Per Mashable.com: With more than 85 million members in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is a professional social network worth using, understanding and optimizing.

After you’ve covered the basics of setting up your LinkedIn presence, features including recommendations, applications, LinkedIn Answers, and the Resume Builder can add value to your profile. Many of these highly useful features, though, are often overlooked or underused by newcomers.

We spoke with four LinkedIn aficionados to get their top advice on making the best use of these tools. Read on for their thoughts ….

Become an Expert With LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers is a Q&A platform that enables members to demonstrate their business acumen by answering questions from other members. When questioners choose another user’s answer as best, that user gains points of expertise. These points rank members on the Answers leaderboard, called “This Week’s Top Experts.”

We asked three of this week’s top experts about their best practices on using the product. Each of these experts spend a few hours per day answering up to 50 questions daily, which is the maximum for 24 hours.

“I consider it my daily marketing investment,” said Christine Hueber, a social media and search marketing strategist, referring to her activity on LinkedIn Answers. She said she usually answers questions until she reaches the daily maximum. Her dedication has paid off thus far, as she now sources most of her clients from LinkedIn.

She explained:

“Since I started focusing on Answers about a year ago, all of my new clients I’ve gained either directly or indirectly through Answers, since my ranking and demonstrated expertise is very impressive to them. Plus, it’s brought other opportunities my way, like giving presentations on LinkedIn, being featured in YouTube (YouTube) videos, being interviewed by people like you, etc.”

…

How do you optimize your LinkedIn profile?

Read the full article.