The secret to generating leads from Linkedin groups – without getting banned

When promoting my B2B content there is one channel that consistently out performs all others. Linkedin. Last year it brought  three times the traffic of Twitter AND converted  significantly higher.

In particular Linkedin groups deliver great traffic and leads but it didn’t happen overnight.  It took getting kicked off groups, banned and a lot of wasted effort before I figured out a process I could follow and repeat. The worst part was pulling my hair out in frustration because I couldn’t tell what was working and what was not.

I tried tracking likes and comments but they are essentially vanity metrics. The real measurement of getting traction on a group was traffic back to my website where I can capture an email address. To measure this I used URL tracking. For those who do not know Google URL tracking I will show you how. If you do know URL tracking I will show you how  to do it on steroids below.

Here is a step by step guide to marketing and generating leads on Linkedin Groups.

• First, search and join a load of groups related to your market.  The groups tell you how big they are by listing the number of members they have. As an individual you can be a member of up to 32 groups  at any one time.

• Your existing customers can be a great source to identify good relevant groups.  Look at their Linkedin profile and see what groups they belong to.
• Make sure you read the groups rules to make sure you are allowed to share your content. Some groups are happy for their members to share good content, others prefer to keep the group to questions and discussions.
• Once your membership is approved go into each group and scan for posts you can contribute to in some way.  This is the most consuming part of this process but essential to be seen as a contributing part of the community. If you do not see any posts or discussions you can contribute to than it is probably a good indicator that your content will not fit here either.
  
• Now it’s time to start sharing your content.
  Make absolutely sure your content  is relevant to the group and offers some value.
  With 32 groups your content will be more useful to some and not others.
  Need I say ‘no sales pitches’? Seriously don’t do it.If in doubt do not post. If you are marked as a spammer it will effect what you share in future across all groups.
• Every time before you share content, look again for other posts you can contribute to.
  We all want to enjoy the web, so give (share your knowledge and insight) every time you take (traffic and attention).
• Create a new post and try and post the full text content. Lately Linkedin has redesigned groups and has restricted the amount of text in a post which is frustrating as I would like to give more not less. If you run out of space post as much as you can.
• At the end of the post link to your blog where people can read the full post and download any associated  bonus resources.
• The link back to your website is important. It is when you get a reader on to your own site that you can ask them to subscribe.  My own goal with my marketing is building my email list and building leads.
• The link is also how you will track how effective the group is for generating traffic and subscribers. Give each group its own unique Google tracking code using the Google URL builder.
  
  The Google  URL builder lets you add additional information to the end of a web page URL so you can track where you shared the link and how many times it was clicked on.
  
  You can use this handy URL builder to change a link like https://brandpitchapp.com into a link like https://brandpitchapp.com/?utm_source=LINKEDIN&utm_medium=GROUPS&utm_campaign=POSTNAME
  

• Every month look at your campaigns in Google Analytics and see what groups brought traffic to your site.  You can find this information if you click on Acquisition > Campaigns in the left side bar in Google analytics. I started doing this last month for Audience Stack and I am tracking each linkedin group by its number which you can see in the below screenshot.

• I then track this traffic in a spreadsheet which you can download below.

• After looking at how many people clicked each link drop the groups that did not perform and search for new groups to join.

That’s it.
The 32 group limit is for an individual but of course you can have others on your team sign up so you can test more groups at the same time.