LinkedIn presents excellent networking opportunities for both businesses and individuals. Setting up a LinkedIn Group for your company is an extremely useful step that brings your employees, fans, clients, and prospect clients together in one place. The hardest part is attracting people to join your group. Whether you already have a group set up or are considering setting one up, follow these steps to make your LinkedIn Group more effective:
Creating a group:
Step 1: Create an industry group, rather than a company group
A company page is for your fans, but a group is designed to connect a community around a shared interest. Since your LinkedIn Group will be represented by your members’ LinkedIn profile via a group badge, you need to ask yourself: “What badge would your target market like to have featured on their LinkedIn profile?” Something like “XYZ Company” won’t add any value to your member’s profile, as not everyone may have heard of your company. On the other hand, a group called “Java Developers Network” will show people that this person is interested in Java code.
Step 2: Get Found
Develop a list of keywords that will show up in your target group’s search results. When I moved to Toronto, I used keywords such as “Digital Marketing Toronto” and “Social Media Toronto” to find networking groups. I found the “Toronto Digital Marketing Professionals” group, which is operated by Critical Mass, an international digital marketing agency. Having the Digital Marketing badge featured on my LinkedIn profile communicates a few things: 1) I’m interested in digital marketing, 2) I’m located in Toronto. This provides much more valuable information to my LinkedIn profile visitors than a Critical Mass badge. Not to say that having the Critical Mass badge wouldn’t be useful to have on my profile, but it limits the interest of prospect members joining. 
Not everyone knows who or what Critical Mass stands for, which requires further research and effort to understand that not many will do this research. Also, more people are willing to join a group if it is going to benefit their industry. Your aim should be to attract prospect clients to your group. Your current clients and fans needs are already met with your company page, so your group should focus on providing valuable information to industry professionals. When setting up or modifying your group name, think about the interests of prospective members considering joining your group. Put yourself in their shoes and complete this sentence: “I’m a proud member of…”
Step 3: Call to action
So, you have your LinkedIn Group up and ready to go, and you’re nearly there. The next step is to capture your group members information.
How do you do that?
Buy a domain for your LinkedIn Group: www.YourLinkedInGroup.com. This will allow you to create a community around your brand by providing extra information and resources on this website. Get people to share their contact information with your company by offering incentives, such as free eBooks and “how to” guides to help your members do their job better.
How does this extra information benefit your company?
After capturing your members information, you are now in possession of a prospective client list. This is how inbound marketing works. Your members have already shown an interest in your company’s industry by joining your group. Use this list as a sales conversion sheet.
Promoting a group:
Step 4: Utilize your existing network
The tough part is to attract people to join your group. Nobody wants to join a LinkedIn group with very few members. Being a group administrator, you need to find a way to overcome this. Essentially, your group has to “cross the chasm” from the early adopters to early majority in order to succeed (Read more about Geoffrey Moore’s Diffusion of Innovation here).
How do you do this?
Invite your existing connections by developing a short pitch outlining the benefits of membership. Be careful not to spam. Your pitch should be 2-3 lines, where recipients can read it in 20-30 seconds. Your name is an important element of your pitch, as people will want to be part of a group that adds value to their profile.
Step 5: Promote your group across all your communications
Get your message out there by promoting your group in your email signature, on your website and blog, and on all your social media accounts.
Step 6: Invite industry experts
People like to see proof of success before making the commitment to join a group. If your prospects see that a big industry player is a member of your group, your group will appear to be more influential and people will be more inclined to join.
Managing a group’s value:
Step 7: Meet online, connect offline
Now that you have a sufficient following, you should organize a meetup so you can engage with your members offline. This meetup should revolve around your brand. A networking event allows your company to share its knowledge with the community and create long-term connections.
Step 8: Educate your members
Use this LinkedIn presence as an opportunity to post informational content and resources that display your company’s expertise.
Step 9: Avoid these common pitfalls:
- You can only choose your name a maximum of 5 times, so choose carefully every time you change it.
- Upon setting up your group, choose to have a closed group for several reasons:
- It encourages people to join the group because otherwise they won’t be able access the information.
- By having information exclusive to members only, it gathers more members, which increases the groups credibility. This creates a snowball effect of members joining your group.
- It allows you to see the demographics of who’s interested in your content, and potentially who would be interested in using your company’s services.
- When setting up your group, be sure to select “Create a Members-Only Group”:
- Create group rules from the beginning to maintain the original focus of your group. Your group rules should define the goals and objectives of the group. Modify your group rules as your community evolves.
- Customize your email templates to thank them for joining your group and suggest ways for them to add value to the group. The sooner your members post something, the sooner they feel connected to the mission of the group.
- Make use of subgroups to add extra value to each sub-sector of your audience, as subgroups don’t count towards the LinkedIn 50 group limitation.
Step 10: Review this to-do list:
- Categorize your followers
- Analyse your current followers. Start with your LinkedIn company followers and Twitter followers.
- Decide where you want to go, who you want to attract, and develop a list of keywords that your intended audience will use when searching. The purpose of this group is to attract a wider audience.
- Get inspired by the groups that are out there: http://www.linkedin.com/search-fe/group_search?pplSearchOrigin=GLHD
- If you haven’t created a group yet, create one here: http://www.linkedin.com/createGroup?displayCreate=
- Check the URL availability of your intended group name: http://www.domain.com/
- Customize your email signature to promote your group and your social media accounts (I recommend using WiseStamp).
- Treat every form of social media in a holistic approach – each one should be connected and compliment each other. Don’t treat them in isolation.
Conclusion
Don’t expect your group to suddenly be fixed after attempting these steps. Schedule your goals on a calendar and monitor your progress. Keep experimenting until you find the correct formula that grants you success. The important thing is that you do not give up trying. “One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again.” – Henry Ford
Happy LinkedIn Grouping!
David Wogan 