By Kim Eberhardt, Vice President, Marketing & Communications, Hennessey Capital 

The most recent statistics indicate that LinkedIn has 100 million users. Are you one of them? LinkedIn offers incredible power to connect and grow your business, if you utilize it effectively.  This tool is used all over the world to connect business professionals at all levels in a multitude of industries - with high-tech, financing and manufacturing industries leading the pack in users. There are over 44 million users in the United States alone and executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn.  Needless to say, with such an impressive rate of adoption among U.S. business professionals, you could be missing out on valuable opportunities by not engaging clients, prospects and referral sources through LinkedIn. So, if you haven't created a LinkedIn profile or you are not utilizing it to its fullest potential, here are a few tips to do so:

1. Complete your profile - This is the easiest step to execute. A complete profile will help your search engine results. See for yourself - if you have a complete LinkedIn profile, Google your own name and LinkedIn is likely to be one the top search results and most likely appears before your own company's web page. This is the power of LinkedIn. LinkedIn even makes it easy for you by offering a status bar that indicates the percentage of your profile completion - your goal should be to get to 100 percent. To do so, you must have a photo, list your current position, past positions (at least two), education, profile summary, specialties and recommendations (at least three).

2. Solicit recommendations - As stated in the first tip, recommendations are one of the necessary elements to creating a complete profile. More importantly, recommendations lend credibility to you, your work and highlight personal characteristics that differentiate you as an individual. In essence, recommendations lend credence to your resume and accomplishments. To solicit recommendations, you can simply click the "ask for recommendations" link within your profile. If you are uncomfortable soliciting recommendations directly, make a point to provide a recommendation for someone else. The law of reciprocity suggests that person will want to do the same for you.

3. Add connections - This is the fun part! You can use LinkedIn to connect with people from your past and current professional world such as clients, referral sources, vendors, prospects, etc. A best practice to consider is dedicating 10 minutes on LinkedIn after attending a networking event to stay in touch with the new contacts you made at the event. LinkedIn makes connecting even easier by offering suggestions as to whom you may want to link up with in the "People You May Know" section. Adding connections not only creates value for you personally, but adds value to the rest of the individuals in your network. The larger your network, the more connections you can help others make as well. If you are new to LinkedIn, start by connecting with people you know, and then connect with people they know. Before you know it, you will have a network that reaches across a variety of industries and geographic areas. When you do send an invitation to connect via LinkedIn, make sure to personalize it. Simply adding the person's name and a reference to how you know each other or why you want to connect will increase the likelihood of an accepted invitation.

4. Share an update - You can share an update by typing into the empty box next to your photo when you login in to LinkedIn that reads "share an update." This is similar to a "status update" on Facebook. The idea is to share information with all of your connections. Appropriate update topics include information regarding a project you are working on, great news about your company or your client's business and interesting links to relevant business or industry articles. If you use Twitter, you can also link your Twitter account to LinkedIn, and your Tweets will appear automatically as your status update on LinkedIn. Using the update feature on LinkedIn allows you to stay top of mind with your connections (when you share an update, it appears in the "update" field when your connections login to LinkedIn) but also offers the opportunity to position yourself as a thought leader in your respective industry. Regularly sharing interesting and compelling content via the "share an update" tool will reinforce your expertise and knowledge within your professional field.

5. Join Groups - There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn that range from non-profit and trade organizations to industry and geographically specific groups. Your competitors are most likely participating, so why aren't you? As an example, there are 643 CPA-related groups alone. LinkedIn groups provide the opportunity for a deeper level of engagement, conversation and forum to share your expertise with the members of the group. Group participation will also help you stay abreast to industry trends and critical issues that may impact your business. Many groups also allow you to display the group on your profile, further enhancing your profile.

Once you have followed these tips and start to engage in LinkedIn, the important thing to do is keep it up. You don't want all of your hard work to go to waste! Try to allocate 15 minutes a day to make connections, contribute to group discussions, update your profile with any new relevant education or expertise and respond to messages and connection requests. As with all social media tools, you will find that the more time and effort you put into cultivating your network, the more beneficial the tool will be come.

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