Whether you are an entrepreneur, small business owner, or developing your company’s social media strategy, LinkedIn is a virtual goldmine – offering an endless supply of business opportunities such as:

• Position Your Brand
• Develop Brand Awareness
• Create an Engaged Community
• Provide Lucrative New Opportunities
• Source High Quality Partnerships, Joint Ventures & Strategic Alliances
• Be Found by Your Target Market
• Identify Untapped Markets
• Create Innovation Opportunities Share Your Message Efficiently & Effectively with Your Market
• Develop Automated Processes and Systems

You can create all of this, if you know the following:

Profile Mastery:
By properly refining your message and communicating your professional goals your profile can literally attract thousands of targeted leads.

Keyword Optimization:
One of the most tightly held secrets on LinkedIn. You can literally through the right processes establish powerful keywords in your profile that will get your ranked high in LinkedIn search results.

Group Development:
This is an amazing way to grow a targeted community that you can control, but getting the group started correctly with the right structure is everything to its potential for targeted “viral” growth.

Additional Strategies and Tactics:
While mastering your profile, optimizing your keywords, and facilitating groups is critical. So are the little unknown strategies that go along with LinkedIn that yield significant returns on your investment.

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Learn how to truly grow your business on LinkedIn in this Advanced LinkedIn Workshop for Businesses. Learn more here: http://bit.ly/5501nf

Top Twenty Recommended Linkedin Groups for Business In order to identify the most valuable top 20 groups on LinkedIn for business, we had to identify the areas of interest to businesses in this new social environment. Numbers don’t matter as much as quality, though they help! The measurements used to rank these groups are:

Quality of content Size of the Group User Engagement Value added Features

Categories included in our list are:

Social Media LinkedIn Management PR & Communications Leadership Innovation Sales Marketing Networking Executive Issues HR General Business

Of course there are many other areas of interest to entrepreneurs, business owners and corporate representatives. These are the best groups for business, however the field is always changing, so we may come back and update this list occasionally as new players enter the field with great value! We would love your feedback and comments. Here is our list in no particular order:

1. Social Media Marketing
2. Linked Strategies (disclaimer – I am a co-manager of this group)
3. eMarketing Association Network
4. Executive Suite
5. On Startups – The Community For Entrepreneurs
6. Consultants Network
7. TopLinked.com (Open Networkers)
8. Innovative Marketing, PR, Sales, Word-of-Mouth & Buzz Innovators
9. ! Sales Best Practices
10. Managing a Multi-Generational Workforce
11. OneCoach
12. Inbound Marketers – For Marketing Professionals
13. Digital Marketing
14. SalesBlogcast.com
15. Social Media Today
16. Public Relations and Communications Professionals
17. Leadership Think Tank
18. Training&Development
19. ThoseinMedia
20. Linked:HR (#1 Human Resources Group)

Remember, we are here to report the top groups related to business. We understand there are passionate feelings about some of these groups on the positive and negative side of the LinkedIn Etiquette status quo. 

Five Must Join LinkedIn Groups

This week I want to share a simple tip of LinkedIn groups you should consider participating in.

Linked HR:
When it comes to seeking employment, career advice, job search, or HR advice this is the place as LinkedIn’s Largest group.

EMarketing
What better way to understand how marketing and networking is evolving than to be tapped into the largest group on LinkedIn that understand that best.

SalesBlog:
This is the most comprehensive sales group on LinkedIn and since LinkedIn is made up of a majority of people in some type of sales role directly or indirectly this is a must join.

Twitter Strategies:
Why? Integration of LinkedIn and Twitter is now complete and as the founders of these companies have realized the power of joining forces so should you. Twitter Strategies provides the insights on how to effectively manage this new intergration.

Linked Strategies:
Why? If you are going to put any time in to building your business or profession with LinkedIn this is a must join group. Get a solid footing on what to do and what not to do.

This is clearly a very short list and I can think of many more worthy groups. However this will get anyone positioned well in the LinkedIn space.

Bonus Group:

Top Recommended People:
Why? When you are looking for the best and brightest you can find them at Top Recommended People. These are professionals, voted by their peers as a true value and asset to their profession.

Linkedin has surpassed over 50 Million Professional members as of November 23, 2009. In todays connected economy, your success as a professional and your competitiveness as a company depends upon faster access to insight and resources you can trust. LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals. So how do you approach LinkedIn for your business?

Start the approach with these 3 LinkedIn Tips to Drive Your Brand

1. Your Profile Picture and Headline: Your Picture should be a professional picture that is complemented with a nice headline that communicates how you can help others. Every time you participate in LinkedIn Discussions in Groups and the Q&A section your picture and headline is what appears. So your brand needs to be professional and informative.
2. Twelve to One: that’s what Chris Brogan says, for every promotion of your brand you should be helping twelve people or offering free advise. Creating true community and authenticity.
3. Be Consistent: in your brand message, put serious thought into your message creation and don’t change it often. Jumping around in your brand message can create confusion and doubt in your credibility.

Bonus Tip: Social Media Trainers Group on LinkedIn. Join the discussion, contribute, and grow your business.

Here are three bonus resources I would like to mention:

~ Get your free copy of the Fast Start Guide to Linkedin Success: Grab it here
~ Join me on the Linked Strategies Group on Linkedin to access more tips. Join Here
~ Join us for one of our “Complimentary” Linkedin Power User Webinars: Count Me In

As I write this article there are currently over 426,857 groups on Linkedin. So what is so important about Linkedin Groups? These groups can help you stay informed, keep in touch, & generate new opportunities with people that share your interests. Another way of putting it, Is that you have the opportunity to join target specific groups i.e. “industry related, interests driven, education background, etc…” allowing you to position your brand in front of your targeted audience at “no cost”.

I am going to take a moment to share a couple of secrets I have learned that have made my group participation worth while for my business.

Here are four secrets I have learned. I realize the first two are pretty basic, but the last two may be things you have not realized to do.

1. Post quality discussion topics in the group that are thought provoking. Keep this in mind, if possible post discussions that are driven by your own qualifying question you use in your business with prospects. From there you should know what to do with the responses.

2. Post quality answers and responses to post’s made by others. Be a resource to the group as often as you can. This drive’s continued brand awareness of you and what you do.

3. Create a signature that is short and sweet that you leave behind on every post or response. It should be your name, website, and 3-5 words of what you do. Save it to word or notepad so all you have to do is copy and paste. Be sure to put the http:// when you add your website, otherwise it will not be a link that people can click on.

4. Joining targeted groups enhances your options in “advanced search”. If you are looking for key contacts and you have joined specific groups that relate to what your business goals are, then you can use advanced search to only search the members of your groups. This is a major resource as you can truly find an endless source of leads, opportunities, and more through this strategy.

That is it for now, but I want to encourage you to take the time to think about utilizing Linkedin Groups to the fullest, for the success of your professional goals.

Here are three bonus resources I would like to mention:

~ Get your free copy of the Fast Start Guide to Linkedin Success: Grab it here
~ Join me on the Linked Strategies Group on Linkedin to access more tips. Join Here
~ Join us for one of our “Complimentary” Linkedin Power User Webinars every thursday at 4pm EST with Live Q&A: Count Me In Can’t make it? Register for the playback.

*If this article was helpful, please take a moment to share with the button below or retweet above.

This is a big question that I am sure will generate a ton of response. So are you a believer in Linkedin Groups? I will tell you that I am without a doubt a strong proponent of Linkedin groups.

The reason why I am a strong believer is because you have a professional community coming together for like interest, goals, experiences, and networks. This makes it the perfect place to collaborate within a “targeted market” with your real investment being the time you put into it.

As a sales and marketing professional myself, I see this as a perfect place to build brand image, be a resource to potential clients or customers, and find solutions! Whether you are in sales, construction, accounting, unemployed, lawyer, doctor, engineer or any other field you can find value in the Linkedin Group communities. Through the group’s directory you can view already established groups or even pioneer a group as you may discover a need to fill on the Linkedin space. The group’s directory will allow you to easily find the right group by both category and keyword. This is a great tool because you then just determine your target audience you want to be in front of by relevant keywords and search to join those “liked minded” individuals

So here are some do’s and don’ts:

~ Be a resource to your group and bring value.
~ Respect the group rules.
~ Ask quality, thought provoking questions.
~ Give well thought out answers.
~ Do not promote your service as a new discussion without the group manager’s approval.
~ Be respectful of the members and when others may be less than professional be slow to respond and careful not to lash out. The community is watching to see how you respond. Respond well and win a valuable connection forever.

As an added interactive, I have posted the question to the Linkedin community on July 21, 2009 @ 8pm central. Here is what I asked, “Are you a believer in Linkedin Groups & Why?” click here to see the live responses.

Finally here is a group for All Linkedin Members, Linked Strategies offers strategies, tips, collaboration, and resources with the Linkedin community on how to be successful with Linkedin. You can join here today, as a way of saying thank you the owner has graciously agreed to host a “no cost” Linkedin Power Users Webinar that you can sign up for here. Strategies Webinar is hosted every thursday with different times emailed to you.  As well as access to the previously recorded.

Randy Schrum

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Click here to Share in your Linkedin Groups

 So what drives me to Lie, Cheat, & Steal? It’s Linkedin I tell ya! At least that’s what I tell my wife. All kidding aside here  is why I Lie, Cheat, & Steal. I originally posted this article in July 2009 and decided to republish now.

 Lie: I lie in bed often thinking of ways to post meaningful group discussions with killer headlines. Why? Because I know when I do that my brand gets tremendous exposure and the personal messages start flying from the over 70 Millions members on Linkedin!

Cheat: During the week I will cheat every available second to some how connect or collaborate on Linkedin so my brand continually stays in front of my network and the 170 industries represented on Linkedin!

Steal: Every single time I see a great invite response, method of posting questions, great headlines on discussions, or a cool status update. My first question is, “how can I steal that and make it work for me and my brand?” after all executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on Linkedin potentially watching or observing members for their next offer of employment they want to extend!

Staying involved and aware of best practices on Linkedin can result in tremendous rewards and I think thats what drives me to Lie, Cheat, & Steal.

What do you think?