LinkedIn Tools & Tactics Resource Center 

Need a fast answer or quick tip on LinkedIn's advertising programs? Start with this Twitter account, which is managed by members of the LinkedIn Advertising staff. It regularly tweets news, comments, tips and advice and answers questions, all pertaining only to advertising on LinkedIn.

Tweets also point users to new or recorded webinars on the LinkedIn advertising platform or to in-house discussion groups.

If you want to advertise on LinkedIn, whether in a one-line text link or a display ad, LinkedIn gives you plenty of help, including a detailed build-your-own ad model that lets you target down to a granular level.

If you're new to CPC advertising, this detailed list of best practices explains what kinds of ad design and copy generate better results and what to avoid. For example, it claims that "Close Your Books Faster" would draw better than "Improve Your Productivity."

The page also links to other helpful information such as tracking results and improving campaign performance.

This tool helps you discover whom you know at key companies in your market and stay current on announcements and updates, which can be handy for building connections or keeping tabs on clients or lead/job prospects.

To use the tool, click on the "Companies" button in the top navigation bar, which appears on every page no matter where you are in LinkedIn. Use the search function to find companies by name, keyword or industry. Click the "Following" tab to see all of the companies you have followed.

Once you follow a company, you will get status updates on your profile page. You can also see whether any featured employees are first- or second-degree connections or belong to your Groups.

New on LinkedIn: If you maintain a Company Page, separate from your personal profile, you can now send status updates to everyone who follows your company. These are similar to Facebook Page updates that are posted to everyone who has "Liked" a company Facebook Page.

Previously, Company Pages were like digital brochures, offering no interaction with followers. With status updates, your company can stay top of mind with people who follow your Page. The link accompanying this review points to LinkedIn's blog post in which it explains why it added status updates and how to use them.

Company Pages have two major benefits, whether you are promoting your own company or researching companies for connections, jobs or business leads:

• Google indexes Company Pages so you can optimize them for your specific keywords.
• Because you can list employees on your Company Page, anyone who views it will see whom they know as first- or second-degree connections or who are in the same groups.

Dell's official Company Page on LinkedIn is a good example of an active, optimized Company Page that uses the features LinkedIn provides to build a big following and boost search results.

Among the copy-worthy features you'll find on this page are regular use of company status updates, career opportunities and a catalog of Dell products and services.

Ready to build your own Company Page? Start with this guide in the LinkedIn Help Center.

This tool, developed in-house at LinkedIn Labs, helps you visualize your LinkedIn network to get more insight into the kinds of connections you have and where you might need to expand your efforts. You might find you are heavy on personal connections, for example, but relatively light on industry people.

Once you grant InMaps permission to access your data, it sorts your connections into a map of color-coded nodes with interconnected dots. Each node represents a data point, such as schools, present or past employers, job titles, markets and industries. Each dot in the node represents a shortcut to a connection, which you can click on to get quick profile information.

This is where a lot of the action takes place on LinkedIn: in the thousands of individual discussion groups geared to just about every profession or business issue. It's also where you are likely to make useful connections with people you might otherwise not have met out in the real world.

We sifted through hundreds of marketing-focused groups and found a lot that were either dormant or populated by blowhards. Here are three that won't waste your time:

• Smart Insights Digital Marketing Best Practices: This active group is for marketers with questions to ask or answers to give on everything from using QR codes to adding "daily deal" promotions.
• Digital Marketing: This large group has a number of subgroups created for marketing special interests, such as start-up companies or marketers living in New York, London, Europe and South America.
• B2B Lead Roundtable: Look for questions and advice about online and offline B2B lead gen as well as information and resources for B2B marketing in general.

Ready to raise your LinkedIn profile, do some fast market research or take the temperature of your industry colleagues on a burning issue? Add the Polls application to your profile, and you can begin to create quick one-question polls.

A poll is easy to create, and they're set up to show results immediately. In order to get the greatest benefit, create polls people want to take:

• Keep the question simple.
• Provide clear answer options.
• Pick a hot-button issue that people care about.
• Don't use the poll just to self-promote.

LinkedIn isn't the only social network covered in this lively blog by an Irish-English Social Media/PR firm, but it has some of the best analysis and reporting about LinkedIn news that we've seen.

Check out the blog post in which the team field-tests LinkedIn's Cost Per Lead advertising format and suggests ways to get the best results. Sign up for email updates or connect via Twitter or Facebook if you don't visit the blog every day.