If you’re thinking about starting a LinkedIn Group here are 3 tips that will help make your group a success:
1. Think of who you’d like to join your LinkedIn group and think of the problem you’re solving for them.
For example, a lot of our contacts and clients were asking us the same questions such as “What is social media?”, “how do I create a really great blog?” or “should I use Facebook or LinkedIn to market my business?” etc. We would have loved to answer these questions individually but there were already a lot of articles out there solving these dilemmas. So we created Social Media Marketing Canada on LinkedIn as a place to post these articles, to start a discussion about new trends and common dilemmas as it related to social media and marketing in the Canadian space.
2. Find another group that is doing something similar to your proposed group but then add a new differentiated twist on it.
For example, there was already a group called Social Media Marketing on LinkedIn, but this group had 120,000 people on it. 120,000 people!!!? That’s bigger than the population of Waterloo (my “pretty big” hometown), there needed to be Canadian version of the group to cater to Canadian trends.
3. Starting a LinkedIn group is a lot like starting a party.
Think about how you’re going to get people to your party (HINT: invite your friends, give them a great reason to join your group and tell others about it). As a group founder and community manager think about how you’re going to get everyone “mingling”, talking to each other and interacting. Once you start a group be prepared to do what it takes to get people chatting and interacting. Start discussions that people can easily contribute to, post interesting articles and answer people’s questions. Basically do whatever you can do make people feel good about joining your LinkedIn group. A LinkedIn group’s success is heavily dependent how enthusiastic the group founder/community manager is about posting interesting articles and discussion topics.
