As you are probably aware, LinkedIn is currently the biggest business-focused network on the planet with Wikipedia reporting that as of June 2013, LinkedIn reported "more than 225 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories." (I believe that number has grown to 300 million as at the time of writing this post!)

So it is definitely savvy to decide to seriously use LinkedInto build your business network on and off the web as well as locally and globally where that applies.

The major problem most people have with doing the latter is that since many of the people onLinkedIn are likely strangers to them, they often find it hard or impossible to strike up conversations that will then lead to lasting and profitable relationships.

In fact most people are not able to nurture relationships using LinkedIn even with people they are already acquainted with or even close to offline! I know the latter is true for me personally and the same is possibly true for you as it likely is for many millions of other LinkedIn users.

Well, this article aims to help you defeat this long standing LinkedIn networking dilemma by suggesting to you an age old tactic that has helped people win friends and influence people without any friction whatsoever.

You probably don't need me to tell you that if you want to be truly successful with your web and non-web related marketing efforts you need to get the right people to hear about you online and even offline, then they either visit your web site, your other web properties, your physical location (where this applies), or they simply contact you directly by phone, email or snail mail to learn more about your business, and hopefully then go ahead to do business with you.

Well, one of the ways you can achieve that level of interest in your business is to work very seriously on building your network of personal and business connections, and using the Internet, telephone or email to do so nowadays is merely common business sense.

Why? Well e-networking is vital to helping you reach out to people who may otherwise never find you or you them. And of course you want to achieve the latter in a way that is often non-intrusive and non-threatening. You definitely also want it to be cost saving, cost effective and ultimately profitable to both you and them, right? If you're nodding in agreement, then you'll also likely agree with me that this is obviously where LinkedIn beats all of the other online networking options literally hands down.

The challenge with making aLinkedIn-focused networking drive so effective however is that most of the people who use LinkedIn for the purpose of starting a new network or reviving old contacts (and even expanding those networks further) mostly focus on selfish reasons.

The sad truth is that most of the people looking to network with you on LinkedIn are likely either doing so to artificially inflate their number of LinkedIn connections which means they don't actually care to get to know those people, or they do it to expand their 2nd and 3rd tier connections in the hopes that that will increase their odds of meeting people they can work with in the future, or worse still, they use LinkedIn just to keep up with the Joneses and/or not be left out of the "who has the most number of connections" rat race.

Never mind that majority of those connections probably wouldn't be able to pick them out of a line up, or that they would never recognize them from Adam (or Eve) if for example they bumped into each other at the mosque ona Friday, some events place ona Saturday, or at church ona Sunday!

It's safe to say that while there are likely millions of people profiting in one form or another from being on LinkedIn, there are also likely millions more who simply don't and never will for all of the reasons laid out above.

In any case, after having assessed the question of why people use LinkedIn and how well they are doing with it, I have come to the following conclusions and will give my best advice to you on how best to henceforth use LinkedIn for yourself based on these conclusions.

I have concluded from personal research that the majority of people who are not onLinkedIn just for the fun of it but who are determined to profit from it, currently go into doing so with one or both of the following 2 strategies in mind...

Usual LinkedIn Strategy # 1: Most people aim to connect or reconnect with people who may require their services.

Usual LinkedIn Strategy # 2: Most people aim to connect or reconnect with people who may be able to connect them with people who require their services.

Now, using either or both of those usual strategies is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but note that it is vitally important that your own approach or attitude to networking as a whole not be tainted by any selfish agenda as that is bound to repel rather than attract your LinkedIn contacts into truly connecting with you.

The following is what will guide you to making the best possible connections for both you and your targeted audience on LinkedIn...

The Uber-Secret LinkedIn Marketing Strategy Revealed

Without getting religious, this strategy is based on a simple technique that was made popular by a couple of bible passages that go thus "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31) and "Give, and it will be given to you" (Luke 6:38).

The above mentioned bible passages make it possible for us to win favour (often effortlessly) from people, but first require us to give favour first to encourage them to return the gesture.

The latter is a secret that has helped some of the world's wealthiest and most successful people to get to the top and stay there.

Sadly however, many millions (if not billions) of people miss out on this strategy when looking to build relationships in business, and they thus end up struggling to make any headway or worse, they fail woefully and alienate dozens if not hundreds of people.

You should always plan to approach and nurture your prospective connections with the aim of truly helping those people achieve their own goals, aims or desires, and you should be most concerned with how much they benefit from knowing you and not simply the other way around.

Doing the latter is the surest way to attract people to you like bees to honey since they are also after self-growth and will easily gravitate towards people they believe have their best interests at heart.

If you spark off (and build on) relationships with people by either offering to connect them to their desired goals or by showing a great interest in what they do or what they are (or may be) looking to achieve, while putting YOUR needs on the back burner, you will build a network of real friends in your personal and business life faster than if you took a more self-oriented approach.

Going into a networking relationship with completely selfish intentions will usually lead to smashed dreams as well as alienating you from the very people you are trying to reach out to. However, by putting your LinkedIn contacts' desires, aims, goals, dreams and projects front and centre and yours in the background, people may tend to be indebted to you and many may eventually return the favour.

To emphasize this fact, Natalie Sisson in her article "How to Build Your Business Through the Art of Persuasion" states that to build a business one must apply the same Law of Reciprocity as stated in Robert Cialdini's best-selling book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" which she highly recommends.

Putting this in perspective, let's say you are able to attract 100 connections whom you nurture and invariably help in one way or another, what you are doing in reality is building possibly easy connections to many more people through those very 100 people you've bonded with over time.

Let's say for the sake of hypothesis that they all feel indebted to you at the end of say one year after meeting you on LinkedIn (or elsewhere), and they each happily connect you to about 10 contacts that could use your services and in turn, one or more of those 10 go ahead to connect you with at least 2 more people each who could use your services.

So now, instead of just 100 contacts that most people will focus on and chase down using the usual LinkedIn strategies mentioned earlier, you will instead be faced with the more pleasing prospects of 100 X 10 X 2 connections which is a hypothetical 20 times more prospects than the number of connections you started out with.

Quite frankly the latter numbers will more likely than not simply continue to grow simply due to how successful networking works!

In another article titled "Little Used Steps To A Successful LinkedIn Experience", I showcase some tried and true real world techniques anyone can use to build a truly profitable LinkedIn network of friends, colleagues and business partners.The best part of it is because the strategies I share require being selfless, millions of people will never use them and only the savvy networkers (hopefully that includes you) will keep profiting from these no-brainer ways to making the best connections possible on and off LinkedIn for years to come.

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Kunle Olomofe is a master at online marketing and has been marketing online since 1997. He is the founder and CEO of Adtwist Publishing Company Limited, a company established online (and eventually offline) to help individuals and organizations figure out the best ways to stretch their time and financial resources online to yield the absolute best ROI. You can reach him for a tête-à-tête any time at https://www.adtwistpublishing.com