Early last year, I had a LinkedIn profile, but it wasn’t filled in much. It was just there.

Then I read an article by a recruiter friend of mine about the power LinkedIn. So I decided to spend a bit of time and fill in my profile and get some “recommendations.”

I also spent more time accurately describing my profession. Most importantly, I joined some groups.

The professional groups have been incredibly helpful to me. I’ve joined groups dealing with the furniture industry, flooring industry, search engine optimization, my former college, etc.

When you participate in a group discussion about a topic of interest, you eventually come to know the people in the group. I must admit that early on there were a lot of junk postings, but in the last six months the quality has significantly improved.

Another time, I had a client who wanted to contact someone at a large corporation. I searched my personal network for a connection to that company. I didn’t find anyone in my network who worked at the company (“a 1st level connection”), but I did find someone who had a connection in his personal network (“a 2rd level connection”).

So I wrote to my contact, who wrote to his contact. Our efforts secured a personal introduction for my client.

Since I “linked in” last year, I’ve definitely expanded my network greatly. There are other business networking sites, but LinkedIn reigns … and there is only so much time one can spend on social media.

The easiest way to think of LinkedIn is as a business-style Facebook. But LinkedIn is a hundred times easier to use than Facebook.

For my purposes, the free service suffices. If you want to write to a lot of people outside your network, you will need to pay a modest fee for that privilege.

You can get “linked in” today by going to LinkedIn.com.

Easy Web Tip#66: If you’re in business, you need to “link in” to LinkedIn. It’s a proven, powerful, and effective networking resource. Thankfully, it’s easy.