Using LinkedIn is a time-waster if you go in without a plan or knowledge of all the tools that are available to you. Follow these eight steps to establish a LinkedIn presence that will get you in front of prospects, encourage referrals, and grow your network.

By now, the myth has been dispelled that social networking sites are only for teenagers and college students. Social media has forever changed the way we consume information and communicate with each other. Companies of all sizes have also come to the realization that social media is a valid and efficient form of marketing and should be integrated into the marketing mix. Social networking websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter enable businesses to reach a very specific target market, even for firms with limited marketing budgets.

Why LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has become the go-to platform for many advisors. This business-oriented social networking site is attractive because the users are more educated, mature, and affluent than users of other sites. Seventy-seven percent of LinkedIn users are over the age of 35. Sixty-nine percent have a household income greater than $60,000, and 38% over $100,000. Finally, 80% of LinkedIn users have a graduate or post-graduate degree.

These statistics-coupled with the fact that LinkedIn has over 55 million members and executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members-make it a very attractive social networking site for advisors to explore.

While LinkedIn has impressive members, joining the site alone won't produce noticeable results. To successfully utilize the site as a marketing tool, you must have a strategy. You should have a plan to make the most of your profile and explore all of the innovative ways to meet new people on the site. Below are eight steps required to make LinkedIn an effective marketing tool for your business.

Compliance note: Since social networking is still relatively new, many regulatory agencies are struggling to come up with rules for this realm. This means they are implementing new rules and changing them frequently, so compliance departments will probably err on the side of caution in this arena. Make sure to learn your compliance department's rules regarding social networking, and pay special attention to the compliance notes in this article.

1. Create your LinkedIn profile

The first thing to do when you join LinkedIn is to complete your profile. The more information you provide about yourself, the more effective you will be at communicating your value and services to prospective clients and centers of influence. Optimizing your profile will also increase the likelihood that your name will appear in search results. Here are nine tips to make completing your profile less intimidating:

•  Add designations. Include your full name as well as your designations (e.g., Joe Smith, CFP) so that people looking for your designation can easily find you.
•  Share what you do. Create your professional headline telling people exactly what you do (e.g., Certified Financial Planner Professional for Entrepreneurial Women). Not feeling creative? No need to worry. Including your title and company name (e.g., Investment Advisor Representative at ABC Firm) is a great start and will help people find you. You can always return later to edit this section.
•  Provide a link to your company website. Include links to any blogs or other social networking sites you use for business purposes as well.
•  Change your public profile URL to include your name. This will help with search engine optimization, and it makes it easier to promote your LinkedIn profile on other sites and marketing collateral.
•  Write about your position and past experience under "Summary." The summary should be very similar to your professional bio. Include your designations and licenses in the summary as well, since there is no specific section for this information.
•  Add your services to the specialties section of your profile.
•  Include your title, company name, and length of employment for your current position under "Experience." A description of your position is recommended but not required. Also include past positions that add to your professional credibility.
•  Complete the Education section of your profile. This includes bachelors and post-graduate degrees as well as certification programs.
•  Add relevant information under "Groups" and "Associations." This is so that people with similar affiliations can find you in search results.

Compliance note: There is a lot of debate as to whether the Recommendations section of the profile is considered a testimonial. You will want to consult with your compliance department prior to accepting recommendations. To be safe, it is generally recommended that advisors do not accept recommendations. Many advisors become frustrated because LinkedIn requires that you have at least three recommendations for the site to consider your profile 100% complete. Just accept that you'll never reach 100%.

2. Add applications

The basic LinkedIn profile allows you to provide information only in the form of text. However, your marketing communication material probably comes in the form of blogs, PowerPoint slides, and PDFs. LinkedIn provides a dozen applications that can help enhance your profile.

There are five in particular to consider adding to your profile:

•  SlideShare Presentations. This site allows you to embed PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, documents, and spreadsheets in your profile. This is a valuable application because it enables you to incorporate your marketing materials directly into your profile, allowing visitors to find out more about you and your business than the standard profile would normally allow. Since SlideShare shows a thumbnail of the document, you'll want to use the application for documents that are graphically interesting. I recommend uploading your brochure, firm summary, or other marketing pieces to this application. You can include multiple files, but only up to three are visible at any given time on your profile. You may want to consider adding only one document and choosing the "Show complete presentation in player" option for more impact.
•  Google presentations. This facet of Google Docs is similar to SlideShare in that it allows you to embed PowerPoint presentations into your profile. However, unlike SlideShare, it only allows you to upload presentations. You may want to use this application if you have a PowerPoint presentation you would like to share on your profile and are already using SlideShare to highlight your marketing material. You may also want to consider creating an overview presentation about your firm and include it in Google Presentations.
•  Box. This is a file-sharing application. You can add any type of file and allow visitors to your profile to download these files. Since all files are displayed with standard PDF, Word, or Excel icons, this application is not aesthetically appealing. You should limit the use of this application to share basic text documents such as forms. Don't take away from your eye-catching marketing pieces by putting them in Box.net.
•  BlogLink. BlogLink allows you to import your blog or other RSS feed directly to your LinkedIn profile. You can also use BlogLink to showcase your Twitter feed. This application enables you to add valuable content to your profile, providing your visitors with further insight into your services.
•  WordPress. WordPress is very similar to BlogLink except that it only works for WordPress blogs. If you have a WordPress blog, I recommend this application over BlogLink since it is more aesthetically pleasing. However, you cannot use the WordPress application to showcase your latest tweets (posts on the Twitter network), so you may still want to consider BlogLink if this is an important feature for you.

3. Build your network

LinkedIn becomes more powerful as the size of your network increases. This is because you are only able to see profiles of people within your network (i.e., first, second, or third connections and group members). To make effective use of LinkedIn, you will need to continuously build your network. This will allow you to discover more potential clients and centers of influence.

•  Import e-mail contacts. Start expanding your network by importing contacts from Outlook or other e-mail providers. You can do this by selecting "add connections" in the contacts menu and uploading a spreadsheet of your contacts' e-mail addresses. The resulting list will show you who is on LinkedIn and will allow you to send a mass invitation to connect.
•  Make it routine. Once you have started with your initial network, you'll want to continue adding all new contacts to your network. Inviting new contacts to join your LinkedIn network should be part of your networking routine. This includes people you meet professionally and socially. You never know where the next client or referral will come from, so don't exclude people from your network.
•  Use toolbars. Another way to build your network is to install an Outlook toolbar, which will notify you when an e-mail contact is on LinkedIn. You can download and install either the LinkedIn or Xobni toolbar, which will show you LinkedIn profile information about each of your e-mail contacts and provide you with a link to send an "invitation to connect" request. These tool bars eliminate manually looking up contacts to see if they are on the site and then send an invitation request. Plus, the tool bars constantly remind you to build your network.

4. Join groups

Once you have successfully completed your profile and have started adding connections, you'll want to be joining groups that include people who are either centers of influence (COIs) or fit your target market. When browsing groups to join, consider alumni groups (e.g., UCLA Anderson Alumni Network), corporate groups (e.g., CISCO), professional groups (e.g., Finance & Accounting Professionals), interest groups (e.g., Marathoners), and regional groups (e.g., Southwest Florida Professionals). By joining a group, you are able to directly contact each member in that group, opening up a whole new pool of people you never would have met. This is particularly valuable when trying to reach COIs or gatekeepers for corporations.

Once you have selected a group, become an active member of that group. Add or respond to discussion questions. This will open up a dialogue with group members and makes it easier to continue the conversation offline. Be sure that the discussion is relevant to the group and not just a sales pitch. For example, if you join a corporate group, add a discussion question like, "What are your greatest concerns regarding your company's 401(k) plan?" Take advantage of the opportunity to contact each person directly who responds to the discussion question.

New and active discussion questions are e-mailed to the entire group on a daily or weekly basis, depending on each member's preference settings. This is a great feature because it means your name is getting in front of members of the group, even if they haven't visited the group page. The more active your involvement in the group, the more often group members see your name. Consistency is the key to marketing success, and this is a fantastic way to achieve this goal.

Compliance note: Some compliance departments forbid participating in discussion forums. Even if you don't actively post in them, however, groups can still be useful.

Joining allows you to expand your network. By joining a group, you are able to view the profiles of everyone in the group. This helps when you are researching prospects, since their profiles might not be available to you otherwise. In addition, you are able to send an e-mail to fellow group members without being directly linked with them through the "send a message" function. Joining groups provides you with direct access to hundreds if not thousands of individuals who would otherwise be outside of your LinkedIn reach.

Compliance note: Be cautious when e-mailing through LinkedIn, since some compliance departments require a screen shot of the message you are sending, including the name of the person to whom you are sending it.

5. Promote your blog, article, or newsletter

Whether you write a daily blog, a weekly article for the local paper, or a quarterly newsletter for your clients, you can extend your article's reach by posting it on LinkedIn. You have already spent the time and effort writing the article, so why not spend another 30 minutes increasing traffic to your masterpiece? To do this, you will want to join groups as previously discussed.

Once you have strategically chosen your groups, you can begin posting your content on them. Click on the News tab and you will see recently posted and read articles. Click the "submit a new article" button and follow the instructions. You will be asked to submit the article URL and a summary. Once you have submitted your article, you will see the link on the overview and news pages. The article you just posted will also be included in the Group Updates section of a member's home page and in the group digest e-mail for those members who do not regularly visit the group page. If you repeat this process across all of the different groups you have joined, you will soon reach hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

Another way to use the LinkedIn groups news page is to promote news stories about you or your firm. This works for articles, radio broadcasts, and television appearances. As long as what you are sharing has a URL address, it can be promoted in a LinkedIn group. This will help you get more exposure than just the one time the story was covered.

6. Create a group

Participating in various groups is one way you can utilize LinkedIn as a marketing tool, but for the more ambitious marketers out there, creating your own group can present even greater opportunities. Creating and administering your own group is a time-consuming strategy, but it increases your exposure to your target market and allows direct access to your group members via LinkedIn e-mail.

Before you start your own LinkedIn group, you will want to consider who your target market is. Is there a large enough pool of people in your niche on LinkedIn to warrant a specialized group? If not, don't waste your time. This strategy is a numbers game, so if you don't have a large enough pool to start with, it won't work. But if you specialize in a large niche industry, this could be a very productive way to spend your time.

Once you create a group, you are able to control who joins the group. You will also have control over content. This means you can mark your discussion questions as "featured," which positions it at the top of the list and the first thing members see when arriving at your page. You can also add your RSS feed so that all posts from your blog automatically post to your LinkedIn group.

7. Research prospective clients

LinkedIn provides a wealth of information about a prospective client. By reviewing a prospect's profile prior to your first meeting, you can discover past employment history, educational background, professional associations, and personal interests. This will give you a better understanding of the prospect and may assist in directing the conversation during a first appointment. The only limitation with this strategy is that you are able to view profiles only of people within your network. Having a larger network, as previously described, will increase the likelihood of being able to see a prospect's profile.

8. Research your network for introductions and referrals

Do you know which of your clients have relationships with the types of people you would like to meet? If they have a LinkedIn profile, you can easily find out. When you connect with your clients, centers of influence, or networking contacts on LinkedIn, you can look through their connections to see who they know. By researching your LinkedIn contacts' network, you can make informed decisions about who has the ability to make quality referrals and introductions and create a marketing strategy around that information.

For example, you can ask for referrals and introductions to specific people within your contact's network when you have a referral conversation. Or you can plan a private client event and make extra effort to ensure that clients with strong networks attend. Researching your network will allow you to focus your referral efforts.

Conclusion: Spend some time with it

LinkedIn is a powerful site that can be used for both marketing and prospecting purposes. Spend some time developing your profile, building your network, and participating in groups, and you will begin seeing its real value. LinkedIn is not just an online résumé if you use it well, it can be a tool that leverages the power of your network to increase your firm's revenue.