Make the most of your profile. This is the page where people can read about your expertise and learn more about your background. At a minimum you should include a photo to personalize your profile. Don’t forget to take advantage of the customized URL option. Use your LinkedIn URL to promote you, your brand name or your product:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourbrandnamehere. Next, pepper your profile with keywords that will make it more likely to show up in search. Match these keywords to your job position headlines and for added ‘wow’.

Networking

Here’s where the magic of LinkedIn really comes into play. Import your email contacts and start connecting with them via LinkedIn. You’ll quickly discover that beyond email addresses you can also network with past co-workers, college alum and others. Make a point of reaching out and asking people to join your network. Try not to shy away from messages and invitations. LinkedIn is about being social and as you grow your network you can share all the juicy details about your brand and what you’re doing to promote it.

Groups

A fundamental part of LinkedIn are groups. This is where you can become a part of sub-networks that are like mini-niches based on what you’re most interested in. For instance, if you’re an author, you might want to join some writing and publishing groups. Take some time to search existing groups and then create one for your brand. Invite your network to join and spread the work to others about your brands group.

Just like you’re using Facebook and Twitter get your audience to interact with your brand, you should be using LinkedIn too. Let people know that your brand has a profile and promote it on your blog and your website. Getting started is the toughest part, but once it’s done you’ll be one step closer to brand building.

Create a URL name that reflects what your business does or if you’re creating a blog, who the person is behind the blog. For instance, if you have a business that provides shoes for older women then you’d want to create a URL that reflect this, like shoesforseniorwomen.com. Same thing goes for developing a blog URL. The person behind the blog should use their name as the URL address, like LeiliMcKinley.com.

There are two schools of thought on URL branding. The first believes that you should use your company name in the URL since there are some folks who will search by the business name. This makes sense for larger, more established brands like Nike, Starbucks or McDonalds. It wouldn’t make sense for them to create a URL that says sportshoes,com, coffeestores.com or cheeseburgerandfries.com.

For smaller brands, which applies to most everyone else, the second approach to crafting a URL would be to write one that shows of what your business does through keywords. Using the larger brand examples from above, sportshoes.com would be an excellent way to appeal to large groups of people who are searching specifically for that item. Make sense?

Now that you have a basic understanding of what a branded URL is here are some other things to consider:

Hyphenated names. The pro is that search engine easily identify each keyword and will normally return better search results for people seeking what you offer. The con is that hyphenated URLs are easy to forget when people are sharing or recommending them.

Articles and plurals. If you’ve decided on a specific branded URL like childrensauthor.com, but discover it’s taken, you could add ‘the’ to the URL (thechildrensauthor.com). Downside is that unless people aware of the addition, you’ll lose traffic to your competitor. This is the same thing for plural URLs like, cat.com versus cats.com.

Choose carefully and spend some time planning. Try searching for something on the web and look at how the URLs have been set-up.

Facebook’s new privacy settings make it much easier for users to navigate and manage. For your brand this means that you’ll have a simpler time controlling what type of content your fans engage with. Another new feature is that you can view what your brands profile looks like to others. This is a big improvement because now web trollers can’t pull personal information from your page and add it to their spam banks or start a tidal wave of solicitation.

Additionally, you can also opt out of sharing personal data with third-party applications. This means that if you want to use the features of an application, but you don’t want to have your phone number, email address and other details shared with software developers abroad it won’t be. Brands will still be able to enhance their pages and interact with fans without sacrificing personal data in order to do so.

Because limited information will be made available through public views people will have to ‘like’ your Page if they want to learn more. This is great for brands because now truly interested fans will jump on board to support your brand and interact with you. In contrast, many people would surface scan your Page and move on instead of taking the time to listen to your conversations.

Overall, Facebook has done a decent job of empowering brands to police and monitor their own information. Choosing what details someone wants to share is a more appropriate way to engage with one of the most recognized social media tools available.

The tweeters below represent a small portion of branding focused Twitter users available, but what sets this group apart is their influence, ranking and follower base. Make sure to add them to follow them for excellent 140 character snippits to help you build your brand.

@pramitjnathan

Pramit J. Nathan has summarized himself as a marketing consultant, author and speaker that specializes in branding and perception management. With an astonishing 123,836 followers (growing daily), he’s the leader of the branding pack on Twitter.

Following Pramit will connect you to great strategies, suggestions and tips that are brand and marketing related. Definitely one of few tweeters with a ‘pure’ tweet stream, meaning you won’t find random pontification on abstract subjects (i.e. what type of coffee he likes to drink each a.m. or what he purchased for his brother’s birthday last year).

@thebrandbuilder

Olivier Blanchard is author of the Brand Builder Blog and a Frenchman with a penchant for cooking and good food. Not only does Olivier tweet about relevant branding topics, but his blog and website have an amazing arsenal of well-organized links to other helpful business strategists and influential branders.

Absolutely a resource worth following, plus his blog posts and tweets are highly original and entertaining. Don’t know too many people that can connect social media and Bette Davis together for a good read.

@danschawbel

If you’re not following Dan Schawbel, well, you’re just plain missing out. He’s the bestselling author of Me 2.0 and publisher of Personal Branding Magazine. Dan is a personal branding guru and if you’re seeking advice on how to start, where to start and what to do with branding, this is the go-to-guy.

@simonmainwaring

A native Australian, Simon Mainwaring has a fresh and creative approach to branding, which makes him an excellent follow and a fun one too. He specializes in brand triage, or a blend of creative and strategic solutions across traditional, digital and social media. Join the masses and follow to learn how Simon can help maximize your brand.

@landor_dot_com

True, this last tweeter appears to be a bit random and doesn’t have tens of thousands of followers like the others, but it is currently ranked as the number one most influential branding tweeter by a Twitter search directory. Landor Associates is one of those hidden gems in the branding mine. A continual stream of branding’s impact and branding tips can be found. All are encouraged to follow.