The
folks at LinkedIn have been rolling out a tremendous amount of updates recently.
 These range from revamped profile pages, updated LinkedIn Company pages,
the ability to follow thought leaders, endorsements and much more. They’re doing
something right because as of  October 16, 2012, LinkedIn has over 175
million members.  If you haven’t joined LinkedIn yet, I hope the following
facts convince you to get started. This is some really cool stuff.  Please
feel free to add your own facts and comments in the comment section
below.




 ·        
LinkedIn
has over 175 million members as of October 16, 2012.  To put this in
perspective, LinkedIn had 32 million members in January of 2009



·        
Users
are joining LinkedIn at 2 members per second  


·        
LinkedIn
added 50 million members in 2011 alone.  It took them 6 years to add their
first 50 million users! 


·        
The
United Kingdom and Brazil are tied for third place as the largest countries on
LinkedIn.  Brazil just hit 10 members. India is second place while the
United States is number one  


·        
LinkedIn
is expecting to reach 5 billion professional searches in 2012 



·        
There
are over 1 million groups on LinkedIn.  These groups contain between 2 and
250,000 members 



·        
The
mobile version of LinkedIn is it’s fastest growing
service 



·        
 The LinkedIn mobile app had 12 options
in 2011 and approximately 1 million users.  In 2012, LinkedIn cut the
number of options down to 4 and they saw an increase in the number of users from
10% to 23% 


·        
There
are over 28 people searched on the mobile app per second 



·        
Over
75,000 developers are using LinkedIn’s API’s in their own products and
services 


·        
 LinkedIn gets over 2 billion network
updates viewed weekly 


·        
 There are over 175 thousand new LinkedIn
  profiles created every day.


·        
There
was 3 billion searches on LinkedIn as of September,
2012 


·        
 Over 25 million LinkedIn profiles are
viewed every day  


·        
There
are over 2 million LinkedIn Company Pages on LinkedIn 



·        
Over
1 million publishers have implemented the LinkedIn share button on their
sites 


·        
 Recently, 150 thought leaders were
requested to create articles for LinkedIn on various topics. These individuals
consisted of 1 Nobel Prize Winner, members with over 2 million followers, 1
McArthur Genius, 29 New York Times best seller book authors, all from 11
countries  


·        
There
are over 10 million endorsements provided on LinkedIn
everyday 


·        
 The new LinkedIn homepage has
been rolled out to over 175 million
users  


·        
There
has been over 200% more social interactions since the LinkedIn homepage was
redesigned  

I just finished a new interview with Ivor Kellock for his radio show your thoughts are appreciated.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/linkedlocalnetwork/2012/07/09/business-with-ivor--live-from-st-albans

When you are building up your website you must find ways to build links to increase your traffic. This list is a collection of social media, web directories and much more you can begin with.


1.     pinterest.com





2.     secureserver.net





3.     warriorforum.com





4.     mashable.com





5.     businessinsider.com





6.     technorati.com





7.     seekingalpha.com





8.     paper.li





9.     uklinkdirectory.info




10.   fool.com





11.   triberr.com





12.   addurlsite.us





13.   addurlnow.info





14.   addurls.us



 

15.   seofnw.com





16.   linkdirectory101.info





17.   addurlstore.info





18.   seonetblog.info





19.   webdirectorynow.info





20.   directories.us





21.   googlepagerankupdate.net





22.   freewebdirs.info




23.   webdirectoriessite.info




24.   alltop.com





25.   nicoo.net





26.   freeseoplan.info





27.   first-web-host.com





28.   list-of-domains.org



 

29.   staged.com




30.   yokimono.com



 

31.   web-hosting-top10.info





32.   associateprograms.com





33.   quicksprout.com



 

34.   karmalynx.com





35.   strategicprofits.com





36.   web-hosting-resellers.info





37.   erica.biz





38.   mingjongtey.com





39.   bestfastdir.info





40.   bookmasters.com





41.   mattbacak.com





42.   carolroth.com







43.   docgates.com




44.   blogdesignblog.com





45.   rsscb.com





46.   humbledmba.com





47.   homebusinesspreneur.com


48. Linkedin.com


49. Twitter.com


50. facebook.com

Spreading Yourself Too Thin

Your efforts should be targeted within a specific niche or group of niches without targeting you are spreading your resources thin.

Not Being Visible

Put yourself out there there is no room for secrecy if you want to build a well known brand.

Being Afraid To Leave Your Comfort Zone

Building a business is a calculated risk you need to consider any opportunity that comes your way strongly.

Sending Mixed Signals

Be confident and honest about who you really are.

Giving Up:

Never do this it is like one of my favorite quotes by Thomas Edison “Many of those who failed never realized how close they were to success when they gave up” Giving up usually happens when you are finally gaining momentum never stop hustling.

 

Not Showing Your Personality on Your Profile

You need to be personable and interact people want someone they can connect to and trust.

Not Having a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

You need a game plan centered on how you will grow contacts, interact and add value to your LinkedIn network.

 

Not having SEO on Your LinkedIn Profile

Whatever niche or niches you are targeting should be positioned for through your profile.

Here are some reasons why people may use LinkedIn.

- To stay in touch with friends and colleagues. 
- To reconnect with old friends and colleagues that you may have not been able to find or be found by otherwise when emails and phone numbers are changed. 
- To get introduced to new interesting friends and business connections. 
- To promote your products and services, find or be found by new customers. 
- To find or be found by new vendors, suppliers or service providers. 
- To find a job through your network and to make it easy for employers and recruiters to find you. 
- To find someone to fill a vacancy that you may have. 
- To find experts and get advice. 
- To share your experience, help others and give advices. 
- To stay updated with the latest news especially about your network and what’s new. 
- To join groups and start or join in interesting discussions. 
- To build and strengthen your personal branding and online presence for you or your company (improving the chances of being found on Google). 
- To find new opportunities for business, partners or investors 
- To consolidate in one place trusted (to some degree) recommendations that you can get from your colleagues, friends and business contacts. 
- To use who you know in common to ask for reference about someone or a company before working or doing business with them. 
- To look up anyone that you need to meet or speak to and find out what you can about them to understand them better and to make a good impression. 
- To be able to post questions and get different answers 
- To be able to create or participate in polls (surveys) and find out the results. 
- To be able to post and share announcements, updates, news, cool things. 
- To be recognized as a subject matter expert in your area of expertise. 

As you can see the possibilities and power of this network are endless. 

How do you get found on LinkedIn? Five places to put keywords

If you want to rank high for a keyword, such as "sales manager" or "graphic designer" make sure to put those keywords in:


1. Your headline
2. Your summary
3. Your current job
4. Your past job
5. Your specialities

For example, I have LinkedIn expert in all five places. When I search my contacts, I

 I come up on the second page out of 18 million contacts for LinkedIn Expert. It works.

 

Be yourself and give a thorough walk through of your story and what you offer.

More Tools and Features of LinkedIn

By now, you probably realize the importance of adding relevant keywords that your target markets may search for to your headline, summary, and specialties sections of your LinkedIn profile. Here are some pro tips to optimize your profile to get found by great new contacts:

Edit your public LinkedIn URL: An example is my personal LinkedIn URL, http://www.linkedin.com/in/Jasonbaudendistel. This will optimize your LinkedIn profile to show up in search results on major search engines when someone searches for your name. It is important to claim those results for your name as they provide a gateway into your personal brand.

Customize your "Website" listings: Under the websites section of your LinkedIn profile, you can list up to three URLs. Choose the "other" option when setting up each of these links and describe them with relevant terms. For example, rather than using the terms "my website," I use "Online Marketing Leads.” Not only is this more descriptive, but it also gives me a better opportunity to rank for these keywords in search engines.

Include a link to your Twitter profile: You can have more than one Twitter account listed, and you can also integrate Twitter into your LinkedIn profile in the "Settings" section.

Best practice: Rather than sending all tweets, selectively send tweets to your LinkedIn status update by adding # in to the end of specific tweets.

Make your LinkedIn profile publicly visible to everyone: 
You want other professionals on LinkedIn to be able to find you and contact you anytime!