Linkedin and the benefit to your business

Does anyone know how linkedin, the professional business site, can benefit their business. I have been told if you have a business you need to be on linkedin. However does anyone have any knowledge if linkedin has produced any benefits to their business rather than have it on another site. I would like to have someone's professional opinion.

 

Only one thing I get from linkedin "traffic".

 

Are you getting traffic from your profile or do you have a group you can create in linkedin. I have seen groups with over 100 thousand people, so I could see how that may drive traffic to your site. How do you apply it? Thanks for the follow up.

 

Is your LinkedIn account mostly sitting idle? You can do so much more with it than simply look up contacts: find gigs, sell products, expand your networks, grow your business and gain free publicity.

Here are 10 ways to use LinkedIn more effectively.
1. Fill out your profile completely to earn trust.
2. Use widgets to integrate other tools, such as importing your blog entries or Twitter stream into your profile.
3. Do market research and gain knowledge with Polls.
4. Share survey and poll results with your contacts.
5. Answer questions in Questions and Answers: show expertise without a hint of self-promotion.
6. Ask questions in Questions and Answers to get a feel for what customers and prospects want or think.
7. Publish your LinkedIn URL on all your marketing collateral, including business cards, email signature, email newsletters, web sites and brochures, so prospects learn more about you.
8. Grow your network by joining industry and alumni groups related to your business.
9. Update your status examples of recent work.
10. Link your status updates with your other social media accounts.