Many business owners have come to the realization that LinkedIn represents a huge potential for sales. The platform can help you get in front people you may never have had access to with traditional sales tactics, such as cold-calling, emailing, and snail mailing. The ability to find connections within your your existing business and social circles and have those people introduce you, means that you have at least a basic level of trust at the onset when reaching out to a potential client.

At Bonsai we know that everything you do online has a cumulative effect on your online presence and how easy it is for your business to get found on the web. LinkedIn's ability to get you right in front of perspective customers makes it an incredibly powerful tool for your sales and online marketing efforts.

To make sure you're on the right path with using LinkedIn to market your business, here are some LinkedIn marketing strategies that you can start putting to use today.

LinkedIn Marketing Best Practices

1. Join industry groups - LI Groups is a great tool for deploying a LinkedIn marketing strategy. Join several groups in some way associated with your industry and look for conversations around your products and services that you can participate in and make connections through.

2. Target the Most Popular Discussions in a Group - The most "popular" discussions within a group generally get the most visibility. These are the topics where members are most actively engaged and they feature discussions that you will want to weigh in on. The most popular discussions are at the top of the group discussion page, and typically there will be quite a few comments associated with them for you to review, expand upon, or learn from.

3. Monitor LinkedIn answers - Take a look at the Answers item listed under the 'More' menu item on your LinkedIn home page. Search for questions that have been asked by members interested in your industry by selecting an area listed in the browse panel on the right. Your objective should be to become an expert in your field by answering as many questions pertinent to your industry as you can.

4. Comment on LinkedIn Today stories - Use this to strike up a conversation in the comments section with LinkedIn members you don't know yet.

5. Share trending stories from LinkedIn Today - When you share a trending story from LinkedIn Today, be sure to add your own comments in order to personalize your update. Additionally, you can share the update simultaneously with select LinkedIn Groups where you are a member (also add your own comments here), and to your Twitter profile.

6. Harvest business prospects via search - If you are interested in developing relationships within a particular company, search for the company by entering it in the search box, then filter on your first connections if you have any, otherwise filter on second connections to see how they are connected to your first connections who you then ask to introduce you.

7. Create a group for your brand - By creating a group for your brand, you'll be able to maximize reach beyond your network. Within the brand group, you can start discussions, share news, post jobs and create subgroups.

8. Customize your LinkedIn Today dashboard - Make sure to customize your dashboard by following topics, industries, and specific publishers that are relevant to your interests, your business, and your industry.See what news is trending in your network this will show you what your connections are sharing with their connections so you can try capitalizing on those topics.

9. Start your own discussion - Starting your own discussion thread is also a powerful tool within a group, but you must be strategic with this. Wait to start your own discussion until after you've spent some time participating in the top discussions first. In addition, observe the contributions of the most active group members in order to understand their concerns, goals and objectives. Also study prior popular discussions. Find out what topics have resonated with members and base your discussion on that.