How can a business best take advantage of using LinkedIn for lead generation?

From Marketo.com

Neal Schaffer is a popular social media conference speaker who is also known for his award-winning and critically acclaimed social media books: ”Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing” and “Windmill Networking: Maximizing LinkedIn.

How can a business best take advantage of using LinkedIn for lead generation?

Neal Schaffer: Well that leads into the general question; is LinkedIn for lead nurturing, lead generation or both? I consider it equally good for both and there are several ways a company can use LinkedIn for demand generation overall. The first thing to do is make sure every outward facing employee is active on LinkedIn. They should have a profile that is optimized because when people are looking at a company’s products and services, employee profiles are going to pop up in searches. Ideally each employee should have status updates about the company.
When it comes down to your prospective buyers and decision makers, it all depends on how they are using LinkedIn. These could be your present customers or brand advocates, and they can be people that forgot about you but are now suddenly searching for your brand because you popped up in their network updates. They’ll go to your page and that leads to conversations, which could generate new leads. I think it’s equally good for nurturing as it is for lead generation. Or it could be companies that you have never done business with before that discover you through search results or from the status updates of others in their networks. LinkedIn groups are great for demand generation as well. From a marketing perspective you can drive brand awareness and lead generation in groups. Moreover, groups are also a great place to have your sales and marketing people look for conversations that they can take offline.