The user interface (UI) for doing this is actually really simple, but non-obvious.  My friend Dave Taylor has step-by-step instructions, with pictures.

(spoiler alert)

Dave’s written a bunch of great articles on LinkedIn over the years. He does a lot of step-by-step how-to’s, which unfortunately get out-of-date given how often LinkedIn changes their user interface, so I definitely recommend subscribing to get those when they’re fresh. Here are a few good ones that are “evergreen”:

• Best practices on sending LinkedIn invitations
• Best practices for a LinkedIn job search
• I’m unemployed. What do I list on LinkedIn?
• How can I get more LinkedIn invitations?
• How do you find people through LinkedIn?
• How do I narrow my search results on LinkedIn?

This morning tens of thousands of people received LinkedIn connection requests from John Sculley, former CEO of Apple. However, these request weren’t actually from John Sculley, but rather a fake account pretending to be him. LinkedIn users are accepting these requests at a current rate of about 4 per minute, unaware that this account isn’t actually the former CEO of Apple.

The article goes on to point out just how frighteningly easy it is to game LinkedIn and acquire your personal information, and offers some sound advice:

Whenever you get an invite from someone so famous that you wonder how they would know you (such as John Sculley), you should always be suspicious. Unless you know the person, or you yourself are suddenly famous, be wary as your privacy and security may be in jeopardy.

Thing is…this happens all the time with fake accounts from people who are NOT famous, too. If you’re concerned about spammers getting your personal info, you really shouldn’t be connecting with anybody and everybody. If you don’t know them personally, you have no idea what their ulterior motives might be.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be an open networker (LION) — just realize that there’s an increased risk of some of your personal information getting out there. Is the risk worth the reward? Also, you might want to look at what contact information you share. Whatever you put in is visible to ALL your connections. Do you really want your email, Skype, and physical address visible to everyone you’re connected to?

Me — my life’s an open book. I figure all that info is publicly available to anyone who wants it badly enough. And once the cat’s out of the bag, it’s pretty much impossible to get it back in. But if you’re concerned, and your data’s not already out there all over the place, you might want to edit your contact info on your profile and be at least a little more selective about who you connect with.

@LinkedIn pretty sure I am in contact with my wife who I have just spent 12 days on vacation with. pic.twitter.com/7EmlI6ffXs

— Ronald Rule (@TheRule8618) June 2, 2013

This is a great feature if you’re more concerned about security than convenience. It’s kind of a pain if you frequently access LinkedIn from internet cafes, friend’s houses, offices you’re visiting, etc. Fortunately, it’s optional, and off by default, so you can choose what works best for you.

Flip through the presentation below for a step-by-step guide to enabling it:

Here are some of the key findings, and what you can do to create more opportunities and generate leads and more business with LinkedIn.

• Sellers use LinkedIn most for prospecting – 61.4% of those surveyed say they’ve been successful initiating offline conversations with prospects.
• Opportunities have been created from their using LinkedIn.
• Top sellers pay attention to their professional presence and use more of LinkedIn’s capabilities.
• 89.9% of top sellers see LinkedIn as being essential.

What can you do to generate more leads and more business with LinkedIn?

1. Be sure your LinkedIn profile is not your resume. In our crazy-busy world, our buyers don’t have time to sift through a long, chronological list of what you’ve done in your career. Make it centered around your buyer, what they’re looking for and how you can help them.
2. Don’t “pitch” people at the same time you say, “Hello”. This turns people off more than you can imagine. Several people have invited me to connect and asked to talk with me, and in the message it was clear that our conversation was going to be a sales pitch. (I didn’t accept their invitation to connect or talk.)
3. Use LinkedIn consistently and regularly to get name recognition as the expert in your area. Too busy?  Don’t worry – it doesn’t take a lot of time. What it takes is a commitment to a few minutes consistently.

LinkedIn is the perfect tool for generating leads and quickly finding and reaching your decision-makers. And it doesn’t have to take a lot of time on the computer to get results. Stay focused, and use LinkedIn regularly and consistently. That’s more effective than spending hours and finding that the time has drifted away and you wonder where the time went.

The key is to take a different approach than everyone else, to Zig when they Zag.  LinkedIn is a business tool, but you can use it get personal; after all, people do business with people.  The key is to get personal with a pre-qualified audience, people that have a higher probability of leading to fruitful business relationships. People with whom you share something in common.

A layered search is one starting point.  You are looking for people with similar personal and business interests, people in your target audience, people that may like concerts, hiking or sailing much like you do.  Get the idea?

Through LinkedIn searches, you determine that these people are in a good position at a good company to help you… perhaps you can help them too.  Now, combine those business and personal searches into one and engage them with a personal bent!

#2 – How can LinkedIn Help when I Travel on Business?

First of all, it’s always a good idea to allow an extra day for business development when traveling to another city, especially if you are attending a conference.  If you know how to play the game, these trips can lead to new business and repeat visits to some very nice places.

Before you travel, search LinkedIn—use the local zip code of your target location—and see who you know and/or who you are connected to there.  If you know people who you are not connected to, now is a good time to send an invitation and let them know you’ll be in town!

If you don’t know an interesting person in your search, invite them noting that you would like to connect and meet.  Of course, your souped-up LinkedIn profile makes this interaction much more fruitful.

Another idea is to invite some of the top LinkedIn people in the target location. Simply set your search parameters from the advanced search screen, scroll to the bottom and sort by number of connections.  This builds your network in a specific city very fast and if you connect with super connectors with whom you share common interests, you’re sure to find more people just like that in their network as well.

One more idea is to join the local LinkedIn Group to see what is happening in the local business community.  Almost every city has at least one such group and some have many.  We operate the Linked To Denver Group (25,000+ members) and the Friends of Colorado Group (3,000+ members) and encourage people to engage before you arrive.

#3 – How many LinkedIn connections do I need?

We recommend that most people have at least 500+ LinkedIn connections to be taken seriously.  You have to LOOK serious to be taken seriously and “500” is where that starts.

Executives may have smaller networks (100-300) but we’re seeing more and more ask us to help them connect to people in their existing network. My favorite request was the classic shoebox full of business cards; when we got done he had over 1,300 connection on LinkedIn full of people.

People who need a larger network full of prospects include those in sales-driven, recruiting or job seeking roles. We typically recommend building a network of 2,000+.  Of course, the executive who loses their job might have wished they had built a larger network when it was easy and they were in a position of power rather than one of need.

If you liked this, you may like 3 Popular Questions People Ask About LinkedIn

What other questions do you have to help you take better advantage of the power LinkedIn brings you?

LinkedIn helps you attract business. The key to which is your Company Page, your LinkedIn Profile, and the profiles of your employees, especially when properly crafted with the keywords your prospects and clients use to find you, as well as images and a consistent well-crafted message.  LinkedIn searching is a science like any other search engine, but quite a bit simpler.

The key to attracting business…

1. Fit In with keywords in profiles, company page, posts… this enables you to be found.
2. Stand Out with a message that inspires people… a clear consistent and targeted message produces the best results.
3. Convert with carefully placed phone number, e-mail and call to action… if you look at the profiles of LinkedIn company employees, particularly their sales teams, you’ll see they place their call to action with contact information at the end of their Summary, in their current job description, in the Personal Information fields (which only your direct connections can see), and in the Contact field (which is not indexed for searches).

#2 – How does my company have a presence on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has Company Pages to provide a presence for businesses and associations.  Akin to a Web site in many ways, a LinkedIn Company Page will list the firm’s employees, job openings, company information, contact data, products, and company insights.

Company Pages can also have as many product or service landing pages as you need each with relevant thumbnail images.  Each can also have rich text, YouTube videos and recommendations.

Please [DO NOT!] use a LinkedIn profile to build a presence for your company. It is a violation of the End User License Agreement that will cause your account to be closed.  You will not receive a warning, you’ll just try to log in one day and you won’t be able to. Trust me… we have a very high profile on LinkedIn as Subject Matter Experts and a lot of people – more than 2 dozen in the last 18 months – have reached out for help but there is nothing I can do except to help them start over.

#3 – How do I convince my employees to participate in LinkedIn?

One sure fire way is to support their efforts too.  LinkedIn training is effective (teaching best practices will help them better represent the company), a social media policy is another, outside help from a reputable subject matter expert to get the ball rolling is yet another.  If you can single out a few employees to become internal experts, that is a great way to start too.

An outside company can offer professional services to jump start the process, like creating a LinkedIn profile template laden in optimized, on-target language.  The same can be done for the LinkedIn Company Page.  Next up: training, one of the most effective things to get buy-in from your employees.

Up next: 3 Question you Should Ask about LinkedIn.

What do you do to promote your business on LinkedIn?