LinkedIn is the biggest business-to-business online networking site in the world, with around 130 million businesspeople looking to connect - including, by my calculations, around 500,000 here in New Zealand.

Now, that might not sound like many compared with, say, Facebook, which currently has about 800 million users and around 1.7 million in New Zealand. However, LinkedIn is definitely the place to network in a business environment.

My guess is that a lot of you reading this article will be thinking, ‘I am on LinkedIn but I don’t do anything with it,’ or, ‘I don’t have time for all that social media stuff’. Let me take you through a few reasons why you should be taking more notice:

• Your prospects will be using LinkedIn for due diligence when deciding on whether to use your company or your competitor.

• A half-filled-out profile may be giving the wrong message – one which is detrimental to your personal or company brand.

• There is an expectation that all businesspeople will be on LinkedIn, and your absence will be noticed.

• How are other business people supposed to network with you if you don’t take part? You do want to network with other business people don’t you?

Before you dive straight in and start sending out invitations to join to all of your current business contacts, get your housekeeping in order first. Take a good hard look at your profile and ask yourself if you are proud of it and could it possibly be any better?

Here are 3 quick wins to get you going:

1. Does your professional headline describe fully what it is you do? You have 120 characters so use them creatively.

2. Make use of the 3 free links back to your website. You can link back to 3 different pages on your website or even your Facebook business page.

3. Get some client recommendations. These will showcase you better than anything you could ever say about yourself. 78% of people trust word of mouth marketing and only 14% trust advertising.

So, once you’re on board, how can you use LinkedIn effectively?

Networking is a great way to meet others with whom you would not ordinarily come into contact. Start a conversation in any of the New Zealand (or worldwide) networking groups and see who responds to your post. It pays to ask a question rather than post a statement, and my rule of thumb here is to ask yourself, ‘if that subject line came into my inbox, would it grab my attention enough to want to open it and answer?’

When someone does respond to your post, carry on the conversation. Don’t just ignore it, or else there is no point starting it in the first place. You wouldn’t do that in a real-life networking situation would you?

Join your industry groups both here and abroad; you just never know what valuable information you might glean from someone who has had an issue like yours.

Also, don’t just use it for networking, use it also for research. You can actively follow a company on LinkedIn that you are interested in, such as Telecom, and each time there is a personnel change or a company profile change, you will be notified. How valuable would this be if you were a recruitment agent, or just watching to keep abreast of what was happening in your industry? You can also find out how many people are following your company - you might be surprised.

LinkedIn can also be used as a recruitment tool; after all, the network is simply a huge database of businesspeople. Try using the advanced search function to narrow down exactly who or what you are looking for. Get a short list together by viewing the relevant profiles, and take it from there. You would probably be surprised how many people are not actively looking for a new position, but would welcome a conversation with you if they knew you were hiring.

Why not use it to make that final hiring decision? Who has the best recommendations out of the applicants before you? It’s almost a reference check.

I have just given you a taste of how valuable LinkedIn can be to your business, so take some time out to get your profile looking 100% and dive in. It will be a great investment of your time, and you never know who may be watching.

Linda Coles is an international speaker, author, and consultant at Blue Banana.