international professional groups

Interacting via LinkedIn is part of my daily marketing activities, since I can reach some of my international audience with no cost.

I got very excited about having professionals reunited on criteria of industry, job title or target segment. I started joining one group after another, until I've reached the 50 groups limit. Seeing there's a limit, I started withdrawing requests, studied little bit better the groups profile and how active they really were; eventually I somehow stabilized a list.

My results with using the Groups feature reflected my efforts spent with creating the message. Initially, I considered that simply posting an introduction of my company and our services would suffice to gain some new traffic on our websites.

So I dumped some ready-made marketing content under the "Start a discussion" tab and waited for the leads to start flowing. Kidding, of course. However, no likes, no comments, no emails; no one reacted to my passive content.

In time, I've learned few things about this channel and the outcome one should realistically expect: as a professional, you can use these groups to build a reputation by sharing your expertise, connect with peers whose trust you've gained by proving to be serious and active, increase your network and thus your very targeted brand visibility. In B2B, I don't expect this type of marketing action to generate leads; but, if properly done, I expect it to generate Invitations to connect.

So, after engaging some of the members in debates regarding trends, developments or challenges in their activity, and after sharing relevant findings such as well-documented articles, studies, stuff has changed.

Basically, by now it's clear that you have to propose discussions that are relevant, engaging and include novelty.

I must have done something right, after all.

LinkedIn says: Top influencers are group members whose contributions in discussions (threads started, comments, and likes) drive the most participation from other members over the course of a week.