The Power of Groups on LinkedIn Part 2

Part 2

What is your ideal market? If you are looking for potential customers on LinkedIn you will need this information. In working with aspiring authors I ask who the target market, niche group or ideal audience may be for the author. Each author is unique but often the answer I receive is "Everyone."

Wrong.

While that may be your ideal target market it is too broad. Narrowing down your market will allow you to understand the groups to target on LinkedIn and how to find these groups. The first way is by searching using keywords. Go to your LinkedIn account. You can search for many items on your profile page. In the upper corner in line with the header you will see the search bar. You will notice a drop down menu. Select "groups" as your choice to search, and then type in the keywords of the client base you would like to reach. You can use any string of three to four key words that specify those in your ideal target group.

Let's say your keyword selection is "women in business" In conducting a keyword search I found many groups. They are listed in rank with the largest members first. The largest group was Women 2.0 with 20,000+ members. If this was my target group I would join them. I would work down the line joining the groups that were of interest to me in order to learn or to get to know people in the group.

If I was selling makeup or beauty products, I might look for groups of professional women. I could also search for "dress for success" or similar types of groups. These women I know would be interested in time saving facial cleansing tips, or other beauty tips.

Remember when you join these groups you are there to observe, first. See what the members are talking about. Take notes and keep an eye on those members that participate often and shine. If you know the answer, go ahead and wet your feet, answer the question. . . briefly. You would not mention immediately that you are a consultant for a particular beauty product. IF someone asks then go ahead and share the information.

You are there to give first. If you are self-serving it will become evident very quickly. No one wants to hear a bill-board ad for your product. They want to know how you can help them, either with a referral or perhaps information that will be useful to their business. By becoming a good resource within your various groups, you will soon find connection offers filling your LinkedIn inbox. You in turn can ask your group members to connect to you as well. This is the power of networking.

8 More Ways to Be Effective on Twitter

Networking off and online both have their learning curves. For some going to a networking meeting and shaking hands and exchanging business cards is much more preferable to understanding the intricacies of social media. Take heart! Since this technology is fairly recent we are all learning. There is no one out there in cyberspace who can claim to have been on Twitter for five years or more. Why? Because Twitter was started by Jack Dorsey in 2006. It has been less than four years and now Twitter is a household word!

So now you have engaged, you've followed and you are tweeting your little heart out. What is next?

Here are a few more ideas to get you started:

Be Polite:

1. When someone follows you, you can send them a direct message saying "Thanks for the follow, how can I help you?" or if you see they have a similar industry, ask a well pointed question.

Find Out About Your Customers

2. Use Twitter as a way to learn what your customers want. Post a question or read the questions that are posted. Twitter is used very effectively for customer service. For example if you are in sales with product XYZ, you may decide to find out if your product is well liked, or if customers are complaining. If they are, find a solution and share it on Twitter.

Sales Leads


3. Use Twitter to find sales leads. Is someone expressing frustration about doing their taxes? Are you a tax preparer provider? If so, reach out to them. Or, begin posting some tidbits about cutting taxes.

Share Information

4. How do you know that the information you are sharing on Twitter is valuable? If you provide useful value driven information, you will find your tweets are not only read, but retweeted to others. (RT) Reciprocate, if you find someone else sharing valuable information that you enjoy, retweet their blog posts.

Show that you care

5. Send your followers a link to a great blog post (this does not have to be yours), an observation that is insightful or a quote. Others may enjoy quotes and I do on occasion, yet if all you are sending is a non-stop stream of quotes you may find people will unfollow you. Make your information leads useful such as links to video, eBooks, white papers, etc.

Joint Venture

6. Find like-minded colleagues on Twitter. Joint ventures are all about working together toward a mutual end goal. In this climate of competition your greatest adversary may turn into your biggest networking friend. Look up like minded colleagues, follow them and read their tweets. When you have an idea of how you can work together, message them if they are following you, or post a comment such as @FeliceGerwitz, please follow me so I can message you privately. If that doesn’t work, they are not interested.

Be Informative and Knowlegable

7. Once you know what your prospects are interested in you can set up a news feed via Google. In this way you can monitor the latest information, such as banking or stocks. Perhaps they are avid sportsmen and enjoy fly fishing or hiking. Monitoring these keywords will bring you to interesting websites that you can send along with your tweets.

Make Referrals

8. If someone asks for example, where can I find a good blog from a literary agent, I can tweet this information even if it is not for self promotion. You get by giving and everyone is more than tired with those who only self promote. Or, if someone is asking for the best Quick Books expert, and you know of one, make a recommendation.


I'm sure there are many, many more ways to be useful but I'll stop here for now. If you know some special ways to make Twitter more effective, please share them with us!