Kendal

LinkedIn is designed for business professionals and business owners instead of  for the public. It is a Web site designed to connect business professionals and enable them to share information, get answers, and promote themselves and their business. Establish yourself on LinkedIn by creating a profile that summarizes your professional and/ or business accomplishments. Creating a profile is one of the first tasks you need to complete. To create a LinkedIn Account go to http://www.linkedin.com

Just fill out the form with complete details like your name, email and password.

Complete the setting up process. Write the important details like your job and the company your working on.

LinkedIn allows you to search your email contacts. You may choose to connect to contacts who are already in LinkedIn or invite others who are not.Confirm your registration to activate your account. After confirming your account, you can now connect to people you know. You may choose to skip this step and do connect with them later.

Upgrading your Account

When you sign up on LinkedIn, you automatically receive a free account that lets you contact users in your network through the people you know, send requests for introductions, and transmit private messages with business and career opportunities to any LinkedIn user. LinkedIn offers several different service packages with options to make your membership more successful and rewarding–at a price. Upgrade to Premium account to fully access the LinkedIn. You can select from one of the three premium account types: Business, Business Plus or Executive.

Basic LinkedIn Account

You can choose to use LinkedIn for free my choosing the Basic account. Some features are not available for the free users.

Signing In and Changing your Account Settings

After creating an account in LinkedIn, you will be redirected to your home page profile. You can now add or edit Basic Information, Contacts and Groups to your profile to keep it updated.

1. Profile – Your profile shows your personal, work, or education background. You may choose to share information you want. This tab enables you to see what your profile looks like to LinkedIn visitors and LinkedIn members. As you scroll down the page, you see information about your summary, experience, education, other LinkedIn members who recommended you, any additional information about, and contact settings (how you can be contacted).
   Add basic information to your profile.

Click “Profile” in the tab and choose “Edit Profile”. Add information you want to share. You may add you work information, education background, websites or blog URL, other social networking services like Twitter.

Add a short summary about yourself and work experience. Show off your profile to the LinkedIn visitors and members.

You can also show off your Honors and Awards gained. Share your Education background and other information like your website URL or twitter.

Share your personal information as shown in the screenshot below.

Uploading a Photo

You can add a photo by click “Profile”, then “Add/Edit” photo. The file size limit is 4 (MB).

When you are finished making changes, click the Save Changes button. The page refreshes and a green bar appears at the top of the page saying the changes have been saved.

If you want to see what your profile looks like to the public, click the “View My Public Profile as Others See It” link.

1. Adding and Managing Contacts
   The best way to start growing your contact list is by adding people who know you and trust you. These are the people who will refer you to others first for business. You can encourage them to grow their own base by recommending them to others within your network for business opportunities. This encourages and excites them to grow their own connection lists.
   Improve your connectability by having high-value connections; that is, have as many decision makers and people who can help you. If you are looking for a job, connect with recruiters in your area. If you have a business, connect with CEOs, venture capitalists and vice presidents in both small and large corporations.
   • Adding a Connection

   LinkedIn makes it easy for you to add a connection to another LinkedIn member. Start by signing in to LinkedIn if you haven’t done so already. Then click the Contacts link in the Navigation box.
   
   If you don’t have any connections yet, then “Add Connections” link appears. Click the link then you’ll be redirected to this page below.
   Enter your email address and password and import your contacts to start connecting with them. You may also enter the email address of your the person you would like to connect with.
   
   You have three options for adding friends and colleagues to your contact list. You can:
   a.) Search outlook. If you use Outlook for e-mail, click the Check Outlook button. LinkedIn communicates with Outlook, and after a couple of minutes it identifies potential connections in your Outlook address book that you may want to add to LinkedIn. The image below shows where you do this.
   
   You can add contacts by selecting the check box to the left of the e-mail address in the list. The added name appears in the box to the right of the address list. If you want to invite the selected contacts, click the “Invite Selected Contacts list.
   
   b.) Search Webmail contacts. If you have an account form an online mail service such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail, you can check your service address books to see if any of them are on LinkedIn by clicking the “Check Webmail Contacts” button. At the Import Webmail Contacts page, log in to your Webmail service and find out which of your Webmail contacts are already on LinkedIn.
   
   c.) Use a few other tools, including address books or add contacts manually. You can add your contacts manually by entering their email addresses or copy it from an e-mail message in the box(See example below). Separate them with commas. After you type in all the names, click the “Send Invitations” button. If LinkedIn finds the contact associated with the e-mail address, the system automatically adds the name your contacts list int the Newly Added Contacts page.

   

2. Featuring LinkedIn Groups. LinkedIn groups allows you to discover and follow popular discussions you are interested in. You can like and comment in the top public discussions in the group. Discussions created in a group before it switches to open will go into the group’s members-only, read-only Archive. They cannot be seen by anyone who is not a member of the group.
   a.) To Find a Group
   Go to the “Groups” menu at the top of your homepage and select Groups Directory. Users can browse for the popular groups existing the the LinkedIn groups list. Search groups using the “Search groups” feature on the left.
   
   b.) To Join a Group. To join a group is fast and simple. All you have to do is click the “Join Group” in the group page or “Groups You May Like Tab” or respond an invitation from a group member or manager.