Early this year, LinkedIN relaunched their group product and in short - I'm very impressed. Having used multiple group products across various social networks, LinkedIN has got it right. It's a powerful tool and if setup correctly can yield valuable results both for the member and the group leader.
After having subscribed to a number of special interest groups on LinkedIN over the past 6 months and intentionally not filtering the weekly notification 'to be read later (like never)', I started to invest the time to scroll through the various discussion topics and click on the interesting ones. In most cases I found extremely valuable links to blogs, insights and most importantly - connections to relevant people. Key insight #1 people's desire to belong to a topic interesting to them ultimately leads them to grow and create/ deepen relationships.
The time was ripe. It was 8am Wednesday morning. I stumbled out of bed and straight onto the laptop. I felt an urge to create my own group around the topic most pressing - influencer marketing. Key insight #2. It's not rocket science to create a group. One hour later, I had set up the group, found a logo (an image from flick.com), wrote the short and long descriptions, added a healthy amount of useful and relevant news posts and discussion topics. Key insight #3 Have an existing tight network. The final step was to invite people from me 400+ LinkedIN network. Unfortuantely the only way to effectively invite people from your network is by scrolling through the letters of the alphabet. For some reason names either dissappeared or didn't show. A bug. Key insight #4 Be clear on your purpose and what value you're offering. This is about them - the member. I invited 50 people with the following message:
Hello there,
The fact is - traditional advertising and marketing is 'almost' dead. To reach the masses + niche groups of people you need to seek out the influencers. They exist in many places and few channels are emerging to help you reach them. But a greater challenge is 'how do you engage' them and incentivize them to influence their followings?
These are questions we address.
Regards Maria
P.S... We recently launched www.themoderatorcommunity.com Would be great to see you there!
Key insight #5 Your registration process needs to be easy, painless and quick! Within minutes, people started to join. By the end of the day there were 27 members in the group. By the following day 50. Two people responded to posts. Ialso announced the group to my twitter following which inspired 8 people to join.
What was the motivation to create the influencer marketing group? Simple. Credibility. Key insight #6 Be very clear on what your purpose is and why you will invest the time into fostering and nurtuing your group. Rather than setting up a LinkedIN group around our company or one of our products, the choice was to focus on a topic interesting to many. I didn't want people to join the group simply as a sign of support to me or our company. I wanted them to join because of their thirst to learn about this topic. The purpose was to catalyze conversations around this topic and get people excited about what they could learn and who they could meet. By placing the interests of the people first - and proving the group could continue to add value to them would by default establish a strong sense of credibility and trust.
Key insight #7 If you execute on the first 6 insights you'll feel over the moon! So what happened over the next few days? This is the interesting part. Within hours I received an email from one of the largest pharmaceutical companies wanting to explore ways we could help them to reach influencers. I reconnected with people who I hadn't been in touch with for some time and scheduled meetings. The group prompted a member to reach out and express his frustration with his community and request my assistance in creating standards around his challenge.
What gave me the greatest joy and sense of satisfaction was seeing the group grow. Every day I visit the group. See how many new members have joined. Who has responded to posts. And continuing to add resources and discussions knowing the effect this content will have on other members.
If you're interesting in joining this group here is the link to influencer marketing on LinkedIN.
I'd be curious to read your comments, insights and questions if you've created a LinkedIN group or contemplating doing so.
