With over 120 Million professionals on LinkedIn, it’s hard to ignore this business-oriented social media network.  What can you do to make sure you are getting the most from your LinkedIn profile?  How about read this list of 22 ways to get more leads from LinkedIn.

1.  Your homepage showcases a NewsFeed.  Use this NewsFeed to start conservations and respond to current conversations.

2.  The top right corner of your home page showcases a “People You May Know” section.  Use this section to grow your connections.

3.  You have access to who has viewed your profile during the last 7 days.  Use the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile?” section weekly to discover new connections, clients, and business partners.

4.  Use the “Add Connections” button to find people by their email address.  You can this button at the bottom of the “Your LinkedIn Network” section on your LinkedIn homepage.  You can input your business partners’ and clients’ email addresses and find them on LinkedIn to help nurture your relationships online.

5.  ”Groups You May Like” – here LinkedIn suggests some groups you may be interested in joining.  Joining and actively participating in groups is key to a successful LinkedIn campaign.  Consider starting your own group on LinkedIn.  This will help qualify your online connections and future business.  Open groups can also be found online through search engines, so it creates another way for your company or personal expertise to get found by prospective clients.

6.  LinkedIn Events – You can search for events and recommend events to connections.   LinkedIn Events offer a great way to see what’s going on in your city and bring the networking offline as well as promote your own events.

7.  Polls are definitely something you want to be involved in.  Where necessary, you can showcase your expertise.  It’s another place to feature your knowledge besides within the groups.   You can also ask questions and engage a large audience.

8.  Use apps to enhance your profile and help spread your content.

9.  Make sure to use keywords in your profile to help get found by customers.

10.  Use Questions.  Questions will be listed on your profile which is good for branding.  Answers will show up on your network updates.  When answering questions, your answer has a chance to be chosen as an expert.  This adds credibility to your talents and services.

11.  Use “LinkedIn Today”, which can be found at the top of the navigation menu, to quickly get current on industry happenings and discussions going on in your groups.

12.  LinkedIn integrates with Twitter, so you can post your Twitter updates to your LinkedIn newsfeed.

13.  Use Skills to place your skills not only on your profile, but you and your company will also appear in search results when a prospect is looking for a professional.  This is an awesome way to get found.

14.  Use a LinkedIn feature called “Signal” (http://www.linkedin.com/signal).  This tool lets you easily monitor updates within your network.  You can filter information so you can see what people in your extended networks (2nd and 3rd connections) are posting. You can also do the same filtering by industry, location, company, time, school, group, and more.

15.  Go to “My Connections” to view a list of all your LinkedIn contacts.  Here you can get your connections’ email and other information.  You can also export this list.  At the bottom of the page click “Export Connections,” which will place all your connections into a format compatible with your address book (Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, etc.).

16.  You can customize your URL on LinkedIn. Visit the “Edit Profile” tab and click “Edit” next to your Public Profile URL. Once on this page, on the far right you will see “Your current URL.” Here you can customize your LinkedIn URL to better brand your account.

17.  Add your company profile to LinkedIn.  Check your analytics often.

18.  Fully complete your company profile on LinkedIn.  This includes completing your services section.  Do this by clicking on the services tab and then clicking Edit in the Admin Tools dropdown menu.  You can add 3 rotating banners with links.  You can add products and services by clicking “Add a Product or Service” in the Admin Tools drop down menu.  You can also attach a corresponding video to your company services.

19.  Narrow your target audience on LinkedIn.  Inside the admin tool, you can create versions of your services page to target a custom audience based on their profile content.

20.  Post company status updates on your company page.  Any LinkedIn member can see them.  All followers will receive the update on their homepage.  All LinkedIn members can view posts, click on links, or view videos.  They can also comment, like, or share your posts.

21.  Visit LinkedIn’s Developer page to get cool plugins for your website or blog.  You can get the following plugins:  Apply with LinkedIn, Share on LinkedIn, Member Profile, Company Insider, Company Profile, Full Member Profile, Recommend with LinkedIn.  Sign In with LinkedIn.

22.  Add LinkedIn sharing buttons to your content.

What tactics have you used successfully to increase your leads from LinkedIn?  Tell us in the comments below.