AutoMarker| Social Traffic Club

Should you pay attention to Pinterest?

Karin — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 16:12:04 +0000

Pinterest is taking the internet by storm

Pinterest hit 10 million U.S. monthly unique visitors faster than any independent site in history, but that is not the only reason you should pay attention to this newest kid on the block

Find out the real reason you need to start using Pinterest for your internet marketing

My good friend Janet Callaway from ‘The Natural Networker’ asked me last week:

“Karin, do you use Pinterest? From what I am reading, it is driving massive amounts of traffic to blogs. Much as I was attempting to avoid another platform, it seems I am going to have to add that to my routine. What do you think?”

and I answered her 4 days ago:

“I do have a Pinterest account, but have not done much with it. It is definitely popular though, because there are close to 100 people following me, without me doing anything besides posting a few pictures. I have not seen any traffic from it so far.”

Even though I have not done much with this new platform, I started paying a little more attention after Janet’s question. First of all, 14 more people started following me in the last 4 days and I have not even been on Pinterest in the last 4 days. I decided to check my Google Analytics account to see if any of those 110 followers actually visited my site. It turned out that 5 of them did. Not only did they visit my site, but they stayed on my site longer than any other visitor from any other referral source. Pretty impressive:

Obviously, the amount of traffic is still negligible. But if visitors from Pinterest stay on my site for 20 minutes, I am interested in pursuing this platform more. So, I definitely will be more active on Pinterest going forward. My ‘plan of attack’ was inspired by a post by Sharon Vaknin who gave 5 great tips to be more proactive. Here is what she wrote:

1. Install the bookmarklet.
By adding Pinterest’s bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar, you’ll be able to quickly pin things you find around the Web without going to the Pinterest Web site first. To get it, head over to http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/and drag the “Pin it” button to your browser toolbar.Now, when you’re browsing the Web and see something you want to pin (like this post!), click the bookmark and you’ll be prompted to create a new pin.

Start by installing the Pinterest bookmarklet.(Credit: Screenshot by Sharon Vaknin/CNET)

2. Tag friends in posts.
Like Facebook and Twitter, you can tag Pinterest friends in the description or comments of a pin. Simply type “@” immediately followed by the person’s name, and choose from the drop-down menu. Once you publish the pin (or comment), that person will be notified and the tag will link back to his or her profile.

3. Collaborate with friends.
If you and a friend have a joint obsession with nail art, consider pinning together with a little-known feature that lets you invite friends to contribute to your board(s).

Head to one of your Boards and click “Edit Board” at the top. Next to “Who can pin?” select “Me + Contributors.” Now, enter the name of someone on Pinterest (you must be following at least one of his or her boards) and click “add.” That person will get an e-mail with your invitation; he or she may opt out and choose not to collaborate with you.

If all of you are all pinning consistently, collaborating will quickly raise awareness of your Board.

4. Be specific and use #keywords.
“What would I search for if I was looking for this pin?” That’s what you should ask yourself each time you write the description for a new pin. Think of it as Search Engine Optimization (SEO)–the more descriptive your pin is, the easier it will be for users to find.

You can also add multiple hash tags (keywords) at the end of your description. For example, you might add “#fashion, #style, #dress, #bright” to the end of a pin about a dress. Add as many as you want, but beware that too many hash tags can look like spam.

5. Search for pins from a specific site
Want to find out what’s popular on Pinterest from a specific site? Easy. Head to http://pinterest.com/source/[Web site URL here]/ and you’ll see everything that’s already been pinned from that site.

It’s a great way to quickly get to what users are buzzing about from a site and repin those items without having to create a new pin.

I have mentioned it before, Pinterest is still in invite-only mode. If you are looking for an invite, just leave a comment underneath this post and I will do my best to help.

If you are already using Pinterest, please share your experiences below this post also. Are you seeing the same long times spent on your site from visitors referred by Pinterest? Do you like this new platform, or are you tired of trying yet another new social media site. Love to hear from you.

Get a better insight into the key metrics of your website

Karin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:48:55 +0000

In order to improve your online effectiveness you need to measure your performance

While most people work hard to get more traffic to their website, only few measure the effectiveness of that traffic.

Find out which site, besides Google Analytics, can give you an abundance of information

If you are an online marketer I am sure you have heard of Google Analytics. It is a great tool to learn more about the traffic to your website and the effectiveness of your sales funnel. But there is always more we can learn about the behavior of those who visit our sites. There is one site in particular that can help you in your search for more data related to the effectiveness of your online efforts. That site is Facebook. With close to 1 billion users they have a huge database of information. I used to think that you could only get data for your fan pages and your apps, but I realize now that that was a naive point of view.

Here is what you need to do to collect data regarding Facebook on your website. First of all you need to go to Facebook’s Insights and click on ‘Insights for your website’:

When you click the green button, you will see the following window pop up:

Now you get the option to add your domain and link it to any account or pages that you want to – insert your domain and link it (I normally would add it to my own personal account if it was my blog). If you are running a Facebook Page you can add that to the “link with” so that data is more accessible.

Copy the meta property line and paste it in the header area (between and ). Make sure you empty your cache if you are using caching and click ‘Get Insights’. Just so you know, when I did this Facebook hang and I had to refresh the page. But the connection had been made. When you have done the above you should see a page like this:

You can now begin to collect and review data. Facebook collects information regarding like and send buttons and it also tracks comments and visitor demographics.

How to get people to read your content

Karin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:27:23 +0000

Only 20% of prospects ends up reading your content

While most people read the title of content they come across, only one fifth of people ends up reading the entire piece of content.

What you need to change to increase your readership

Today I am starting off with a question. Why did you decide to click the “read more” link and start reading this blog post?If it is because I managed to peak your interest, keep reading and see how you can do the same. If that is not the reason, please let me know in the comments, because it will be useful for me to hear so I can improve my titles.

You see, as an online marketer you write lots of content. Whether it is for your blog, your fan page or the tweets you send out via Twitter or a Twitter app, the only way to reach your prospects is through content. It can be a daunting task. To make things worse, only a small percentage of the visitors to your web properties will actually read what you have to say. As so often the 80/20 rule applies. Where 80% of people will read the headline copy, only 20% will actually read the entire content.

Your title is the first, and in the majority of cases the only impression you make on a prospective reader. If your prospect’s interest is not peaked by your title, your prospect will move on to the next shiny object. It is your duty to try to increase the percentage of prospects that turns into readers. Lets take a look at a way to write a compelling title that makes people want to know more and read your story.

There is one site in particular that I admire for the amazing headlines they create. That site is aol.com. Let me give you an example. Below is a picture of one of today’s headlines:

The story is about yesterday’s tragic death of Whitney Houston. The cause of death has not been released and many people want to know what the cause was. So, by saying “why police won’t release the results” they create curiosity, even though there is no real news to report. But by telling them that clicking on the link will give them some insight into why her cause of death is dealt with so secretively, people are eager to read the entire story.

Just in case you think that this technique only works with news stories about celebs, let me show you another one of today’s stories:

This second example is amazing to me, and really shows you the power of creating curiosity. First of all the fact that most of the communication is done through the picture. It makes it very clear that this is about furniture. The title text confirms the problem: a boring room. The other thing that pops out at you is the blue by-line. Now that the problem has been defined, you can either just give them the solution, or say that the “after” photos look totally different, without showing the after pictures. In order to find out how they turned this boring room into a “dramatically changed look” you have to click the link and read all the content.

You can do the same with your content. Show a picture that summarizes the topic of the content. Have a title that describes the problem and add some text to clarify the issue. Than produce a sub-title that tells the reader that you can find the answer to the problem by reading the entire story. Now that you know the problem, leaving without the answer would be seriously annoying. Right? So, you click the link and read it. Even if you don’t really care about this room. But after reading these few sentences, you want to find out what they did to make this room so appealing.

I encourage you to check out the aol headlines regularly, until you figure out their secret and can implement it yourself. Experiment with it, and track your result, so you know what works best for your audience.The fact that you are reading this sentence suggests that this method is working for you…

What do you do to make your visitors open your posts and read them from start to finish? Any other suggestions we all should incorporate into our headline creating techniques. As always, please share your views in the comments. If you enjoyed reading this post, please consider using one or more of the buttons in the top right hand corner to show your appreciation and share this post with others.

To your success,

Pinterest is making waves

Karin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:17:26 +0000

I am sure you have heard of Pinterest. The new social media kid on the block. I signed up for it some time ago, just to see what it is all about. I added a few pics of my favorite tennis players and that was about all. Much to my surprise people starting following me even though I was not very active after that first time. This peaked my interest and I started reading up a little more on this new social media platform.

I am no longer surprised with the fast gain in popularity Pinterest is experiencing. With the combination of scrapbooking and social bookmarking, it has created a powerful tool for people who just want to collect the information from the web regarding their particular hobby. And at the same time it is an extremely powerful platform for internet marketers to use.

Just in case you have not seen it yet. Once you have an account, you go to the “goodies” tab on the Pinterest site from where you can add a “pin it” button to your bookmarking toolbar. Every time you see information of interest to you, you simply click on the button and add the content to your pinterest account. Within your account you can set up what they call “boards”, where you can separate the various topics of your interest.

Each entry is called a pin on a board, and other people can ‘repin’ them, comment on them. Since it is a social media site, you can also like and tweet them. You can have followers and follow others. In other words it is a true social media site as we have come to know them in recent years.

Pinterest is only 1 year old, but with an Alexa ranking of 113, and more than 10 million unique visitors a week it is hard to ignore them. There referral traffic is higher than YouTube, LinkedIn and Google Plus combined. That got my attention and I am sure it is getting yours also. So, I started looking at what others are doing on this site. Here is an example of the University of Pennsylvania, who is making great use of the options provided:

It may be hard to distinguish from the picture, but they are posting about events, resources and why their university is great place to work. In other words they are advertising their business. As an internet marketer you can do the same. You can make boards around your products (or affiliate products), you can promote your brand, and last but not least you can get easy links back to your website from a platform that already has a PR of 6.

The only problem is that you have to get an invitation to get in. So, if you are not in yet and are interested in getting started on this amazing social media platform, leave me a comment below this post with your email and I will send you an invite. If you are in and are using Pinterest, I would love to hear from you how you like it.

To your success,

How important is social proof?

Karin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:24:05 +0000

I was stumbling the other day, when I came across this post on Copyblogger. It was written in 2008, so you would think that it is completely outdated by now. But I don’t think it is. The power of social proof is still valid in the same way it was 4 years ago. Remarkable, I know. Go ahead and read the post first and I will talk to you again at the end of the article.

The right message at the right time can start a movement that changes the world, in both big and small ways. And social media has the ability to spread that message and organize that movement in ways not possible in the recent past.Of all the psychological triggers that lead to persuasive messages that spread, one stands above the rest when it comes to social media. In fact, this one element of influence drives the entire concept of social media.What is it?

Well, if you’ve been a keen observer of social media (or simply read blogs about blogging), you’ve probably come to accept some realities of the social media space.

Things like:

Blog posts with lots of comments get more comments.
Digg submissions with a high Digg count (combined with a catchy headline and summary) get Dugg before the content is viewed (even if the content is never viewed).
Items that are heavily bookmarked at Delicious get even more bookmarks.
Blogs that display high subscriber counts attract more subscribers faster.
Content is often viewed more favorably when recommended than when found independently.

Well, that makes sense… social media is all about users deciding what’s worthwhile instead of relying on mass media or advertising to dictate to us. But the real issue is that users often decide to give a message a chance based on initial indicators that have nothing to do with the actual quality of the content.

What we’re talking about is called social proof. Here’s how Wikipedia defines social proof, which is pretty spot on:

Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed.

Social proof is also known as herd mentality or the bandwagon effect. People tend to follow the crowd without evaluating the true merits for themselves, especially when the merits are ambiguous.

In a more positive sense, social proof can be the proverbial foot in the door. It can be the difference that leads to attention and acceptance, which turns a message into a movement.

The Key to Social Media Attention and Acceptance

So, social proof gives us important cues about how to behave in ambiguous social situations. But what’s ambiguous about social media?

First of all, we’re not sure if we should pay attention. Given the vast amount of information we’re exposed to daily, we naturally look for quick cues about the quality of what we come across. And we’re wired to look to others for those indications of quality.

Secondly, we look for cues as to whether or not to accept the message itself. If you’re reading something in your area of expertise, you’re less likely to look for external indicators. But if the topic or position is new to you or novel in any way, you’ll likely be influenced by the raw popularity of the piece, plus the specific comments of others who’ve come before.

Again, this is normal human behavior, so you can’t expect social media to operate differently. This is incredibly cool for web publishers, because great content gets rewarded in social media, and the rewards tend to compound as attention and acceptance grows.

But here’s where it gets quirky.

Sometimes your message inadvertently convinces people to do or accept the opposite of what you want—thanks also to social proof. And it’s easier to make this mistake than you might imagine.

The Negative Side of Social Proof

Studies have shown that mass media coverage of a suicide soon leads to more suicides. The simple explanation is that people who are contemplating suicide feel validated by the suicide of another, so they act in kind.

In other words, social proof also tells us it’s okay to do what we already want to do. This isn’t all bad, especially when it involves the acceptance of your message. But it can also result in negative social proof, in that it motivates people to do the opposite of what you want because you’re trying to change behavior already supported by social proof.

Take a look at these well-intended messages:

“This year Americans will produce more litter and pollution than ever before.” ~U.S. Forest Service
“4 years ago, 22 million single women did not vote.” ~Women Vote
“42% of college graduates never read a book again.” ~Dan Poynter’s ParaPublishing

These messages point out important problems. But what are some people really hearing?

“Everyone litters, it’s not just me.”
“Voting is a hassle, and others like me think so too.”
“I don’t enjoy reading, and I’m in a lot of good company.”

These are all examples of negative social proof. Instead of prompting people to change, it encourages people to stick with the crowd that hasn’t changed (especially if the change is inconvenient or undesired). It can even lead people to engage in behavior they otherwise wouldn’t, once they know others are doing it.

How to Reframe Negative Social Proof

A team of social scientists decided to test the impact of negative social proof while also examining more effective message strategies. The test is highlighted in Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, and involves the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

The park faced a threat due to people taking pieces of petrified wood as souvenirs. It became such a problem that warning signs were erected throughout the park:

“Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time.”

Can you spot the negative social proof? 14 tons of wood (one small piece at a time) equals lots of people taking petrified wood.

Was the park inadvertently encouraging wood theft?

The scientists set up a test using marked wood along alternative paths. One set of paths had no sign at all, another set of paths used a negative social proof message highlighting how many people stole wood, and a third set of paths took this approach:

“Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest.”

This sign also featured a graphic of a lone thief reaching for wood, with a red circle and line superimposed over the thieving hand. This aimed to stigmatize and isolate the behavior as socially unacceptable.

The results?

No sign – 2.92% of wood pieces stolen
Negative social proof sign – 7.92% of pieces stolen
New sign – 1.67% of pieces stolen

In this case, a social proof element dramatically increased the undesirable action compared with doing nothing at all, because it demonstrated that lots of others engaged in the behavior. The new sign, however, did better than nothing at all by isolating and stigmatizing the behavior.

Here are some tips for avoiding negative social proof that works against your message:

Focus social proof on the desired action, not the action you want people to avoid.
Reframe negative social proof to highlight those who are on board rather than those who are not.
Characterize the undesirable action as isolated, out of touch, uncool, aberrant, etc.
Enjoy the positive social proof that results from social media acceptance.

Ok, now that you have read the article do you agree with me? Is this 2008 article still valid? How important is social proof to you? I would love to hear your opinion about this interesting topic. Share it in the comments.
To your success,

Social Media Optimization

Karin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:13:20 +0000

We are all familiar with SEO. We know that there is on-page and off-page optimization and that this is critical for your page rank. But with the arrival of social media, the dynamics of ranking in the search engines has changed. As you could read in my previous post, Google Plus is fastly becoming an integral part of SEO.

As a matter of fact, I strongly suspect that we will stop making a distinction between SEO and Social Media Optimization (SMO) in the not so distant future. It will all be part of the same effort. So, what does SMO mean? Since we are still in the early stages of SMO, I don’t believe that that has been fully defined yet. But there are a few things within SMO that are obvious. For example, if you send out a tweet, it can create a back link for you. If you write a post on a social media platform, such as Google Plus or Facebook, you can create an easy link back to your blog as well.

The same holds true for profile pages on all the social media platforms. On most, if not all, you can leave a link to your blog or money pages. And all these social media platforms have a high PR themselves, which means that the links back to your site carry weight also. It could not have been easier to create high PR backlinks.

But the real question is, are you using social media for back linking purposes, or are the back links ‘just’ a by product. Are you active on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to collect back links or to engage with others and create relationships. A few years ago, when we all just started using Twitter and Facebook and the likes, we were convinced that social media was not meant to sell products. But that is changing, isn’t it? You can now install an app on Facebook, that turns your fan page into a store.

You can now sell your products and provide coupons for your products through hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘social media’ platforms. In reality, what is happening is that the social media concept has brought the human touch to the web. But besides the human touch, the web has not significantly changed. Or has it?

What is your opinion? Are you using social media to create back links, to engage with others or to do both? I would love to hear your view of the moving target of social media.

To your success,

Google Plus will get you more social traffic

Karin — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:15:00 +0000

Google has done it again. They announced the arrival of Google Plus your World, where they have now started integrating social media into the search engine. This is not a new phenomenon. After all, Bing has done it for quite a while now. And I have to admit, I have avoided Bing for exactly that reason. I don’t need a search engine to find out what is happening on Facebook and Twitter. So, this latest move by Google does not make me very happy. But before I go on a rampage, let me show you what I am talking about (just in case you have not seen it yet).

If you do a search on Google, while you are logged into your Google account, what shows up on the first page is posts from the friends you have in your Google Plus circles. It now specifies the number of personal posts the search engine has found on top of the regular pages that it always provided. It looks something like this:

You do have the option to turn this personal search on or off, through the 2 buttons in the top right corner:

The problem is that when I do a Google search I am not looking for my friends posts. Rather, I am looking for the best content available online and I would prefer an objective list of quality content. And the content the people in my circles have found is not always the most relevant. To may it is just as annoying as the fact that Google is showing you search results based on where you live. To me, both the location based and the personal results prohibit me from getting the most relevant information that is available world wide.

What I said above is purely spoken from a consumer perspective. From an internet marketer’s perspective things could be different. After all, having your posts show up on the first page in Google is a great opportunity for marketers like you and I. However , if everybody is as annoyed as I am when they see the results, I am not sure if it is going to be as good as it sounds. Lucky enough you can turn off the personal search results, and I find myself doing this all the time.

The second change that Google made is more powerful in my opinion. If you have a gmail account (and you should ), Google Plus notices are now posted inside your gmail inbox. This means that your posts will 100% of time be delivered those gmail user’s inboxes who are in your circles. No more fighting spam filters. And until all internet marketers have discovered the power of this phenomenon, the opportunities will be just as big as with email marketing in its early stages.

The one thing that hopefully is clear to you, is that it is critically important to be careful who you add to what circles. Having relevant circles with only those you want to follow, will pay off. Adding people to your circles for the numbers sake is going to hurt you. After all, it will turn your email into a spam page again and it will now even affect your search results!

Even though I am frustrated with what Google is doing with search, I hope you agree with me that you cannot afford to ignore Google Plus any longer. If you are an internet marketer that is.

What do you think of the latest Google developments? Am I too negative? Do you feel that this is a postive change and if so, what makes you say so. I appreciate your input in the comments.

To your success,

Top Twitter trends of 2011

Karin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:30:52 +0000

HootSuite analyzed over 200,000 Twitter trends of 2011 to determine the top topics. If you are anything like me, you will go “oh yeah, that happened in 2011 also…” when you see the top 10 topics in the various categories. As you can see, social media has become an integral part of our life.

Isn’t it amazing how a social media like Twitter, where communication takes place in 140 character messages, can be so involved in the events of the world. It comes to show how far we have come with the use of platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. I have to say that I have come to appreciate Twitter more in 2011. Until last year I struggled with what to do on Twitter. I know that it is not about the number of followers, but I had a hard time figuring out how to make good use of this platform.

The change came when I started following just a handful of people that interested me. All of a sudden it became easier to have a conversation. I also started doing more searches on Twitter, which helped me find more new people that I had meaningful conversations with. I finally managed to build an active community that is talking about the things that we are all, collectively, interested in.

How are you using Twitter. Are you a part of the 15% who is actively using their Twitter account, or are you a part of the 85% of people who have a Twitter account, but not really use it. Share your experiences with us in the comments. We all appreciate hearing from you.
To your success,

Targeted traffic from StumbleUpon

Karin — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:49:42 +0000

Happy New Year to all of you. I wish you the best year ever! May all your dreams come true and may you reach all your goals for this year. As far as my plans for this year are concerned, I will be launching my second online product in the next few weeks. It is a course that teaches you how to take advantage of the #1 source of social traffic online, which is StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon is an amazing platform, that has doubled its members to 20 million in the past year. The beauty of StumbleUpon is, that your page will continue to be shown to Stumblers long after your Facebook link and Tweet have disappeared. Stumblers are a very active group. They add more than 2 million new pages to the StumbleUpon database every month.

As a result they are an amazing source of content. To give you an indication, here are the most popular StumbleUpon links for 2011:

As you can see, all the big events are well documented on StumbleUpon. But if you think that StumbleUpon is only good for news worthy topics, you are mistaken. Here is an example of a page about a pancake recipe that received 449,000 views from Stumblers!

As long as you submit quality content, you will be amazed at how much traffic StumbleUpon can get you. It is such an easy way to get targeted traffic. All you need to do is select your areas of interest within StumbleUpon and their algorithm will make sure you are only presented with pages that match your interests. If you like the page you give it the thumbs up. StumbleUpon keeps track of your likes and will serve pages that are close to the pages you liked before, giving you only pages that you enjoy.

I will explain to you much more of how StumbleUpon works and how you can take advantage of this platform in the coming weeks. I am not ready yet to give you all the details. That should not stop you from asking any questions you may have in the comments below.

That is it for now. Again Happy New Year!

The most powerful way to use LinkedIn

Karin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:39:15 +0000

I don’t talk a lot about LinkedIn, even though LinkedIn is a very powerful social media platform. One thing I really like is the fact that a large percentage of its users is not just a member, but actively uses the platform. I have found the groups to be the most powerful part of LinkedIn. Granted, it depends somewhat on the niche you are in. But I have seen people who build their entire online presence using LinkedIn groups only.

If you have created a group, you probably already know the benefits. But if you have not yet considered this option, here is an article I found that spells out 10 of the best reasons why you may want to reconsider:

1. Builds Thought Leadership

I have several LinkedIn groups. One has more than 20,000 members, and around five of them have 5,000+ members. Each group has (one of) my websites as the featured site for the group. This is one of the first things people see when they join the group. My name is also featured as the owner of the group. Based off of perception alone, the owner is a thought leader for that groups niche (until proven otherwise). The more you back this up with quality content, and positive group management, your community will support you and anoint you a leader in that niche.

2. Connects A Thriving Community

People love to belong to a community, or a Tribe as Seth Godin puts it. The more you are able to connect like-minded people together, the more they will appreciate you for doing so. Create an opportunity for passionate people to come together because the leader that does this *usually* reaps the benefits.

3. Drives Traffic To Your Site

Looking to drive traffic to your blog or company website? Look no further, a LinkedIn group is a great way to do this. Here are a few ways you can drive traffic to your site from your group:

Put your website link in the group profile
Add the site RSS feed to the News Section
Send a weekly message to you group, and include a niche related article from your site
Add your site in the group welcome message (more on this below)
Create a discussion and include your link

4. Builds Personal Network

I get roughly 15-20 new invites to connect (as a 1st degree connection) every day. Most of them come from my groups. Why? People love to connect with the community leader. Since I run a number of “communities” within my LinkedIn groups, I am looked at as someone to connect with. This is almost true for all group owners, they seem to rack up bonus points from starting the group, therefore having more connections than the average LinkedIn user.

5. Sending Weekly Messages

This may be the most powerful feature within the groups. A great example is Robert Flemming, who runs the eMark eting Association group on LinkedIn. It has almost 200,000 members. Instead of having to spend thousands of dollars each year on email marketing you could simply create a group, and send them a weekly message for free.

The downside to this is you can’t brand your emails they way you could from a custom email marketing provider (affiliate link), but you can still do some damage in terms of getting your message out there to your members.

The upside, Robert has events with ticket prices of over $1,000 and he sells a ton of them because of his group. His LinkedIn group helps him achieve his event marketing goals, and it doesn’t cost a dime. Tough sell, eh?

6. Create Auto-Responder Email

This is a no-brainer. Who wants to send a message one-by-one to someone every time they join a group? Not me, that would take hours of management time every week. LinkedIn was wise enough to make this easy for the group managers by enabling a welcome message. Every time someone joins, you can send your own automatic message that delivers to their email account (not their LinkedIn account, but their actual email provider).

This means that you can create a decent sales funnel by first welcoming people to the group, telling them a little about how the group can benefit them and where they can go to get more information. Hopefully you have them sign up for your newsletter, or connect with you on other social networking sites. This will help you generate sales in the long run… if you set it up correctly.

7. Lead Generator

The more you give, the more you will receive. Dr. Robert Cialdini talks to us about the proven power of reciprocity in his best selling book Influence, and it holds true within a LinkedIn group as well (on LinkedIn, or any other social networking site for that matter).

Connecting people, providing job leads, referrals, valuable content to help them achieve their goals: these are things that you can give to people, and by doing so they will give you an abundance of leads (or whatever it is you need in your business) in return. It has happened to me, and a number of other group owners who are “doing it right”, and it will also happen for you.

8. Creating Sub Groups

Want to target people in various locations around the world, or sub niches within a niche? LinkedIn allows you to create up to 10 subgroups. It’s a great way to throw events all around the country and only have to send a message out to the subgroup, as opposed to the entire group about a regional event. Make sure you take advantage of this feature (in an ethical manner of course).

9. Managing Content

If people are posting MLM type content, or someone is using foul language or attacking others in an unproductive way, you have the ability to remove individuals or delete inappropriate content. Simple as that. If it isn’t helping the community, you have the power to make it better.

10. Helping Others

Ultimately, every good leader helps his team or community rise to the top. I’m sure 99% of group owners have their own agenda when creating a group, but the more they focus on helping it’s members achieve their goals, that group owner will achieve their goals as well. It feels good to have the opportunity to help others. LinkedIn helps us everyday by letting us see how we are connected to one another, and allows us to build stronger, more meaningful relationships. Let’s face it, business (and life) is about all about the relationships we have, right?

Chances are you have a LinkedIn account, but have never considered starting your own group. I hope that these 10 reasons help you if you where thinking about the use of LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you if you do have a group and if so, how it is working for you. Also share with us if the above reasons have helped you decided to start a group.

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To your success,