One of my favorites ways to use LinkedIn is to fill out my schedule for a business trip.

You’ve probably been in this situation, right? You have a business trip planned, but you have some blocks of free time while you’re there, and you want to make good use of it by meeting some new people, preferably that are relevant to your business, or meeting up with some people that you’ve perhaps only met online. Maybe a former colleague or classmate lives there and you didn’t even realize it. There are a couple of ways that LinkedIn can help you with this.

1. Do an Advanced Search. Choose the industries and/or enter keywords that will help identify the people you’d like to meet. For location, select the “Located in or near:” option, then choose the country you’re visiting, and the zip code, if available/applicable. I recommend changing the sort order to “Degrees away from you” instead of “Keyword relevance”. You’re going to have better luck setting up meetings with your first-degree contacts (perhaps you only know them virtually, or just weren’t aware they were living there) and second-degree contacts, to whom you can get a direct and timely introduction, than third-degree contacts with the possibility of a weak link somewhere in between you and them.
2. Review the profiles and pick the ones that look most interesting and promising.
3. Send them an introduction request, saying that you’re going to be in town on such-and-such date and would like to meet them.

Now this approach pretty much puts the selection process in your hands. Here’s another approach that leverages relationships even more.

1. Search for one of your direct contacts that lives in the area via LinkedIn and/or your contact management system. If you’re searching LinkedIn for them, look for people with a fairly decent number of connections – let’s say 200+. They don’t have to be a mega-connector – just someone who’s actively using the system. Alternatively, they don’t even have to live in the area – maybe it’s someone in the industry in which you want to meet people, or just someone who you know to be a good networker and whose opinion you truly value.
2. Contact them, explain your situation and ask for their assistance. Ask them to perform a search basically like the one above. The difference here is that instead of you perusing dozens or even hundreds of profiles, they can quickly scan down their list of 1st-degree contacts and know, without even looking, which people would be a good connection for you. They can simply copy the names of those people, which are hyper-linked to their profiles, and paste them in an e-mail to you. You are now looking at a much smaller list of people that has been intelligently selected by someone who knows both you and them well, rather than just relying on a search engine.
3. Pick the ones you want to meet and send an introduction request via LinkedIn. It only takes your friend a few seconds to forward each of them.

Having done this for a couple of other people, I can tell you it takes less than five minutes, and I welcomed the opportunity to help a friend with very little risk or effort.

Have a great trip!