How to Use Hootsuite to Post to Multiple LinkedIn Groups

One of the advantages to using a social media management system like Hootsuite is that it allows you to share a status update with multiple LinkedIn groups, In the following video, I show you how to add LinkedIn groups to your Hootsuite account, and post an update to them:

How to Share Status Updates with LinkedIn Groups

Got an event you want to promote to more than one LinkedIn group? Want to share a great quotation with several LinkedIn groups at the same time?

LinkedIn makes it easy to share articles with more than one group at a time. You’ve probably seen the LinkedIn share button on blog posts before, right? And if you’re reading a discussion in a LinkedIn group, you can easily share it with another group by hovering your mouse over the bottom of the discussion to bring up the “More” tab. When you click “more,” a dropdown menu comes up with an option to “share link.” As you can see in the image below, you can check the box that says “Post to group(s)” and then type in the name of the groups you want to see the article.

No Link? No Share

If you start a discussion in a LinkedIn group and don’t add a link to it, the option to share to groups goes away. When you click on the “more” tab now, you only get the options to “Flag as promotion,” “Flag as job,” or “Delete.”

The only way I’ve seen to share with multiple LinkedIn groups from a group is to copy the status update, go to the next group you want to see the information, and paste the content as a new discussion.

There’s just one problem with this tactic. It is tedious and time-consuming!

Hootsuite to the Rescue

I’ve been asked about this problem by several people lately, and I will tell you what I told them. The only way I’ve found to share an update with more than one LinkedIn group at the same time is to use a third-party tool that allows posting to LinkedIn groups. The one that I use is Hootsuite. As you can see in the image below, I selected three LinkedIn groups in the Hootsuite dashboard. I typed in an update and now all I have to do is either send it now, or schedule it for a future date.

That’s my solution. Have you found another way to share with more than one LinkedIn group at the same time? If so, please share it in the comments below.

Related articles

• 7 LinkedIn Tips For Using Groups Feature Effectively (business2community.com)
• 7 Must-Haves to Grow an Audience Via LinkedIn Groups (business2community.com)

Using LinkedIn for Contact Management

LinkedIn has been on a roll in the last year, tweaking its services and recently, I got my first look at the changes they have made to Contacts.

The social networking site has now made it easy to bring together all of your address books, emails and calendars and keep them up to date in one place. It’s designed to help improve how you stay in touch with your LinkedIn connections. For instance, you’ll get notifications when someone changes jobs, or has a birthday, so you can send them a greeting right away.

The change is especially noticeable when you visit your contacts’ profile pages. Directly underneath their profile picture, there is a new box that indicates your relationship to the person, and includes areas where you can write a note, set a reminder, and indicate how you met. This is priceless for keeping track of prospects that you meet at a networking event. Even though you’re adding this information underneath someone else’s profile, the information is visible only to you:

LinkedIn has a new contacts app available on iPhone, but there’s no mention of Android yet. I hope they will come up with one soon, because I would love to try it out on my phone!

Watch your email for the invite from LinkedIn. I almost missed mine, since the subject line contained the number “2” and nothing else! (I’m sure this was a mistake.) I think these new features are an excellent enhancement to the service.

Think like a Photographer when it Comes to Social Media Marketing

When I was growing up, there were no digital cameras. I had a Kodak Instamatic camera that would take 12, 24 or 36 pictures at a time, depending on the size of the film cartridge used. Once you reached that limit, you had to remove the film and insert another roll. As a result, you had to be choosy about what pictures you took, especially if you were running out of film and didn’t have another roll handy.

Today, my digital camera lets me take hundreds of pictures before the memory gets full, so I can keep snapping pictures till my heart’s content. But that also means I have hundreds of pictures to look at when I come back from vacation, which can be quite overwhelming.

The number of social networking sites available today can be overwhelming too. Many small business owners fall into the trap of thinking they need a presence on all of them to be effective. I’ve been guilty of thinking that way too. I recently hired a virtual assistant to help me with my own social media marketing, because it’s time-consuming to come up with posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and run my business at the same time.

Here’s a little secret. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can limit yourself to one or two different platforms. The best photographers take time to craft their shots, and choose only the best images to present to the public. You should do the same. Take time to craft good quality content that will be appreciated by your audience and engage them. If your business lends itself well to visuals, spend the majority of your time on Pinterest. If your audience is B2B, spend more of your time on LinkedIn.

Experiment to see what type of content appeals most to your target audience and gets them to engage with you. Try out different types of posts, photos, contests, even ads. Test and re-test. In time, you’ll develop a good eye for what works.

Image courtesy of ammer / freedigitalphotos.net

Why Employees Need to Update their LinkedIn Profiles

Some good friends and former co-workers of mine learned an important lesson last week, and that is to always keep your LinkedIn profile updated. They are now out of a job, due to a buyout. They were part of the Miami production staff of Nightly Business Report, the award-winning PBS business news program that was recently purchased by CNBC. The show will continue to air on PBS stations across the country, but it will be based out of New Jersey. Last Friday was the last show co-produced out of Miami and New York, and the last day of work for the Miami staff.

How to Turn Cold Calls into Warm Leads with LinkedIn

Congratulations! You have a LinkedIn account, set up your profile and now have a hundred connections or more. Are you getting any business yet? If not, I have a formula that you can use to turn what would have been a cold call into a warm lead. It’s a technique I learned about from B2B copywriter Steve Slaunwhite.

How to Easily Manage Your Social Media Presence

One of the biggest frustrations small business owners have with social media is trying to manage it and their company operations at the same time. This is particularly true of solopreneurs. I feel your pain, because I have the same challenge! It’s not easy balancing client work with my own social media marketing. But I have found a tool that has helped me manage my time more effectively, and is one that I recommend to my clients as well. It’s Hootsuite.

LinkedIn Ends RSS Feed Support for Groups

LinkedIn is ending support for RSS feeds in LinkedIn groups, as of March 15. The social networking site says it decided to eliminate the feature in order to better invest its resources in “building more great LinkedIn products.” This is essentially the same line LinkedIn used when it announced it was getting rid of its Answers application.

How to Use Quora as a Marketing Tool

Anyone who has used LinkedIn Answers is probably disappointed to know that the service has been eliminated. Answering questions submitted by LinkedIn users was a terrific way to demonstrate your authority on a subject.

If you’re looking for an alternative, check out Quora. This social networking site has been around for several years, but it doesn’t get the same kind of attention that Facebook or Pinterest does.

Here are a few tips on how to use Quora as a marketing tool:

1. Search & Answer Q’s – Search for questions that relate to your industry and then answer them. Be thoughtful about this process. Make sure your answers are of high quality. Review other answers that have been posted so you can add something new that will be useful to the questioner. Doing this positions you and your company as a thought leader in your industry.

2. Include Keywords in Answers – Social activity shows up on the search engines, and Quora is no exception. Include keywords in your answers to make them visible on Google. Since Quora is a reputable domain name, people will click on answers they see in the search results. Why not give them the chance to view your answer?

3. Approach Questioner Directly – People who submit questions on Quora are looking for help. Even though answers are posted, they might still need more help with their problem. You can follow up with them to offer more assistance, but do it tactfully. Some marketers spam Quora frequently, and the community hates this! Don’t leave simple answers and then message a user for business. Leave a thorough answer, and then pursue a relationship with the person, if you want to help them further.

You can always pose your own questions too. That may be a good way to get started on Quora. The answers you get can give you a good insight into your target market. If you’d like to see some of the questions I’ve answered, visit my Quora profile: https://www.quora.com/Gloria-Rand

Related articles

• LinkedIn Answers Gets Pink Slipped (gloriarand.me)
• Quora’s New Blogs Take The Site Beyond Q&As, But Not To Profits (fastcompany.com)

Is Facebook’s new Graph Search Engine a danger to Google, LinkedIn, Yelp & Foursquare, as according to these arguments?

Answer by Robert Scoble:

It is a threat, but only in the long-term if the others don’t react quickly.

I’ve used the new search engine quite a bit. Yes, it is disruptive to many of those competitors.

Just so you know where I’m coming from, I study how others use Facebook and have built several lists, including these: