If you haven’t joined any LinkedIn groups yet, the question is why?

LinkedIn groups are the place for professionals to be and businesses to cultivate a valuable community.

Essentially, groups are little hubs of like-minded individuals in the same industry or with similar interests and present a great opportunity to not only share your content, but find common problems others are facing where you may be able to offer a solution.

As such, contributing in LinkedIn groups and providing value is a great way to build credibility for yourself and your business.

Plus, by default you cannot message people on LinkedIn that you don’t know, however if you share a common group, the option to message them becomes available presenting a major benefit for you to connect.

Let’s take a closer look into 5 ways joining LinkedIn Groups will benefit your business.

Boost Your Content Reach

A LinkedIn group can act as a dedicated space for your customers or clients, and usually consists of specific demographics which is extremely important.

Assuming you’ve done your research and know the demographics that matter to your business, you’ll be joining groups where you can provide value.

Let’s say you’ve written a knowledge-packed blog article on “Tips For Creating a Webpage”, and someone posts in the group saying they’re struggling with layout – you can share your blog post to help them out and increase your visibility.

In essence, LinkedIn group members are more likely to engage with niche content as opposed to your personal connections, especially because they receive email notifications updating them on new posts in the group.

Demonstrate Expertise

As a business you’ll want to present yourself as a credible and trustworthy brand in order to secure sales.

As such, contributing regularly in LinkedIn groups helps to solidify your expertise in your industry.

And, by sharing your knowledge or offering advice will help people see you as a leader in your industry; if your industry peers see you as a leader, chances are your target audience will too.

It isn’t just about sharing blog posts though – when you don’t have any content to share, asking relevant questions or providing answers to questions is a great way to create a buzz for your business, as it shows you are engaged and enthusiastic about current news in your industry.

Create New Leads

Once you’ve joined a group you should make a list of potential customers or clients, using the search function and filter by job title, company and location.

Doing so will provide you with a list of prospects that you can send personalised messages to, see what they’re posting about to identify pain points and importantly, build a new connection.

Before doing this though, make sure your presence within the group is known and your profile properly optimised; i.e. having your website clearly visible.

Gain Feedback

Using LinkedIn groups is a great way to gain feedback for your business; it gives you the chance to identify new ways to improve to deliver what your audience wants.

As such, you can ask group members to give honest feedback and professional advice on your product or service.

Keep in mind though, this is not an opportunity to self-promote, so don’t just ask “I just wrote this blog, what do you think!?” – this is not asking for feedback.

Instead, ask people clear bounded questions and thank them for their honesty in return.

Problem Solving

Whilst gaining feedback is good for you to improve, if you have a difficult business problem to solve then why not ask fellow group members?

Especially in the case where you’re seeking an unbiased viewpoint.

By asking questions to solve a problem you face is a great way to generate engagement because you’re allowing other group members to shine by asking for their professional opinion.

In addition, this demonstrates the appreciation you have for the group as you value what they have to say, rather than just joining for lead generation – that would be pretty selfish!

On a side subject, if you would like to convert more of your leads, please check our video below:

Final Words

To conclude, be strategic in what content you post, how you post it and the group you post in. Do this and you’ll find LinkedIn groups are the perfect place to grow your online community from both a personal and business perspective. 

Remember though, don’t just join random groups, research the demographic you want to target first to get the most out of it and reap the benefits.

For more information contact us today.

Check out our LinkedIn Management services in the meantime.