With over three million groups on LinkedIn, there are two main reasons why anyone would join LinkedIn groups. The first one is to get industry specific insights advice and tips that help them achieve their professional goals. The second reason is to network with other professionals who may be your ideal customers or peers within your industry. For today’s post, we are going to focus on top 3 tips on how you can use LinkedIn groups to generate leads and grow your business:
1. Become the “Go to Guy” in the Group
LinkedIn Groups bring together people that work in the same industry or have similar professional needs and interests. You can take advantage of this to promote your brand and become the “Go to Guy”.
1st step- Identify and join five groups whose members are your target prospects or referral partners
2nd step- It’s very important that you allocate time out of your weekly schedule to actively participate in these groups. Set aside ten minute a day responding to group discussions will increase your profile views and engagement with your target audience.
3rd step- Aim to share relevant content such as how-to’s, articles, and blog posts to your groups at least once a week. When appropriate, include a link to your company’s website or LinkedIn Page in your posts but avoid purely promotional posting.
2. Engage with your Audience
LinkedIn Groups is a community. You have access to hundreds, thousands and hundred of thousands of people with shared needs and interests – in other words, a perfect sample market!
Now you can find out what your target market thinks simply by starting a conversation. You can use LinkedIn Groups to customize your products and services to meet your target market’s needs and preferences. You can also use LinkedIn Groups to do market research about industry trends. Wondering what your competitors think of a new technology being developed or a new social media trend? Pose your question in a variety of industry groups and collect the responses to use as research for a blog post or report. Then share those original insights on your company’s LinkedIn page, status update, social media channels, and other LinkedIn groups.
3. Build Your Lead Machine
If you are looking to build your LinkedIn network, and create a lead generation machine being active in group discussions allows you to do so naturally. Liking and commenting on others’ discussion posts is a great way to start a dialogue and make new connections. Likewise, if someone regularly responds to your posts, send them a connection request and invite them to continue the conversation one-on-one offline.
Another way to find leads through LinkedIn Groups is to search the Group Members tab and connect with potential prospects. However, be aware that not every member will welcome a connection invitation and if too many of your requests are denied LinkedIn may place a restriction on your account requiring you an email address for each connection invitation you send (also known as LinkedIn jail).
If you have the time to devote to building and managing a community and you would like to further utilize LinkedIn Groups, consider starting your own LinkedIn group to further aggregate your target audience and build your network.
When starting a Group, think about these questions:
- How to find a suitable name for the group? (hint: think of your target market)
- What set of people does your company want to reach?
- What set of people would benefit from engaging with your company?
- Would that same group benefit from connecting with each other?
- What kind of content are you going to be sharing?
Think about a niche audience. There are most likely several existing groups for your overall industry, but there may not be a group that caters to your specific target audience. Find out where the opportunity lies, then invite your contacts to join your group and start building a community of quality members.
Creating a LinkedIn group and facilitating connections between like-minded people will help you become a leader in the LinkedIn community. You will also see much higher traffic to your LinkedIn Profile and Company Page because people like to connect with community leaders.
For any questions about LinkedIn Groups. You are welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn or email me at: jabraham@abraham-global-marketing.websitepro.hosting
