How To Find New Opportunities on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has been around for a while. In fact, it’s one of the top growing social networks around the globe. Whether you are an entrepreneur or just an employee looking for new opportunities, LinkedIn is the place. I know a lot of folks talk about the importance of taking advantage of Facebook and Twitter, but you are not going to find any better professional social network than LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is different than most other social networks. It’s not a community of friends (like Facebook), and it’s certainly not similar to Twitter. LinkedIn is designed to help you expand your network and find professionals. But there is more to LinkedIn than creating a short profile and joining a few group. If you play your cards right, not only you will find other professionals in your industry, you may even find business opportunities and new projects (e.g. clients).

Here are a few tips on how to put your best foot forward on LinkedIn:

• Create a professional profile: your profile is your first impression on folks who find you on the web or through LinkedIn. Make sure you have information on your skills and recent projects. Add your relevant experience to your work history and don’t forget to mention your education. You should also put something professional in your status box. LinkedIn is not Twitter, and nobody wants to know what you are having for lunch.
• Connect with your past colleagues: don’t wait for others to find you on LinkedIn. Take action and add your former colleagues to your network.
• Join LinkedIn Groups: LinkedIn groups are a great way to connect with others and build your network. Just don’t join them. Participate in them. Post articles. Communicate with others.
• Manage your contacts: thanks to LinkedIn, you have a decent contact management system that you should definitely use to manage your professional networks.
• Add Your blog/websites: if you blog or own a website, you should definitely add it to your LinkedIn account. Make sure you don’t post junk website to your profile. People do check out your profiles.
• Get recommendations: don’t be shy to ask for recommendations on LinkedIn. It’s much easier to get folks to recommend you on LinkedIn. And when someone asks you for a recommendation, don’t suger coat it. Now, it’d be awkward to turn people down, but if you have nothing good to say about someone, then you shouldn’t write a A+ recommendation for them.
• Turn on Applications: LinkedIn is taking a page out of Facebook’s book and focusing on its own applications. You should add your reading list, your blog feed, and even use BlogLinks to connect with other bloggers in your network. You can even share your presentations and slides using these apps. So you should definitely take advantage of them.
• Ask Questions and Provide Answers: the best place to show your skills is in the Q&A section on LinkedIn. Search for what others are asking and provide decent answers. You’d be surprised how many doors you can open for yourself with this method.

There you have it. LinkedIn is an ever changing community, and you can be sure they will add more networking features in the future. But you should make the best of what you already have available on LinkedIn.

Your take: how do you use LinkedIn for networking or business?