Ten Tips for Using Your Linkedin Network Successfully
Clarify Your Why
Why are you doing Linkedin? What do you want to accomplish with this social networking program? If you are clear about your purpose for using Linkedin, you can leverage your time. Write out your purpose in one sentence as a reminder to yourself!
Your Profile is Your Personal Brand
Your Linkedin profile is your personal brand. Your brand is the remarkable expertise you bring to your customers. It’s the special something that connects you with your customers. It’s the one benefit that expresses what they can get from you that they cannot get from your competition. Your profile is your billboard on the internet highway. Like billboards along the freeways, you never know when someone will notice you.
Use the Outlook Tool to Gain Credibility
When you use this tool, you combine your Outlook program with your Linkedin Program. 
For every email you receive from a person in Outlook, there will be a Linkedin symbol in the right hand corner of the email. When you click on this, it tells you if this person is a member of Linkedin, their headline and the number of their contacts.
You can click on any of these emails and invite the person to be on your network. Invite the top people in your field as members of your network without all the work involved in personally contacting these people. When others see these experts as part of your network, your credibility soars.
Ask and Answer Linkedin Questions
Asking Linkedin questions gets others involved. Since LinkedIn is a network of professionals, you can expect good answers. By asking questions, you access valuable resources and business answers; you get opportunities to demonstrate your own expertise and you get more visibility and credibility with search engines.
Join Linkedin Groups
People in Linkedin Groups want to network people who care as they do about a topic or an issue. By participating in the Group discussions, you get to demonstrate your expertise; identify key contacts; share materials with others in the Group and you can add links to your URL to give you more visibility.
Power of 2nd 3rd Networking
The real power of networking is not who you know but who they know–2nd and 3rd degree networking. When you go to your Linkedin page, you see your first level list of Connections. Click on anyone of your Connections and you will be taken to their list of Connections. Then you can click on any one of their Connections and see another level of Connections. Linkedin helps you uncover three levels of connections so you can expand your network.
Recommendations
Giving and getting Recommendations is a must for using Linkedin effectively. People want to know what others have experienced with you and your business. Every time a new recommendation is made or received, your entire network is notified, giving you more exposure. Think of recommendations as personal testimonials to what you can produce for others.
Promote Your Linkedin Site
Put as much energy into marketing your Linkedin site as you do in creating it. Create a Vanity URL (renaming your site with your personal name); place the Linkedin logo on your email signature, your website and other places. When a person clicks on the logo, they are taken directly to your Linkedin Summary page where they can learn more about you.
Professional Photo
63% of the people make their decision to connect based on the photo they see. Don’t use your cat in the photo or your business logo. Make it a good head shot that clearly shows your face.
Benefit Statement
Your Professional Heading right under your photo is your benefit statement. People don’t care about you until they see what benefits you may provide for them. Have two or three short benefit statements and periodically change your Professional Heading. This ads power to your personal brand on Linkedin.
Conclusion
Implement these changes on your Linkedin site and you will significantly improve your networking power.