#SMLive Manoj Rijhwani shares tips for Building Communities on LinkedIn

In an insightful session at #SMLive 2020, Manoj Rijhwani from LinkedIn shares two cents on the relevance of building communities & leveraging the platform in the most optimum sense.

At a time, when most are still working from home & are under a lockdown, building communities & connecting with people has become all the more important. Manoj Rijhwani, Head of Online Sales – India, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions emphasizes this thought and takes us through the 'How' and the 'Why' of building communities on LinkedIn.

The 'Why' of building a community online

Communities bring people together through shared attitudes, interests, and goals. What brands want to do, is bring all together on these communities to connect & share ideas as per their interests & goals, shares, Rijhwani.

On a knowledge-sharing platform such as LinkedIn, brands are increasingly posting and attempting to engage with customers through thought-leadership content, economic opportunities, and more. To leverage the right opportunities, one needs to belong to a community, says Rijhwani.

"The idea of LinkedIn is centered around this, that is, thriving to bring communities together", he shares.

He also highlights the traits of engaging content on LinkedIn:

• Relevance.
• Informative
• Staying top of mind
• Inspiration
• Skill development

How to build inclusive communities?

After mulling over the 'Why' of the community, Rijhwani further explains the 'How' in the next part, especially in the context of creating communities on LinkedIn. The first gateway to build communities on LinkedIn is through your company page, he shares.

Further, to foster inclusive groups and conversation, LinkedIn offers the following features that help brands to build their communities:

• Content suggestions for the company page
• Discovering trending content through LinkedIn Hashtags that help the brands, tell their stories, relevant to their community
• Engaging with the community

Engaging with your
community

After explaining the processes around the methods & features of building a community, it is crucial to engage with them & build lasting impact through the platform. This can be done, Rijhwani shares, on LinkedIn through the following ways:

• By building connections on the platform- connections through culture, storytelling & thought-leadership
• Sharing content with the audience- through the available content formats such as document uploads, videos, questions, polls & images
• Bringing people on the platform for real-time conversations through live-streaming & events
• By sharing & spreading messages through the employee notification feature

You can access the complete presentation here.