After talking with him - and asking lots of questions about his industry - I asked, "Have you tried LinkedIn?" What would I get from LinkedIn?" " For those of you who think LinkedIn is simply a place to post your resume when you need a job or to half-heartedly build a "network," it's time to revisit LinkedIn. In the last year or so, LinkedIn has significantly increased its functionality - making the business networking site a great way to gather market intelligence about your prospects and connect with them as well. "Uh, no. MORE >>

This week the Savvy Sisters reveal their secrets for using LinkedIn. post a summary and link to it within the relevant LinkedIn groups and within your profile. To Kate's point, coordinating efforts across your site, Twitter, and LinkedIn will give you the highest return. When you post a LinkedIn update, it gets sent out to your contacts automatically, so it is a great way to point your network to articles, blogs, product announcements and the like. However, LinkedIn should be a smaller network with higher quality, albeit fewer, contacts. Stephanie. Jamie. MORE >>

consider LinkedIn and Twitter to be to the two most viable social media platforms for B2B, and recommend you think of them first as search engines. Slowly and steadily expand your network: Join at least five Linkedin groups related to your industry. Request to connect on LinkedIn with at least five professionals in your business each week. Join only the LinkedIn groups you find interesting, and elect to receive daily or weekly updates. This week's guest post is by Billy Mitchell, president of MLT Creative based in Georgia. Use the Search Function. Comment. MORE >>

Late in '08, I began discovering hundreds of B2B marketing professionals with a passion for the business through LinkedIn , Twitter , the Inbound Marketing Summit , HubSpot , Marketing Sherpa , MarketingProfs and a variety of B2B blogs. We're delighted to welcome Billy Mitchell to Savvy B2B. Billy does a wonderful job of building community with B2B marketing professioinals, and in the post today he gives you a lot of great resources. After 25 years in business-to-business marketing, I thought I knew all the tricks. It was time to forget the past and start over. had found my tribe. MORE >>

Using LinkedIn to Gather Industry IntelligenceIt's a no-brainer: You can't make a connection with your audience unless you know who you're trying to reach. This gets down to marketing basics – you need to develop buyer personas. Yet my unscientific polls show that a fair number of B2B marketers haven't undertaken the exercise of developing buyer personas. In all fairness, looking back on my days in product marketing, I don't recall many of us creating personas either. After all, unless someone shows you the ropes, it's not exactly an intuitive process. What is a Buyer Persona? MORE >>