Most of you tech savvy business people out there have had a LinkedIn account for years, but have you been truly using it to increase your business opportunities?

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional online network with more than 45 million users representing 150 industries, and in case you’re wondering, the company itself is valued around $1 billion. Since September 2008, when the economic crisis hit, it has seen a 25% increase in the rate of sign-ups as concerned professionals look to keep their contacts up to date. That equates to approximately 1 million new users every two weeks. In terms of activity by those users, in the last two months there has been a 15% increase in the issuing of invitations to get people to join business networking circles and there has also been a 14% increase in the amount of recommendations made by users endorsing another member of LinkedIn.

The explosion of LinkedIn usage brings to mind the age old question of Quantity versus Quality.   Would you prefer to have 500 good contacts, or would you rather have 50 great contacts? The former may inflate your network statistics, but the latter may inflate your sales statistics. We can’t all be like Ron Bates, but do we want to be?

Who is Ron Bates you ask? With 44,000 direct contacts on LinkedIn, Ron has been referred to as “the most connected man on Earth.” In fact, I just tried to connect with Ron last night. I haven’t been accepted yet, but I did it for fun and I don’t expect any business to come from it. To effectively use LinkedIn to promote and grow your business you don’t need a ton of contacts, you just need a handful of great contacts that are in need of the services that your company offers and are interested in working with you or know others who would be.

If you’re hoping to reap the benefits of a LinkedIn account, you need to commit to actively using it on a consistent basis. At the very least you should look at your profile every day to see to see who your contacts are networking with, and if there are more “People You May Know” listed in your profile. Remember, your contacts’ new contacts are now in your network, and the groups they have joined may be of interest to you.

The bottom-line with LinkedIn is that people would much rather work with people who their friends and colleagues know and trust. To truly realize a return on the investment of time required by LinkedIn you need to increase your number of viable connections and thus increase your chances of getting more business. In order to make your profile more appealing you need to nurture it by being committed to completing at least one or two LinkedIn tasks every single day. Make a connection, join a group, or just enhance your profile. Be sure to track the traffic to your website and what percentage of it comes from LinkedIn.

There are many ways to establish sustainable relationships through LinkedIn.  Find out how to put the power of LinkedIn to work for your business by downloading part one of our three part series.

Without a doubt, the answer to the above question is THE BUSINESS!  But it’s amazing how often we forget this when looking at new technology to implement in a business.  Far too often, a cool new technology noticed by a business owner or the desire of their IT company to play with a new technology drives the decision for an implementation.  While there may be merits of the technology, the decision to affect a business’s production environment should be driven by a business need.  For example, we have clients come to us all the time saying something like, “Shouldn’t we be upgrading to Windows 7?”.  Our reply is usually, “Why?  Do you feel that one of the new features can help with a business problem you are having?”  While the answer is sometimes yes, most often it is because they have a friend who got it or saw a good ad on TV.

As a technology partner for our clients, we use the mantra that business needs should always drive technology implementations, not vice versa.  To help our clients make the best use of their technology investments we will work to understand their business so we can help them make informed decisions.  Some of the things we want to determine are:

• Is there a business problem you are having that is driving this?
• Have you considered all of the costs of this implementation?
• How will this affect your interactions with your clients?

By working in this fashion, we believe it build good long term relationships as we are not simply looking to book every billable project we can get our hands on.  In the long run it is a win/win.

We have compiled a more thorough list of the things we evaluate when helping a client determine if a new technology is right for them.  Download our “10 Reality Check Items to Consider in any Technology Implementation“.