Groups on LinkedIn are an absolute treasure trove of information, debate, contacts and prospects – a key element of the site that really delivers value at all levels. There are currently some 1.2 million groups, all run by LinkedIn members like you and me, and they deliver a huge variety of content and focus areas, so being able to find the right ones and tap into them is invaluable.

From a sales and marketing perspective, they also provide a veritable goldmine of information and opportunity – though one which needs to be used with great care.

However, the challenge has always been finding the most appropriate ones to participate in. Using my own rule of thumb, with 1.2m groups on offer and our ability to join 50 of them (plus subgroups as well), I still believe we can only really participate properly in a maximum, of 4 – 5. This has been a bit of a “needle in a haystack” job, given the fact that groups which best answer our needs may take a variety of forms such as:

• Industry
• Vertical Sector
• Geographic
• Skills
• Networking
• Trade Association
• Alumni
• Personal Interest

Well, hopefully, that process has just got a little easier.

New LinkedIn Groups Search

Previously on LinkedIn, the Groups search function focused solely on the title of the group and the summary / overview of it that appears in the search results – this has now been extended and made smarter so that it factors in the topics covered in the discussions as well. Even more reason for the Groups’ owners and managers to keep the discussions on topic and spam free I’d suggest, which is no bad thing.

In addition, there is more information displayed about the Group in the results page as you can see in the example below:

Again, more information and also some tools to let you get started more quickly, whether you are already  member as in the example above or it’s one that you are thinking of joining. Couple this with the Group Stats page and you should get a fairly good indication of whether it has the profile of membership and activity that you are looking for.

In addition, we are given some additional filters, that allow us to hone down our search according to whether it contains people who are connected to us for example (doesn’t give indication of numbers of these connections, just that there is at least 1 person who is that level of connection), or by categories of groups such as open groups or not and also by language. I hope that these get extended further as time goes on but this is a good starting point.

Where is it?

Well, I have no doubt that this will be being rolled out with all due speed, but (as of today) in the meantime until it reaches you, access to the Group Search function can be found via https://www.linkedin.com/search-fe/group_search.

As a first opinion, I think that it is good that LinkedIn are starting to create more coherence between the different sections of the site and long may it continue. The Groups area is a hugely vibrant place but the group search had been left behind – let’s hope some other areas, such as the Events section for example, are also earmarked for similar treatment.

You’ve been able to follow companies from the LinkedIn site for a couple of years now, but this is the logical extension to that by facilitating it away from just the Company pages on LinkedIn. It also ties nicely in with the other feature that LinkedIn added to the Company pages at the end of last year which allows organisations to post updates and hence opens up the opportunity for them to start to use their Company Page more proactively as a company mouthpiece and marketing tool.

How does this change things?

Previously only individuals were able to post updates which they could do from their LinkedIn homepage – these updates would go out to their direct (or 1st level) connections and could then be shared or liked by them and so passed on to their connections in turn. The advent of the Company Updates took that one step further with companies now able to send out news and articles as well, this time the updates going out to ‘Followers’ of the company.

As a result, companies should be looking at building the number of followers they have so that they can also extend their reach and branding opportunities. The addition of the ‘Follow Company’ button helps to start to link all of these elements up so that not only can you now place LinkedIn ‘Share’ buttons on your content pages, and ‘Recommend’ buttons on your products or services pages, but also encourage people to ‘Follow’ you directly on their website rather than just send them through to their Company Overview page as has been the trend up until now.

How do I add the button?

Luckily, all of the pain has been taken out of the process. LinkedIn has a ‘Developer’ section which you can access via the footer of every page on LinkedIn and within that there are a number of plugin options which allow you to start to integrate elements on LinkedIn. The ‘Follow Company’ button is the latest of those (direct link here).

You will be faced with the box you can see to the right and all you need to do is type in and select your company name, decide whether you want the number of followers you have to be displayed or not and then click the ‘Get Code’ button at the bottom which gives you a little chunk of code to add to your website.

Since I’m an ardent advocate of an integrated approach to the marketing between LinkedIn and other parts of your online (and offline) marketing then I’m all in favour.

However, there is a caveat – you do still need to send out information that people are going to be interested in and want to hear from you! So, do plan what you intend to put out as Company Updates – think of it as part of your communications planning, focus on your audience (as ever) and do avoid just pushing out advertising messages.

I am of course talking about business cards.

I’ve always known that I really ought to get more organised and productive with them, perhaps sorting and filing them by level of interest or speciality or even by event.
The trouble is that it would be impossible to manually keep in contact and up to date with what they are doing even for a consummately organised networker – and I’m really not one of those.

So, to be brutally honest, in the vast majority of cases they are stored away for a rainy day only to be forgotten about or, when I do think “Yes, I remember talking to someone who did that!”, all too often I find the details are no longer accurate anyway.

No longer the case. LinkedIn to the rescue.

After an event, with business cards still carefully received and given where appropriate, I search them out on LinkedIn, send a personalised invitation covering our earlier chat and there we are. Instead of a static business card, I am directly connected to someone who has an interest in keeping their profile and contact details up to date.

In addition, I get their information to refer to, updates from them on (hopefully) subjects of interest and of course a way to keep them up to date with mine, thereby ensuring that I remain in their mind’s eye should a business opportunity arise. Perfect!

There’s even an App that now belongs to LinkedIn called CardMunch – only for the iPhone as it stands unfortunately – which will take a snap shot of the card and then convert it to a connection automatically. For the rest of us there’s the long hand method of searching for the on the site itself!

And what happened to the business cards? Well let’s just say I don’t have hidden piles of them any longer!

Takeaway Point: Turn a business card into a live connection by contacting them and linking up on LinkedIn – could be the start of a beautiful relationship!

It’s true that you can never really hope to keep on top of all the discussions that go on in the groups but this summary or ‘homepage’ for the Groups will give us a great overview of where the latest activity is happening and so where we should perhaps be focusing our attention. After all, we might be able to join up to 50 groups but, with the best will in the world, you’re only going to be able to participate in 4 to 5 of them at best.

Why might this me of use

It may be particularly helpful if you have decided to turn off your discussion notifications from your groups- as indeed I have decided to do – to avoid email overload from Group Discussions. That way, you can see at a glance which Groups have new discussions in them and so might be worth a visit.

Equally, if you wish, you can rejig the page to help you focus on the most important Groups for you by changing the order that they appear on this page. That way, the key ones – those where you want to make most impact – can be displayed first on the page so you can pay even more attention to them. [As an aside, if you aren't familiar with how to do either of these things, then do drop me a line via my LinkedIn Profile or here on the site.]

So, here is just a short summary of the different elements that appear here, what they mean and perhaps how you might like to use them.

1. Basic Information

Here’s the stuff that you get on all Groups:

i) Group name (all important of course) and in most cases a Group logo of some sort. It isn’t essential to have a logo so you may find the default one there if the owner hasn’t put one in but, in general, most will have done if they are serious about the group and its objectives.

ii) There may be the image of a padlock next to the name in which case it is a Members-only Group (as opposed to an Open Group). This doesn’t mean that you have to be invited to join – both types of groups can opt to automatically allow members to join or vet them before allowing them in. It simply refers to whether the content can be seen by non-members or not – Open Groups, yes, and Members-only Groups, no.

iii) Final element is the little graph icon which takes you through to see Group Statistics relating to the membership and usage of the group which may be usefl and / or of interest.

2. New Discussions

In addition to the general information, you may have:

i) a ‘speech bubble’ with a number in it – this indicates the number of new discussions since your last visit and hence whether you should pay a visit and catch up with what’s been going on, particularly if it’s one of your target groups.

ii) The briefcase with the number indicates jobs or job discussions which are new.

iii) If there are any pictures of people, then these will be your 1st level connections who have recently been active in the group.

3. SubGroups

i) There are also lots of sub-groups on LinkedIn, that’s to say a group within a Group. If you have joined one of these (and they don’t count towards your 50 by the way, you get 50 sub groups you can join in addition) then it also displays details which reminds you which group it belongs to etc.

ii) The ‘Official’ marking, which could be on a group or subgroup, is just to reassure you that this is the place to go for the official information on that subject.

4. New Members

And finally, if you are an owner or a manager of a group then you may well see this symbol which means that there are people who have applied to join the group and are waiting for you to let them in (or not … as the case may be!)

Just to be clear, tags on LinkedIn are simply keywords you can “attach” to your 1st level connections (ie. the people you are directly connected with) which essentially allow you to put them into categories, a bit like creating different folders to keep their records in. LinkedIn actually starts the process for you – when you invite people to connect as ‘colleague’, ‘friend’ or as ‘groups’ then, when they accept, they automatically get tagged as such.

However, the real benefit is that you can dd your own tags (up to 200 different ones) and apply those as you wish.

This means that you can filter (or segment) your connections in any number of different ways because you can add as many tags as you like to each person. This then gives you the opportunity to send information out to very specific tagged groups of your 1st level connections who you know are going to be interested in it, whether that’s due to their interests, their location or their job.

LinkedIn even has the messaging system built in to do this directly from the “My Connections” page, though you can only use it for individual tags containing fewer than 50 connections – quite rightly in my opinion, like LinkedIn, I’m keen to avoid anything on the site being used as a tool to potentially spam people, connected or not!

All this can be found on the “My Connections” page which you can reach via the “Contacts” tab in the main menu on the site. Lots of good information in there and the perfect place to help get your prime content out to exactly the people who’ll be interested in it. Use it wisely though!