LinkedIn is a social networking website geared towards companies and business professionals looking to make new business contacts or keep in touch with previous co‐workers, affiliates, and clients. If you currently work with a lot of professionals or your target market is business professionals than LinkedIn would be a great social network for you to get involved in.

The average LinkedIn user is 39 and makes $139,000 a year.

With LinkedIn, members can create customizable profiles that detail employment history, business accomplishments, and other professional accolades. LinkedIn also gives you the ability to see who your contacts know (second‐degree connections) and who they, in turn, know (third‐degree connections). A great trick is to use the search feature the next time you get a hot lead. See if they are on LinkedIn and if they are on the network you will be able to see if you have any mutual friends/connections.  LinkedIn is also a great way to keep your database up‐to‐date. As your contacts move jobs or addresses, each change will be updated in his or her profile.

There is a number of ways to position yourself as a subject matter expert on LinkedIn and drive traffic to your website or blog. The first thing you should do is add the following applications: WordPress, Events, Twitter, and Slideshare. You have to be already using these in order to pull the information through to your profile. These applications will allow you to provide more engaging information on your profile.

You should update your status regularly with useful information, try and include a link if possible to some content that you have created. Look to answer the question ‘what has your attention right now?’. This will help ensure that you create useful relevant status updates. Every time you update your status your network receives a notification, this is a non-intrusive way to stay top of mind with your network.

LinkedIn groups is another way to engage people and increase your sphere of influence. Find a group that relates to your niche or a passion. Engage people in the group in conversation always focus on adding value to the community and if appropriate reference content on your site. You can also demonstrate your expertise by using the Answers feature on LinkedIn. This feature enables people to ask questions to the general LinkedIn community. You can search for questions relating to Toronto real estate. By providing an educated articulate answer to the posted question you will not only demonstrate your expertise but you will also be engaging someone (lead) that is interested in real estate and who is most likely out of your current network.

In the next post i will be discussing how you can leverage Twitter.