Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. He is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

Not long ago, Guy wrote a piece on LinkedIn called 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn. It provides several great ideas about how to leverage this valuable tool.

(Interestingly, Guy’s list includes 11 tips, not 10. This, of course, proves the old dictum that there are 3 kinds of people — those who can count, and those who can’t.)

Here’s an excerpt of Guy’s article. For the complete article, visit 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn.

Most people use LinkedIn to ‘get to someone’ in order to make a sale, form a partnership, or get a job. It works well for this because it is an online network of more than 40 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 170 industries. However, it is a tool that is under-utilized, so I’ve compiled a top-ten list of ways to increase the value of LinkedIn.

1. Increase your visibility: By adding connections, you increase the likelihood that people will see your profile first when they’re searching for someone to hire or do business with. In addition to appearing at the top of search results (which is a major plus if you’re one of the 67,000 product managers on LinkedIn), people would much rather work with people who their friends know and trust.
2. Improve your connectability: Most new users put only their current company in their profile. By doing so, they severely limit their ability to connect with people. You should fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities. You can also include a link to your profile as part of an email signature. The added benefit is that the link enables people to see all your credentials, which would be awkward if not downright strange, as an attachment.
3. Improve your Google PageRank: LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. Since LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high PageRank in Google, this is a good way to influence what people see when they search for you. To do this, create a public profile and select ‘Full View.’ Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public profile’s URL to be your actual name. To strengthen the visibility of this page in search engines, use this link in various places on the web. For example, when you comment in a blog, include a link to your profile in your signature.
4. Enhance your search engine results: In addition to your name, you can also promote your blog or website to search engines like Google and Yahoo! Your LinkedIn profile allows you to publicize websites. There are a few pre-selected categories like ‘My Website’, ‘My Company,’ etc. If you select ‘Other’, you can modify the name of the link. If you’re linking to your personal blog, include your name or descriptive terms in the link, and voila! instant search-engine optimization for your site. To make this work, be sure your public profile setting is set to ‘Full View.’
5. Perform blind, ‘reverse,’ and company reference checks: LinkedIn’s reference check tool to input a company name and the years the person worked at the company to search for references. Your search will find the people who worked at the company during the same time period. Since references provided by a candidate will generally be glowing, this is a good way to get more balanced data.
6. Increase the relevancy of your job search: Use LinkedIn’s advanced search to find people with educational and work experience like yours to see where they work. For example, a programmer would use search keywords such as ‘Ruby on Rails,’ ‘C++,’ ‘Python,’ ‘Java,’ and ‘evangelist’ to find out where other programmers with these skills work.
7. Make your interview go smoother: You can use LinkedIn to find the people that you’re meeting. Knowing that you went to the same school, plays hockey, or shares acquaintances is a lot better than an awkward silence after, ‘I’m doing fine, thank you.’
8. Gauge the health of a company: Perform an advanced search for company name and uncheck the ‘Current Companies Only’ box. This will enable you to scrutinize the rate of turnover and whether key people are abandoning ship. Former employees usually give more candid opinions about a company’s prospects than someone who’s still on board.
9. Gauge the health of an industry: If you’re thinking of investing or working in a sector, use LinkedIn to find people who worked for competitors-or even better, companies who failed. For example, suppose you wanted to build a next generation online pet store, you’d probably learn a lot from speaking with former Pets.com or WebVan employees.
10. Track startups: You can see people in your network who are initiating new startups by doing an advanced search for a range of keywords such as ‘stealth’ or ‘new startup.’ Apply the ‘Sort By’ filter to ‘Relationship’ in order to see the people closest to you first.
11. Ask for advice: LinkedIn’s product, LinkedIn Answers, aims to enable this online. The product allows you to broadcast your business-related questions to both your network and the greater LinkedIn network. The premise is that you will get more high-value responses from the people in your network than more open forums. For example, here are some questions an entrepreneur might ask when the associates of a venture capital firm come up blank:

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the value of the Coke brand vs. the value of the Pepsi brand.

There’s a terrific article on The 60 Second Marketer about these cola wars. It’s called “Coke vs. Pepsi: Why Coke is a more valuable brand than Pepsi” and it outlines why Coke’s brand essence knocks the socks off of Pepsi’s brand essence.

Check it out, it’s worth reading.

If you’re wondering whether green marketing is just a fad, the answer is “no” it’s not a fad. It is, however, a trend. (The distinction being that a fad lasts for a very short period of time, say under 6 months. A trend can last from 6 months to several years.)

Anyway, being green is a trend that will last at least 4 years, if not more. Because of this, many marketers are asking themselves if they’re doing everything they can to be environmentally-sensitive.

Good news — The 60 Second Marketer has outlined 10 steps you can take to be a green marketer. These steps are outlined on our website in an article called “Is Green the New Black? 10 Steps You Can Take to be a Green Direct Marketer.”

It’s a good article. Check it out. (But don’t print it — that would be environmentally-insensitive!)

Here’s a problem a lot of companies face — the marketing team complains that the leads they drive to the sales team get ignored, and the sales team complains that the leads marketing drives to them aren’t any good.

Sound familiar?

According to Lisa Cramer with LeadLife Solutions, there’s a solution to this problem. It involves developing a lead scoring system that grades leads based on a number of variables including visits to your website, length of time on your website, trade show engagement and a whole host of other important factors.

The result is that companies (like yours) can now more accurately gauge whether a prospect is in the “tire kicking” mode or the “ready to buy” mode.

I saw Lisa speak yesterday at the Customer Relationship Management Association’s Return2Customer conference in Atlanta, Georgia. If you’re interested in improving the effectiveness of your salesforce, visit the LeadLife website. Or, read “How to Win New Customers Before They’re Even in the Buying Mode.” on The 60 Second Marketer site.

Does sex help sell products? You may be surprised by the answer.

A recent study by MediaAnalyzer looked at whether sexy images in ads improved ad effectiveness or decreased it. The finding was that sex is a great attention-grabber, but disastrous for ad effectiveness.

Men and women alike are strongly attracted by sex in ads. However, men are so engrossed by the sexual imagery that it diverts their attention. The end result is a less effective ad.

If you want to check out the entire article, click “Does Sex Sell? 7 Golden Rules of Print Ad Effectiveness” by Charles Boyar, Vice President at MediaAnalyzer who wrote the article for The 60 Second Marketer.