This is my list of the best tips for maintaining a professional presence on LinkedIn.  As LinkedIn changes and develops, I will add more tips to this page, but if you have something to add or you want to ask any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

1. Complete your profile and keep it updated regularly
2. Connect with people who you have worked with or know in a professional capacity
3. Join discussion groups that are relevant to your profession, specialization and geographic interests
4. Use discussion groups to ask technical or professional questions
5. Monitor and participate in polls in your specialist subject area
6. Look for new questions from your network that you can respond to
7. Follow the company that you are working for, their direct competitors and companies you might like to work for in the future
8. Ask for recommendations from people who you have worked with, with the same respect and care as you would ask for a reference when applying for a job

1. Include misleading or inappropriate content in your profile
2. Connect with people without good reason or who may reflect poorly on your reputation
3. Maintain membership in discussion groups that fail to interest you or live up to your expectations
4. Post new discussion items to groups that are off-topic, irrelevant or spammy
5. Share links to discussion groups without checking to see if they have already been posted to the group
6. Comment on a discussion item when you have nothing to add, i.e. avoid one line comments: that’s great, thanks for sharing, I did not know that, etc…
7. Push automatic updates from other social networks to your LinkedIn status.  If you feel some of your updates would benefit your LinkedIn connections, use the #in hashtag option with Twitter and be selective about which updates to include
8. Update your status more than two or three times per week, LinkedIn is about quality of interaction not quantity

Quick Tips

Further Reading

1. Managing LinkedIn: How to filter relevant discussions from LinkedIn Groups