Online networking business groups.
What are they?
Why should you take your time to go there?
You know you need to network to grow your blog.
Networking allows businesses to collaborate with each other.
Where should you go?
The popularity of forums decreased.
You could leave blog comments.
Yet, this too has inherent problems.
For example, if you comment last, no one will see you but the admin blogger.
If you comment first, it’s anybody’s guess how many other bloggers will see your comment and possibly click on your link.
At online business networking sites, tens of thousands of people are in groups.
This exposure will help you grow your blog.
There are other advantages to participating in online business networking groups.
For example, your SEO goes up since online business networking sites have high Domain Authority Rankings.
However, this post will focus solely on how to attract your target audience to your blog using online networking business groups at six social media sites.
This blog growth results in more traffic, income, and branding for you.
By the time you’re done reading this post, you’ll know how to network publicly and privately with people in your niche at the following social media sites: LinkedIn, Facebook, MeWe, Reddit, Quora, and Twitter.
Let’s get started.
Online Networking Business Groups
Eric Sui, from the podcast Marketing School, recommends LinkedIn for lead generation.
Let’s see what LinkedIn is all about.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn.com has 660 million members according to November 2019 stats from Quora.com.
Is LinkedIn a social media site?
Is it a forum?
Is it a place you can promote your links daily?
LinkedIn is all these things and more:
LinkedIn is a networking site.
LinkedIn offers you a way to promote your website content and generate traffic.
LinkedIn is a place you can brand yourself as an expert.
LinkedIn is an avenue for you to find new clients.
LinkedIn is a resource for reference material for your articles.
LinkedIn is a website you can use to generate testimonials.
LinkedIn is a forum for you to discuss content with like-minded content creators.
LinkedIn is a place for you to blog.
LinkedIn Groups
There are over 1,000,000 million LinkedIn groups (Source). You can be a member of 100 at a time.
When you first log in, you see groups listed on the left:
You can also find them by scrolling down to the bottom of your profile and clicking Interests/Groups.
The Value of LinkedIn Groups
As you can see by these screenshots, I’ve received traction promoting in LinkedIn groups.
LinkedIn began as my 5th top referrer of all traffic to my site.
This is a snippet of a screenshot from Alexa.com. Notice: 1.5% of all my traffic came from LinkedIn. At the time I started this writing, LinkedIn was my 5th best traffic referrer.
Millions of people are in these groups combined. Even if just a fraction goes to your site, you’re golden.
Look:
April 9 stats:
Then, it quickly moved to the #4 best referrer of my traffic.
When I started this draft, LinkedIn sent me the second most amount of social traffic with Facebook being the first.
By April 15, LinkedIn had increased to my 4th best traffic referrer, the amount of traffic almost tripling from the previous screenshot, bringing me 3.5% of my overall traffic.
As you can see, I got triple-digit page views from LinkedIn groups.
I attribute this major jump I had in stats on April 8 to putting my post about unusual social media tips in the social media related LinkedIn groups.
Before promoting in the LinkedIn groups, you might want to be aware of some changes LinkedIn made:
According to Ian Preston, a LinkedIn trainer and coach:
“A couple of things I would say is that LinkedIn has now changed its terminology.
What it used to call ‘posts’ (blog) are now called articles, and the day to day short ‘Facebooky’ type messages LinkedIn now calls ‘posts.’
You should use both regularly as you want to be seen to be a thought leader in your market place and these are great ways to do it…
BUT!!! It is really imperative that your profile is in good order because people will invariably look at it and if it is ‘shoddy’ readers may just think that everything else you do is shoddy as well.”
How to Promote Your Post in a LinkedIn Group
You can put your content on LinkedIn publicly or privately.
When you post to a group, your content is public.
Here’s how:
Step 1: Click the name of the group you want to add content to.
Step 2: Click Start a Conversation in this Group.
Step 3: Paste your content over “What do you want to talk about?”
Step 4: Choose relevant hashtags.
This part is intriguing if you find AI interesting.
Before you even post your content, you’ll see hashtag suggestions.
After you post your content the hashtags change. They become more relevant to your content. Click on them to tag your posts with these hashtags.
When people search for content like yours, thanks to the hashtags, they will find your post.
LinkedIn Networking Strategy
Ian mentioned the importance of your LinkedIn bio. Make sure your bio is well-optimized so when people meet you, they check your bio out.
Put your keywords in your bio. People search for them. These keywords will lead them to you.
Since LinkedIn is a professional networking site, put your best foot forward. Dress to impress in your LinkedIn profile picture.
People find you via LinkedIn groups. Your skills will be found when people research keywords. You are allowed to list up to 50 skills. Don’t be shy. You are trying to impress. Use all 50 skills.
You will also make an impression by crafting and posting original content at LinkedIn. Become a thought-leader in your industry by showing what you know.
More Ways to Use LinkedIn as an Online Networking Business Group
You can network publicly in a group or privately in a DM box.
You can also network publicly one one one.
Look: I have 16 notifications waiting for me.
Click Notifications.
Click the text.
Click the like button or the comment icon to respond.
LinkedIn Groups Where I Promote
1. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2093399/
2. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/62352
3. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/100358
4. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/71207
5. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/54066
6. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4054884
7. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/71207
8. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/117175
LinkedIn Company Pages
To locate a LinkedIn Page: Type the company, university, or high school name into the Search bar at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
Finding an Organization’s Page on LinkedIn
- Press Enter.
- Click the More dropdown menu and select Companies or Schools to filter the results. …
- Click the correct Page name.
My LinkedIn company page is still rather new, but if you’d like to see it, click here.
Private LinkedIn Networking
There are many social media sites where you can network privately. LinkedIn is one of them.
This is what a LinkedIn Message Box looks like.
Do you see there are possible responses already there for me to click?
This is the AI at work.
More Online Business Networking Sites
Why do you need alternative online business networking sites? Why can’t you just use LinkedIn?
You need to have a stream of social media sites with different groups. The “avoid putting all your eggs in one basket” mentality makes sense.
The post was written by someone who, meaning no harm, was put in “Facebook jail” and banned from posting in groups.
What if Facebook is simply down? This happens to sites every now and again. You need options.
I have used LinkedIn groups for those options.
Facebook groups exist for all sorts of niches: Entrepreneurs, Ahrefs users, California writers, and movie directors just to name a few examples of the wide variety of Facebook groups you’ll find at Facebook.com.
Facebook Groups
Here are the online networking business groups at Facebook I use related to my niche, blogging:
9. Turbo Blogging and Business
10. Bloggers Passion VIP Group
12. Blogging Newbs
14. Connect and Cultivate with Ivory Mix
15. Bloggers Supporting Each Other
Facebook Business Page
People network on Facebook Business Pages as well.
People leave me messages on my Facebook Business Page all the time.
Many of these are financial opportunities.
MeWe
Like LinkedIn and Facebook, you can post on the wall.
MeWe’s groups can be used for business networking.
Click Groups.
Click on the group you want to post content in. Then click Post to this group.
Type or paste your promotional content.
Here are the blogging and business groups I use for promotion:
16. https://mewe.com/group/5c912ba69632c5695e6fe870
17. https://mewe.com/group/5d4a5e403118541fd42f19b2
18. https://mewe.com/group/5ded2e432bad467790cd9b1a
19. https://mewe.com/group/5c91ef9543fa9e59a0fb7494
20. https://mewe.com/group/5c91ef9543fa9e59a0fb7494
22. https://mewe.com/group/5c6127f6c2886c29599ff3d4
23. https://mewe.com/group/54f178e8e4b0d53625e477f3
Technology:
24. https://mewe.com/group/5bc5b25fa5f4e56c315224f5
There is another way to use MeWe as an online networking business group.
Click Chats/Contacts.
For more information about MeWe, see this MeWe review.
Reddit offers great networking opportunities.
There an unlimited number of subReddits in many niches where you can network with like-minded content creators.
Use Reddit to extend your brand by sharing your knowledge. You can also increase your knowledge by using Redditors as a resource.
However, avoid promoting your content unless someone asks you to. Bloggers have notorious reputations as spammers at Reddit.
The Reddit subReddit I recommend and others recommend as well is this subReddit for bloggers:
25. https://www.reddit.com/r/Blogging/
You can also network privately at Reddit.
Click your envelope icon.
Click Send Private Message.
Quora Spaces
Although Quora.com is a question and answer site, you can use Quora Spaces to collaborate with people in your niche.
This is done in several ways. First, you can collaborate in each other’s Quora Spaces.
To do this, you need to submit to someone’s space to add your Quora answers.
Next, you can invite someone to be a co-administrator of your Quora space.
Finally, you can help people to help you answer the questions at Quora and in this way network.
As you can see from the screenshot, Rob supplemented my answer about Twitter by contributing his own knowledge about the site.
You will find your Quora spaces listed on the left of the screen.
If you are interested in using Quora spaces as online business networking groups, you might want to check out some of my favorites.
Here are some of the Quora spaces I contribute to.
Please note: These are niche-specific.
28. Sexy Networking
More information about Quora and a tutorial can be found here.
People in the same industry network in Twitter Chats.
Here is a large collection of Twitter Chats.
Another way people use Twitter as an online networking business site is with hashtags.
Here is more detailed information about how to attend Twitter Chats.
Using hashtags, they find like-minded content creators and network with them.
For example, I use #bloggingtips, #businesstips, #socialmediamarketing, etc.
Wrapping Up: Online Business Networking Groups
Do you have a New Year’s Resolution to grow your tribe in 2020?
You can extend your network, your brand, and your influence with these 31 online networking business groups.
Like with blog networking or networking on any social media sites, there is an overall generic strategy that works effectively on any social media site:
You get out of social media what you put in. Don’t just sit and wait for people to find you, network with you, or buy from you.
Use your hashtags and use the search bar to find people in your niche you’d like to network with.
“Build it and they will come” does not work for social media effectiveness, and that mentality definitely won’t work at these online networking business groups.
Takeaways
Participation in these online networking business groups has many benefits for you.
Since you boost your exposure, you boost your traffic.
A rise in traffic leads to a rise in email signups.
A rise in email signups leads to a rise in sales.
Since you’ve generated targeted traffic to your site, you’ll look like an authority to people in your niche. This extends your brand.
Because any business works better with a network of supportive people, you boost your business’s success by visiting these online networking business groups.
Readers, please share, so other bloggers learn about these groups and the advantages of using online business networking sites.
I look forward to your views in the comment section.
Are there any additional online networking business groups you can recommend?
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Janice Wald is the founder of MostlyBlogging.com and co-founder of the Mostly Blogging Academy. She is an ebook author, blogger, blogging coach, blogging judge, freelance writer, and speaker. She won the Best Internet Marketer Award and the Best Blogger Award at the 2021 Infinity Blog Awards. Wald was also nominated as 2019 Best Internet Marketer by the Infinity Blog Awards and in 2017 as the Most Informative Blogger by the London Bloggers Bash. She’s been featured on Small Business Trends, the Huffington Post, and Lifehack.
