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A social media community that should not be ignored is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional networking site where members can post their resume and where their personal profiles can be linked to the business profiles of companies for whom they have worked.

Here are some good reasons why you and your business can benefit from LinkedIn. LinkedIn has grown to 100 million members worldwide in over 200 countries. Over half of these members live outside of the United States with more than 3 million members in Canada.

Create a LinkedIn profile for yourself if you don’t already have one and fill it out completely. Be sure to include a professional picture of yourself and both your professional and non-work related experiences as part of your profile. Having a picture and a little bit about your personality will help you differentiate yourself. You can even customize your personal LinkedIn profile URL with your name. Search for other people on LinkedIn that you actually know and send them an invitation to join your network.

To create a company page, start with this link. Once your profile has been created, other current and past employees can link their profiles to the company’s profile. Only employees with a valid email registered to the company domain can be an administrator or for more control, you can designate specific users to also be administrators.

A company LinkedIn profile has four sections: overview, careers, products & services and analytics. The overview tab is what you see first. This is where your uploaded company logo image will display along with your company description. You can post job opportunities in the careers section and in your services tab you can upload banner images and create descriptions of different products and services your company offers. The analytics section is only available to administrators and provides helpful information about traffic visiting your company’s profile.

LinkedIn has many features that can be useful. You can add your Twitter and blog feeds show YouTube videos to your company page. You can join or create groups in LinkedIn on specific industry topics and you can ask for and give recommendations. You can also get LinkedIn content in an RSS feed.

LinkedIn has options for a paid, premium account with enhanced features as well as advertising on their site. LinkedIn ads work in a similar way to Facebook ads with a bidding process (described in our previous blog).

Sources:
http://mashable.com/2011/03/24/linkedin-overview-infographic/
http://marketing.linkedin.com/sites/default/files/attachment/LinkedinCompanyPageGuide_Mar2011_1.pdf
http://learn.linkedin.com/company-pages/
http://www.copyblogger.com/linkedin/