John Hayes posted on February 22, 2011 |
I recently spoke with the founder of Supply Chain Today. He has garnered over 37,000 members to his Linkedin group. Here’s how he did it:
1. He was early to promote a group on Linkedin. That ship may have sailed already if your group is about a popular topic, like “Internet Marketing”, but you may still have a good shot if your group is about something highly specialized.
2. He started by asking all of his friends to join. That gave the group an early critical mass so that it was credible.
3. He made a number of interesting early posts that sparked some discussion. He followed that up with job posts, which seems to be sure-fire content for a Linkedin community.
4. He blocked and removed all spammers. Here is a link to a funny 2 minute movie made by a technical forum owner. It shows you what they think of spammers, trolls and leeches. http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/11120416/
5. He promoted the group heavily through his web site and by sending email to the group through Linkedin’s messaging features.
Of course, the next question is what to do with this big audience?