To most people LinkedIn is just part of the social media landscape but in this location you will find not only your customers and prospects but employees and competitors as well all interconnected in a web of possibilities. And while the business uses of other social networks are still being explored, here you have one whose original purpose was business networking. With over 100 million plus users in over 200 countries (and getting a new member about every second) there are exponential networking capabilities but how can you make the most of your involvement in this business networking behemoth? It is all about the basics.

Optimize:
Fully optimize your profile. I know it sounds simple but those little nagging completion meters are there to help you. The more information you provide the easier you are going to be to find by potential clients. And don’t just go through the motions to get to that ever elusive 100% mark, make it count.

• Don’ Bury the Lead
  Make the info you provide work for you starting with a strong summary-headline. Think of it like keyword optimization for your website. What is the best way to describe yourself for a search. Are you a Graphic Designer or are you an Atlanta Logo Designer. Once term will pull you up with about a million other people while the other significantly narrows the field
• Show them what you can do
  Make sure to fill out your areas of expertise. You never know what skills a person might be looking for and the more well-rounded you are for the job, the better.
• Give them a Call to action
  Make sure they can contact you. It does not do you any good to show up in all of the searches if people cannot find a way to connect with you once they determine you are the right person for the job. You need to strike while the iron is hot so don’t give it time to cool down while they are trying to figure out the best way to make your brilliance part of their project.
• Let your music be heard
  Request recommendations them from connections you have done business with in the past. Testimonials from satisfied clients or praise from former co-workers can go a long way toward sealing the deal. Anyone can “enhance” their resume to sound better on paper but it is a whole different story when potential clients can hear people singing from the mountain tops about their amazing experience working with you.

Connect:
Making connections is what it is all about but it is more than just names on a list. You need to interact to make the most of the medium.

• Lock and Load
  Add connections from your address book or search people out based on past work history. You have to start building your connections at home before you can expect to be found. And once you make your base connections you can expand your web by reaching out to people they may know. And then they’ll tell two fronds and so on and so on and so on.
• Get Onboard
  And if you are a business owner, get your employees involved and leverage their connections as well because you never know where you might find that next project.
• Follow up
  Keeping top of mind with people only requires you to keep your eyes open. Listen to what your connections are saying and drop a quick note congratulating them on recent promotions or other events notated in their LinkedIn account. It will start a dialog that will make you more memorable.

Socialize:
Get your other social networking involved to help spread the word.

• Twitter
  Integrate your twitter feed into your profile to let people see what you are putting out there and give them an opportunity to follow your musings on a regular basis.
• Blog
  Integrate your blog as well (if you have one) so people get all the info they need about your and what you offer in one place. Give them more than they bargained for and take advantage of the captive audience to dazzle them with your thought leading brilliance.
• Trip-It
  If you travel a lot for business set yourself up on Trip-It so you can easily make sure people know where you are going and how long you will be there. That way you can kill two birds with once stone by setting up meetings with new potential clients while you are in the area.

Contribute:
As with any social network, what you get out of it largely depends on what you put into it so make a contribution.

• Say it don’t spray it
  Use updates to give useful info, not just propaganda. Become a resource for people looking for your expertise. Best case you can become a thought leader on certain subjects and worst case you can provide information that can be a tipping point for determining whether or not your get a call. Either way you can never go wrong with providing useful information.
• Get in with the In Crowd
  You will find a great many groups in Linked-In that cover a multitude of topics from Alumni associations to highly segments industry specific cabals. Find a group that makes sense for you and join. But don’t just join, in order to make the most of this type of interaction you need to participate. Join the conversation. Give your two cents and who knows you might just strike up a conversation with someone who is looking for you.
• Sing for Your Supper
  The recommendation train runs both ways. Don’t be stingy! Make sure you are helping your connections the way they are helping you. And if you are still felling a little bit selfish,  keep in ind that writing recommendations can be just as useful as getting them yourself. What you say about working with other people says as much or more than the what others say about you. Remember, you never know what circuitous route a connection may take on its way to you. Someone could be looking for something completely different, read a recommendation you posted and realize that what they really need is a person like you for a totally unrelated project.

Do the Math
Connections through liked-in are like playing 6-degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. You start out knowing a few people in the far-flung reaches of the world and the next thing you know the Bacon Brothers are playing for your next birthday party. Lets put it in perspective. I only have 141 direct connections through linked-in but those 141 connections actually balloon up to a potential 36,600 connections and that is only going a few layers deep. Just think how many that would be if I actually had to go more than 2 degrees to get to Kevin Bacon? Going all six would yield be a crazy number of connections.

The bottom line is that there is too much business potential to ignore so get it in gear, optimize your account, load those contacts and start some business conversations.

Companies spend years building their reputations but all of that work can be for naught if they don’t know how to manage it. I know what you are thinking, you have a great reputation for excellent products and outstanding customer service, but the reputation you have cultivated with your loyal customers over the years may not be the same thing that potential clients are seeing online. The main reason for this is that once something gets loose on the Net it is almost (if not completely) impossible to remove.

All it takes is one negative blog posting on a popular site and new prospects might overlook you out of hand because that negative posting about your inferior quality products or your non-existent customer service is showing up with higher rankings than your well designed, fully optimized corporate site. This type of information can hang around long after they are posted whether or not they were ever true or have since been fixed. And although these things may never go away completely, there are things that can be done to mitigate their impact:

1. Control the message
   The key to any reputation management plan is to control the message. Make sure that all of your online communications follow the same guidelines. Wherever the company is mentioned, it should always be portrayed in the same light which means knowing what is being said on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other online outlets is a must. It is a big job but you need to set aside time to review these sites every week.
2. What to monitor?
   Find a group of blogs or other social medial outlets to monitor. Not just your company but competition, industry as a whole and messages to see what is resonating. You can usually start this with a simple Google search to see what is going on in your space. But don’t stop there, it is also a good idea to keep en eye on employee blogs and personal websites to identify possible internal risks to your online reputation as well.
3. Making sense of it all
   Not all conversations will affect the company. Focus on the ones that impact perception. Make note of the audience impacted using each platform as a guide (Twitter=followers, Facebook=Fans, etc). Know what is being said and to whom so you can determine the best way to respond.

Once you are set controlling, monitoring and interpreting, you will be ready if things go south and you suddenly find yourself facing some high-ranking negative information. If this happens, you can use social media to set it right again. Time is of the essence and with the recent roll out of Google’s Caffeine, and the fact that you have been paying attention, you can now make a bigger impact even faster. Keeping track of your online reputation allows you to take out those negative blips before they fester into any significant business impact by pushing them down to the level of insignificance in the search engines.