If you want to know more about Linkedin, the company’s history and where it’s going, then read this interesting article posted on CNN Money.

“Social networking has been great for the kids, but not of much use to business - until now. With Reid Hoffman’s MySpace-for-grown-ups at a tipping point, these days you’re either LinkedIn or left out.”

“For many, it’s become irresponsible to not invite business associates into your LinkedIn network,” says Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who specializes in sociology and strategy.

The following is an excerpt from The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, a new book from David Teten and About.com Entrepreneurs Guide Scott Allen on building business relationships online.

How to Use Online Networks for Marketing

Here are some of the ways that you can use social networks to market your company and you:

Research your market. You have two ears and one mouth; listen more than you talk. Through participation in these communities, companies can learn about consumer interests and reactions with a candor rarely found in focus groups and surveys.

Create Competence. If becoming an expert in your field is part of your marketing strategy, social networks give you a much more accessible outlet than the media. You can speak up in a mailing list, discussion forum, or blog, and reach hundreds or thousands of people. Say something useful, original, and profound, and you will get quoted and linked to, reaching even more people.

Build and reinforce your brand. Every signature in an e-mail or on the Web, and every profile online, is an opportunity to reinforce your brand.

Unveil a human voice. Networked markets demand openness from the companies who want to sell into those markets. Organizations should have more people participating virtually than just professional marketers. A happy employee is a more powerful brand evangelist than almost anyone in Marketing. This is one reason why Microsoft has approximately 1,200 bloggers out of 55,000 employees.

Associate yourself with a not-for-profit cause. People are much more willing to gather around a cause than a company.

Microtarget. If you have identified a particular narrowly-defined groups to target, the odds are good that you can identify a virtual community where they are already gathered. Are you selling consulting services to independent bookstores? If it doesn’t already exist, just create a virtual community for your target pool, seed it with your closest relationships, and watch it grow.

Ignite word-of-mouth buzz. If you have a new product or service, word-of-mouth—satisfied customers talking about you—is one of the most effective ways to establish your Competence. Word-of-mouth flows through social networks; Leaders of networks are excellent lighthouse customers. If the most prominent blogger in your field likes what you sell, you will create a powerful evangelist.

A common mistake many marketers make when dealing with online communication is in thinking that it can be turned on and off like an advertising campaign. Online networks are generally not very receptive to marketing messages from brand new members. You must earn the right to talk about your product through participation in and contribution to the community. Similarly, you cannot simply leave when the campaign is over, or you will be seen as shallow and a “user.” People do not want to be used; please do not use people.

Most people acknowledge that networking - creating a fabric of personal contacts to provide support, feedback, insight, and resources is an essential activity for an ambitious manager. Indeed, it’s a requirement even for those focused simply on doing their current jobs well. For some, this is a distasteful reality. Working through networks, they believe, means relying on who you know rather than what you know, a hypocritical, possibly unethical, way to get things done.

But as INSEAD’s Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter point out in this article published in the Harvard Business Review (January 2007), even those who understand that networking is a legitimate and necessary part of their job can be discouraged by the payoff because they are doing it in too limited a fashion. On the basis of a close study of 30 emerging leaders, the authors outline three distinct forms of networking.

Read the short version at the Havard Business Review or the complete article here.

Having an updated contact list of everybody in your network is crucial to stay connected. Linkedin does a great job at enabling online networking and staying updated on where your contacts work, how their experience progresses and who is in their network. But one thing is lacking, and that is fully updated contact information. Plaxo is the perfect solution, and with 30 million users, it is a tested technology. Go to www.plaxo.com and sign up for a FREE basic account and get the following benefits:

- Update your address book when friends change their contact info
- Update friends’ address books when your contact info changes
- Sync your contacts, calendar, tasks, notes across Plaxo-enabled applications
- Get reminded of a friend’s birthday just a few days before
- Receive a Plaxo alert whenever a contact’s info has changed

And be sure to install the Plaxo Toolbar for Outlook, it works great. It keeps your Outlook and Outlook Express address books up-to-date. Install the Plaxo Toolbar on multiple computers. Syncs your address book, calendar, tasks and notes everywhere. You can build your address book from sent and received e-mail. Now, Plaxo members can detect AIM presence information from Outlook.

* The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven.

* The average number for Harvard Business School grads is fifty-eight, so you could skip the MBA, work at Google, and probably get most of the connections you need. Later, you can hire Harvard MBAs to prepare your income taxes.

* People with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.

* All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees.

Read the 10 Ways to use Linkedin on “How to change the world” a blog by Guy Kawasaki

Never heard of this C-Title, don’t worry it is still taking its first baby steps towards acceptance. But the concept is interesting and worth considering, maybe not as a full-time functions, but as a focus area for the executive officers, to better understand how networking can be used at all levels of the company and to the company’s benefit. Read more about the CNO at thenationalnetworker.com

When looking to join a business networking group, keep in mind that in most cities you’ll have many different options to choose from. You can generally divide the choices into seven different groups, however, which will make your final decisions much easier to make. See the groups here.

In an article written on ABC News, Tory Johnson writes about taking control of your digital identity. Create a free digital identity to advance your career. By raising your online profile, you can make yourself more employable. If you’re an employee or entrepreneur looking for a job, a promotion, new clients or better business opportunities, there are several smart ways to create and enhance your digital identity.”

Tory gives some good tips:

Three tips for maximizing your success with LinkedIn:
1. Select “full view” of your “public profile.”
2. Claim a “vanity URL” using your name.
3. Invite friends and/or desired professional contacts to link to you.

- create a free profile at ZoomInfo.com
- Subscribe to Google alerts
- Create a blog
- Post expert opinions

Read the reasons behind the above tips and more at ABC News