Groups on LinkedIn.com to help your Business grow

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are receiving more national attention every day. I like Linkedin’s “Groups” feature which provides a space to engage with other professionals who reflect business interests. The feature allows one to not only connect, but to be of value by generating discussion and sharing knowledge.

For the newly initiated to the world of social media networking, it always helps to get a sense of the culture and here is an excellent tool to help one get started. Pam Slim,  posted this article in July 2007 titled,  “Facebook, My Space and Linkedin Conundrums: Are there any rules for social / business networking?”

Here are some practicals steps to find groups which can be a part of your business community:

*Search the “Groups Directory” by industry or keywords pertaining to the industry.

*Evaluate the group’s description and member count. Decide whether it is desirable to be part of a large group, i.e. more potential connections or a smaller group, i.e. more potential for high-quality connections and discussion.

*Click to “Join  Group” which will trigger an internal message to the group moderator that someone wishes to join.

*It is also useful to visit the “Groups” link located on the right-hand side of the page, locate the group (you will note a message stating “pending membership”) and a link to message the group moderator. This is a prime opportunity to engage the moderator as to why you wish to join the group.

*Once approved, three things which I like are the means to initiate discussion by posing a question, answering one or the sharing of articles via hyper-links.

Here is LinkedIn’s blog post advocating one of the recent feature improvements:

“Raising the ActionBar for Groups’ users”

Jen Granito May 19th, 2009

What do you like or dislike about LinkedIn’s Group feature?

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