Comments on: LinkedIn Groups Announces Newsletter-like Feature

By: John Felkins

John Felkins — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:15:38 +0000

This seems to be a great feature. I must confess though I’m still focused on growing my group membership. I’m using LinkedIn to “tighten” a specific group that exists offline. The only challenge is, how to find each other on LinkedIn and then connect.

Thanks Jason

By: Andy Shaindlin

Andy Shaindlin — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:38:54 +0000

This is a major downgrade in functionality for me as a group owner. Access to individual email addresses is worth much more to me than the ability to send everyone in the group a message from within LinkedIn. Ideally, I’d be able to segment my group members (by industry, region, network size, title, etc.) and target subgroups. But as is, I’ve lost something very valuable and gained something not so valuable. Just for the record, the group I’m talking about is a college alumni group.

Thanks for the post, Jason.

By: Jason Alba

Jason Alba — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:14:29 +0000

Lisa, that’s excellent – great advice to “do it right.” I think about my own newsletter and know that if I didn’t provide value then it would just be spammy pitching, and people would unsubscribe as no value is added.

By: Lisa Hendrickson

Lisa Hendrickson — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:35:30 +0000

I really LOVE this new feature as our group, the biggest in MN was just starting to do quarterly newsletters and had to exports to gmail. I sent out our newsletter a few days ago with ease and got great feedback.

The key to emailing your group is give info, help others and give tips and other good information and you should be ok. We had a big newsletter, but we also told people how to start using the discussion boards as many folks don’t know how.

I manage “LinkedMinnesota” with almost 7000 members now.

Lisa

By: Jason Alba

Jason Alba — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:53:31 +0000

Yeah, I agree… and I think they are going to shoot themselves in the foot – I’m thinking of my “announcement” ability as a monthly newsletter… kind of. Regular bug infrequent.

here’s my group:

http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=59081

By: Brian Schuster

Brian Schuster — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:49:58 +0000

Not a bad point, though I doubt certain group members will actually listen.

Just curious, what’s your LinkedIn group? I wouldn’t mind checking it out.

Brian

By: Jason Alba

Jason Alba — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:45:51 +0000

actually, yes, I understand and don’t disagree at all. I think it will depend based on different groups, however…. some may be more for getting input from a group owner and others are more “from the crowd.”

One thing I neglected to mention, I think if a group owner abuses this feature they will lose people and regret it.

By: Brian Schuster

Brian Schuster — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:35:20 +0000

I’m not sure that I’m so excited about this. I’ve already received a few emails from some of my groups, but I don’t think it’s that valuable. The reason I join groups is to meet other individuals, not necessarily to get in contact with the group leaders.

So when I receive these group emails they’re less useful as a source of information and more a source of forced marketing. I’ve just tuned out most of it.

Do you understand why I think this, Jason?