Active members are the life blood of any group. Wouldn't you agree that no activity = no opportunity to connect? It's important that group members take ownership of growing the group by inviting new interesting and interested people. Any member of the group can extend invitations to other contacts. And here's how...
Once logged into Linkedin, go to the group that you want to extend invites to. Next, look towards the middle right hand side of the screen to find the"share group" link.
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Click the "Share group" link to open a sub-menu; and then click "Invite others". You can then either start typing a name in the text field, or click the "In" button located to the right of the text field and view your list of connections to select from.
The issue that I have with this is that Linkedin doesn't allow users to customize the message sent to the new invite.
For "member protection", this is all you get to work with:
- Lance Gahimer invites you to join Linking Terre Haute on LinkedIn
- I would like to invite you to join my group on LinkedIn.
- Pretty non-descript, and not very engaging at all. It's fine in most cases - where you've already given connection an advanced notice that you're sending a group invite, and you've explained the value and why they should join.
My preference is to send them an email and make it more personal - even if I've already explained the what and the why.
In that case, click the link "Share on Linkedin" rather that "Invite others". In the pop up window, uncheck the box "Post to updates" unless you want this to go to your stream for all contacts to see. Click the check box "Send to individuals", and enter the email address of your contact.
Again, the default message is pretty bland: "I found this and thought you might be interested." You'll want to customize the invite to make it more personal and appealing.
There you have it. Now, go forth and invite.
