Heads-up: It's time to take a fresh look at LinkedIn. That's what Diana Huff says in a recent guest post at the Savvy B2B Marketing blog. "In the last year or so, LinkedIn has significantly increased its functionality," she reports, "making the business networking site a great way to gather market intelligence about your prospects, and connect with them as well." She offers some interesting tips on using the site's functions for B2B lead gen. Among them:

Study company profiles. To target companies within a niche, use the site's Search Companies function. "You can learn quite a bit reading Company Profiles: how large the company is, its specialties … and its previous years' revenues," Huff reports. "Even better, you can quickly see which employees are in your network."

Read individual profiles. Check out your prospects' connections and the Groups they belong to, she suggests. "Also look to see if people have links to a corporate or personal blog, or Twitter or Facebook profiles."

Search "Answers." Conduct a search in the site's Answers function using industry terms, and check out the latest results. "Read those Answers that pertain to your industry and analyze who is answering them," Huff advises. "[D]o these people match any of the names on your prospect list?"

The Po!nt: It's time to link anew. Use these tips to approach LinkedIn from an all-new, all-B2B lead-gen perspective. You could make some valuable connections.

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