Your Secret Marketing Weapon—LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups used to be hot! Then they sort of fell by the wayside. I think what happened is that everyone discovered the power of groups and jumped on the group bandwagon. Virtually overnight, groups were hammered by people trying to hawk their wares in the group. People got tired of it, started leaving and, eventually, the group died, was deleted, or just became a pitch fest. A lot of marketers in my niche quit using groups as one of the main engines of our marketing efforts. Well, I’ve got something important to say about LinkedIn groups.

It’s time to come back!

You can join up to 50 groups. Given that each group might have, oh let’s say, 1,000 members, 50 groups puts you in front of 50,000 people potentially! Nice, huh? That’s a lot of potential clients and a lot of people with whom you might want to connect.

There’s a lot you can do with groups. I love content marketing on LinkedIn and something I’ll be doing a lot more of for myself. One of the big things I do to get more people into my clients’ world is to create and publish quality content. I publish this via LinkedIn Pulse. After my content is published, I’ll write a short blurb about it, get the link to the article, and then go to relevant groups and post my blurb there. I can triple the number of people who look at an article I’ve published just by doing that.

Another thing about groups that I love is that they’re very specific. If I want to focus my energies on a specific sub-niche – let’s use public speakers as an example – I can search for relevant groups, ask to join them, then once I’m in, I can start the process of reaching out to members and asking them to accept my connect request. By doing this, I can build a following in a very narrowly defined niche! Not only that, but I’m setting myself up to market to that niche through the group itself!

Groups are a great platform if used correctly. So don’t abandon them completely. Get in there, find your niche groups, and start using content marketing to your advantage and grow your business!