Having a great LinkedIn page about yourself can get you a long way towards building and making new relationships that will help you get new business and keep your customers informed.

1. Offer Interesting Content

You want to have a good page for yourself that has a combination of impressive business information and good humor on it. Content that shows you’re both a very talented person and enjoyable to work with. If it’s too serious and “professional”, it will blend in with all the other LinkedIn pages.  Use the “Network Updates – What are you working on now?“ comment feature weekly to say something interesting about what’s going on in your personal or professional life.  Add links to content that talks about how successful your business is, what awards you’ve won, and recept press you’ve received.  Update your links every month or so, so people want to come back and visit your site often. You can also add the “SlideShare” application offered by LinkedIn, then go to SlideShare.com and pick out presentations that will educate and inform your visitors on hot topics in your industry.

2. Show Your Personality

Whether you own a store, provide a service, create products, being a successful small business owner means you want people to trust you with their business and their money.  You want potential clients visiting your page to find you open, honest, and fun-loving. They’ll also be impressed if they see you’re a member of a handful of interesting LinkedIn Groups too.  Alumni groups look good if they are reputable companies or schools. Non-profits show your softer side. Trade associations look good too. Just be really careful that the groups you join are run by credible people – look up the owners profile to be sure. There are some oddballs out there that have managed to build huge LinkedIn groups somehow that provide little valuable content or discussions.

3. Demonstrate Your Expertise

Also consider adding the “WordPress” application so you have blog articles show up on your LinkedIn page. With these articles you can write about current events in your industry, quick how-to articles for your potential clients, anecdotal stories about clients you’ve helped, or interesting uses of you services or products.

4. Add a Friendly Photo

I can’t believe how poor some of the LinkedIn photos are on pages belonging to otherwise very impressive executives and professionals. Instead of a quick pic from your web cam, or something showing you in a suit, add one with you in business casual garb that’s more of a close up with a big smile. You want something that makes people want to meet you and hang out with you. Here are a few examples of LinkedIn photos that are both professional and friendly:

Guys
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/spiezle
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephendayton
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/katzp
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismangold

Gals
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/reenanadkarni
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/lamore
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/auneh
• http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rebecca-becky-carter/6/91/464

5. Consider a Business LinkedIn Page

In addition to sprucing up your personal LinkedIn page, you can create a business page too. Just be careful and use the business-page feature in LinkedIn instead of creating a “personal” page with a business name –> LinkedIn will kill your page if you do that, since it’s a violation of their policies.  Your business page will list your employees who have LinkedIn pages, show stats about your biz, (number of employees, etc.),  and display a text-only description of your business that you can edit. You can’t have “connections” or post a blog on a business site like you can a personal site; but, you can be creative in the company description section. Here are some good examples you can check out:

• Tiny Prints
• LWI.com
• Red and White Fleet
• Green Printer

6. Learn More about LinkedIn and Social Networking

Finally, here are some interesting links about using LinkedIn and similar sites for business use:

• “Content rich profiles on social media sites are imperative” (podcast) – http://whooyouknow.com/strong-profiles-on-social-media-sites-are-imperative
• “Social media marketing – back to basics” (blog article) – http://www.social2b.com/index.php/2009/05/29/social-media-marketing-back-to-basics/comment-page-1/#comment-38
• “LinkedIn: Why you should be using it for Expert Positioning” (blog article) – http://451heat.com/2009/06/05/linkedin-why-you-should-be-using-it-for-%e2%80%9cexpert-positioning%e2%80%9d/
• “Mind Your B2B Social Network, get more business” (blog article) – http://www.marketingfolio.com/the-industrious-marketer/bid/19554/Mind-Your-B2B-Social-Network-Get-More-Business
• “Successful business uses for Facebook & LinkedIn” (presentation and webinar) – http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/4-imu-successful-business-uses-for-facebook-and-linkedin-gf202
• “Social media quickstart guide – 6 tools you can use” (blog article) – http://blog.hotdesign.com/2009/06/social-media-quickstart-guide/

While personal LinkedIn pages are usually just used for making 1:1 connections and displaying resumes, there are lots of great tools offered by LinkedIn you can leverage to turn your page into an information portal for your customers and contacts. With blogs, SlideShare, links, updates, and groups you can demonstrate both your business expertise and your personality in order to stand out from the rest, and drive more interest in your small business.