Today it is official. I am unsubscribing to receive digests for two of my favorite and most important Linkedin groups, SHRM and ERE.net. I was an early adopter of Linkedin groups, enjoying the recruiting advantage when joining niche or local groups. I started and engaged in the discussions, posted articles and made significant new contacts and relationships through these groups. As the groups became larger and larger, folks marketing products and services have figured out how to dilute the content of the groups. Once a community of engaged participants, Linkedin groups have turned into now marketing channels to reach consumers.
SHRM and ERE.net (and LinkedCincinnati) were my favorite Linkedin groups for sharing, learning and asking. So what has caused me to leave SHRM and ERE.net groups? Let’s look at the content of the daily digest for SHRM on 11/18/10 an example.
SHRM (the official group, not the bootleg one) discussions:
Three active discussions – Workplace bulling has 724 comments (ok, that is absolutely overkill on any topic). I commented on this one back when there were less than 20 comments and left the conversation when I realized that the comments were negative, angry and endless. It’s time to move on people. The other two active discussions are real questions from practitioners, but you can’t find them in the mess of discussions. More about that follows…
Forty discussions. Sounds like an active group, right? We’ll let’s look at these 40 discussions –
• 8 articles were shared, mainly by people trying to market services to HR professionals
• 18 personal blogs were posted by the people who write them. Some even commented on their own blog posts in the group discussion area. Nice.
• 6 discussions or questions posted by HR practitioners
• 7 people directly marketing products and services to HR professionals. I’ve included job postings that are not related to HR in this category. Yes, we do notice when you ask a question about communication and you are the CEO of a communications consulting company. That’s why no one responds.
• 1 duplicate posting
I’ll say that there might be 10 postings that are actually interesting to the target audience – HR practitioners, but they are so difficult to find that I just scroll right on past to the job section.
Jobs section. There were 20 jobs listed on 11/18/10 digest:
• 9 jobs were related to HR
• 8 jobs were not related to HR, including a pastry chef. Really?
• 1 posting was a duplicate
• 2 postings were blog posting in the wrong section.
Let’s be honest, the free job posting service is what really retains group members in Linkedin groups. This is where you will find your passive job seeker, right? Not if they don’t look at the group discussions.
I have not bailed completely on Linkedin groups. I’m still a member, follower and active participant of 16 Linkedin groups, including local and smaller, targeted Linkedin groups such as alumni groups and my local SHRM chapter. Even though the guy who sells LED lights continues to spam the group with his marketing literature, I’m in for as long as the personal, relevant discussions continue. There is still tremendous value in Linkedin, but professionals marketing their services need to be more aware of their audience. Connecting personally will never compare to mass marketing - and Linkedin is the best tool for that!
I get your point, but the value of groups really varies by the specific group. I run a mediation and conflict resolution group that I rarely ever touch, and it seems to be doing very well as a viable community. The same witha couple of others. I belong to others that are of virtually no value, except for contacts (since I am not job searching).
ReplyDeleteYou have perfectly summed up the current state of the majority of LinkedIn Groups. Unfortunately, I've turned off the daily or weekly digests from the majority of Groups I'm a member of because of the same reasons you've outlined.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there's hope! Just a couple of weeks ago, LinkedIn introduced new features for Group Managers that allow several levels of moderation control - including moderation of Discussions, Promotions, Jobs or Comments - or all of the above. As a manager of a large Group, this is a Godsend for me. I've set the moderation to be for all content - except Comment for now - and even with over 15k members in my group, it only takes me a few minutes a day to review posts, delete ones that aren't relevant, put things in the right place and remove members who spam the Group.
Hopefully, more Group Managers will begin to use the moderation features available to them and bring their Groups back in line.
As for the SHRM group, check out their Facebook page - it's similar. Clearly, no one is steering the ship at SHRM in regards to their social media presence. They've created the Group, Facebook page and Twitter accounts, but no one is managing the "community". Hopefully they'll take notice and get involved soon before more good members like you leave them.
This is precisely why we need community managers to actively monitor and, if need be, defend the virtual borders of their groups. To do otherwise dilutes the value of the group.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely be interested in your feedback on the ERE.net group. I actively monitor it and as Jennifer mentioned, they recently enabled some moderation controls that made the groups much easier to manage. Over the last couple of weeks, it has actually improved because I wasn't forced to go into the groups every couple of hours to remove posts.
ReplyDeleteWhile our discussion volume is down, it is now actual discussion versus spam and promoting a person's latest blog post. I hope that now people can actually see that there are actual discussions, they will be more apt to join in and discuss before they were overrun with marketers.
If you have any feedback you'd like to give privately, please e-mail me (lance@ere.net).
Thank you all for your feedback! Good to hear that I am not alone with the frustration of a powerful social media tool going down the tubes because of overzealous marketing. There is a difference between joining the conversation and direct marketing (i.e. spam) services to the group members. I hate the idea of group managers monitoring or policing their groups because you are all busy professionals with real jobs, but I am glad to know that Linkedin has already reacted to the situation and rolled out an application to try to keep the integrity of the group feature. I am looking forward to joining the conversation in the ERE group again soon!
ReplyDeleteThanks for "moderating" the LED spammer, Jennifer!
Bonita,
ReplyDeleteI did the same thing a while back because they're almost entirely filled with dribble and shameless self promotion. Smart move!
- Chris