As the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn offers unmatched opportunities for individuals and businesses to build communities, share expertise and values, market, and seek goods and services.
Just like in real life, one of the key strategies when trying to connect with your professional audience is by creating a community. A smaller group or a limited space often offers the best possibilities for creating deeper relationships with top-quality connections and interactions.
In LinkedIn, you achieve the above by mastering the use of LinkedIn Groups.
What Is a LinkedIn Group?
A LinkedIn Group is a defined space within the network usually mustered around certain topics or industries.
They are used by professionals and their contacts to share knowledge and capabilities, engage with each other, seek advice, and share values. These interactions can both help and inspire all of the involved, thus building an active community.
There are definitely certain benefits of LinkedIn Groups to be used as a powerful business tool. Through them, you can connect and interact with professionals within related industries, expand and advertise your business, plan future projects, lay down values and ideas, build personal and professional brands, and connect with potential customers.
Basics in Creating a LinkedIn Group
The LinkedIn platform makes it easy to create and maintain a Group. But it is up to us to learn how to attract a target audience and respond well to their needs and desires.
Certain guidelines should be followed when creating a LinkedIn group. For instance, the group name and description should reflect your values and sense of community, not just the company or a brand name.
The visual identity of the group should be striking and relatable to your company brand. Also, adding a location and industry should allow your group to differ from other similar groups.
Make Your Group Successful
Certain guidelines should guarantee at least a good chance of making your LinkedIn Group popular and effective.
The main topics of group discussions should revolve around your business. Occasionally try to search for relevant, but wider themes to propel the involvement of fellow group members. These topics should be something that gets them going and motivates them to take an active role in group dynamics.
Try to stick to the following guidelines when trying to maximize the possibilities of a LinkedIn Group:
Start discussions – By starting discussions, you will both make your audience involved in a topic, and make them feel appreciated. Active participation in group discussions makes new members get involved more easily. Use polls as an effective way to steer discussions.
Bring value by creating interesting and expert content – Make your audience involved, and help them solve some of their problems.
Celebrate various occasions – Holidays, company achievements and milestones, brand campaigns, coming of new members, birthdays – anything to improve group cohesion – should all be celebrated.
Share and promote hiring posts – Either a position in your company or anything from your industry can be posted and promoted in your group. This is a way to get better candidates, and at the same time have your group be more appreciated for the opportunities it offers.
Don’t spam – There is a thin line between captivating your members and overwhelming them with content. Try to avoid the latter.
Expand Your Group
Make a sporadic effort to expand and grow your LinkedIn Group. You can achieve this using the following tactics:
- Invite your connections to join the group.
- Adjust group information and keywords to attract the right audience.
- Use LinkedIn Ads to grow your group.
- Use LinkedIn tags to easily categorize group members from your connections and send them personalized notes to motivate them to invite their contacts.
Bear in mind to keep your group compact and intertwined. Too large a group can lead to disengaged and unmotivated members.
Importance of LinkedIn Groups for Business
Recommending products from one person to another is proven to be effective, successful, and persuasive. What better way to achieve this than within a well-connected and supportive group of people such as LinkedIn Group.
Also, many reasons speak volumes about the importance of LinkedIn Groups for doing business.
For one, marketing has changed. Plain broadcasting adverts are being replaced by clear-cut and individually targeted campaigns and customer engagement. Closed communities such as LinkedIn Groups just work better.
Unlike similar networks, LinkedIn keeps on growing and establishing its firm position as a leading business social platform.
There is an array of functions and tools designed for business environments one can put into use to obtain and maximize the full potential of a LinkedIn Group.
Well-managed groups facilitate trust and inspiration. They make your brand and company trustworthy and get the audience to share their experience, thus promoting your business.
Conclusion
If used in the right way LinkedIn Groups can prove to be a potent tool for expanding your business.
In an ever-changing professional and marketing climate, managing to engage individuals, to move and motivate them to acquire new knowledge and identify with the values and messages of your brand, means fully appreciating the scope of modern marketing tools available to us. LinkedIn Groups are such a tool.
Provide your audience with knowledge and opportunities, and you will be rewarded by them becoming customers and making your business ever more profitable. We hope our guidelines for using LinkedIn Groups for your business can help you achieve this.
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