Improve Your LinkedIn Visibility Through Active Group Use

Its been 2.5 years since I wrote about LinkedIn groups. Admittedly, they were pretty darn good posts. See for yourself if you don’t believe me:

3 Reasons why LinkedIn groups don’t work
5 Steps to find the right LinkedIn Group
3 Reasons your discussions don’t get read

Every word in those three posts is still as relevant today as it was when I wrote them, now just use this info to increase your LinkedIn visibility. Having said that, a lot has changed in the past two years.

Changes to LinkedIn Groups
There are plenty of blogs about the recent changes to LinkedIn groups. A quick Google will tell you all you need to know or just check this article in the LinkedIn Helpcentre. Basically there are no more ‘open’ and ‘closed’ groups. All groups are closed and they are now ‘standard’ or ‘unlisted’. This has implications for findability of some groups. Another change is that group members can now approve other members to join. This makes it harder for group owners to moderate a group and especially could pose a problem for alumni groups.

How to improve your LinkedIn visibility?
By acting like you would when attending an event or meeting. Do you arrive late, interrupt and shout out your sales pitch? Didn’t think so! How does this apply to your behaviour in groups?

- Get to know the group, just visit and read to get a feel for the topics, tone and members of the group.
- Introduce yourself by commenting on discussions adding relevant information.
- Engage, reply to comments and see people responding to your comments as well.
- Do your thing! Once people have noticed and engage with you, it is time to start your own discussion.

Make sure you don’t just blatantly push your content. Start a discussion by linking to your own blog by all means. But only if people find very useful information there. Make sure you give enough information in the group for people to benefit. Following the link to your blog should be a bonus. Not a necessity.

Return on investment
Is it worth your while? One way to find out! Monitor the ‘who’s viewed your profile’ daily for a week, before becoming active in groups. Then after two weeks of active LinkedIn group use monitor again. Has your LinkedIn visibility improved? Keep going! No results? Rethink your activity, are you talking to the right people? Is your information helpful to other group members?

Do you use LinkedIn groups? Why/why not? Lets talk about it in the comments!

This article was originally published on Petrafisher.com

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Petra Fisher

Petra Fisher is a LinkedIn consultant who doesn’t quite fit in the box (don’t worry, she is losing weight). Straight forward, no-nonsense feedback, fun, creative and driven to keep going till the result is what she set out to achieve with you. To learn more about Petra, check out her site petrafisher.com or visit Petra on LinkedIn.

Petra lives with her teenage daughter and big-fat-red-cat. She loves to travel to Thailand, and to offset her nerdyness (books and computers are never far) she takes long walks and gets stuck into some crochet.