8 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Build your Small Business

5. Use LinkedIn as an advertising tool.

“People who are interested in employment or new business ventures will be able to see your company’s name under your employees’ profiles. For business ventures, you can connect with other companies and place each others’ names under your recommended networks in order to reach across to a bigger audience.”

– Michael Pesochinsky, Vice-President and Co-Founder of GovernmentBargains.com, @govbargains

6. Share effective and relevant content.

“When I first started my company, I began by posting inspirational quotes on LinkedIn, and people liked my daily positive messages. This opened up new opportunities for me to network with many people on LinkedIn in more ways than one. I’m happy that I’ve not only been able to inspire people to achieve their goals, but I’ve also been able to connect with them on LinkedIn and form business relationships.”

– Kelly Hadous, President of Win The Room, @kellyhadous

7. Use LinkedIn as an HR staffing tool.

“I have hired numerous people off of LinkedIn and saved a recruiting fee. I’ve also found suppliers and customers that I’ve wanted to connect with through LinkedIn. I pay for the premium service, which allows me to send many “in mails” to people I’m not connected with yet. That’s a great way to share with someone why you’d like to connect with [them] before you invite [sic] to connect.”

– Tyler Merrick, Founder and CEO of Project 7, @Project7

8. Use LinkedIn as a pre-conference networking tool.

“Conferences and lunches often will list their attendees, speakers and sponsors prior to their events. Before to attending any event, I always do a soft reach out to the speaker, some attendees and sponsors to try to schedule a meet-up. More often than not, these LinkedIn messages create new contacts even when I am unable to attend the actual event.”

– Robert Braathe, Consultant at Braathe Enterprises, @RobertJBraathe