Personal Reflections of a LinkedIn Group Owner and Manager
Personal Reflections of a LinkedIn Group Owner and Manager
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:
- Team Building Network for Executives - for executive peer to peer interaction and discussions about team building, corporate culture, and leadership (I have just launched an Executive Team Buiding Network hive)
- B2B Bloggers Network - where bloggers can share their content and discover and share great content from other bloggers
- An alumni group for a company where I once worked
- Event Planners Network Canada - Réseau des planificateurs d'événements au Canada (2,465 members)
- Caribbean Event Planners Network (940 members)
- Networking & Professional Development for Event Planners (749 Members)
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
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Comments
Lance 🐝 Scoular
7 years ago #24
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #23
Exactly Javier \ud83d\udc1d beBee
Javier Cámara-Rica 🐝🇪🇸
7 years ago #22
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #21
Thank you.
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #20
Franci\ud83d\udc1dEugenia Hoffman Finaly figured out how to tag you. I have share the links at comment 21
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #19
Thank you.
Javier Cámara-Rica 🐝🇪🇸
7 years ago #18
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #17
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
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #16
Thank you.
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #15
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
Jim Murray
7 years ago #13
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #12
@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.
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #11
Thank you everyone for your support and for such a warm welcome. It is a breath of fresh air.
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #10
You're welcome. It has been exhausting. I should have made the move long ago.
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #9
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.
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #8
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.
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #7
Thank you Paul. What groups do you recommend for Canadian bees?
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #6
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.
Anne 🐝 Thornley-Brown, MBA
7 years ago #5
Phil Friedman
7 years ago #4
Robert Cormack
7 years ago #3
Cyndi wilkins
7 years ago #2
🐝 Fatima G. Williams
7 years ago #1