by Christina Pomoni

Created on: October 07, 2012   Last Updated: October 08, 2012

Today’s competitive business environment calls for a great professional network for personal brand promotion. LinkedIn is a powerful business resource, which hosts more than 175 million members in over 200 countries (as of August 2012). This offers you a huge target group of potential contacts and can provide you with a great opportunity to exponentially grow your network by adding professionals you already know, but also people from different networks who are sharing common contacts.

How can you take full advantage of LinkedIn’s great potential? The following are tips on building a business network on LinkedIn.

1. Optimize your profile

Optimizing your LinkedIn profile means to use appropriate keywords that can improve your search discovery within LinkedIn. Ranking high in search within LinkedIn is very important because it means that fellow professionals appreciate your expertise. To achieve this you need to emphasize on your skills and areas of expertise using the proper keywords. For example, if you are a finance professional with 5 years experience in financial statement analysis, state it in your heading. Besides elaborating in your resume and explaining what your tasks were in relevant job positions, make sure to include in your heading the keywords that best describe who you are. If you are experienced in financial statement analysis do not state financial advisor in your heading because it is too broad.

2. Stay active

According to Lab42, only 33% of registered LinkedIn members visit the site every day and another 33% visit the site every week. However, to keep your network strong and increase visibility you need to commit to staying active. Make sure to update your status on a regular basis - experts recommend three times a day. Share links that apply to your audience’s interests at least once a day. Join groups that are relevant to your professional profile and participate in group discussions three times a week. Connect with new contacts by sending invitations to at least one new person per day. All these tips will help you develop new business relationships and take on new professional opportunities.

3. Participate in group discussions

According to Lab 42, 81% of registered LinkedIn users belong to at least one group. This is an encouraging statistic considering that people have realized the value of LinkedIn groups. However, joining is not enough. You should actively participate in group discussions to fully capitalize on the value

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