Category Archives: Groups on LinkedIn

Using LinkedIn to listen

July 28, 2011 by Mark White, LinkedIn trainer

Listen on LinkedInA lot of what people do on LinkedIn is talk – they share their own information (or other people’s), publicise what they are doing, demonstrate their expertise etc. And that’s great, because LinkedIn has a number of great tools which allow you to do just that and, hopefully, you will have chosen topics that your network wants to hear about.

However, there’s the other side of networking … and of business … and that is listening. LinkedIn is also really good at that too. So, as you might imagine, there are also a number of different tools and places on LinkedIn which provide great ways for you to do just that.

Why listen?

Listening is really important – the much touted adage of (more…)

Article Categories: Groups on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Strategy, LinkedIn Tips, Using LinkedIn
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LinkedIn Groups you should join

March 16, 2011 by Mark White, LinkedIn trainer

LinkedIn Groups - LinkedIn Groups to considerJust to be clear up front, I’m not about to list 10 groups that you just have to join on LinkedIn. But I make no apology for that – this is going to be more useful in your search for good, relevant LinkedIn groups to join and participate in than any list I could have put together for you would have been. Trust me! ;)

The reason I say that a list of 10 groups to join would be as much use as a chocolate teapot is that the ones you decide to join and participate in on LinkedIn need to be aligned with your goals (and / or interests) and so will be specific to you … or to take it a step further … you at this particular moment in time. They have to be, I know that you simply don’t have the time to spend in ones that just might be of interest – this is a business network and we need to focus accordingly.

Sorry, lecture over I promise …

Now it’s true that you are “restricted” to joining only join 50 LinkedIn Groups at the moment, but, let’s be honest, the most you’ll be able to participate (more…)

Article Categories: B2B Advice for LinkedIn, Groups on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Advice, LinkedIn Strategy
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Open Groups on LinkedIn

November 19, 2010 by Mark White, LinkedIn trainer

LinkedIn Open Groups###Update 2: as of this morning (December 21) it seems that the process of moving to an Open Group is being made available to the group owner as you will be given the option to change across to an Open Group automatically. There should be a yellow band now with a clickable area and it will explain some of the implications and a bit of housekeeping you should do ahead of it. Also in the “Group settings” area of the “Manage” menu in the group you should find a button at the top which guides you through the process! Decide carefully though – no undoing the process once you’ve elected to make it Open! :) ###

### Quick update: I’ve had a number of people ask how to make their groups open – as of end November 2010, LinkedIn are still testing and rolling out and, if you are interested in enabling this feature for your group, they recommend emailing them at opengroups@linkedin.com or visit an update page at lnkd.in/opengroups. ###

In yet another departure from their current setup, LinkedIn has announced that it is introducing Open Groups onto the site – indeed, this will be the default format of all new LinkedIn Groups going forward, once it is fully rolled out.

So what’s an Open Group? Well, this isn’t, as you might think, one that anyone on LinkedIn can join – those already exist as “open access groups” – but rather one where the content will be visible to everyone on LinkedIn (group member of not) and externally to LinkedIn as well, therefore making it accessible to Google.

Currently, most of the content on LinkedIn, including in this instance that in the Groups, is essentially hidden from Google because they are locked away behind the password and login. The main exceptions to this are (more…)

Article Categories: Groups on LinkedIn, LinkedIn News, LinkedIn Site Changes, LinkedIn Strategy
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