Attracting Ideal Clients

Secrets to Leverage LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn is a great social network for connecting with your ideal clients. As much as I like Facebook, I think LinkedIn offers more of an ability to connect with a Person of Influence (POI).

One of the best places to find your ideal customers and clients is in LinkedIn Groups.

Here are 3 quick tips to leverage LinkedIn Groups:

1) Focus on adding value

Make sure that you share information that people want to read. One great strategy is to include a link out to your blog post. This will help to position you as an expert. It will also allow you to generate leads if you have an opt in box on your blog.

2) Connect with people you meet in groups

After you have interacted with people a few times in a LinkedIn Group, then send them an invitation to connect.

LinkedIn Groups also gives you the capability to follow people. This is similar to the way Twitter works. It's an easy to build a base of followers who read your posts and comments.

3) Send personal messages to people on LinkedIn

What good is a network unless you actually intend to communicate with people. Make time every day to reach out to someone on LinkedIn and send a personal message. Share a resource, congratulate them on a recent success or ask them for 5 minutes to chat by phone.

LinkedIn Groups is a great tool for making connections with powerful and influential people. Set a goal now to leverage this tool to grow your business.

Rick Cooper
Online Marketing and Social Media Trainer

Drive Traffic by Commenting on Blogs

There are many reasons to become a blogger. One of the best is simply to generate leads. And yet, the challenge is always to get people to your blog. You can't generate a lead unless someone lands on your web page.

So, once you are in the habit of blogging and you have the ability to capture leads, then you simply need to send more people to your blog.

Here's a simple technique that people often overlook. Many people look for the more challenging or complicated techniques. I look first to do the simple things that will drive traffic and create backlinks to your site.

The technique is simply to comment on other people's blogs.

It's a simple idea in concept, but how do you actually implement it consistently?

Here are 3 simple tips:

1) Compile a list of blogs where you can post comments

It's not enough to simply post a comment once and you're done. To be effective, you should post periodically to different blogs. When you get started, post a comment on a site once per week. Then, later cut back to once or twice a month.

Engage Other Bloggers in Conversation

Why this often? First, you want to engage the other blogger in dialogue. It's just like connecting on a social networking site. If you post often enough, people will remember who you are and you will become friends.

In addition to that, if they like your ideas, they might actually feature you or their blog. Or, they might share a resource you offer.

2) Keep your comments short

Remember, this is their blog. Don't write a novel, keep it brief.

If you feel compelled to write more on the topic, write it on your blog. Then, link back.

Don't include a hyperlink in the body of the comment. See the next section for more details on how to send people to your blog.

3) Link back to your blog

When you post your comment, you have the opportunity to include a link back to a website. There will be fields for name, email and website. But, where should you send people? Should you send them to a lead capture page, a website, or a blog?

In general, the best approach is to send people to your blog. If a person is interested in reading blogs, then they will probably be interested in reading another similar blog.

So, should you send people to the home page of your blog? The SEO experts say that it's best to include a link directly to one of the posts on your blog. Pick a post that has similar content to the one you are commenting on. Or, write a new post and link to it.

Are you in the habit of commenting on blogs? Or, is this a new idea for you?

If you want more traffic to your blog, then try this strategy. And be sure to pick some high profile blogs to comment on also. Make sure the topics are relevant. If you're writing about organization tips, don't comment on a political blog. Different audiences, different interests.

Set a goal now to comment on 3 blogs in the next 2 weeks. And while you're reading this post, take a moment now to comment on this blog. Make it happen!

Rick Cooper
Marketing Coach