hello I'm Jim KRL reporting for smallbiz trends.com today we'll be talking about a website called linkedin.com after viewing today's video you'll know why you should use LinkedIn and how to use it from a small business or brand standpoint so give us a few minutes of your time and we'll do our best to help you get started on LinkedIn first of all let's talk a little bit about what LinkedIn is LinkedIn is an online network of more than 25 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 150 Industries when you join you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments your profile helps you be found by former colleagues clients and partners you can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you I like to think of LinkedIn as a big potential contact database so let's talk a little bit about how LinkedIn can help you there's two ways it can help you from the business owner owner perspective or as a job candidate as a business owner you can use it to find potential clients service providers subject experts and partners who come recommended and you can use it to find business opportunities you can also use it to post jobs and find qualified candidates and you can use it to close business deal deals through connections that you make through Linkedin as an individual you can search for great jobs you can discover inside connections that can help you land jobs and you can get introduced to other professionals through the people that you know who could help find you a job so the first thing you want to do if you want to get started on LinkedIn is register if you go to linkedin.com and put your first name your last name and your email in and click continue you can go ahead and register the second thing you're going to want to do after you register is fill out your profile in depth so I'm going to go ahead and log into my account right now all my information is here already and it'll take me in and show my account one of the best tips for using LinkedIn is to fill out your profile completely so you can use it as a resume in fact for everything that you do for in the future so when you do get started click on the profile Tab and make sure you fill it out in depth so once you have your profile set up you're going to want to make new connections if you click on the add connections tab here you can go in and see that LinkedIn gives you several ways to add new connections you can invite contacts from your email you can import them from your email and other tools you can look for colleagues perhaps once your profile is put you can look at a company that you used to work at and add Prof other people from other companies or you could search for classmates uh that possibly you were in school with at some point another easy way to do it is just to go to the search tab at the top of linkedin.com and just do a search for people we'll do a search for Anita Campbell who is the editor and owner of small business Trends so it'll bring back a list of all the people that you're looking for and there's Anita right there gives us her name her title her profile I can go ahead and click on her name now and see all of her information now I can send a message to Anita I can recommend a person and we'll come back to that and if she wasn't already a friend or a connection I could add her as a connection here it shows that I'm already connected to Anita if I wasn't there would be a button here that says connect with Anita so one of the things I may want to do is recommend Anita and it says I already done that but there will be a button here that says recommend and that basically means that I'd like to leave a nice testimonial or note about that person that will be shown to everybody and you can see I've already left a recommendation for Anita Anita is a small business is Small Business Online her insight and experience as a publisher and promoter of small businesses online has propelled her to Elite status in the community she is a definite person you need to know I endorsed Anita with a recommendation on LinkedIn and Anita will endorse me back I highly encourage you to put recommendations in for all of the connections that you possibly can because the more that you give the more you're likely to get back now let's talk a little bit about LinkedIn answers if you look at the top of the site there's a answers Tab and basically what answers is is your ability to ask or answer questions in your Professional Network so you can ask a question to get fast and accurate answer to your business question you ask the question then you share your question you pick the connections that you have to share it with and then you receive answers you can also answer questions at any time and share knowledge within your network find questions of in your areas of expertise then answer those questions and then you can become what's called a LinkedIn expert and you learn you earn expert status by answering more questions expertly LinkedIn answers is a great way to find more connections and meet more people who are in your Niche or your industry and to become an expert on those topics which is the goal or one of the goals of being on LinkedIn in the first place besides using LinkedIn and answers to gather research you can join groups if you click on the groups button here you can see all the groups you're in or you could create your own group or you could do a search for other groups out there and find groups that are in your Niche and then join them so here's one for the CIO forum and if I was interested in being a CIO I could click on join group and join that group and then I would be shared with all of the people in that Network joining groups is another great way to build your personal brand for yourself and your business on LinkedIn so by joining groups and answering questions and just in general being an expert you're going to have lots of good solid connections and your business or brand will benefit from these associations remember you only get as much as you put into LinkedIn so take some time and put some personal work into it and building new connections and answering questions here are a couple of the best practices make sure to complete your profile in detail remember connect with a lots a lot of friends and keep building your connections over time also recommend other people so they will recommend you and participate in LinkedIn answers and become an expert and also look to join groups or to create your own group at the at the same time finding new connections and adding recommendations all along the way so let's do a little recap on the benefits for small business owners and Brands you can use LinkedIn to build connections for your business like new partners and to land deals you can also use it to post jobs and find out about researched qualified candidates you can use it as a job Seeker to find jobs and get connected with potential employers and you can research Executives and po potential employers that way you can also use it as a resume you can also use LinkedIn to create groups and connect with other people in your industry and become an expert I'm Jim kro reporting for small business Trend and I hope you enjoyed this video about LinkedIn