According to The Future of Commerce Trend Report for 2022 by Shopify, companies should start investing in online communities to humanize their brands, increase loyalty and retention rates, and overcome the instantly growing ad costs.
The best communities are not about selling. They are about sharing – data, insights, questions, and engaging discussions. People (your prospects and brand advocates) want to visit and engage with such groups regularly.
This article focuses on the concept of community-based marketing on LinkedIn and the means to leverage it for your business.
This type of marketing brings along a variety of benefits. Some of them are as follows:
If you manage to hit the mark with a topic your customer base cares about and your product resonates with, it will organically keep people coming and conversations running.
LinkedIn automation tools can become your secret superpower, leaving the competition in the dust.
Let’s illustrate it with an example:
Linked Helper is a software that introduces funnel automation on LinkedIn. With the tool, you can focus on discovering new opportunities while delegating a significant part of your activities to this software:
Nonetheless, to get you started, why not take a sneak peek at how your competitors are doing it?
What can you do?
Start with scraping their audience. Search and analyze the customer’s needs, pain points, and gaps and fill them in with your product or service. Or, start from afar and give them a reason to want to join your community first.
Now that you know the basics of community-based marketing, the strategies that we shared will help get started and leverage your online community on LinkedIn.
So the sooner you start, the more fruitful harvest you'll be able to reap.
The best communities are not about selling. They are about sharing – data, insights, questions, and engaging discussions. People (your prospects and brand advocates) want to visit and engage with such groups regularly.
This article focuses on the concept of community-based marketing on LinkedIn and the means to leverage it for your business.
What is Online Community Marketing?
Community marketing is the strategy to engage with members of a group or community, handled on one of the social media networks, typically LinkedIn and Facebook.This type of marketing brings along a variety of benefits. Some of them are as follows:
- Building a solid reputation for a company
- Engaging with prospective clients
- Giving your brand a personality
- Increase in customer loyalty
- Attracting extra attention to your brand
- Close interaction with the target audience
- Pain points and user persona analysis
- Creating a community of brand advocates
- Gaining brand loyalty
Steps to Creating a Successful LinkedIn Community?
Now that we’ve found out what community marketing is and its advantages for an online business, let’s explore what aspects you should keep in mind to make your group attractive:Step #1. Choose a Topic
Yes, you know what your niche is. But how well do you know the pain points of the target audience?If you manage to hit the mark with a topic your customer base cares about and your product resonates with, it will organically keep people coming and conversations running.
Step #2. Set up a Community
Here comes the setup process, which is quite intuitive on LinkedIn. You’ll need to come up with your community’s:- Title
- Logo
- Description, and
- Rules
Step #3. Work out Content
The quality of content you create determines the success of your community. Starting from outreach templates and invites you send out to insights you share — all touchpoints with your brand should be filled with knowledgeability.Step #4. Grow Your Audience
Consider the means you could use to promote your community. It can be sharing its link on your social profile pages or via private messages. Kindly ask other team members to repeat the pattern.Step #5. Be Active
Being active and starting irresistible discussions influences how interest in your group develops. Craft a featured welcoming post to start a conversation and ensure to trigger new discussions repeatedly.Step #6. Moderate Regularly
They say that the majority of communities fail because of a lack of moderation. Take command of spam and act quickly if a user violates the community rules.Three LinkedIn Outreach Strategies to Enlarge Your Community
Now that you’ve done it all to launch a thriving LinkedIn community, let’s highlight what strategies you can use to attract more potential members and, consequently, new prospects.Test the Ground with Cold LinkedIn Outreach
Being an avenue for professionals of different backgrounds and levels of experience, LinkedIn allows infusing a variety of communication channels to reach your prospect. They are:- Notes to connection requests
- Messages
- InMails
- Emails scraping to connect off the platform
Automate your routine
With the growing importance of LinkedIn for a business, the necessity to facilitate a variety of community-based marketing activities has emerged.LinkedIn automation tools can become your secret superpower, leaving the competition in the dust.
Let’s illustrate it with an example:
Linked Helper is a software that introduces funnel automation on LinkedIn. With the tool, you can focus on discovering new opportunities while delegating a significant part of your activities to this software:
- Inviting users to join your group (by mail, InMail, messages)
- Visiting profiles
- Messaging your community members
- Inviting to follow your brand
- Removing specific connections
- Interacting with LinkedIn content
Spy on the Competition
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Sure, your brand must have its own tone of voice, topic, and identity.Nonetheless, to get you started, why not take a sneak peek at how your competitors are doing it?
What can you do?
Start with scraping their audience. Search and analyze the customer’s needs, pain points, and gaps and fill them in with your product or service. Or, start from afar and give them a reason to want to join your community first.
Recap
Online communities allow establishing your brand and business quickly. They also boast of having an exceptionally high ROI.Now that you know the basics of community-based marketing, the strategies that we shared will help get started and leverage your online community on LinkedIn.
So the sooner you start, the more fruitful harvest you'll be able to reap.
