I’ve managed the Legal Blogging Group on LinkedIn since the first week LinkedIn created groups.
Regardless of what you think of the value of LinkedIn Groups, they’re gold for reaching out to shake people’s hands. And after all, shaking hands and talking with folks is what networking through the net is all about.
How so?
- Don’t just check off to accept or deny requests to join the group.
- Review the profile of each person requesting to join.
- For those you are accepting, send a personal invite to connect with a note welcoming them to the group, introducing yourself/company as the moderator, explain what you do to add value to the group, and ask if they would be so kind to connect on LinkedIn.
- Then go back and accept their request to join the group.
- You’ll receive notes of thanks. Continue the dialogue through LinkedIn as appropriate.
- Look for business development opportunities with the person. Need not be right away. May go into your customer relationships system. For us, it’s HubSpot.
- For example, with LexBlog expanding internationally, I make note of people with law firms overseas and have my team look at what their firm is doing to build their name through digital publishing. We may be able to help them with our blogging education program, our legal blogging community and and our publishing platform.
Just a few ideas for leveraging the LinkedIn group’s membership feature for business development. I’m sure there are other ways to leverage it that I’ve missed.
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