In my blog titled, You’re dead without LinkedIn, I spelled out how critical LinkedIn has become to your career and business.

Savvy people are on LinkedIn for three reasons:

• to be found
• to find others
• to build their individual or company reputations

All three are important, but the one that’s most often overlooked is “to be found.”

With a knowledgeable approach to LinkedIn, there’s much less need to make cold calls or to scratch for new prospects.

It’s obviously more efficient and cheaper to have prospects find you than it is to hunt them down.

Of course, the most obvious strategy is to make sure you include key words in your LinkedIn profile so your prospects will be able to find you.  If you don’t include your key words then you won’t show up when someone does a LinkedIn search.

But in addition to including key words, there are three simple things you can do that will drive people to your LinkedIn page:

• Adding your photo makes your profile 7x’s more likely to be found in searches
• Including your two most recent positions makes your profile 12x’s more likely to be found
• Being endorsed increases your chances of being found by 4x’s.

It’s clear whoever has the most knowledge about how to use LinkedIn will have a competitive advantage.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use LinkedIn, click here to download our FREE e-book–LinkedIn Guide for Executives.

David Sher is a co-founder of Buzz12  Advertising. You can read more of his posts by looking for the “David Sher Posts” category in the sidebar of Buzz12’s website.

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