LinkedIn is the preeminent business social network and a place where most business professionals already have a presence.

The key is making your LinkedIn presence work for your business!

Neal Schaffer is a Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer two years in a row and creator of the AdAge Top 100 Global Marketing Blog Windmill Networking (recently rebranded as Maximize Social Business), Neal is a global social media speaker who also teaches as part of the Rutgers University Mini Social Media MBA Program. As an author, Neal is best known for his definitive book on social media strategy creation, implementation, and optimization “Maximize Your Social: A One-Stop Guide to Building a Social Media Strategy for Marketing and Business Success” (Wiley).

Neal has also published two other award-winning social media books:

Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing and Windmill Networking: Maximizing LinkedIn.

I was privileged to meetup with Neal recently at the New Media Expo (#NMX) conference in Las Vegas where we sat down and recorded a concise interview on maximizing your LinkedIn presence.

Listen to the Podcast:

Subscribe to my podcast:

via iTunes:  Halftime Mike on iTunes  | Android users via RSS  | Listen on Stitcher.

Key Steps to Maximizing your LinkedIn profile:

1. Start with optimizing your profile

• Keys for your profile:
  • Use a professional photo.
  • Be intentional about your headline.
  • Your name, photo, and headline are your "brand" presentation on LinkedIn!
  • Differentiate yourself in your summary from others, showcase your uniqueness.
  • It's just like Facebook, how you present yourself matters. People do business with people, so present your best personal points forward.
  • However, it's different from Facebook.  People search for business needs!
  • Just like they Google search, LinkedIn search is used often to find vendors, suppliers, and industry leaders.  So be sure to help your profile be found by creating more data points in LinkedIn search by listing all of your former employment places. (Neal takes his profile all the way back to high school. You never know what former classmate  is now CEO of a large organization!)

2. Increase your Connections

• Connect with everyone you know!
  • Connect with friends
  • Connect with clients
  • Be sure to connect with people you meet at events

This helps expand your audience and in particular your "visibility", because when you post an update on LinkedIn your entire network has the opportunity to potentially see that update.  This means that the more connections you have, the more visibility of what you are doing is available to a larger audience.

3. Engage Regularly

Try to be active each day on LinkedIn by sharing some nugget as an update that can be of value to your network.

Some social media tools like Buffer, allow you to schedule a post to your LinkedIn profile ahead of time for example.  The key is to offer real value from your expertise and experience.  Do not sell, simply offer value.

Final Tip:

Whenever possible personalize your invitation to connect on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has some automatic methods to help you increase your connections including "People you may know" that invites you to push a button.  When this is done, there is no chance to personalize the invite.  So, if you don't know the person well, it is more important to be able to customize the invite.  Search for them on LinkedIn and then use the ability to personalize a message instead.

Resources from Neal Schaffer:

NEW! Neal was invited by LinkedIn to contribute to a new eBook "Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to LinkedIn".

Download the ebook here: Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to LinkedIn

Books by Neal: 

Maximize Social Business - Most recent, published in September 2013

Create and maintain a successful social media strategy for your business!

LinkedIn Books:

Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing

Windmill Networking: Maximizing LinkedIn

Download this Halftime Mike episode:

[powerpress]

Subscribe to my podcast:

via iTunes:  Halftime Mike on iTunes  | Android users via RSS  | Listen on Stitcher.

Hangout with Mike and Neal at Social Media Marketing World this March in sunny San Diego! Learn more >>

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