How to find the right audience for your Linkedin Group

How do you get on with LinkedIn groups?

Time was, when a LinkedIn group was in the top 4 weapons in your social media armoury, along with tweeting, blogging and Facebook. A ‘group’ brought people together around a subject so they could chat and share ideas in a non salesy way. I joined a handful about social media, and played a part in setting up several others for clients.

But now I have got stuck on a problem. My latest group is not growing. It is stunted and despite lots of tender ministrations and lovely high quality content, it is not finding an audience.

Are the days of a great group gone?

Well let’s look at the facts. The groups that work well for me are the ones where we are genuinely occupying a niche. The specialist recruitment group has hundreds of members and over the past 6 months by focussing on getting the content right, it has started to generate good levels of engagement from other group members. A success! Another even more niche group is to follow!

But over at my cloud computing group things are static. These are the problems;

• The members all work in the computer industry and are primary LinkedIn contacts, rather than target audience, which is a different crowd altogether.
• The content is aimed at people who work in a diverse range of professional services and want to learn about cloud computing, but don’t know much about it yet.    
• Therefore the content is not finding the right audience. 

My suggested remedy is to change the group’s name so that it reflects the type of people I want to join, perhaps using the phrase ‘a beginners guide’ or ‘how to’ – then I need to line up some content that really matches the name change before setting to and publicising it.

I still have faith in LinkedIn groups, but I think it is harder to get an audience – especially in areas like computing where the competition is tough. What is your experience with Groups and do you think the strategy I have outlined above is going to do the trick?

An e-shot across the bows – saying yes to the newsletter.

I am very excited about a new project, which is always a good place to be, but as with so much that is worthwhile it is taking me into areas where I simply don’t have all the answers. So I wondered whether you do? Or at least some of them?

I’m putting together a ‘communication’ for a friend which we are far too au courant to call a newsletter – let’s call it an e-shot shall we?

We are hoping to use it to encourage a group of people he knows professionally, to stay in touch in case they might need him in the future.

The totally scary thing is persuading them that they want to receive this communication. They have to be given the opportunity to opt out and therefore it is really important that we get it right with the very first mailing. No time to bed down and develop – they either like it, or they don’t.

For that reason we are going to be focussing very much on them and their needs. We can’t afford to turn them off by babbling on about the company’s virtues. The content, the style and the images also have to appeal straight away.

The recipients will all be career minded professionals and we want to offer them interesting and useful content that will help them to get to the next level in their careers. I plan to offer a mix of material that is both original – commissioned from scratch by us – and curated articles from around the web. Like all digests you can find it out there for yourself but it is useful when someone has done it for you.

So please do let me know about your experiences of persuading people to say yes to your content – the more experiences we can gather, the less scary it will be when we press send.

Why you can’t afford to be casual about LinkedIn

As someone who loves using all forms of social media; to make contacts, keep up with colleagues and help clients, I’ve found myself in an unusual position this week.

For the first time ever I’ve been looking at people on LinkedIn through the eyes of an employer and it’s scary!

I’ve taken on a project that requires extensive LinkedIn research which has turned my casual social usage into something else altogether. Here is what I have learned.

• When an employer searches for people using LinkedIn, as with any online search they are using key words, so it is essential to get your key words sorted out if you want to be found and offered a job. I’ve been searching using one key term and if you are the world’s expert but you didn’t put it in your title, I may well have passed you by – sorry.

• Clarity is essential. Instead of trying to sound as though you are brilliant at everything, be clear about the things you do well. It is tempting to want to cover all bases – but I know from my work this week, that when you are the person searching, you want the right words to leap off the page straight away or you move on.

• Up-front honesty plays well. If you are looking for freelance opportunities, short-term project work or a full-time job, say so. It saves a lot of time!

• No pic? Why not? I like a head shot and as many contact details as possible, including a phone number. If I were going to offer you a job, would you want me to spend  20 minutes searching for your number?

• People look for potential employees on LinkedIn – you can’t afford to forget that even if you only use the service socially.

Now I’m off to de-clutter my LinkedIn profile – I wouldn’t want to miss that freelance writing or social media job, however small!