It is imperative for managers and leaders to highlight their professional excellence as well as create a buzz about businesses they are associated with by leveraging a professional networking site.  Your LinkedIn profile is in effect, a logical extension of your fledgling brand identity.

Locate a relevant group for your business needs

LinkedIn Groups is quite useful to come across peers in your industry to engage with and to find complimentary businesses for sharing referrals with. From several thousand groups exclusively dedicated to small business domains, you can find a relevant one to network for your business needs.  For instance, mortgage brokers can easily get in touch with other real estate agents to deal with on relevant groups. Make it a point to remain in constant touch with those important to running your business.

Establish your credentials as a thought leader

Maintain an active presence on certain domain-specific forums to share practical ideas, your knowledge and insight. Be ready to clear doubts and answer questions in your domain of expertise, to establish your credentials as a thought leader. Throw up some interesting ideas and innovative suggestions from time to time. This is bound to further boost your image, and also help you make more useful contacts as well as win new business.

Get active in groups so that it leaves a positive impact on your business associates, key contacts, colleagues and industry people who might check in, to find out what you are commenting about a particular topic.

Indulge in knowledge sharing

In all likelihood, prospects will notice your proactive approach quite engaging and strike a business deal with you. They will feel more than happy to reach out to you as they start locating the information posted by you, through advanced Answers search.

Remember, knowledge sharing is an ideal way of soft pitching your business skills instead of directly promoting your brand through a flood of offers and incentives. Dissemination of ideas and thoughts can not only help you establish a close connect with other key people in your industry and domain, but also to tap exciting business opportunities.

A niche networking site greatly helps in keeping your brand fresh in the minds of a focused user group, which is interested in your business in one way or the other. It’s also a great tool to find vendors through your more established peers’ network. As part of a referral system, which is mutually beneficial, you may even trade services with select vendor connections.

As any small business owner would readily agree, these partners can be your reliable source of referrals, which can turn into highly beneficial repeat business.  In essence, the importance of networking on LinkedIn and other business sites that involve peers in your domain need not be understated. It is a highly critical activity for repeat business referrals.