of expertise. Users are then able to rate answers, and the more Best Answer rating you receive, the greater your reputation as an expert will grow, and so too will the confidence clients and potential clients have in your business.

Alban has been using Linkedin for business development. When he is not looking for new connections, Alban is a contributing writer at Home Loan Finder

• Plan each day. Use a planner or online calendar to help you see what appointments you have each day so that you don’t over book yourself. Also consider having a daily to-do list included in your daily planner or calendar. Seeing what needs to be done each day can help focus your energy and keep you on track.
• Prioritize. Many people unknowingly spend a lot of time on things that are not very important. For example, you may spend a large amount of time checking emails or updating your social network profiles (Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin etc.) and checking on friends there when you have much more important tasks to complete. Having a prioritized list can help you stay focused on the things that will help you build your business.
• Say “No”. When non-essential things come up that will take a lot of your time and make it so that you can’t accomplish many of your tasks, simply say no to them. Sure some of those non-essentials will be more fun than your important tasks, but you need to ask yourself if they will help build your business; if they don’t gracefully decline.
• Delegate. This is one of the secrets to some of the most successful people in the world. See, no matter how organized and focused you are, there are still only 24 hours in a day. Sometimes you just can’t do everything on your own; when that is the case, let others who are capable help you out. You’ll find that you can reduce a great amount of stress by delegating to trusted helpers.
• Practice the 10-minute rule. As you build your business, there will be important tasks that need to be done, that you simply despise. However, rather than avoiding them, work on them for 10 minutes every day until you either finish the task, or learn not to hate it so bad.
• Get plenty of sleep, have a healthy diet and exercise regularly. Maintaining good health not only increases your ability to focus, but also reduces “sick days” and “lazy days”; those where you really can’t get much done even if you try.