The Research Playbook

Posts Tagged ‘LinkedIn’

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The Social Media for SMB Group is designed to help address the needs of small and midsize businesses. 

It is where business owners, and executive teams that run businesses ask questions on how to leverage social media marketing, social media research, and the broad area of internet marketing and business research to advance their opportunities.

Professionals with credentials to offer guidance, advice, how-to suggestions, resources, and other  information are invited to bring their expertise to the group.

Please join Social Media for SMB Group to learn and share your knowledge!

 

Special Report: Website Traffic Businesses and Experts Speak Out 2012

 

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Some LinkedIn groups are so good (a.k.a. “cool”) you want to share them with some or all of your connections. You can do this in a number of ways, but the simplest way is to use the LinkedIn Share group option.

Select the group you want to share. Then click on the Share group option, which you will find toward the top of the page on the right hand side.

 

 

 

When you open this dialogue box this is what you will see (of course the group you selected will replace the Social Media for SMB Group heading).

As you can quickly see this screen allows you to post an update, which is valuable, but not our focus. It also provides a check box, which will allow you to post the name of the group you want to share to other groups, again not our current focus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last check box gives you the option of sending an invitation to one or more (up to 50) of your connections. Check that box and this is what you’ll see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Type the first letter of the name of the people you want to send the invitation to and LinkedIn will supply a list of the contacts whose name begins with that letter. Add then to your send list.

Then do one more thing – personalize the message. You don’t have to write a long letter, in fact, a short one is better, but personalizing the message speaks volumes to people about how important they are and how important your message is to you.

Now you can share the groups you like and find useful with the people you think can benefit most from your discoveries!

 

 

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Many of you have asked me how to weed out the groups you belong to on LinkedIn. Sometimes you simply don’t want to be a member any longer and sometimes you have reached the LinkedIn limit of 50 group memberships and you’d like to replace less useful groups with new groups.

Either way the process is the same and it’s easy, but not obvious. Here are the steps you need to take:

Step # 1 – Go to “Groups” on the main menu and select “Your Groups” from the drop down choices

Step # 2 – Select the group from the list of groups you belong to that you would like to leave.

Step # 3 – Then click on “More..” which is the last item on the group menu (below the main menu).

Step # 4 – Select “Your Settings” from the drop down menu (you’re almost done).

Step # 5 – In the lower right hand corner of the page you will see a button for “Leave Group” click on that button and you’re done!

It’s easy, but only  if you know where to look.

 

This issue came up repeatedly when I asked people to join the Social Media for SMB group and they told me that they had reached the LinkedIn limit of 50 groups. My response was to “do what I do,” weed out the least useful groups and add new ones that have greater potential! Hint Hint.

Here’s the group link for Social Media for SMB

Have fun on LinkedIn!

 

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One of the more important elements of running a business and/or developing professionally is staying on task. And, one task we’ve talked about on many occasions is how to use LinkedIn to move you forward professionally and make progress in your business. I’m assuming this is an important topic for you or you wouldn’t be reading this article.

Here’s a basic question I’d like you to consider “What are you doing to leverage the LinkedIn (or other platform) groups you belong to?”

I think this question is worth your time to answer. There are tangible benefits we can achieve from spending time on LinkedIn groups, however, a systematic approach will yield greater benefits than a casual poke-your-head in the door one will.

First, join and embrace discussion groups to enhance your authority. You do not have to become a world renowned Guru (though that would be great) to establish a position of authority. You simply have to show you are well informed on a topic and willing to share your thoughts with others. Demonstrate that you both appreciate the perspectives of others and that you have a perspective that adds value to the discussion. You can certainly go beyond this approach, but walk before you run.

One mistake a number of people make is only joining groups related to their profession, impressing your peers is fun, but will it leverage your time on discussion groups – LinkedIn or any others? A market researcher who only joins Market Research groups will find customers there, but he or she is likely to be one voice among many. Joining a marketing or communications group where potential clients hang out (marketing departments are often the purchasers of market research) might make more sense.

It is important to find out where your prospective customers hang out and join those groups too! This may take some investigation, but it is well worth the effort. The results can be dramatic.

Here are two additional posts from last year worth reading. Each will help you to use discussion groups more productively.

Keep your discussion on the first page

Does group size matter – yes it does

Staying on task whether it’s related to group discussions or another aspect of using social media is as important as keeping up with client or customer service requirements. In fact, one way to stay close to customers’ needs is to listen closely to the discussions you take part in.

 

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When you start a new discussion, it will be displayed on the first page, but not for long, especially if you posted your discussion in large group, with perhaps 100,000 or 200,000 members. A large number of discussions might be posted on such a group and to make room for the newest topics the not-so-old discussions are pushed to the background (page 2 and then to page 3, 5, 10 etc.) relatively quickly.

 

Unless your discussion attracts comments and “likes” very quickly it may not see the light of day for very long. Unfortunately, some good discussion topics that may attract attention simply do not stay on the front page long enough for interested parties to see them and comment. However, there are ways to extend the life of your discussion and give people who have an interest time to read it and hopefully comment.

 

If your discussion is quickly noticed and even one-person comments on it others are likely to comment on it too. Once the ball is rolling, you’ll have a fighting chance to achieve a measure of sustainability. Others will be curious and take notice, which often generates more comments and so forth.

 

Nothing succeeds like success!

 

The question is how to increase the chance your discussion will attract that all-important push from one or two initial readers. The answer is to invite people you have a connection with who are also members of the discussion group and ask them to comment or at least click on the like button.

 

Of course, this tactic works best if you are connected to a large number of people who share group membership with you. If this is not the case, get to work building your contacts!
 

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One of the most important activities on LinkedIn is joining and then participating in group discussions. This is where you meet people, explore ideas, make new connections, and overtime find resources and possibly clients. A question I am asked often is “Which groups should I join?”

 

There is no one answer, it always depends on your needs and objectives. However, allow me to make a recommendation that will serve you well regardless of the topic or your objectives for participating on group discussions.

 

It is relatively easy to find a LinkedIn discussion group that focuses on your topic of interest. In fact, you are very likely to find multiple groups that are specific to or touch on your interests.

 

How do you choose? Of course, relevance is the first criteria, but size matters too.

 

Typically, for any particular topic you’ll find very large groups with 10’s of thousands or perhaps 100’s of thousands of members, modest size groups less than 10,000 members, and small groups with hundreds of people. Each type of group by size has a unique value for your business.

 

The largest groups provide the broadest audience and a high volume of discussions. However, this is also a weakness, that is, with large groups, keeping your discussion thread on the front page will be challenging.

 

The modest size groups have a large enough membership to be of high value and you can more easily stand out in the crowd. You can achieve an influential status within a group by offering useful comments on other people’s discussions before launching your own discussions. With a few simple tactics (discussed in an up coming post) you can easily stay on the front page and perhaps achieve “Top Influencer” status for the week.

 

Small groups do not offer a broad audience, but they do offer you the potential of presenting your skills with little or no competition. A small group can provide you with a monopoly-like environment, where you’re the only game in town, at least for a narrow topic area.

 

The best approach is to explore all three types of groups and find ways to be known better, be helpful, and possibly attract prospects and resources.

Please listen to our video http://bit.ly/LinkedIn_Grps_Unleashed

And, comment on your experiences as a participant in LinkedIn groups – we’d like to hear from you!

 

 

 

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No one appreciates the value of LinkedIn (LI) more than I do. Which is the reason I want to alert you to a limitation you will eventually discover, assuming you use LI to its full potential? That limitation is the number of invitations LI allocates to each user.

The limitation seems high enough when you begin using LinkedIn, but overtime you might discover, as I did, that you can and will reach it. So, what is the limit on invitations? The number is 3,000.

I know what you’re thinking, “Oh man, what are you worried about?” “It will take me years to use up 3,000 invitations.”

Well you might be correct, but it’s useful to know the limit exists and not find out once it’s too late. Of course, truth be told, LinkedIn will warn you when you have used 2,000 and have only 1,000 invitations remaining.

However, it could help to know that the limit is there and to monitor how many invitations you’ve used (the number is available on the invitation page of your inbox messages).

 

There are ways to invite people that will preserve your invitation allocation, but that’s a topic for another day – stay tuned!

Please share your experiences using LinkedIn.  How have you been able to build relationships?

 

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There are many ways to use LinkedIn groups to expand your business opportunities. However, one mistake a number of people make is only joining groups related to their profession. For example a market researcher who only joins Market Research groups. Are your customers and prospects listening in to the discussion in these groups? Possibly, but it’s not very likely.

 

It is important to find out where your prospective customers hang out and join those LinkedIn groups too! This may take some investigation, but it is well worth the effort. The results can be dramatic.

 

Please share your experiences using LinkedIn groups. How have you been able to build business relationships?

 

 

 

 

 

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Recently, I started a discussion on LinkedIn with the title “Using LinkedIn is Pointless if Your Profile Stinks.” The discussion offers 10 ways to improve your LinkedIn profile and at the end of the text, I added the postscript below.

 

P.S. If your profile is so perfect that you cannot implement at least one of these improvements, call me I will highlight your business in a future blog post

 

One of my LI connections Nelson Davis commented on the discussion and he asked, “Hey Carey, what grade would you give my profile?” I gave him a solid “A.”
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Tags are a powerful mechanism for organizing contacts on LinkedIn. Classifying people into different [and sometimes multiple] categories can help you stay in touch with your connections in more meaningful ways.
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