Plaxo? huh? I know at least two of the eyeballs reading this post thought… “Why is he writing about Plaxo?”

Frankly, I don’t hear or read much about Plaxo. Why not? It is still a viable tool to be used in terms of business networking. , I thought I would put a list together to help with the use and optimization of Plaxo. The following 10 tips are things I have learned by using Plaxo and what I have gained by reading along the way.

1. Upload a picture. This should already be common knowledge for the majority of you. We want to see a face. No more excuses. Scan a college or beauty picture is you have to!

2. Feed your blog into your profile. Go to Edit Profile–>Websites. You want to be able to share your content into any type of site… as much as possible. It helps with recognition andt traffic to your website.

3. Add your powerpoint (via Slideshare) to your Plaxo feed. If you are a speaker and want the world to know what you are talking about… add your slidedecks to your Plaxo feed. To learn how check out: Add SlideShare to your Plaxo Profile.

4. Synch your Address Book. Plaxo Plaxo has the ability to synchronize with address book from Outlook Express, Hotmail, Windows Mobile, AOL, LinkedIN, Windows Mail, Mac, and Google. If you make a change in one of the multiple address books… the change is made universally across all platforms.

5. Maximize Plaxo Pulse. Plaxo Pulse is the social stream you can find on your profile page. Every social media site is starting to have the waterfall-effect-social-stream (see: your Facebook wall).

6. Invite Your Trusted Connections to Join You on Plaxo. Notice I underlined TRUSTED. Do not import your entire address book to Plaxo because they ask. Of course they ask! They are wanting as many invitations to leave your hands as possible. Only invite the people that will not be offended by you spamming them with Plaxo invites.

7. Automate Your Plaxo Status Bar with Ping.FM. If you are using multiple networks like LinkedIN, Facebook, and Twitter you can automate a status update using a site called Ping.FM. Ping lets you send one status update that will hit all of your networks. This will save you a small amount of time in the long run but remember to keep personally visiting the sites as well. Add that human flavor into the mix!

8. Use Plaxo to Connect to Other Users. There is one HUGE benefit of using Plaxo to connect and market your business and services…. not very many people do it. 🙂

9. Build More Information about Prospects. Plaxo helps you very easily build your prospect database further because it’s easy to extract contact information from it. This technique can have negative and positive ramifications associated with it. Be smart or be sorry. Feed your email list and build out information about prospects to help in the selling process.

10. Advanced People Search and Plaxo Pro. (From Plaxo blog): Plaxo announced recently the launch of ProMail and Plaxo Pro. Once you find the right people, whether through Advanced People Search or your Company Navigator, you can use our all-new ProMail system to message them directly. Plaxo Pro also includes all the advanced address book features of Plaxo Premium, including Outlook Sync, the De-Duper, unlimited eCards, automated backup and recovery, 24/7 support, and more. Plus, we’ll remove the ads from your Plaxo Profile!

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