Twitter

Here are some of my favorite ways to use LinkedIn to find sources:

1. Use LinkedIn as a contact manager. If you meet someone in person or online you think might make a good source, invite them to connect on LinkedIn. When you’re writing a story, look through your LinkedIn connections for potential sources and email them through the network to ask if they’re available for an interview. In LinkedIn’s Contacts section you can email one message to multiple recipients, so you can send the same interview request to several potential sources at once. Another feature of the Contacts section lets you sort connections by geography or industry, so you can send a group email to potential sources in a certain city or with a specific job title. If you use Microsoft Outlook, you can use LinkedIn’s Outlook Toolbar to manage your LinkedIn contacts in Outlook.

2. Ask a question in the Answers section. When I was a newspaper reporter, if I needed “man on the street” comments for a story I’d go to a local shopping center, sports arena or other place where I was bound to run into a lot of regular Joes. Today, I post a question on LinkedIn’s Answers section. If you use the Answers section to solicit quotes, word your question so it’s easy to understand and doesn’t elicit simple “Yes” or “No” answers. Always identify yourself as a reporter so people know whatever they say may be published. It’s a good idea to follow up with anyone who responds by email or telephone to verify they’re who they say they are, get additional information or comments and to make sure they understand you’re going to quote them.

3. Use the Advanced Answers Search. Another way to find sources is to use LinkedIn’s Advanced Answers Search feature, which uses keyword searches to dig deep into the backlog of Answers material to find what people have written about a particular subject. If a keyword search turns up one or more discussion threads on the topic you’re researching, scroll through the answers to determine whether any LinkedIn members in the discussions could be potential sources. If they are and you subscribe to one of LinkedIn’s premium service levels, send the prospective source an InMail requesting an interview. If you can’t send free InMails, check out the person’s LinkedIn profile for an email address, or track down their company Website and search for an email address for them there or contact the PR department and ask them to set up an interview.

4. Use the Companies profiles. This spring, LinkedIn overhauled its Companies section to include more information on businesses whose employees use the network. You can use the Companies section to search for employees at a specific company, or do keyword searches to search for companies by geography or industry. Once you find a prospective source, go through the same routine I outlined in step no. 3 to contact them.

5. Look up sources by their job title. – Need to interview IT managers or corporate HR directors? Use the People section of LinkedIn’s user database to search for sources by their specific job title. When you find prospects, go through the steps outlined above to contact them. Note that if the person works for a large company, they may request that you go through their company’s PR department to set up an interview.

I’ve blogged extensively on other ways writers can use LinkedIn.

What’s your favorite way to use LinkedIn to find sources?

Today’s reruns: how writers can use LinkedIn, the business social network.

The secret to my LinkedIn success

How freelancers can use LinkedIn’s companies database tool

Link your blog to your LinkedIn profile

How to keep track of story sources

Take this quiz to find out what kind of LinkedIn user you are

Last September I was getting ready to start writing again after spending most of the previous seven years at home with my kids. I was totally out of touch with the freelance world and way behind on the subjects I’d once specialized in, technology and the workplace. So when a friend told me about a social network for businesspeople, I was all ears. I signed up the same day and was immediately hooked. Within a month I’d reconnected with a bunch of former colleagues. One of them even gave me an assignment – I was back at work.

That was my introduction to LinkedIn. Since then, LinkedIn has grown substantially – to 30 million people – and the ways I use it have too. Today it’s one of my workday mainstays, something I use to research companies, find sources, organize contacts and a lot more.

I also joined LinkedIn to get up to speed on the whole Web 2.0 thing, which had passed me by during my extended hiatus. LinkedIn was my entre into the world of social networks, and from there it was an easy jump to blogging and learning new forms of online storytelling. I immersed myself in it so thoroughly, I now write about it for several clients, and happily answer questions about LinkedIn for freelance friends who are where I was a year ago.

If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, or just want to get more out of it, here are my top 10 secrets for how writers can successfully use LinkedIn:

Flesh out your profile. Include all your previous jobs and schooling. The more companies, schools and organizations you affiliate yourself with, the bigger your circle of contacts can grow. Add a picture or some kind of illustration that lets a little of your personality shine through. Be aspirational: describe what you want to do, not just what you’re doing now. The LinkedIn police aren’t going to call you out for dubbing yourself a freelance magazine writer with only one or two published pieces under your belt. If that’s what you consider yourself, say so.

Join groups. There are lots of groups on LinkedIn. Joining writers groups is one way to build up a virtual support system. Joining those or other groups also gives you the ability to send group members invitations to join your network. So if you see an editor at a magazine you’ve been interested in writing for in a LinkedIn writing group you belong to, you can use the connection to send them an invitation.

Build a network. The more people in your network, the wider the net you can cast when you’re searching for story sources. If you haven’t already, use the tools LinkedIn provides to import information from Outlook, Gmail or another contact manager, then go through the list and pick out people you’d like to invite into your network. When you happen upon sources you think you might want to use again in the future, ask if they use LinkedIn and offer to send them an invitation.

Create a phone book. In late August, LinkedIn expanded the amount of information you can store on your LinkedIn connections. In addition to their profile information, you can now input office and cell phone numbers, IM addresses, address, Website and birthday date; there’s even a notes section for adding anything else you’d want. This makes it possible to store info on a source in one place so you don’t need to toggle between Outlook and LinkedIn.

Troll the Answers section. Forget ProfNet or HARO. This is probably the No. 1 way I use LinkedIn. Use the Answers Advanced Search feature to look for keywords related to subjects you’re researching. If you find someone you want to interview and you don’t pay for LinkedIn’s premium-level service –frankly, I haven’t found a reason to – look at their profile to see if they’ve listed their email address or blog. If they did, jackpot! If they didn’t, go to the Website for their company, group or agency and track them down through a company PR representative or even a main phone number.

Query your contacts. Another way to find sources on LinkedIn is to send group emails to subsets of your connections. LinkedIn lets you slice and dice your connections list by geography or industry, which makes it easy to put group emails together. You can also hand pick a group of names to send a message to.

Update your Status line regularly. The Status line is LinkedIn’s answer to Twitter or Facebook’s “What are you doing right now?” Use it to point people to your blog, solicit sources for a story or brag about your latest publishing achievement.

Check for work on the Jobs board. Most of the positions on the Jobs board are full time. Every once in a while, though, there are listings for freelance, part-time or temporary full-time gigs. And the caliber of available jobs is much higher than what you see on Craigslist.com.

Use Companies feature to research new markets. If you identify yourself as a writer in your profile, the Companies directory will automatically show a list of industries related to writing and editing. Click on any of the industry links – book publishing, newspapers, magazines, education, marketing and advertising, public relations, software – and you’ll see lists of all the companies in those industries LinkedIn has in its database. Clicking on the Newspaper listing, for example, brings up 930 newspapers. Like everything else on LinkedIn, they’re ranked according to your LinkedIn network connections, so newspapers where you have a 1st degree connection come up first. This is a great feature when it comes to pitching stories. First, you’ve got a list of who’s got what position at a paper or magazine – again, if they subscribe to LinkedIn. If you see someone you want to pitch but don’t know and there’s another editor you do know, you could use your LinkedIn connection with the second editor to ask for an introduction to the first. Of course, you could do that without LinkedIn too.

Mind your manners. Do you really want to notify your entire LinkedIn circle every time you make a minor change to your profile? Probably not, so make sure to adjust your account settings accordingly. Likewise, it’s easy to reach out to people, but don’t overdo it. Sending group emails to every source on your list every day, or even every week, might be OK with some but others could start to think you’re a spammer.

Today’s topic: Online resources for freelance writers:

What freelance writers should know about SEO – Sounds tricky, but search engine optimization, or SEO, is simply understanding how to tag articles and blog posts so search engines find them.

10 top Web tools for freelancers – Learn about Google News Alerts, Firefox 2.0, RSS, Del.icio.us and more.

How writers can use LinkedIn, Part I – My go-to source for organizing contacts and finding story sources.

How writers can use LinkedIn Part II – Use this professional network of 23 million to remake yourself into the writer you want to be.

Go online to get business cards in a hurry – Sources for ordering business cards without leaving your office.

Later this week:

Tomorrow: Blogging basics for writers

Wednesday: Tips for improving your writing

Thursday: Best blogs for writers

Friday: Career development for freelancers