Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA

7 years ago · 3 min. reading time · ~10 ·

Blogging
>
Anne 🐝 blog
>
Personal Reflections of a LinkedIn Group Owner and Manager

Personal Reflections of a LinkedIn Group Owner and Manager

Personal Reflections of a LinkedIn Group Owner and Manager


Visit more Linkedin Products

=

I am the President of Executive Oasis International, a Toronto team building and management consulting firm that was established in 1996. It's been over 12 years since I joined LinkedIn and just over 8 years since I started managing groups on LinkedIn. At the time of writing, I own:



I manage a community of 17 groups for event planners, the largest has grown from 4,000 members at the end of 2008 to 350,000+ members today. I have recruited almost every group leader (managers and moderators) and trained all of them. Here are 3 of the smaller groups in this community:


A Roller Coaster for Group Leaders


It's been a roller coaster. We've gone from the days when there were few group manager tools to a full suite of tools to manage groups. At first spam was a huge problem and spam gangs flooded groups with their content. Controlling spam has become a lot easier but, despite the fact that members have the tools to flag spam, few members bother.

Once the full suite of group management tools was in place, managing groups was a breeze. It didn't take a lot of time and it was fun.

After a while, some tools, like Block and Delete, stopped working and LinkedIn never bothered to fix them. One by one, the excellent tools for group management and communication with group members have been removed. In fact, on LinkedIn, you can't even send private messages to multiple recipients without all names being visible.

Functionality, layout, and navigation have changed so often that there has always been confusion about how groups work. 

Despite numerous reminders in announcements, members never really did understand subgroups and they were finally scrapped without notice. Instead of changing the functionality, the focus should have been on making sure everything works.

Beginning in October 2015, notifications from groups were gradually removed, until now, the only time that group members receive notifications is if someone tags them.  Announcements work in some groups but not others. Try communicating with a leadership team when the only way to grab their attention is to tag each and every one of them manually. You can't do that with a large group.

The result has been that many groups have become ghost towns. When members stopped receiving notifications of new discussions or comments in discussions in which they have participated, they didn't have a clue what was going on. Communication is the heartbeat of any community and, when it is absent, it kills engagement.

The removal of notifications from groups is not good news for bloggers. Even posting in LinkedIn Pulse has become a pointless exercise as content is no longer distributed to everyone in your network or all of your followers. Even if you share the posts in groups, no one will know they are there unless they visit the groups and manually scan through the discussions as notifications have been removed. Scrolling only goes so far so good luck on gaining visibility if there are a lot of "Conversations" posted in the group.


If a tree falls in the forest, and there's nobody around to hear, does it make a sound?
Source Unknown

The Final Nail in the Coffin


The recent changes in the interface was the final nail in the coffin. Most members don't even know that, to find their list of groups they have to:

  • click on the work icon in the top menu
  • then, click on the Groups icon in the panel that pops up

e9c8647e.jpg

It is now much more work to manage groups and not as much fun. I had to ask myself, what is the pay-off? Other than some excellent peer-to-peer interaction and relationships with some great people, zero, zip, nada. Other than blogging, I can't think of one piece of business that my company has generated as a result of the many hours each and every week invested in group management. 

So, I have made a tough decision. I will be significantly cutting back on my involvement in group management and focusing on just a few groups. I will be reducing my involvement in social media across the board and focusing on just a few points of engagement. The many hours I save each and every week will be invested in off-line marketing and writing. While it's tough to start from scratch after taking 12 years to build a 4,000+ member network, I am also trying out beBee. I'll continue to manage a handful of groups, going from 22 to 5 or 6. 

I've already created beBee hives for them 2 of them and members DO get notifications of ALL content: 


I'll still use LinkedIn for peer-to-peer engagement. LinkedIn is great for that but it's useless for B2B lead generation and business development.


Lessons Learned

The main lesson learned for beBee and other virtual communities is that, if your interface stops working, you don't listen to your most experienced community leaders, and you constantly make changes that make no sense, even your most committed members will eventually throw in the towel. 

The lesson for me as a business person is that time is a precious commodity. I'll never get back the time that I have invested in the promise of social media. In future, I will assess what is and is not working much earlier and take action to eliminate non-value added activities much sooner. There is no point in hanging on and on and hoping that things will get better as they rarely do.

Image: Jenny Downing (Flickr)
""
Comments

Lance 🐝 Scoular

7 years ago #24

New Twitter & LinkedIn 🔥 Added to next Twitter & LinkedIn 🏍
#37
Exactly Javier \ud83d\udc1d beBee
Anne Thornley-Brown great lessons. 1) if your interface stops working, you don't listen to your most experienced community leaders, and you constantly make changes that make no sense, even your most committed members will eventually throw in the towel. 2) never put all eggs in ONE basket! https://www.bebee.com/producer/@javierbebee/never-put-all-eggs-in-one-basket-keep-linkedin-but-explore-bebee
#35
Thank you.
#20
Franci\ud83d\udc1dEugenia Hoffman Finaly figured out how to tag you. I have share the links at comment 21
#30
Thank you.
Anne Thornley-Brown welcome to the hive ! Thanks for sharing your worries & issues. We are learning from you !
#23
Paul \ I am just realizing I don't know how to send a private buzz yet. Please send me your email address and I will send you the post. I would also love some traction on this one. It's about my experience in trying to help 2 people through social media. https://www.bebee.com/producer/@anne-thornley-brown/crowdfunding-for-philanthropy-social-media-disappoints-again
#25
Thank you.
#24
Jim it is like a breath of fresh air here. My only regret is that I didn't make the jump sooner. 1.3K post views, 12 shares, 18 relevant (likes) and 23 comments in less than 24 hours. I have never seen anything like this on LinkedIn....not even close and my network here is tiny. So glad to give up the struggle. I hope my group members will join me here in the 2 hives I have set up.

Jim Murray

7 years ago #14

Welcome to beBee Anne. I have shared this on LI where the disgruntlement is growing in leaps and bounds.

Jim Murray

7 years ago #13

Fortunately for beBee, it has the advantage of a great many influential bloggers and social media people who have migrated here from LI, for all the reasons that you cite in your post. A number of us raged long and hard all though 2015 at the broken promises and complete apathy on the part of LI management. But we are all here and thriving. And we are now actively targeting groups on LinkedIn to migrate, to help us build this site and make it a great opportunity for everyone. The big advantage here is that the management of this site is listening and taking advantage of the the ideas that people proffer. Big difference.
#20
@Franci Thank you for your offer. These are the hives I have created. I already have LinkedIn groups for them but communication and engagement is difficult for the reasons discussed in my post. - B2B Bloggers Network https://www.bebee.com/group/b2b-bloggers-network - Executive Team Building Network https://www.bebee.com/group/executive-team-building I just started encouraging members to move over so I am not starting from scratch.
#2
Thank you everyone for your support and for such a warm welcome. It is a breath of fresh air.
#6
You're welcome. It has been exhausting. I should have made the move long ago.
#7
I have started 2 hives today for existing LinkedIn Groups. o have posted about it in 2 of the groups. I have no idea if anyone will even see the post without me emailing it to everyone. One group is still small enough for me to tag everyone so I will include it in the next announcement and tag everyone if I don't see any response.
#10
Ren\u00e9e \ud83d\udc1d Cormier It's okay for you to say I told you so. I was so reluctant to start from scratch somewhere else after investing so much time on LinkedIn and Twitter but this post has had over 900 views and I just posted it this morning. Never got close to those results on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. It's been such a struggle.
#12
Thank you Paul. What groups do you recommend for Canadian bees?
#1
I definitely do that Ren\u00e9e \ud83d\udc1d Cormier. I am the queen of sharing. ;) But if members get no notification of posts, it's tough to gain visibility. It never used to be like this.
This post was posted 8 hours ago and so far over 800 people have viewed it. On LinkedIn, it's a struggle to get 100 viewers to view it over the course of weeks. I will be sharing beBee with all of my followers and groups. Let's hope they see it.

Phil Friedman

7 years ago #4

Welcome to beBee, Anne. Good to know your take on LinkedIn groups. Have you considered how you might migrate your LI group(s) to beBee? There are some of us here who are working on that issue. https://www.bebee.com/producer/@friedman-phil/hives-groups-and-froot-loops

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #3

I've had all those problems @Anne Thornley-Brown. If LinkedIn's strategy is to get rid of us, they're doing a great job. So many people—especially those using LinkedIn and other social media sites to promote their businesses—fell for the hype of LinkedIn's audience. That audience never materialized, and my posts frequently disappeared within minutes of posting (I shouldn't say disappeared; they just went somewhere neither I nor anyone else could find). Thanks for your post.

Cyndi wilkins

7 years ago #2

Thank you for this Anne Thornley-Brown...That change in the interface was the final straw for me too...Many have written about it, but it falls upon deaf ears...Welcome to beBee;-)

🐝 Fatima G. Williams

7 years ago #1

Wow you have put in a lot of work in the groups and it's sad noone even listens. Like you said it's like a tree that falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear. Every time we start a new journey there are so many promises and experiences and lessons to gain from that journey. I believe you have learnt so much as a result of all the time you spent on social media. Your writing and management skills just with reading about you in the buzz tells me much. Happy to follow you here on beBee and hoping to learn alot from you. I joined your hive and I welcome you to beBeeland 🤗🐝🤗 Time is a precious commodity and the time spent on reading this buzz was definitely worth it ✌

Articles from Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA

View blog
6 years ago · 2 min. reading time

Wallflower · A person who has no one to dance with or who feels excluded at a party. · To put it ano ...

6 years ago · 2 min. reading time

A Tempest in a Teapot.... · This post is inspired by Matt Sanders' LinkedIn status update chastising ...

6 years ago · 3 min. reading time

It is no secret that the organic reach of LinkedIn content has declined significantly in recent year ...

Related professionals

You may be interested in these jobs

  • Accurate Metal Powder Coating

    painter helper

    Found in: Talent CA 2 C2 - 5 days ago


    Accurate Metal Powder Coating Surrey, Canada

    Education: No degree, certificate or diploma · Experience: Will train · Tasks · Load, unload and transport construction materials · Erect and dismantle concrete forms, scaffolding, ramps, catwalks shoring and barricades · Mix, pour and spread materials · Assist heavy equipment op ...

  • Aramark

    Bartender

    Found in: Talent CA C2 - 1 week ago


    Aramark Surrey, Canada

    Job Description · The Bartender is responsible for providing outstanding guest service from the moment guests arrive until they leave the establishment. The Bartender prepares and serves alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages at guests' requests. This may include preparing mixed d ...

  • Activate Games

    Senior Software Developer

    Found in: beBee S2 CA - 5 days ago


    Activate Games Winnipeg, Canada Full time

    Salary: $80,000-90,000 per year · Enter the Game · Activate is a tech company known for creating Canada's first full-scale interactive gaming facility. We continue to experience significant expansion, and are looking to grow our IT team with the addition of a Senior Software Dev ...