USING LINKEDIN The main benefits from LinkedIn come when you are looking for a job or to hire an employee. There are also benefits related to connecting with other professionals in your area of interest. The following are some of them. Of course, the benefits increase a great deal when you have a paid subscription rather than using it for free.
Open Profile - People who have paid for Linked In have an option of setting their profile to open so that anyone can contact them. If you have a free account you can only contact people you have connected to. This is for a paid subscription only.
Request an Introduction to someone who is on a 2nd degree connection. 
When you have a LinkedIn account you are networked to people directly and they are linked to others directly. You can communicate with the person you are connected to who is directly connected to their contacts. One example of this is being aware of who your contacts are connected to so that you can find someone inside a company you want to apply to.
Check in on your network updates - Like Facebook, the more that you use it and show that you Like, Comment and Share your network will become more familiar with you.
 Be identifiable - Make sure that you have filled in all of the options in the Settings To do this click on your picture (or thumbnail) in the top right. Choose Privacy & Settings and click Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile. Make sure you check off the “Your name and headline (Recommended)” option. This allows you to take advantage of the next feature on our list.
Check out who has viewed your profile - There is more information on this available if you have a paid  account.
You can increase the number of people who view your profile by doing a few things.
- normalize your title - look to see what others are titled in positions like yours and make yours match
- add keywords to your professional tag line - That way if someone searches for a term they will be more likely to find you.
- improve your summary - Make sure it includes lots of keywords that people can search for. If it is long break it down to shorter paragraphs for readability.
- expand your skills entry - Things change as you get more experience. It is good to take a look at the skills that are listed for you and make it more accurate.
- syndicate blog posts - If you are writing a blog post for somewhere else copy and paste it into LinkedIn also so that it will reach a larger audience.
- add your LinkedIn account to your email signature - This is usually in settings in your email program.
Find new connections - This is one of the things that LinkedIn promotes . You can automatically add connections from your email account with Add Connections, Connect with other Alumni with Find Alumni. Keep in touch shows you when your connections have changed jobs, have birthdays, or just haven’t been in contact for a while. You can ask for connections to people you are interested in or who are in the same (or similar) industries even if you don't actually know them.
 Use LinkedIn groups - There are over 13,000 groups listed. Become host of a group to show off your leadership qualities or just join a group to meet likeminded professionals. Share resources with this group and host industry-centric communications. Get a sense of what people are thinking about. Groups also allow you to connect with others in the group that are not your primary connections.
Advanced Search options - You can search to find out if you are connected to anyone from a certain company or from a certain location
Leverage mentions in your status updates - Use the @ symbol in front of someone’s name or company name in order to tag them when you post or share their post. They will get alerted when you mention them. They will be appreciative and maybe return the favor.
Endorse people - Endorse people you have worked with that have done a good job. This makes them look good and also cements your relationship to them.
 As I write this I realize how skeptical I am about LinkedIn. I would love to hear stories of people who have used LinkedIn successfully. I often get requests for connections from people who are not in my industry and not even in my city or area. I do not accept them as connections, but I guess a person could collect people to add to their network so that it looks like they really connect to lots of people when they don't.
Also, I have been endorsed for qualities by people who never experienced my skill in that area. I assume that they just wanted to be nice and so clicked Endorse when LinkedIn suggested it. If that is happening lots (and I assume it is) I don't think that Endorsing can be very accurate.
I guess that if a person takes these things into account the connections that one makes with LinkedIn can be very valuable.
The information here is from HubSpot. I believe that it is a PR firm that promotes LinkedIn as well as other companies.
https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23454/The-Ultimate-Cheat-Sheet-for-Mastering-LinkedIn.aspx
| 
