With over 380 million registered users in over 200 countries and territories, more than four million companies with LinkedIn Company Pages, and professionals signing up at a rate of more than two new members per second, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network.

It is, therefore, imperative that you to create a presence for you or your company on LinkedIn to develop your business and earn better ROI. If, however, you haven’t done so yet, follow the guidelines given below to enjoy the benefits offered by LinkedIn.

>> Get an effective profile picture – Needless to say, your profile picture proves to be one of the most significant elements of your LinkedIn presence. But here also are a few procedures that you need to follow, such as:

• Choose a photo that looks like you – Don’t try to post a ten-year old photo of yours when you had grown a beard and looked like a hippie. In that case, people won’t be able to recognize you , creating credibility problem. In other words, make sure that your LinkedIn profile picture is up-to-date (not more than a couple of years old) and mirrors your general look that includes glasses (if you wear regularly), hairstyle, makeup, etc.  
• Make sure your face takes up more than 60% of the frame – Your LinkedIn profile picture is not an ad for a particular brand of sport shoes or highlight the effects of Ray Ban sun glasses on a teardrop face. What you need to do is to crop the picture from the top of your shoulders to just above your head so that your face fills the frame, showing off that pretty smile.
• Wear what you’d wear to work everyday – Don’t wear any outlandish jacket or any dandy dress while posing for LinkedIn snap. Instead wear the same type of clothes that you are likely to wear while going to work. This will help people recognize and communicate with you instantly.

 

>> Document how you have met people – You must have noticed a special LinkedIn feature called “How you met” located under your connections’ profile details. This, incidentally, is a great area to store how you have met people at networking or events or meetings,

Note down whatever you had talked about; what had interested people mostly; how did they interact with you. Once your connections start increasing, finding and retaining personal touch of a smaller network will be of vital importance.

>> Be ruthless, don’t connect with everyone – Cluttering your network could prove ruinous to your reputation. Export your connections and ‘de-link’ all and sundry that are not known to you. Get rid of anyone who is just a personal friend or casual contact. It is perfectly alright to start with a small number of reliable contacts. Treat them as your core connections which will help your network to grow appreciably.

>> Treat your profile as your sell sheet – You need to halt people when they click on your profile while encouraging them to self-discover why they need you. One way of achieving this involves using a few ‘pain’ questions in your summary sheet. These ‘pain’ questions will be the problems your customers are likely to tell you so that you may be able to solve these.

>> Join groups where your customers are – If your customers are in your group, they can be your free salespeople.  They are the ones that will back up your posts, will like your posts, will spread your posts, etc.  They help you sell third party.

>> Share news from LinkedIn Pulse – If you fail to find what to post, go to Linkedin Pulse (LinkedIn’s news feature) and find some news to share.  Don’t just randomly share crap.  Share what your connections would truly be interested in.  When you do this, Linkedin Today showcases your profile as one of the people that spread the news.  This gives you additional exposure outside your own network.

>> Keep contact details listed – It goes without saying that we always try our best to keep our contacts up to date. One of the easiest ways to share the details is through LinkedIn.

While many get communication forwarded from LinkedIn to their regular email accounts, it seems others often fail to do so. So, it is preferable to get them listed so that people could find you and connect.

Conclusion:

Apart from using LinkedIn for developing business, create a LinkedIn Company Page to raise brand awareness, promote career opportunities, and educate potential customers on your products and services.