The Virtual Handshake blog lists 10 super ways to use LinkedIn as a biz building tool.

1) When you have significant news in your business, use LinkedIn to notify your contacts by way of a profile update. (For those of you who are Plaxo users, this works in for that tool as well)
2) Use LinkedIn to understand the relationships between people you know and people you want to know.
3) Connect, by all means, with your former colleagues from every company that has ever employed you.
4) Connect beyond the obvious.
5) Use the LI database to understand more about your prospects.
6) What’s in it for them?
7) Your contacts may be even more valuable to others than they are to you.
8) When you spot a cluster of people on LI who all know one another and are all accomplished in the same arena, that’s a really special thing.
9) LinkedIn in combination with Google News Alerts makes a great business tool.
10) Vendors like to reach out to former clients, and that’s good, but it can be awkward when you haven’t kept up and have no idea what the former client is now up to.

Dana,

Thanks for this. I know a lot of people that get flustered by LinkedIn and other social networking services like it (SoFlow, Communitelligence, etc.) This is one of the most practical posts I've seen on the subject.

I'll add it to my post of blog posts to read for today (on "Much Ado About Marketing").

Thanks again.

Mike Bawden
Brand Central Station