Determining the types of groups to join

The LinkedIn Groups you join should contain your target audience — not your competitors. Most people join only groups that reflect their interests and careers. As an example, let’s say you are an insurance broker. You may find yourself tempted to join only groups for insurance brokers. When you do that, you are filling your LinkedIn network with your competitors. You don’t want to find or be found only by insurance brokers. Instead, think in terms of your target audience. You want to find and be found by prospective customers. Your prospective customers probably belong to LinkedIn Groups for business owners and human resource professionals. Figure out what LinkedIn Groups attract your target audience and join those groups.

Jobseekers should join groups that contain recruiters and human resources professionals. They should research the companies where they want to work and join groups where the employees of their dream companies are members.

Those who are using LinkedIn for executive branding and thought leadership should join groups that contain their target audience. Do you want to be found by reporters and journalists? Join groups for media professionals. Do you want to be asked to speak at conferences? Join groups that cater to conference and event planners. Do you want to be asked for radio interviews? Join groups for radio broadcasters and podcasters.

One of the easiest ways to determine which groups attract your target audience is to visit the profiles of your current customers or target audience members. Scroll to the bottom of their profiles and look at the groups they have listed on the bottom of their LinkedIn profile. After viewing a number of their profiles, you may start to see certain groups repeated across their profiles. Those are the groups you should join.

The other thing to consider when joining LinkedIn Groups is the number of members within the group. Your network grows by the number of people in the group, so choose LinkedIn Groups with the most members. The bigger your network, the more people you find and the more people who find you.

In addition to the groups that fill your network with your target audience, consider joining groups that demonstrate your expertise and industry knowledge. These groups may contain more of your competition than target audience, but that’s okay as long as you don’t join too many of them.

Another type of groups to join are the groups I like to call “Glory Days.” Your university alumni group falls into this category as well as any groups devoted to old companies at which you worked in the past. By joining these groups where old colleagues, schoolmates, and friends are, you are making sure that if you are not directly connected to them yet, they are still in your network. You never know when one of these old relationships may need your new expertise.

Lastly, join a couple groups that are strictly fun. Do you love martial arts? There are a number of great groups devoted to discussions on martial arts. Do you enjoy technology or history or professional development? There are groups related to all of those topics. It’s important to have fun on LinkedIn, and it’s okay to delve into things you enjoy even if they aren’t pertinent to your career. LinkedIn is all about networking, and networking with people who share common interests is a great way to forge real relationships.

Check out Figure 13-2 to see the ideal breakdown of groups you should join on LinkedIn.

If you are so inclined to participate in LinkedIn Groups, choose two or three LinkedIn Groups for your focus. Get into the habit of checking out the group discussions once a week. Participate as you can. Add discussions and comment on already occurring discussions. And guess what? If you simply don’t have enough time to keep up with a few groups, don’t worry about it. You can still find amazing benefit from LinkedIn Groups without any true participation.

If you love participating in groups, LinkedIn has a LinkedIn Group mobile app. As of 2016, it is available only for the iPhone, but it is slated for release on the Android soon. This mobile app makes it easy to interact with your LinkedIn Groups wherever you are … watching TV, in a coffee shop, or trying to look busy during a boring meeting.

Turning off group notifications

Before you start joining groups, especially if you are a currently employed job seeker, it’s best to update your notification settings so LinkedIn doesn’t notify your network whenever you join a new group. Here’s how:

1. Go to LinkedIn.com.

2. Hover your mouse pointer over the thumbnail image of yourself in the upper-right corner of your screen and click Settings & Privacy.

   LinkedIn's settings page opens.

3. Along the top of the settings page, click Communications.

4. Under Groups, click Group notifications.

   This setting expands to show more information

5. If “Would you like to publish an update to your network whenever you join a group?” is switched to Yes, click it to select No.

   By selecting No, when you join a LinkedIn Group your network is not alerted. See Figure 13-3.

Joining recommended groups

There are over two million groups on LinkedIn. Search LinkedIn to find groups that match your target audience and interests or allow LinkedIn to recommend groups to you. LinkedIn looks at commonalities you share with members of different groups such as companies, schools, or industries. Those groups with members that share the most attributes with you are presented as groups you might want to join.

Here’s how to discover groups that align with your goals and target audience:

1. Go to LinkedIn.com.

2. Click the waffle (More or Work) icon on the menu bar at the top of the screen and then select the Groups icon from the pop-up menu.

   The highlights page displays. This page offers brief summaries of the most popular and trending discussions from all of your groups.

3. Click the Discover tab in the upper menu bar.

   The Discover page opens. This is where LinkedIn recommends groups to you.

4. Scroll through LinkedIn’s recommended groups, and if you see a group you would like to join, click the Ask to Join button.

   Notice the total number of people in the group. The larger the number, the more your network expands when you join. Also, LinkedIn shows you the number of people you know within the group. Are these people your target audience or are they competitors? If they are competitors, you may choose not to join the group. See Figure 13-4.

Searching for groups

Rather than just accepting groups that LinkedIn deems worthy of you, search for groups. LinkedIn has two types of groups: standard and unlisted. When searching for groups, you only see standard groups. Unlisted groups are unlisted and do not turn up in Search. The only way to join an unlisted group is to be invited to join.

Here’s how to search for groups that match your interests, goals, and target audience:

1. From any LinkedIn page, enter a group topic that would attract your target audience in the search bar at the top of the page.

   Some keyword topic ideas include: Executives, Real Estate, B2B Marketing, CAD, CRM, Sales, Cloud Computing, Supply Chain, Retail, Fashion, Maritime, Military, and so on.

   When entering your keywords, LinkedIn offers numerous filters as you type. You can choose from the suggested results, or you can click the search button to be presented with a page of search results. By clicking the Group filter at the top, you are filtering results so only Groups appear.

2. Click the search button.

   Search results display, as shown in Figure 13-5.

3. Scroll through the list.

   The name of the group displays, followed by the total number of members in the group.

4. If the group looks interesting, click the hyperlinked name of the Group to visit the group overview page.

   The group overview page shows you the admins of the group and who within your connections are members. If you wish to join, click the Ask to Join button, otherwise click your browser’s back button to go to the previous screen of search results.

5. If you decide to join the Group, click the Join button to immediately become a member, or if the Group’s membership is moderated, click Ask to Join.

Deleting groups

Now that you understand the strategy behind LinkedIn Groups, you may want to delete some groups that aren’t providing the value you need. Here’s how to delete groups you have already joined:

1. From any LinkedIn page, click the waffle (More or Work) icon located in the menu bar at the top of the screen and click Groups.

   The highlights page displays. This page offers brief summaries of the most popular and trending discussions from all of your groups.

2. Click the My Groups tab in the upper menu bar.

   The list of groups you belong to appears. If you manage any groups, they appear at the top of the list.

3. Scroll through the list until you find the group you want to remove.
4. Click the gear icon that appears to the right of each group listing and select Leave Group, as shown in Figure 13-6.

Turning off group communication email

You’ve joined 100 groups and suddenly you are beginning to see more views to your LinkedIn profile. As wonderful as that is, you are also seeing your email inbox fill up with LinkedIn Group update email. LinkedIn sure does love to fill our inboxes up with notifications, don’t they? No worries! It’s easy to turn off the LinkedIn Group communication email. Here’s how:

1. Go to LinkedIn.com.

2. Hover your mouse pointer over the thumbnail image of yourself in the upper-right corner of your screen and click Settings & Privacy.

   LinkedIn's settings page opens.

3. Along the top of the settings page, click Communications.

4. Under Basics, click Change to the left of Email frequency.

   The page expands to include different options. This is where you choose what email notifications you want to receive from LinkedIn.

5. Scroll down to Group updates and click Details.

   The top five groups you belong to display with the ability to toggle off their email updates.

6. Click All Group Email Settings to see options for all of the groups you belong to.

   A page displays with the ability to toggle off communication from all of your groups.

7. To turn off all group email communication, click the top option, “Receive email about group notifications” from On to Off.

   If you only want to turn off some group email updates, go through the list toggling from On to Off the groups you no longer want to receive email updates from.

   If you want to receive a weekly digest rather than daily email from some of the groups, toggle the option from Off to On and the menu expands to choose between daily or weekly digest options. You are also given the option to turn off alerts on new discussions and group announcements. See Figure 13-7.

Choosing which groups to highlight on your profile

Your profile displays group logos on your profile with the option to expand to show the complete list. Although LinkedIn lists the groups on your profile randomly, you can determine the to exclude a Group from appearing.

Instead of leaving it to LinkedIn to showcase your group membership, it’s important you take control and determine the best groups to populate your profile to impress your target audience. Remember, it’s a Google world, and people are looking you up. They want to learn more about you. You control how they perceive you. As a reader scrolls through your profile, you want to make sure that the groups you are associated with build your brand and won’t turn anyone off.

In the section, “Determining the types of groups to join,” I suggest adding a few groups that showcase your industry knowledge. These groups are great to add to the top of your profile. Always think of your target audience. What group memberships might impress them? Which might make them feel confident in you?

Once you have an idea of the groups to spotlight on your profile, here’s how to display the logo on your profile:

1. From any LinkedIn page, click the waffle (More or Work) icon located in the menu bar at the top of the screen and click Groups.

   The highlights page displays.

2. Click the My Groups tab in the upper menu bar.

   The list of groups you belong to appears.

3. To hide groups on your profile, click the gear icon to the right of the group name, as shown in Figure 13-8.
4. Click Group settings.
5. Remove the checkmark from “Display the group logo.”
6. Click Save Changes.

The Group’s logo will not appear on your profile.

Choosing the right companies to follow

Just as individuals have LinkedIn profiles, companies have LinkedIn company pages. A company page is where a company tells its story, mission, and goals on LinkedIn and posts open positions. When employees and past employees list the company in their LinkedIn profiles’ experience sections, the logo that is displayed on their profiles comes from this company page. A link is also created from the employees’ profiles to the company page.

In addition to providing a digital outpost for the company on LinkedIn, the company page provides the ability to post status updates as the company rather than as an individual. When you visit a company page, you have the ability to follow that page and receive the updates it posts. Some company pages have showcase pages. Most companies post statuses on a large variety of topics, but not all followers want to read such a wide range of topics. Showcase pages are for the different topics a company page might broadcast. Visitors can then subscribe to the showcase page of the topic they are most interested in reading. When you subscribe to a showcase page, that logo is displayed on your profile as a company.

Follow at least 10 companies and/or showcase pages to demonstrate you are using LinkedIn as a way to get information and updates. These company logos also show your allegiance and interest in the company.

Not sure what companies to follow? No worries; here are some ideas to get you started:

• Your current company
• The companies where you worked in the past
• Your dream company(ies)
• Companies that are current or prospective customers
• Companies in the news
• Companies that are leaders within your industry or customers’ industries
• The companies where your friends and family members work

Unlike with groups, you cannot control the order companies are displayed on your profile. If you are not comfortable potentially showcasing a certain company on your profile, don’t follow it!

Following companies

It’s easy to follow companies on LinkedIn. Here’s how:

1. From any LinkedIn page, click in the search bar and start typing the name of a company you’d like to follow.

   As you type, LinkedIn recommends matching company pages.

2. If the page you are searching for appears, click it to open the company page.

   If LinkedIn doesn’t recommend the correct company page, click the search button to display the search results.

3. Scroll through the results and click the company page you’d like to follow.

   The company page opens.

4. Click the Follow button.

   The button text changes to Following and the company appears in the Following section on your profile.

Unfollowing companies

If you go overboard and follow more companies than you are able to keep up with, or if you’ve changed your mind about showing allegiance to a certain company, simply stop following a company and its updates.

To unfollow a company, follow these steps:

1. Go to your LinkedIn profile.

2. Scroll to the bottom of your profile to the Interests section and click See All.

   The list of companies you follow appears. You may need to click the Companies tab at the top of the page.

3. Click the Following link next to the Company you wish to unfollow.

   Once clicked, you no longer follow that company and it is removed from your profile’s Interests section and you will no longer receive their broadcasted status updates.

Deciding which influencers to showcase

Unlike with groups, you cannot control the order influencers are displayed on your profile. Just because you adore a certain influencer, consider if that person is a polarizing individual, especially within your industry. Rather than choosing influencers you truly love and want to follow, you may decide to choose influencers who showcase you as you want to be seen.

If you want to be seen as a conservative, traditional leader, you may decide to follow Jack Welch rather than Mark Cuban. Although LinkedIn includes a number of politicians as influencers, you may decide not to follow them and alienate half your audience.

LinkedIn doesn’t provide a list of influencers beyond a small list of recommended influencers listed on the Discover page. Rather than have you blindly search for influencers, I’ve compiled a list of the most popular and prolific (see Table 13-1). See if any strike a chord with you. If they influence you, go ahead and follow them.

Finding specific influencers

Not all big names are influencers. Check to see if a person you admire is an influencer by following these steps:

1. From any LinkedIn page, enter the person’s name in the search bar at the top of the page.

   As you type, LinkedIn presents you with name matches.

2. If the person’s name appears, click it to open his or her profile.

3. If the person’s name doesn’t appear, click the search button and review the search results, clicking the person’s name to open his or her profile.

   If the person is an influencer, in the top-left corner of the profile, it says Influencer. Although you can connect with influencers, the Follow button is highlighted, as shown in Figure 13-9.

   You may see 1st, 2nd, or 3rd next to the person’s name, meaning that not only is the person an influencer, but also you are connected to that person and that person is in your LinkedIn network.

4. Click the Follow button to subscribe to the person’s long-form posts and status updates.

Discovering recommended influencers

LinkedIn provides you with a partial list of recommended influencers. Here’s how to access that list and follow those influencers LinkedIn recommends for you:

1. Navigate to the Discover page: www.linkedin.com/pulse/discover.

2. Scroll down to the Influencer's section and hover your mouse pointer over an Influencer that interests you.

   The plus ( + ) sign that appears in the upper-right corner of the topic image changes to Follow.

3. Click Follow.

   The plus ( + ) sign becomes a green check mark, showing that you are following this news topic, see Figure 13-10.

Removing influencers

It’s a good idea to audit and edit your list of influencers every few months. Not only does LinkedIn add influencers, but also some influencers you follow may lose their luster, and it’s best to remove them. Remember, nothing on LinkedIn is written in stone. Not only are you developing as a professional within your career, so are your interests and future vision of yourself. Make sure that you are always keeping your profile updated as to who you are right now in time.

Here’s how to remove influencers from your profile:

1. Go to your LinkedIn profile.

2. Scroll down to the Interests section and click See More.

   A list of Influencers you are following appears. You may need to click the Influencers tab at the top.

3. Click the Following button to the right of the Influencer.

   Once you click, that influencer is removed from the Following section of your profile. You will no longer receive their status updates or long-form posts on your newsfeed.

Showcasing yourself as a thought leader

At one time, only academics were held to the paradigm of “publish or perish.” Now, in the world of rampant social media, professionals who wish to be seen as thought leaders must also publish or perish. By blogging on LinkedIn, you establish yourself as an authority in your specialized field by sharing your expertise, insights, opinions, and professional background. With each share, like, comment, and view, your post is seen, shared, and promoted to your network and beyond.

It’s easy to say you are an expert; it’s much harder to prove it. Imagine you are on the shortlist for your dream job. The hiring manager visits your profile and the profiles of the other people being considered. Your profile showcases a number of articles you’ve written on your specialized field; the other candidates have none. Immediately you have differentiated yourself from the other candidates and have proven your knowledge and authority.

Creating your first article

The longest journey begins with a single step! Before you create your first long-form article, it’s best to consider the topic channels on LinkedIn. By knowing the different channels people subscribe to, it’s easier to choose your topic.

Here is a list of LinkedIn’s topic channels:

• Leadership & Management
• Big Ideas & Innovation
• Technology
• Entrepreneurship
• Social Media
• Economy
• Professional Women
• Marketing & Advertising
• Green Business
• Banking & Finance
• Best Advice
• Your Career
• Healthcare
• Customer Experience
• What Inspires Me
• Big Data
• Software Engineering
• Social Impact
• Recruiting & Hiring
• Law & Government
• Business Travel
• Careers: Getting Started
• Productivity
• India
• Editor’s Picks
• Retail & E-Commerce
• Accounting
• Design
• Sales Strategies
• Entertainment
• Mobile
• Media
• Food & Beverages
• Apparel & Fashion
• Careers: The Next Level
• Automotive
• Oil & Energy
• Construction
• Public Relations
• Travel & Leisure
• Management Consulting
• Real Estate
• Product Management
• Logistics & Supply Chain
• Airlines & Aviation
• Company Culture
• Information Technology
• VC & Private Equity
• Pulse
• Europe
• Asia Pacific
• Insurance
• Operations
• Pharmaceutical
• LinkedIn Tips
• Human Resources
• Cloud Computing
• Public Speaking & Presenting
• Writing and Editing
• Freelance and Self Employment
• Hospitality
• Business Strategies
• United Kingdom
• Global Trade
• Information Privacy & Security
• Space
• US Politics
• Student Voices
• Law Practice
• Manufacturing
• Australia & New Zealand
• Top Videos
• Daily Digest
• Millennials
• Africa
• The Weekend Essay
• Middle East
• Latin America

You want to choose a topic that resonates with your target audience. Concentrate first and foremost on making the content high quality and meaningful to your audience.

Articles on LinkedIn shouldn’t be overwhelmingly long. Aim for 800 to 2,000 words. If you have a larger vision, break it into a series of articles. Keep yourself focused on your topic and write using a conversational tone. Rather than write for views, write for engagement. A successful post receives feedback in likes, comments, and shares.

Unlike your profile, LinkedIn supports formatting of long-form posts. Make sure your article is thoughtfully formatted. Use headings to outline your overarching points. Add interesting pictures that illustrate your thoughts. Call attention to your important points by using lists and formatting your text in bold and italics.

You can also include links to other websites, and you can embed videos as well as HTML. Here are some items you can embed into your blog post:

• Charts
• Images
• Podcasts
• Polls
• Presentations
• Tweets
• Videos

By adding multimedia to your article, you are making it visually appealing and providing concrete examples that support your opinion.

Publishing on LinkedIn isn’t a once and done exercise. Publishing is a long-term commitment with no end date. The idea is to commit to a schedule and keep at it. Determine what works for you, and make it a habit whether it’s once a week, once a month, or once every three months.

If you are wondering the best days to publish your post to achieve the most views, research points to Thursdays and Sundays. Some of the most successful posts I’ve written were posted on Fridays and Mondays, so even though research points to Thursday and Sunday, the real differentiator is simply good content.

Now that you have an idea of topic, tone, length, and frequency, follow these steps to create your very first article on LinkedIn:

1. Go to LinkedIn.com.

2. At the top of your home page, click Write an Article (see Figure 13-12).

   A page opens where you write your long-form post, as shown in Figure 13-13. At the top of the page is an area to add a hero image. This image also acts as a thumbnail and proceeds your long-form post on your profile and on status updates and on Pulse, if you are featured.

3. Click anywhere within the image area to add an image.

   An Open dialog box appears.

4. Select your image on your hard drive and click Open.

   The image opens and you can preview how it looks. Hovering your mouse pointer over the image, click at the top to credit the person who made the image.

5. Click in the area where it says, “Headline,” and type in a headline.

   The headline is the title of your article. Make sure it is intriguing and compelling. This field may only contain 150 characters or fewer.

6. The next area is the body of the post. Click where it says, “Write here. Add images or a video for visual impact.”

   This is where you write your article.

7. Highlight the text you want formatted, and then in the format bar at the top of the screen above the image area, click the Normal drop-down list to expand the text formatting options:

   • H1: This is the main heading and produces the largest font size.
   • H2: This is a subheading and produces the second largest font size.
   • Normal: This is unformatted body text.

   There are other options as well. Click the matching icon to apply the following formatting:

   • B: This sets the text in bold.
   • I: This sets the text in italics.
   • U: This underlines the text. Use this sparingly as most people associate underlined text with hyperlinks.
   • Numbered list: This creates a numbered list.
   • Bulleted list: This creates an unnumbered list.
   • Block quote: This is for a direct quotation. The text is center justified and the font is italics and slightly larger than the normal body text.
   • Link: This creates a hyperlink to another page on the web.
8. Once you have finished writing your article, proofread to make sure it’s ready to be published.

9. Click the Publish button in the upper-right corner of the page to publish your article.

   A pop up window appears.

10. In the open text field, provide context around your article so your network knows what it is about, and then click the Publish button.

    Tell your network what your article is about. Use #tags (hashtags) to help others find it.

    To create a hashtag, all you do is take a word or phrase, remove any spaces, special characters, or punctuation and begin it with a hash mark ( # ). For example, #LinkedIn #B2B #Leadership #ProfessionalDevelopment.

    People search by hashtags to find content that corresponds to subjects they are interested in. By searching for hashtags or just clicking on a hashtag (as long as you are accessing LinkedIn on your mobile device), you are presented with a results page of articles written on that subject utilizing those hashtags.

What happens after you publish?

Take a deep breath, whisper a little prayer to your favorite benevolent god, and hit the Publish button. What happens now? Your post is published to your LinkedIn profile under the Your Articles & Activity section in the top part of your profile. Your profile shows the most recent article you’ve written. Anyone who views your profile can click to see all the articles you’ve written on LinkedIn’s publishing platform.

Now that your article is published, it’s important to create a status update letting your network know that you published a new article. As newer status updates and long-form posts are published by others, this little update of yours gets pushed down lower and lower on the newsfeed. Depending on the size of your network and how active your connections are on LinkedIn, some people will see it and some will not.

LinkedIn runs your post through a spam and low-quality filter. If your post passes as quality content, LinkedIn may individually notify your network. Rather than alert every single connection you have, LinkedIn alerts only the strongest connections that you interact with regularly. This alert appears in the Notifications section of LinkedIn.

Every day LinkedIn sends out a Highlight email filled with excerpts of articles and status updates that are recommended as relevant or from members you are connected to. As long as your connections and followers are subscribed to this email, they may get a link to your post in their inbox.

And if your article is truly compelling and engaging, you may find that it is chosen for a topic channel. When this happens, you’ll receive an email alerting you, but most likely you will already know because you’ll receive more views, likes, and comments than ever before.

Marketing your blog post

Although LinkedIn does a fair amount of marketing for you, you should also market your post yourself. Use social media as well as email to alert your audience.

Once your article is published, share the link on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Pinterest. Don’t just send it out once; send it out a bunch of times on each network. Either schedule a reminder in your calendar to resend the link or use a tool like Hootsuite that allows you to create multiple updates that are scheduled out into the future.

Don’t just post a link — provide some context and include hashtags in the status as well.

Bad:

Read my article: www.linkedin.com/today/author/todonna

Good:

Just posted a new article detailing the #Microsoft acquisition of #LinkedIn and what it means to LinkedIn users. Read it here: www.linkedin.com/today/author/todonna

Email is another great way to get views to your long-form post. If you are a marketer with a double opt-in email list numbering in the thousands, you’ll have no difficulty getting word out. But even without a marketing email list you can still send an email out to your friends and colleagues, letting them know you posted an article and providing a link so that they can read it.

When sending email to more than a few people, don’t use the To or CC address fields of your email header; instead use BCC. BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy. When you add email addresses to the To or CC fields, everyone can see those email addresses and reply to them. When you use the BCC field, those email addresses aren’t visible to others. This is helpful because often people reply not just to you, the person writing the email, but to everyone included as recipients. When this happens, the person replying is unknowingly spamming all of the email recipients. By using BCC, you are stopping people from seeing the other email addresses and mistakenly “replying all.”

In the next chapter, it’s time for you to review your profile and get ready for the final reveal!