Now that you know why you should be using LinkedIn for business, let’s take a moment to talk about how you should be using it in order to generate income.

LinkedIn is a great platform to use to help share your knowledge with the world, establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, and make money while you do it.

Here are a few ways that you can do so:

• Optimize your profile and make sure that it’s 100% complete. When optimizing your profile be sure to highlight what you can do for your customer instead of solely focusing on your accomplishments. Your profile should not read like a resume — it should speak as to what you can do for others. See this example:

Headline: Marrying eight years of college education, 20+ years experience, and a passion for helping others succeed in marketing their business. (It’s a little long, but you get the point.)

Summary: Think of your summary as your elevator pitch. You want to highlight the benefits of knowing, trusting, and working with you. Highlight your results.

Testimonials: You should absolutely include a testimonial or two at the end of your summary. This helps to support your claims of being an expert in your field.

• Include a 30 second DIY commercial about who you are, what you do, and a call to action. Not everyone is going to read your profile — video is king right now so do not be shy! Post a quick elevator pitch via video and share it at the top of your summary.
• Invest time in making genuine connections. Scroll through the “People You May Know” feature and connect with at least a few folks a day. Be sure to customize your connection request while doing so. Let them know you’d like to connect with them and give them a reason to want to do so. Whatever you do, DO NOT come across as salesy. People don’t like that. They want genuine connections.
• Join groups where your prospective customers hang out. Remember, once you’re in the groups DO NOT try and sell them on your products. You’re there to network, add value, and establish trust. That will help lead them to wanting to know more about you and ultimately to wanting to work with you. Focus on building your presence and your network. If you build it, they will come.
• Create your own group. This is beneficial once you have started to build your network, established trust, and are ready to build your targeted community. Your group should be focused on creating a place for your target audience to go get more of what you have to offer. In this space, you are the leader — the only expert and go-to person for what you bring to the table. This is where you can add more value to your prospects lives by sharing resources, answering questions, and just helping people out. You can also offer these associates your courses on occasion. Let them know what promotions you have going on and things like that. This is YOUR space, but use it wisely.
• Update your status daily. Use this space to share articles, links to white papers, tips, your latest accomplishments, latest client testimonials and more. The sky is the limit. Just be sure that you take advantage of this space. Try not to let your status dull out. What do I mean by “dull out”? Profiles that fail to provide status updates seem dead to the audience. It becomes a situation of “out of sight, out of mind,” which defeats the purpose of the platform!
• Publish articles directly on LinkedIn. Articles are a great way to get attention. Showoff your expertise by posting content that will benefit your target audience. These articles are read and shared on the site; in turn, this helps build awareness around your brand or presence and gives insight as to what you have to offer. Put something in writing and post away.

These are only a few things you can do to help generate leads using LinkedIn. With close to 600 million users, it’s safe to say that your target audience is in that number — they just need to know that you and your courses exist. So jump in there and make it happen. You’ve got this!