People Say: What are your LinkedIn Tips and Tricks?

With more than 90 million users worldwide, LinkedIn has established itself as the premier social networking site for professionals. LinkedIn is the ultimate social platform for professionals: in addition to making connections, you can get introductions, obtain recommendations and collaborate with hundreds of industry professionals and peers in your network.

Bellow you may find some tips and tricks propelling people toward success in LI. Feel free to take them on board if you are willing to take 100% advantage of LinkedIn.

Eric Saint-Guillain, Independent Financial Consultant and Interim Manager advises:
«First, complete your profile with all your professional experiences with clear job descriptions, and put your strong points in evidence. Try to have recommendations from different relationship partners (customers, former colleagues, managers) in order to increase your e-reputation.
Participate also to groups and to question and answers. The quality of your questions and answers is much more important than the quantity. Other important principle from networking and not only applicable to Linkedin: provide services or advices to your network partners without expecting something in exchange. Good partners will come back to you one day or another.»

«LinkedIn helps you build and maintain your network of professional relationships.
You will get out of LinkedIn what you put into it, thus:
– Complete your profile so others can know you better. Your Summary should be a WOW piece since that is what people look at first.
– Use the Outlook Toolbar to LinkedIn your existing contacts to grow your network.
First time through, only invite those with the blue LI symbol that indicates they are already on LI.
– Play around with “Settings” to see what is best for you.
– ALWAYS personalize an invitation (if you can) to reflect where/when/how you met or the common ground or reason you wish to connect. Make it easy for the person to remember you and accept your invitation.
– Get active in Q&A so that folks understand you better.
– Join relevant groups and get involved with people that you can connect with and get to know.»
Bryan C Webb, P. Eng.
President/CEO at Norton Scientific Inc

«1. Make sure your profile can turn a viewer into a visitor to your website.
2. Participate in groups. Answer questions. Update your status. Comment on others.
3. Don’t ever spam.»
Mike Seidle
CTO at VPS

«The wonderful thing about LinkedIn is you can get more personable than you can on your resume. It is the perfect tool to “toot your own horn without blowing it”. Here are just of few items that I advise people to do to get maximum exposure on both LinkedIn and their Google search:
• Profile – Building a complete profile that emphasizes on your strengths.
• Contacts – Connect with people you trust and that have the same goal you do for LinkedIn.
• Groups – Don’t only join groups but get involved in their discussions.
• Jobs – Download the JobInsider Toolbar to save you time and have your resources at hand.
• Companies – Follow companies and stay on top of their changes.
• Events – Register for networking events.»
Phyllis Steele
Corporate Administration

«1. You will not go far without a 100% complete profile (photo, 3 recommendations, and keyword-rich summary). When people do a search on LinkedIn for someone with your skills/experience, you want to show up, so make sure all applicable keywords are in your summary.
2. The heart of networking is giving when you have the opportunity. So find or even create opportunities to give, through groups or Q&A.
3. LI is a great vehicle for personal branding. Between its SEO effectiveness and various Applications (portfolio displays for artists, blog integration, etc), there’s tremendous opportunity to tell the world you exist and why we should care.»
Ed Han

«1) Every 4-6 weeks send a brand agnostic resource to your network
2) Be a matchmaker and help introduce people who need to know each other.
3) When you start a discussion, don’t start it and run. Circle back and make sure you actually facilitate a discussion.
4) Everyone’s favorite subject is them, not you so look for social cues in their status updates, their reading list, trip it, perhaps they blog etc.
5) Spend the 30 seconds to actually write an invitation to connect instead of the always lame LinkedIn Invitation Template.
6) Don’t just accept invites, write a note and, get this . . . be “social”
7) Understand that whether you have 10 connections or 10,000 they are totally useless until you move these virtual relationships to real time. »
Paul Castain

So these are I think quite valuable tips and tricks from LI members. Feel free to leave a comment with your favorite LinkedIn tricks.