I recently read a really good book about LinkedIn called LinkedWorking by Frank Agin and Lewis Howes. If you are serious about using LinkedIn or are simply curious as to how to maximize its effectiveness, this is a book you should definitely consider picking up.

In the book, Agin and Howes give real success stories about people that have used LinkedIn to grow their business. There really isn’t a right way or a wrong way to use LinkedIn. Rather, its picking a strategy that works for you and doing it consistently.

Here are a few tips that I got from the book and am implementing now:

1. Have a plan of action and do it consistently
2. Join as many groups as possible. LinkedIn limits you to 50 groups. Make sure that they are spread among different interests for best results. Visit the groups and if the group is inactive, drop it and find one that’s better. Alternately, you can talk to the moderator and take over the slow moving group.
3. Better yet, start your own group if you have the time.
4. Use Linkedin Answers. You will meet some great people and help people in the process.
5. Find out your local events and post them to events. Invite your local connections to them.
6. Get and use the Firefox LinkedIn plugin
7. Send helpful newsworthy items to your contacts. Also post your best content in LinkedIn’s Groups. Get people engaged.

I also changed my profile since getting the book. You should add the keyword of your business to your profile in several locations. The video below explains it a lot better than I can. After using the tips from the video below, I got my profile to #3 in the US for the term “SEO”. Nice!

There is some talk as to whether its better to have a lot of contacts you don’t know well or just a few contacts that you know quite well. I’ve decided to take the “lot of contacts” approach. I joined some open networker groups and in a short time grew my contacts from around 300 to now having over 1800. It’s been well worth it as I’m getting more leads and partnership opportunities than ever before.

One of these contacts, Darrell O’Dea sent me a free ebook called Breaking the “Linkedin 500 Barrier”. It’s a great 60+ page book and you can download it here.

I hope you really enjoyed these tips and if you aren’t connected to me on LinkedIn, please feel free to contact me.