LinkedIn: The Best Prospecting Tool (Chapter 2)

Hi everybody! I hope that you are doing great boosting your business through your LinkedIn profile. If not, read this article on how you can increase your prospects by improving your LinkedIn profile. Well, in this article, I would like to discuss the importance of LinkedIn groups and how can you use them to attract your target audience.

LinkedIn Groups are great boosters for your connections and business. There have been many instances where people have used LinkedIn groups to become thought leaders, sell their paid events, market their products and set up an entire business around LinkedIn groups. That’s how powerful LinkedIn groups are.

So, here’s how you can also search for most beneficial groups, create your own and be the top most influencer in your groups by implementing these simple practices. Read On!

Finding The Relevant Groups

When finding LinkedIn groups, you need to elect groups where your target audience resides. For example, if you are providing marketing or sales services, groups with CMOs or CFOs as participants can be a great choice.

So how can you find such groups? Here are Super easy steps you can follow:-

• Type the profile name in the search bar. For eg:- type ‘CFO’
• Now, look for personalities who can be your prospects.
• Get a view of their profile and see which groups are they member of
• Make list of such groups (which you haven’t joined) and review the quality of those groups.

Now, go to a different prospect’s profile and repeat the process. See if any group is repeated often in many profiles. In the end, you will a refined set of groups that are high quality and have good number of target audience. Choose those groups and enrich your LinkedIn connections.

Note:- Make sure that group is a not a one man show and encourages different contributors.

Endorsing Your Business Through Groups

Now, as you have already chose your groups. Let me tell you how you can influence them to promote yourself.

Select a group and offer your content as a solution to their audience’s problems. Contact the owner of the group and tell the person that you can present content (webinars, presentations, seminars) for the group. As every group owner seeks the best content for audience, he or she will surely encourage your worthful efforts. Thus, providing value content to such groups will improve your credibility in front of your audience. Hence, it is pretty much easy yet pretty much important too to connect with the right group and improve your trustworthiness.

Also, every group owner has the authority to mail his group members once a week about the updates in the group. Hence, for example if you offer a valuable content to a group owner who has 80k members, he can announce it directly to all his members (LinkedIn mails directly land to Inbox and not spam). You are able to take your product to 80k people without even maintaining a customer database. Isn’t that amazing!

Also make sure that you write the mail’s subject line and body to make it more effective.

Creating Your Own Group

Why do you need it? Because You want people to follow you which makes you a leader in the market. And your LinkedIn group is the best way to constantly be in touch with your audience.

Some things to know about groups in LinkedIn

Number of groups you can own- 30

Number of groups you can join- 100

• Note:- Once you reach 100, you have to withdraw yourself from one group to join a new one.

Hence, I will recommend you to make as many groups as you can manage because groups act as databases to your business.

Alert:-  Always create groups related to your target market. You don’t need to create or name a group around your profession as that will not do much good to you.

Example:- If you are a marketing expert, you can create a group named “Chief Finance Officers”. You can also think of problem solution for a name.  And when talking about members, be prepared to welcome your competitors as well as they can bring potential customers to your group.

How to Make People Join the Group

Well, as you have created your LinkedIn group, it’s time to attract members to your group.

• The very first thing you can do to increase your followers, is by directly mailing your connections and friends to join the group. Just see for the list of people who can be benefited by joining the group.
• Put an update about your profile and share value content that is published on your group.
• You can promote your LinkedIn group on your blog. Put a link of your group in the middle or end of the article and it would draw your audience’s attention.
• You can invite your email list and ask them to follow your new group.
• You can contact fellow groups related to your target market. For example, if you have a group about “Chief Marketing Officers”, you can contact a group dedicated to “Chief Sales Officer” and mutually help each other.

These are few tested ways to increase the number of your group members. In addition to that, you have keep a track record of posting awesome discussions or content. Ensure that you have a minimum of 20 posts or discussions to publish to make your group interesting. A good trick to increase the number of discussions or increase followers is to invite other influencers (competitors) in your niche. But also mention to announce your group to their group members.

Winning Credibility with Discussions

There is a simple trick for gaining credibility in a short span. It is called winning the credibility over others. What you need to do is to choose a content which is very popular in your targeted niche and review it logically. While reviewing it, you need to discuss few points you fully or partially agree upon and a couple of points, you totally disagree with. For example, if you are targeting the marketing industry, choose a name who is looked upon as the ultimate marketing wizard and review his works.

Make sure that your points are rational and valid. Hence, when you prove a big name wrong, you are automatically leveraged in the eyes of your audience. And that’s how you win the credibility over others!

Get on the Top Influencers League

You have to come up in the elite league of influencers in groups that you have joined. Hence, to do it, you need to tart contributing to the group in a way that people notice you.

For example, if whiteboard videos are the trending in your target market, start a discussion contradicting it. Provide a compelling title like- “Whiteboards are a Time Waste” and logically support your arguments in the post. You can also provide a link of your post on your blog. Thus, the main aim is to draw your audience’s attention by saying something at issue and backing your statements logically.

Be prepared for people commenting for and against your statement but anyways it will boost your group persona as long as you can logically back yourself. Moreover, this heated debate will enhance your activity level in the group and people will start to recognize you as a person with big balls and credibility and will want to have a business with you.

Another trick, you can use to be reached out by your potential customers is by picking up a hot issue related to a big name in the market and providing solutions for that problem publicly. For example, let’s say if Yahoo is going down and you come up with an article that tells “How you can save Yahoo in 25 days”. People around you will notice it and will subconsciously think of you as a business partner.

The Yin-Yang Philosophy for Business

There is no use of posting a content if no one is reading it. Therefore, you need to come up with a great title which is eye-catching and Yin-Yang philosophy can help you in coming up with a great title.

What is Yin-Yang Philosophy?

It is about understanding and using the two contradictory concepts. For you, it is answering two questions-

• What is the most feared thing by your target market?
• What is the most desired thing by your target market?

You have to figure the answers to these questions and construct a title at a elementary level. For example, let’s say if you are posting a content about how to present your business plans in the best way possible, you can go like- “Presenting your business plan Soon! 3 Surefire Ways you can Excel in your Presentation” or you can say- “3 Surefire ways to sell your Business Plan”

Leaving Your Link In the Discussion

Leaving your link can help your prospects easily find you. So, when you comment on a discussion, leave your link in the comments by providing a reason for your target audience to connect with you. For example, ask your audience to connect with you to learn more about a strategy and provide your LinkedIn profile link.

That’s all for today, guys. Use the power of LinkedIn groups and increase domination in your target market.