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LinkedIn tends to be touted as “Facebook for adults”, despite launching a year before Mark Zuckerberg’s uber-popular website. Still, LinkedIn is considered a social networking site that lets users make a virtual resume and create a network of friends and colleagues called connections. A user’s network consists of his connections plus the connections’ connections – to whom a user can get introduced through the mutual contact.

In the early days of LinkedIn, that was it. Like Facebook without applications or photos, there wasn’t much to do except acquire new connections and hunt for jobs. Instead of being “Facebook for adults”, LinkedIn only got updated when a user needed work, a problem further compounded by Facebook opening its doors to the public in 2006.

But recently, LinkedIn has expanded what its users can do in three important ways. While critics deride the site’s new functionality as a copy of features on other sites, the unique business-oriented focus of the site makes that functionality more useful.

1. LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers is the most useful of the new features. That is, the one that you are likely to use the most. Like Yahoo! Answers or the newly launched Mahalo Answers, this feature allows users to pose questions that can be answered by other users in the community.

The benefit of using LinkedIn Answers as opposed to those others I mentioned above is twofold. First, the trust level is increased because you can see the real names of the respondents along with their profiles. This allows you to determine the “expert” status of the person behind the response. On other answer sites, you are often reliant on the username (often an amusing Internet sobriquet like “TwilightFan999”) rather than a name, title, and company. Second, The focus of the community means that the snarky comments and joke answers are a rarity, if they appear at all.

You can also recommend an expert on the subject within the LinkedIn Network for the questioner to contact.

2. LinkedIn Groups

Yahoo!, Google, and Facebook, have group functionality, but once again, LinkedIn’s version benefits from being more user-friendly than the first two, and with a better, higher signal-to-noise ratio than the latter (where groups can be as off-the-wall as “I love beer!”)

Participating in LinkedIn Groups is a good way to network with other professionals who have similar interests or work in the same industry. Groups encourage discussion and debate more fully than Answers do, so they can be an even better platform for getting to know other users.

3. LinkedIn Applications

Just a few months ago, LinkedIn introduced applications that users can add to their profiles. Again, you’re thinking “Just like Facebook,” and this isn’t untrue. There are still very few apps available, but every one of them is useful in some way. If you have a blog, you can now connect it to your profile and show people browsing your most recent posts. Other apps allow the sharing of Word and PowerPoint documents, as well as other files – a great way to display work samples. The app “TripIt” shows where your network is traveling and when you and a Connection will be in the same city – an extremely useful tool for those of you who live from trade show to convention to conference. A market research app was recently rolled out that allows users to poll the community.

The Cost?

Although LinkedIn runs on a “freemium” model, where a paid membership garners extra features, all of the features above are available to anybody at no charge.

Your Reputation

At the very least, you should be using LinkedIn as a reputation management tool. Take a few minutes and create a profile; it will show up in the first couple of pages when your name is Googled. Linking your profile to your blog or personal website can bring in traffic. Unlike other outposts you might use to promote your business, LinkedIn is about promoting yourself. If you run a B2C e-commerce store, being active on LinkedIn might not lead directly to an increased conversion rate, but you’ll be seen as more of an expert in your product than others without profiles. Also, a savvy B2B store owner could leverage additional business.

Summing up

What’s the best way to use LinkedIn? Like any social network, it depends on what you want out of it. It can be a good tool for lead generation or finding freelance work, or just to establish your expertise among your peers. Being an active participant will raise your, visibility and get you noticed, as well as increase your authority

Solid Cactus, Inc. has designed or redesigned more than 3,000 e-commerce sites. Solid Cactus is an Inc. 500 company and was named one of the "Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania" in 2006 and 2007.

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