After LinkedIn went public, its importance as a social networking platform for professionals has crystallized to the point of it becoming mandatory for whoever wants to grow in life. LinkedIn provides a great platform for professionals and businesses to interact with each other, network, and engage in useful conversations that might lead to hiring or a business contract signed.
Back in 2014, there were more than 300 million members. Now, the figure has rose to 467 million. With LinkedIn serving as the only platform for professionals to interact, it is certainly the right place to look for opportunities to boost your business. For this, LinkedIn makes things even simpler. It offers LinkedIn Groups, a great way to share your knowledge and prove that you are a thought leader in your area.
A LinkedIn Group can be categorized under any industry you want, and it fetches people who are looking for communities where they can learn, share and discuss. A LinkedIn Group can be described as an active platform where knowledge is shared, and relationships are built.
In this article, let us take a look at how LinkedIn Groups boost your business.
One of the first things you must do in order to get business is to spruce up your profile. Most of the profiles on LinkedIn are still carrying information from years ago, and they have not been updated. Profiles are also not written in a way that they can optimize your information. Hire a professional writer and get your profile rewritten and spruced up. This is worth paying money for because this is the most important section on LinkedIn. Once you spruce up your profile, get people to write testimonials for you which are focused on your business. This will help you to land some new contracts.
Do not make the mistake of keeping quiet on LinkedIn. If you are like a regular LinkedIn user, you will certainly have at least 500 people in your network. Contact every single one of them and make a list of people who might be useful. Ensure that you invite all of these people to your own LinkedIn Group, about which we shall discuss below. Asking people in your connections to visit your group will help you to boost credibility and visibility. It takes a while for you to meet that sweet spot between getting people on your network and getting unknown people to join your group. Though it takes time, it is better to start with your own connections first.
You can create your own LinkedIn Group. All you need to do is choose the category where your group should be listed, choose a topic, fill out some profile details and then begin sharing useful information and engaging people in discussions. Use the group to provide useful information and ask people to join if you think the discussions will help them. By creating a group, you also tend to increase your visibility. Not only for yourself, but also for your company. This helps to boost sales and leads begin to come through.
Once you create a group, the next step is to start sharing information that is related to your niche. Help others to solve their problems, direct them to resources and tell them what to do if they ask you for solutions. All this will crystallize your position as a thought leader or expert. Do not beat around the bush or talk about things that are irrelevant to your experience. Be honest and share from your personal and professional experience, so that it helps people to make the right choices.
Once you establish yourself as a thought leader, and once your group is popular enough, ask your own employees to start sharing information and engaging in discussions. This brings a more human and public face to your company, which is always important if you want business. Involving employees is a great idea, because they tend to have their own connections too, who will probably join the group your employees are commenting in. This way, you can enhance traffic not only to the group, but to your own website, which certainly will lead to more conversions.
Once your own group is doing well, begin to join other similar groups too. This will help you to interact with even more people and get them to join your group. Most importantly, do not go to other groups and spam them continuously with comments in order to gain visibility. Instead, respond to queries that match with your experience, and when there is conversation happening, you can invite the other person to join your own group./ This way, you will not annoy people and you will still be able to get quality leads from others groups. Last but not the least, you will learn a lot from conversations in other groups.
Take home thoughts
As we can see, LinkedIn is a great place to network with other professionals. Networking on LinkedIn may lead to possible job or business opportunities. Make sure that your personal profile is up to date and communicate with your network regularly and create a group based on your expertise. Ensure that you post regularly in the group and help others.
LinkedIn is a wonderful platform that can be used by professionals and businesses alike. LinkedIn Groups help to boost your identity as a thought leader and that indirectly boosts your business.
