Article Written by Katina Jaye Beveridge, ASBAS Advisor, Western Sydney Business Centre.
LinkedIn has proven to be the biggest and most popular social media platform for professionals, but are you making the most out of it? LinkedIn Groups is one of the marketing tools in this platform that allows users to engage with like-minded professionals and make genuine connections.
Why Should You Join LinkedIn Groups?
Users join groups for various reasons. Some are just passive readers who are happy to watch conversations and benefit from tips shared in the group while others are more proactive in starting discussions. You can freely ask questions, offer answers, or share things that might be interesting for the other members of the group.
So before you try joining any of the LinkedIn Groups, you have to set a clear objective for what you want to achieve in joining. Here are some of the objectives most users have when using LinkedIn Groups:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Introducing the company’s articles, services, and culture
- Networking with potential clients, customers, or industry peers
- Recruiting talents
You can have more than one objective, as long as it is defined and works in alignment with your other goals.
How to Find the Best LinkedIn Groups
Once you have defined your objective and has outlined your strategy, the next steps is to find which groups are perfect for your needs. Don’t haphazardly join any group that you see or invite you to join. This will just make it more difficult for you to streamline your strategy and will not help you get near your objectives.
There are two ways to find the best LinkedIn Groups for you:
Discover
This feature can be accessed by clicking the Work Grid found on the top-right corner of your LinkedIn homepage then launching Groups. Click on the Discover tab and LinkedIn will show you a list of relevant groups that it thinks might fit your interests. The list is based on your skills, interests, and your network’s preferences.
Keyword Search Another effective method is searching via specific keywords. You can use keywords that are related to your industry, interests, or job titles. You will get more useful results if you use targeted keywords because it will filter out all the noise.
Once you’ve narrowed down your list of groups, you can start joining them one by one. Take note, however, that you can only join 100 groups at a time, so make the most out of them.