If you want to increase your customer base, and therefore increase sales, you have to grow your network.

One of the best tools for expanding your business network is LinkedIn.

These simple tips will help you to get the most out of a LinkedIn membership.

1. As soon as you join LinkedIn, create a profile and start inviting people to be your connections. Joining LinkedIn is free. While you can pay for a premium membership that will give you access to more LinkedIn services, you don’t need to pay anything to send invitations and make connections.
2. When someone accepts one of your invitations to connect, you will get an email from them saying that they’ve accepted.  You can use this email to begin a conversation with your new connection, in which you tell them about your business and ask them what they do and how you can help them. As with all networking, always make sure that your connections understand that you want to get to know them better; don’t make them think that you are only using them to get more business.
3. When you have made a connection, look at your new connection’s profile. Find out who their connections are, and send invitations to those connections.
4. Share your contacts with people you trust. If you share your contacts with someone, they will often reciprocate by sharing their contacts with you.
5. Find out who has looked at your profile.  You can send these people messages and invite them to connect with you.  If you are a paying member, you will have access to more information about who has seen your profile, so this is where upgrading your membership can help. Don’t worry about having so many connections that you can’t keep track of them. LinkedIn allows you to export all of your connections onto a spreadsheet.
6. Write recommendations for other people. If you write someone a recommendation, they will usually recommend you in return. Recommendations are great for attracting customers.
7. Join LinkedIn Groups that are related to your industry or to your field of expertise. You can post articles to LinkedIn Groups. This will help to increase your visibility and the visibility of your company. LinkedIn allows you to get in touch with 500 people who belon to any group to which you belong – even people who aren’t connections of yours. Take advantage of this opportunity to let even more people find out about who you are and what you do.
8. Optimize your profile. Your profile is a tool to help you advertise yourself. You can rearrange the items on your profile in order to focus on those things that are most likely to attract business. You can include links to three different websites on your profile, which can also incorporate add-ons from third parties.
9. Set up a company profile, in addition to your personal profile.  You can use your company profile to provide visitors with detailed information about your company. Members of your staff who are LinkedIn Members can link to your company profile. This will enable their connections will find out about your business. Your company profile can include company recommendations.
10. Be sure to update your profile frequently, so that your connections frequently have you on their minds and they remain aware of what you are doing. If you have a Twitter account – and you should – you can connect it to your LinkedIn account so that your Tweets show up on your Linked in profile.
11. Stay on top of your connections’ updates. If you know which projects your connections are working on and what is going on with their businesses, you will be able to communicate with them better.

Many people know that LinkedIn is useful networking tool. However, few of these know how to take advantage of all of LinkedIn’s features so that that they use LinkedIn in the most effective way. By following these easy tips, you and your business will get the most from LinkedIn.