If you’re like most people, you don’t really know what to do when you log into LinkedIn.  You tend to meander through the various menus, groups, profile features, and other nooks and crannies, hoping that you’ll find something of business value from this professional network. If this does in fact sound like you, meander no more. To help you be a little more deliberate (and get the most out of LinkedIn in a time-efficient manner) I recommend the 4P methodology:

First P: Privacy and security protection

One of the biggest misperceptions about LinkedIn is that your information is available to only those you connect with — not so. If you want that to be the case, you must set up your privacy and security options to program it that way (but if you read my book, you’ll find a pretty compelling case to do just the opposite…).

Setting up your privacy and security is the first step in the 4P process, because before you fill out your profile and grow your network, you should feel completely comfortable with which information you project and which information you protect. You’ll find access to these features by hovering over your name at the top right-hand side of your homepage and clicking “Settings.”

Second P: Profile improvement

Once you feel safe and secure in LinkedIn, you then want to prepare your profile so that the online network that you are about to grow sees just what you want them to see. Your mantra while creating your profile should be focused on two words: Target market. Regardless of whether you’re job searching, in sales, looking for talent, or seeking an expert, it’s critical for you to include what will (and more importantly, remove whatever will not) resonate you’re your target market in your profile. You may find or be found by the person you seek, but if she is not impressed by what she sees on your profile, she may turn from a potential lead into “the one that got away.”  Use the profile completion meter on the right hand side of the page to help you spruce it up.

Third P: Proper network growth

While you do need a bit of quantity to make LinkedIn’s tools work for you, remember that quality always trumps quantity when it comes to growing your network. Why? Look at it this way: If you just connect to anyone and everyone, your “middlemen” (your mutual connections to the people you want to know) will most often be people you don’t really know. Let’s say you wanted to get into GE for one reason or another, so you do a search for decision makers in that company on LinkedIn (more about searching in the next P). When you find that a senior VP is a 2nd degree connection, wouldn’t it be more helpful if your mutual connection to that SVP is actually your college roommate, versus some guy that you just connected with because you share a group with him? Quality trumps quantity…

However, arguing for quantity now, if you only connect in LinkedIn to your three closest friends, your odds of learning that your neighbor, co-worker, college roommate or former boss has the ability to “give you some intel” about the hiring manager who is interviewing you next week, are significantly weakened. You should create your own litmus test for who you’ll connect to (an example litmus test might be — Only connecting with people who you’d feel comfortable calling and asking for an introduction and/or people who would be willing to help you by providing business intelligence, and vice versa). I recommend starting by clicking the “Add connections” link at the top right of every page. This link will help get you started connecting to all those people who fit your particular litmus test.

Fourth P: Proactive business tool usage

Currently, two million companies have pages in LinkedIn, executives from all 2011 Fortune 500 companies are members, and 75 of the Fortune 100 companies use LinkedIn’s hiring program. So you may have heard about success stories in LinkedIn where people just happened to learn some information that helped them achieve a business goal while they were roaming through the site. Or perhaps someone contacted them out of nowhere to offer them their dream job. Now, don’t get me wrong, any kind of success using LinkedIn is great. But wouldn’t it be better if you could actually take credit for using the information/people available to proactively take the actions that will likely lead you to a victory?  If you agree, the best place to start is the Advanced People Search (found by clicking “Advanced” next to the people search functionality at the top right side of the page). Think about what type of person could potentially benefit your job or career, and put in the titles, geography, alma mater, industry, or other characteristics about that person and conduct a search, sorted by relationship.

Based on how well you’ve protected yourself, completed and improved your profile, and effectively built your network, your chances of finding the right people for you using that search feature are now greater than ever before.

True story…

To give you a specific example of how I “controlled my own fate” by using this tool, I’ll tell you how I got published. When I first started writing my book, we had decided to take the self-publishing route – it was the faster (and cheaper) option. But when some of my advisers suggested trying to get a well-known publishing house behind us, I turned to LinkedIn. I had an employee use my account to do a search (also a good example of delegating LinkedIn responsibilities) for the major publishers of business books to see if I had any mutual connections who could potentially help us out. She sent some results back to me, and I saw that a friend and client of RockTech’s was connected to a senior executive at one of the world’s leading publishing house of social media books. I reached out to him and asked if he knew the executive well and if he would be willing to introduce us – at that point I was merely hoping for some advice on the publishing industry. The next morning, he responded, letting me know that he not only knew her, but that she was one of his best friends for almost 40 years. He gladly put us together and exactly two months from the day he responded to my request, I received my contract from John Wiley & Sons to publish my book… Just eight weeks after I directly stimulated word of mouth using the knowledge I swiftly gain through LinkedIn. Use the 4P methodology to start finding self-initiated successes of your own!