One of our key focus areas on the blog this past year has been to share with you how different professionals use LinkedIn to advance their career. Here are five videos we picked from a slew of LinkedIn user success stories we featured this year. Feel free to leave a comment on how you’ve used LinkedIn this past year to advance your career:

1. How LinkedIn Referrals can help you find new business and talent

Sasha Strauss (Innovation Protocol), describes how he has leveraged his trusted referral network on LinkedIn to not only to hire every employee in his firm but also to find most of his valued clientele.

I do business with people that are pre-qualified, and the only way that they are pre-qualified is that they have a robust profile that showcases who is willing to support what they claim! It really is an authenticity protocol!

Edit your LinkedIn Profile now

2. How LinkedIn Answers can help you build client relationships

Steven Shimek (Ruder Finn), used LinkedIn to build client relationships in over 20 leads that led to business worth over a quarter of a million dollars! He uses LinkedIn as a litmus test to qualify leads for his business development practice and explains his philosophy of digital karma in the below video.

LinkedIn isn’t just about networking. It’s about your friends, clients, and associates being a resource to you. I like helping people because they’ve all helped me!

Ask or Answer questions from your network

3. How LinkedIn Jobs can help you find your dream job

Evan Gotlib (Travel Zoo) describes how LinkedIn helped him find a dream job that he wasn’t looking for! Evan started seeing the power of LinkedIn right after he hit 50 connections on LinkedIn and calls it the tipping point for him!

Using job search, I stumbled upon a dream job opening in the travel industry. This is the first job I proactively went after and it wouldn’t have happened without LinkedIn!

Find your dream job using your LinkedIn Network

4. How LinkedIn Search can help you find the right candidate for the right job

Lenny Bourdeau (Stephen James Assoc.) faced the same challenge that recruiters and executives face these days, a dearth of talent with specific skill sets that they are looking for. Lenny was looking for somebody with a specific skill set in “revenue recognition”. His Search yielded three candidates whom he contacted via InMail and soon one of them was hired yielding a placement fee of $20K!

This person wasn’t on the job boards. So LinkedIn tremendously increased my candidate pool within that niche segment that I was specifically looking for!

Try LinkedIn’s new Advanced People Search

5. How LinkedIn Groups can help corporations can find unique value

Mark Kvamme (Sequoia Capital), describes his LinkedIn Aha moment when he was able to reach out to Ross Levinsohn (Velocity Interactive Group) through a trusted referral from Marc Andreessen (Ning). Watch more in the short video below.

I can really see how corporations and individuals can get some unique value from LinkedIn that they could not get in any other place.

Manage your Groups on LinkedIn

Stay tuned as we bring you many more examples of how professionals utilize LinkedIn and leverage the power of their professional network. If you have a LinkedIn success story you’d like to share with us, please leave a comment.

Just a few months ago Michael Friedenberg, CEO of CXO Media asked what three qualities best describes a CIO. And, just a few weeks ago former CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner, asked the perfect follow-up question:

which CEO and/or company most successfully, consistently and thoroughly embodies innovation to maximize business results?

Almost 800 professionals answered the question. While a few answers predicted the demise of the “Star-CEO” role, the majority cited examples of CEOs such as Steve Jobs or companies like Southwest Airlines and Google.

Here’s a sampling:

Neal Lachman, Chairman & CEO at N.S. Lachman & Co.

We may have some visionary founder or executive that will occasionally play the charismatic CEO role, but the era of the CEO as the poster-child of great innovation and great leadership is gone due to the job-hopping tendencies of today’s (short-term minded) CEOs.

Patrick Hayes, Vice President, CSMG

Apple has done amazing things with computing and more recently Consumer Electronics devices. They have a unnatural ability to bring out converged platforms and extend CE devices with an obsession for the form/factor itself and more importantly the surrounding value added services and products. For example, iPod went from a product, to a platform to a full-fledged eco-system of products and services.

And, like it or not they changed the way record labels, artists, etc. view the distribution and monetization of music now. They’re doing it again with iPhone.

Browse the rest of the 777 answers here.

How to tap into the wisdom of your crowd using LinkedIn Answers:

1. Ask your Network: Need an answer in a particular area of professional expertise. LinkedIn has hundreds of categories in the professional space ranging from the mundane to the obscure.

Ask a Question on LinkedIn Answers

2. Search for Answers: Don’t have time to ask a question. Never mind. Somebody may have encountered the same issues you have, may have asked the question on LinkedIn and found a satisfactory solution to it. 

Find Answers on LinkedIn

3. Help your Network with your Answers: Want to earn some Digital Karma? Answer questions in your area of expertise that can help both your professional network as well as others looking for similar solutions.

Answer questions from your LinkedIn network

The volatile economic situation in the USA has been up, front and center in the news these past few weeks throughout the globe. It’s of particular significance to small business owners in this part of the globe given the political climate. Just ask Joe, the Plumber.

Today’s featured question comes from Bill Dunkelberg, Chief Economist, NFIB, National Federation of Independent Business. Bill asks small business owners what they are doing “to keep customers happy and coming back during these difficult economic times.”

The latest NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business) Economic report shows that “decreasing sales” is now the No.1 concern for small businesses. A recent LinkedIn community discussion recommended “focusing on your existing customers” as the top measure for dealing with economic downturn . How would you best work with your customers so they will keep their business with you and ride out this storm together?

The answers featured keywords such as “trust”, “communications”, “value”, “passion” and more. Take a read here. Given below are a couple of answers that exemplify the common themes.

Steve Kownacki, Producer/Director/Owner @ Final Focus Productions, writes:

Service. Service. And oh, service. We have 2 main words in our mission statement “value” and “passion”. Exemplify them in everything you do and everyone you communicate with. Treat each client as though they are your only client. You be honest about what you can deliver for a given
budget.

Just got back from lunch with a long-time client – they gave us 2 new jobs! – his comment: “I come to you because I have no worries. I know it’s in good hands.” This is all I ever need to hear. But never take it for granted.

Ronn Irving, Vice President, the TASCON Group, opines:

Many business owners and their “Trusted Advisors” are going through the process of planning for the coming year. When they review their performance to date and forecast for changes in the coming year, it becomes clear they need to have a plan in place to generate more revenues to offset the skyrocketing costs of doing business.

There are three ways to do that – 1. Control costs, both fixed and variable costs. 2. Increase sales – sell more widgets. 3. Increase sales price.

About the featured LinkedIn user:

Bill Dunkelberg is the Chief Economist at NFIB, and a featured speaker at the Weather the Economy Forum, a series of webinars dedicated to helping small and mid-sized businesses survive and thrive in a tough
economy.