LinkedIn Groups - What to do once you have one

So yesterday, we talked about the steps to take in managing the rogues within your membership who have started their own LinkedIn Groups using your trademarks without your consent. While those were some good beginning steps, I would love to have your thoughts on what I missed.

Today, I wanted to discuss an important topic also relating to LinkedIn Groups – important steps to take once your organization has one to make it work well.

1. Promote, Promote, Promote – Once your group is set up, be sure to have a promotion strategy in place to get the word out about it. This will not only give the group some visibility and legitimacy, but make the community larger and of more value to your members more quickly.

2. Pre-approve key members – Once you have set up your group, pre-approve a list of people who are likely joiners to take the step away from them having to request entry. That will let them know that you were thinking about them specially when the group was set up.

3. When a member joins, reach out to them – While this can become cumbersome when a lot of requests are made to join on a daily basis, it is a nice touch to show the members that you appreciate them joining and that you hope they will find value in the association’s group.

I have a pretty standard message that I send when someone joins: “Good afternoon (Name) – I have added you to (organization)’s Group on LinkedIn. I hope you can make some great connections! Please let me know if there is anything that I can do for you as we move forward. Best Wishes, Bruce Hammond.” Short, sweet and to the point, and there are times that I will add other personal messages to the notes if I notice something in their profile that I think is interesting. That leads me directly to my next point:

4. Mine the Data in their Profile – Taking the minute or two to take a look at their profile to glean any necessary information is another very important element of having a LinkedIn Group. These members are sharing information with you that can be of a lot of use to you as you try to segment and personalize your communication efforts with your members. If you see from their profile that they received an advanced degree that you didn’t know about, that might be helpful. The profiles show their previous employers, which also may be beneficial in some cases. It also provides a great deal of additional information like personal web sites, widgets with upcoming trips and travel, a photo, etc. Mining this data that they are freely providing when joining your group is important.

5. Encourage Connections by starting and participating in the discussions area of the Group. – The group’s members joined for a reason, and in most instances it’s to connect with other members. Helping to make those connections happen is something that you on the staff can help with. Post discussion topics, comment on topics that already have been started, share other resources that you know about to aid in those conversations. If you show that you are a part of the community and the conversations happening within it, the members can see the tangible value of the association in its interactions within the group.

These are five tips that we are using in our LinkedIn Group. The group started in January 2008 and we have engaged nearly 1,500 members since. The connections are happening. The excitement continues to grow. And, the organization is benefiting from increased engagement, knowledge, and conversation with our members.

LinkedIn Groups - Managing the Rogues

There has been a lot of conversation this week on the ASAE Communications and Membership List servs about LinkedIn Groups, and how to handle certain situations that arise with them. Instead of responding to the messages on the list serv, I thought I would do a post because I have a decent amount to say on this topic.

The Issue

The main issue in the discussions on the list servs was about how to "police LinkedIn Groups that are using your logo and representing the organization without the org's permission." Many people responded that the association should talk to their General Counsel about this.

There are a number of steps to take before you need to include your General Counsel:

1. Prepare your response and plan of action. - Do you want to take over the group and manage it in house? Would you like the person who has started the group to serve as a volunteer moderator for the organization who can serve as an extension of your office in this capacity? Do you already have a branded social networking site that you are pushing to members, and not want to have a presence on LinkedIn at all?

It really depends upon your association's workload and philosophy on how you handle social media efforts on how you want to handle this. If you are restricting membership in the group to only members, you may want to have a staff person managing the group so they can check the credentials before someone can join. If you are having it as an open group, having the member who took the initiative handle the group as a volunteer might be a great way to engage them in the organization. It's really up to your association's philosophy.

2. Reach out to the member who started the group. - There's a good chance that if you reach out to the person who started the group and engage them in conversation about how you'd like to handle the situation, they will follow your advice. It's my guess that in most instances someone has started a group in LinkedIn because a) there wasn't a presence for the organization on the site in the first place, b) they didn't know you already had a group set up, c) they just wanted to help get the name of the organization out and network with fellow members.

By reaching out to the member and explaining your reasoning for wanting to take the action you want to take, you are creating another opportunity to engage a member and explain how the association will benefit by taking your course of action. By going in guns a blazin' talking about the legal ramifications and that you have spoken with your General Counsel, you may lose that opportunity to educate your member, and may end up losing them completely.

3. If engaging the member doesn't work, contact LinkedIn. - LinkedIn has policies (see the bottom Note) about how to handle situations where someone is misrepresenting a group within LinkedIn. It is easy to handle, without having to bring in the organization's General Counsel.

One great idea that I read actually in the discussion on this topic in the YAP discussion came from Andy Steggles, who said about handling groups who don't want to fold in with the main group's presence:

"I would create a slightly different version of your logo with something like "Proud Supporter of" in front of it. That's what we've done at RIMS and then we ask all our "partners" to use it with a link to our site. This way it indicates they are not "RIMS" but are a supporter of RIMS which more accurately reflects what they are trying to do."

You can read the whole discussion here, which was actually about groups using your logo on Facebook. You may need to join the YAP Group to be able to access it, but we hope you'll join us anyway!

These are three easy steps to take to help when there is a situation that happens like someone using your logo or starting a group on LinkedIn before you can do it yourself.

I would echo many people who in the past have said that LinkedIn is an invaluable tool for not only the association, but for your members. They can connect with people for employment, for business purposes, and for networking.

Just think about it... They made those connections because YOUR ASSOCIATION made it possible by creating a group. What better PR can you get than that?