Boost Your Freelancing Career by Making the Most of LinkedIn Groups
Posted February 24, 2011 in Social Media
As a freelancer, you likely recognize how important the Internet has become to the success of your business. Potential clients and freelancers now regularly communicate and research each other online. As such, if you aren’t yet a member of the top online social networks, this should be a primary goal of developing your freelance career.
While some social networks are hit and miss when it comes to cultivating connections with potential clients and other freelancers, LinkedIn lists this as its primary purpose. Designed as a professional connection building network, LinkedIn offers immense possibilities for advancing your freelancing career and for building more connections than you may have thought possible.
Here are four tips for effectively using LinkedIn groups to build your freelance network.
1. Research Group Opportunities
Many LinkedIn groups now exist on various topics. As such, to narrow the variety of possible options, research several groups you think may be relevant to freelancing and the niche market you are targeting. After finding several options, conduct a testing phase with each to ensure their relevance to your freelancing goals.
Since maintaining an appropriate level of group interaction can be time consuming, be sure you are only participating in groups that meet your predefined expectations. A manageable number of groups to join is typically three to five, but this number may vary depending on the intensity of your discussions.
LinkedIn group search is your best friend here. It has the wide variety of options that will allow you to discover new relevant groups and join them right from the search results (again, don’t overdo though!).
First, the search allows you to jump to top groups right from the search box:
And secondly, if you still decided to go to search results, don’t miss the following:
- Always pay attention to “Yesterday’s activity” line–that will help you to estimate how active the group is.
- Try the “Similar groups” link to discover more targeted communities.
- Notice whether the small “lock” icon shows if the group is open or closed (Closed group moderators always have to approve each applicant before he/she can join. Per my own experience, closed groups are more effective in terms of connecting to active niche influencers).
2. Join Relevant Discussions
Just as there are many LinkedIn groups that aren’t worth your time to join because of their irrelevance to freelancing, there will also be discussions within your pre-selected groups that aren’t relevant to your goals. Although you may feel obligated to comment on nearly all discussions, this process will quickly become exhausting.
Instead, only comment on those discussions you feel are valuable for your career as a freelancer. By doing this, you will have much more knowledge to contribute to the conversations and won’t feel as if you’re wasting your time. You can also start your own discussions if a topic you want to discuss has not yet been addressed.
3. Stay Current
A very important aspect of using LinkedIn groups is ensuring you remain up to date on your discussion topics. If you commented on a discussion, recheck the status of that comment as often as you feel is necessary. By doing this, you will show others how committed you are to the topic being discussed and will build much more valuable connections with other professionals in the group.
Remember that the more active you are, the more visibility you get within the group. This is not only about appearing here and there in the discussion to get noticed at last. The best thing is that active members are constantly featured on the group home page in the “Recent activity” widget:
… as well as “Top Influencers” widget:
4. Start a Group
After gaining experience by joining LinkedIn groups and building connections in them, the next step is to start your own group. Of course, this isn’t a requirement but it can provide much more freedom and drastically increase your LinkedIn exposure. By creating a group, you can initiate valuable discussions and attract the types of professionals with whom you want to connect.
Another awesome which (which I often see neglected) is that you can create subgroups. The subgroups allow you to more effectively unite people by some specific interest to create the huge community hub (and thus turn into the influencer).
The great example of smart using the subgroups is The Blog Zone (started by Mike Clough). The group is divided into the subgroups by some specific bloggers’ interest (and even more! Mike has invited the niche influencer to moderate each of those niche-specific groups):
- The Guest Blogger
- Social Media for the Blogger
- The Blog Promoter, etc.
It is always easier to get noticed and build authority within a highly-targeted niche community and LinkedIn is the best social media network for that.
LinkedIn is a powerful social network that can help advance your career as a freelancer. By joining this social network’s groups and regularly participating in them, you can build connections not only with other freelancers but also with potential future clients.
What About You?
Are you using LinkedIn’s group features to promote your freelancing business?
Top image by mariosundar
Related posts:
- 7 Ways To Give Your Freelancing Career A Boost
- 30 Inspiring Flickr Groups On Typography
- 7 Tips for Using Your LinkedIn Profile to Land Great Projects
- The Freelancer’s Guide to Getting Started on LinkedIn
- Getting The Word Out – Making Word Of Mouth Happen
About the author: Sonia Tracy is the content editor for PsPrint and editor of PsPrint Design Blog. She likes to write, do yoga and make nerdy “Star Wars” and “Simpsons” references. PsPrint is an online commercial printing company specializing in brochure printing. You can follow PsPrint on Twitter @PsPrint.
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22 Comments
Jennifer Mattern
February 24th, 2011 at 8:54 amThanks for the article. It was a good reminder that I’m not really making the most of my LinkedIn account. It’s one of those tools I keep pushing aside even though I know it’s a good fit for me, and I really need to sit down and come up with a plan to use it effectively and work it into my schedule.
Samantha Bangayan
February 24th, 2011 at 9:22 amInformative post, Sonia! I joined LinkedIn this month and participating in groups has really expanded my network of business contacts and even friends! =) The BlogZone community and its subgroups have been especially helpful.
I’m no expert, but as a side thought, I wonder if it’s actually okay to join more than five groups. My take is that my affiliation with various groups is just another way for others to identify my interests. You’re right that I only have the energy and time to dedicate myself to and fully participate in around 3 groups, but I find it valuable to be associated with other groups as well. At the very least, people from the other groups are able to message me, even if we’re not connected on LinkedIn. =)
Justin P Lambert
February 24th, 2011 at 10:00 amThanks so much for this valuable resource. I know the value of LinkedIn, but definitely have not given it the attention it deserves in my overall marketing plan. I’m glad to see one of my intuitive guesses is correct, though: I went ahead and joined far too many groups to effectively keep up with, hoping to “test the waters” and see which groups work best for my purposes. The few conversations I’ve gotten involved with have been really helpful, and I’ve been really impressed with a few of the groups I joined because they represent some of the most engaged user communities I’ve come across. With your article in hand, I’m going to delve back in and start narrowing my focus.
Thanks again!
Robin
February 24th, 2011 at 12:57 pmThis is an wonderful post, i m really impressed ur domain on blogging…As a freelancer designer i always wait for new things :)
Jordan Walker
February 24th, 2011 at 4:02 pmJust got back from a job interview, and that was exactly what they had printed out – my LinkedIn profile page.
Yvette
February 24th, 2011 at 7:25 pmI have yet to try Linkedin…but after reading your article today I think I’ll try it out and see what connections I can make.
Christina
February 24th, 2011 at 10:19 pmI’ve been on LI for many years and while I keep my profile up-to-date, I have yet to dive into groups so this is a very valuable article for me. Thank you :)
Ensemble
February 25th, 2011 at 1:01 amawesome already joined two wordpress groups and started discussing few stuffs…
Solomon
February 25th, 2011 at 4:09 amHi Sonia, thanks for the wonderful post! I was very active on the LI, but slackened off, of late. I needed to be more active. I haven’t been very active with some discussions in the groups i joined.
Which group do you think is more effective for me as a freelance copywriter? Thanks, once again!
wall art
February 25th, 2011 at 6:59 amYour blog has everything I need in one great site – you are doing very valuable work.
Beth Robinson
March 4th, 2011 at 2:46 pmYou’re right in that you can only participate effectively in a few groups, but there are other advantages to joining many of them. Some of the ones I belong to, for example, are really badges of affiliation, giving a possibility for common ground with others. LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50.
The BIG reason to join more – you can Inmail other group members and see their profiles. Normally if you aren’t at least a 3rd degree connection you can’t see someone’s profile (and their job duties) unless they have a public version of their profile. And you definitely can’t contact them without paying for premium LinkedIn features. If you share a group with them you CAN contact them directly (unless they’ve disabled this feature, which doesn’t seem to happen often.)
And the reverse is also true. You can see them and they can see YOU and your profile. And therefore be more likely to find out you’re a great person to hire.
Not currently freelancing, but love LinkedIn. Comment link goes to my profile.
Michael Soininen
March 7th, 2011 at 5:04 amGreat post Sonia. I think that joining a couple of focussed groups may be the way to go.
Rachael Arnott
March 8th, 2011 at 3:20 amGreat article. I’m just in the process of setting up my group page and wasn’t sure about having sub groups but I think that I’ll give it a go now.
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