A message to the spammers, and a lesson for your marketing
Imagine you’ve joined a Professional Association. To get involved you decide to go to their annual conference to meet some fellow professionals and to learn some new skills and ideas—you’ve heard that the keynote speaker is great.
You turn up bright and early, grab a good table and the presenter starts to talk. But there’s a problem—10 of the audience haven’t sat down. They are walking from table to table handing out brochures and giving everybody their 30 second elevator pitch.
No one can hear the presenter.
It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what Groups on LinkedIn are like today. 10% of members are constantly posting stuff about their business and driving traffic to their websites –and no one finds it terribly useful.
Real conversations, real learning and research are being drowned out…This is partly why we have started new Groups for our clients, where we can moderate this junk.
So what can you learn from this for your own marketing?
Nobody likes to be sold to straight off the bat. Here are five tips to help you get results from your LinkedIn campaigns:
5 Steps to Generating Leads on LinkedIn Groups
- WIIFM? (What’s in it for me?) – the only way to network with others on LinkedIn and to strike up a conversation with a prospect is to have a good hook. Don’t bulk-post your blog posts and don’t write directly to people offering your services. We use other Groups on LinkedIn to research what’s popular in different industries – what’s gaining the most comments/interest? Add your own twist, phrase it as a discussion question and share.
- Focus – focus on the LinkedIn Groups that contain the largest majority of your VIPs (very important prospects!). Perhaps start with 10 Groups; don’t bulk-post your sales material and expect a response.
- Have a call-to-action – so you shouldn’t be just posting links to your free event, but how do you ever get clients from LinkedIn? LinkedIn Group members are there to network and learn – so your goal here should not be to sell a service, but to sell a guide or paper on an issue in your field. It’s appropriate to link to your White Paper in a relevant discussion.
- Measure – we all know what a timewaster social media can be – in fact that’s the No. 1 reason why people resist it. Plan your campaigns and measure clicks, comments and downloads. Is the time you’re spending yielding good leads?
- Plan a follow-up – in B2B or B2Professional relationships, people don’t buy from one touch. Eight or more touches are often needed before someone trusts or understands your business enough to respond/buy. Make sure you plan an email sequence with engaging content that is relevant to what your prospects have downloaded.
If they get value, they will stay. And some will engage. Then some will buy. And more will buy next month… And the next.
But only if you stop selling at everyone.
Discover more ways to increase Lead Generation with Social Media.
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it should be noted that spam is often in the eye of the beholder.
I’ve posted items in some groups where people love it and it’s generated heaps of discussion.
Yet when I post the same item in other groups I get accused of spamming.
None of the posts are selling anything or promoting products. They are useful info with clear WIFM’s yet some people still find them upsetting.
Hey Mark,
Yes that is true. May I ask what you posted? Or perhaps send me a link?
Often if you just post the link to your blog posts it is seen as spamming, we do moderate some of this in our groups. Often simply because if we let everyone do this, the group would be flooded with everyone’s blog posts, but no one would be actually discussing and networking, which is the purpose of these groups. They are not a link farm, which is what some people treat them as.
I guess it’s like if you were at a networking event and started spouting off “how to” tips to people without them indicating that they are interested in what you do. People are getting more and more resistant to people who are constantly pushing their own barrow.
I’m sure you mean well though.
Perhaps a way around this would be to phrase your blog post as a question tailored for that particular group? And ask them for their experiences. Then link off to it later in the discussion.
Would be interested to know more about what you’re doing…