This is part of our success story series where LinkedIn users share their best practices on using LinkedIn more effectively to advance their career or business. Today’s user story comes from Thomas Merlino, small business owner at InControl Technical, who discovered how LinkedIn could help his small business grow outside of where he lived.

How I used LinkedIn as a beginner

Never underestimate the power of social networking.  When I first signed up for a LinkedIn account, it was primarily to network with peers in my area.  I am now a small business owner who utilizes LinkedIn as a means to help gain customers outside of our local geographical area.

My business, InControl Technical, was started in February 2007.  My vision was to provide simple and straightforward technical services to the area where I live, work, and play.  I wanted to connect with other professionals and business owners in the local Erie, Pennsylvania area, so I decided to create and administer a group on LinkedIn called LinkedErie.  I, along with some others in the group, promote our individual businesses and discuss everything from politics to the local economy on the LinkedErie discussion board.  It has been a tremendous help to get to know some of my current and potential customers through this group on LinkedIn.

My Aha! moment: How a future client found me on LinkedIn

Soon the time came when I realized another advantageous benefit of social networking and LinkedIn.  While I was working towards building a sizable local customer base and getting our name out there, InControl Technical was contacted by a company out of Greenville, South Carolina.  They found us on the Web by doing a search for “computer repair erie pa” and found my LinkedIn profile that I link to from our Web site.  After viewing my credentials and seeing the recommendations on my LinkedIn profile, the company felt that InControl Technical would be a good fit for their clients in Erie, PA.  The company that contacted us installs and services equipment that is tied in with local servers at various law enforcement agencies.  Based on the recommendations and credentials posted on my LinkedIn profile and the pricing information that is readily available on our Web site, this company felt comfortable trusting us to service their installed server equipment at a reasonable cost.

Since then, we’ve received calls from other companies outside of our immediate area wanting to utilize our services to assist with everything from temporary small projects to dedicated ongoing support for field employees who don’t have access to a corporate information services department.  Without the enormous power and potential of social networking and LinkedIn, I truly believe that the task of expanding outside of invisible geographical walls would be much more difficult to accomplish.
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[LinkedIn Tip] Optimize your LinkedIn profile with appropriate keywords to be found easily by clients

I’m sure many of you reading this post may wonder how you can reap similar benefits by optimizing your LinkedIn profile for keywords pertaining to your consultancy (both for freelancers or small businesses). For starters, make sure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date with the latest information on your small business offerings.

For example. Not only is Thomas’ profile summary up-to-date, but he’s also updated the “Specialties” section with a list of keywords related to the technical consulting offered by his small business. You may notice that the keywords he’s added are also localized mentioning Erie, Pennsylvania. This is a great way to come up in search results when prospective clients search for vendors in that particular location. In this particular example Thomas’ profile showed up when the prospective client searched for “computer repair erie pa” and found 14 results, the first of which was Thomas’s profile.

If you’re looking for vendors, don’t stop with basic search. Try advanced people search that allows you to slice and dice across multiple facets including location, industry; even groups that you belong to.

Update your LinkedIn Profile Summary and Specialties now

This is a guest post from our user, Linda Ruck, who runs her own Public Relations and Event Management consultancy in Singapore, Linda Ruck Communications (LRC)  with “a focus on personalized service”. In this post, she shares her best practices on how LinkedIn helped her win three global clients for her small business. You can find more of our user stories here.

Being a small business owner carving out a niche against the big players is very challenging. As with any small business you need to develop viable strategies, seek out opportunities and be creative on how to promote your business, all with a limited budget!

My LinkedIn profile has attracted clients and generated leads and referrals from the US, UK, Australia and throughout Asia seeking to hire expertise to organize their events or run their media and PR campaigns in Singapore and the region.

LinkedIn has proved to be an excellent marketing tool for LRC and more importantly has given me a global presence. My first success though LinkedIn was when I was contacted by a multinational company based in Boston which required a PR consultant in Singapore to support their Asian expansion plans. The company searched LinkedIn to find a PR company in Singapore who had expertise dealing with US based companies. LRC was one of a few companies short listed and after the initial contact and several conference calls they picked my agency to run their inbound media campaign. Having a robust, up-to-date LinkedIn profile definitely helped. Since then I have worked with this company every time they have had a project in the region.

Through opportunities in Linkedin, I have also worked with a $500 million company in the UK who contacted me through a respected mutual Linkedin contact to do their inbound media campaign in Singapore. We were also successful in winning the PR project to launch lavera, the fourth largest organic skincare company in the world.  And we have worked with several other multinational companies listed on LinkedIn, who either found us through common introductions or the LinkedIn’s advanced search.

In addition to my robust profile, I also actively participate in relevant user groups on LinkedIn. Groups is a great platform to engage in discussions and connect with like-minded professionals to learn and share, whether it’s for business or personal interest. And, most importantly, helps establish my thought leadership in a space I’ve carved out for myself as a small business owner.

Linkedin has definitely helped make my company, Linda Ruck Communications, a global player.

Have a LinkedIn experience you’d like to share with us? Submit your story here.

[Ed. note: This is a guest post from Kathy Steele, Vice President of an integrated marketing firm that credits networking as the key to their growth, and who discovered how vital social media sites like LinkedIn have become to their business process and success]

I have to admit for a number of years I was under-utilizing the resources on LinkedIn. Recently our company has joined the conversation by embracing social media as part of our integrated marketing plan, and now we work with our clients to establish Web 2.0 strategies.

We use LinkedIn to leverage the experience of our group members, vet ideas, create new connections and re-establish relationships to increase sales and publicize the achievements of our clients and ourselves. We have even found that in our sales process, sending an InMail has garnered a much higher response rate than using email or phone contact. We have just found that when we send InMail vs email we have been getting a response in the same day where we may have had no response in the past. In addition, we have also been able to be more prepared for a meeting by viewing a contact’s profile in advance. This has had significant impact on the timetable of our sales cycle, particularly in the cases when we respond to a blanket RFP or quote.

More recently, we’ve also found ourselves on the speaking circuit more often thanks to a LinkedIn Poll. By responding to a LinkedIn Poll we were found by the Chicago Tribune who asked us to weigh in on social media best practices. Recognition in the article has helped secure three new speaking gigs, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

We are so impressed with the results we are spreading the word! We have been speaking to groups of CEOs, affiliations and chambers about how to use LinkedIn as well as other social media tools in their marketing mix. Social media messaging takes time and commitment, but the return has given us credible visibility and exciting new opportunities to present our capabilities to interested prospects.

[Ed. note: This is part of our success story series where users share their tips and tricks on using LinkedIn more effectively. Today's user experience comes from Dan Gellert, a Grammy award winning audio mixer, engineer and producer. He's also the co-founder of Jitterbug.tv that he started with his partner recently, a venture that LinkedIn helped them greatly with]

Building the technical backbone of the site, I asked the LinkedIn community to comment on best practices for streaming media, advantages of different media players, budgeting bandwidth costs, etc. Taking advantage of the eyeballs and expertise on LinkedIn, the answers enabled me to understand the average mode of operation; and more importantly, gave me the vocabulary and right questions to ask moving forward on a variety of topics.

Moving to logo and brand design, through launching and especially now, marketing and spreading the word – LinkedIn has helped me waste less time on areas I am not an expert in.  Finding people who are influencing the kids music niche has been fairly easy using LinkedIn. Scanning peoples profiles, what and how they write quickly gives me a sense of their direction, expertise, involvement and relevance to me  – now that is useful!

As we started defining the navigation of jitterbug, LinkedIn was one of a few sites I referenced – noticing how it made potentially messy navigation simple and clear gave me understanding… and a bit of hope!  Adding my profile link on outgoing emails to people who I am trying to woo into action – I found this adds some credibility for those who need some prodding.

The fact that LinkedIn has a huge user base and that you can cross reference users answers with their profile – for me, this makes the experience transparent and helpful.

Have a LinkedIn experience you’d like to share with the community? Please submit your story here.

[Ed. note: This is a guest blog post from Ron LaPedis, Principal at Seacliff Partners and describes his journey from being laid off to becoming an entrepreneur with some help from his LinkedIn network]

I am an entrepreneur who was always afraid to quit my day job. I sold rock concert T-shirts in college and even after I began work in the Silicon Valley, I started selling high-end fountain pens from Realpens.com and writing articles for industry magazines. These were little more than hobbies until my first pink slip showed up, after I’d spent nearly 29 years in the industry. After exiting the building and taking stock, it was obvious that networking was the answer. The scuttlebutt was that few people were being hired off the street and recommendations to managers were worth their weight in gold. Using LinkedIn’s advanced search feature, I reached out to old friends and co-workers for references but instead discovered that many of them were independent consultants and actually making a living at it.

While still searching for a full-time job, I began the work to become a trusted adviser on my favorite topic – protecting businesses and people when something goes wrong. I used LinkedIn Answers to get tips and tricks from my contacts on how to set up a consulting business including the need for liability insurance and why I should incorporate as an LLC. To prove my credibility, I used the WordPress application on LinkedIn to publish my regular blog post entries on to my network. An Australian friend of mine saw my posts on LinkedIn and recommended me to a company in Los Angeles. My first contract came quickly, in fact before the ink was dry on my incorporation papers. After that I was requested to author an online article and was paid to write and give two educational sessions at a technology conference – and this all started with a LinkedIn contact.

I am absolutely convinced of the power offered by LinkedIn and I tell all of my friends to build their networks, use the search feature to find people at targeted companies, and get recommendations from co-workers.