Great LinkedIn Strategies That Really Work

Most likely, you understand the value of LinkedIn (at least, to some extent) and you are trying to use it as much as possible for your business. That may or may not be working very well for you. It really all depends on what you are doing and how those features apply to your particular business. However, there are some less-well-know features and tricks that may work extremely well for you. They are, in many cases, a well-kept secret.
LinkedIn and its amazing potential
You may use the free version of LinkedIn (don't worry, you are not alone; many, many people do the same thing) or you may feel that having access to additional features on LinkedIn are worth paying for so you have a subscription to the premium version of the tool. Well, you may be correct when it comes to some of the features that you are using for your business. Most likely, you are using a combination of features that are part of the premium version and some that everyone who is a part of LinkedIn is allowed to use without paying a penny.
Leveraging LinkedIn Groups
By now, it is probably safe to assume that you understand the importance of not only posting content on a frequent, consistent basis but also the importance of syndicating that content so that many other people are able to benefit from what you are writing, sharing, offering, etc.
You may or may not be aware of the fact that in LinkedIn (this is true of the free and the premium versions), you are allowed to join up with 100 groups. It certainly makes the most sense that those 100 groups (or, however, many you choose to join) should all be relevant and appropriate for you and your business and brand. When it comes to your groups on LinkedIn, the important elements that you will want to capture are how may people have viewed your LinkedIn profile, how many connections you have on LinkedIn, how many groups you have joined, and whether you use the direct messaging feature on a regular basis to communicate with your connections.
The advantages that LinkedIn offers you
If you take advantage of all that LinkedIn has to offer (we will be discussing those secrets in a little while), you will begin to embrace the fact that LinkedIn enables you to gather information on other businesses and people, communicate with people who you knew at some point on a professional level. You may have lost touch with those people but perhaps it is now the time to reconnect with them. LinkedIn also enables you to establish new relationships with people whom you hope to do business with at some point.
Aside from LinkedIn's wonderful features in general, there are several different things that you can do, which will produce a positive result for you, and which you may not have considered or even realized existed.

• Evaluating your competition: LinkedIn allows you to gather intelligence on your competitors by simply conducting a search with the names of those businesses. Once you have put in the name, the tool will generate a list of positions within the company. Once you have that information at your fingertips, you can get a handle on who works at that company and that will tell you where the strengths of that particular business lie. By looking at the number of people in any given competing business (including the positions that those people hold), you can get to know exactly what level of competitor that business is for you.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9302781