Are LinkedIn Groups Worthless or a Tremendous Opportunity?

There are over two million LinkedIn groups, and, to be brutally honest with you, this LinkedIn feature has had its ups and downs over the years.

But now that LinkedIn has completely revamped this feature and even added a separate App, as well as allowing users to now join 100 groups as opposed to 50 in prior years, how much time should you realistically devote to groups?

In response to my recent LinkedIn user survey, let's see what LinkedIn users are saying about groups.
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• Over 59% of the users are in ten or more LinkedIn groups.
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• Only 28% of the users consider the Groups feature to be helpful. (In 2010, 76% of the users rated Groups as a helpful feature)

So, let's take a deeper dive into the numbers to see if there is a correlation between groups and LinkedIn success.
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Do successful users find groups to be helpful?

When asked, How important is LinkedIn in your efforts to grow your network and develop your business or help you find employment, respondents answered 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, with 5 representing extremely important and 1 representing not important.

About one-tenth of those surveyed answered 1 or 2, and only 31% of them are in 10+ groups and only 14% consider Groups to be a helpful feature.

Two-thirds of the survey respondents answered 4 or 5, and 68% of them are in 10+ groups and 33% consider Groups to be a helpful feature.

Conclusion: Even though most LinkedIn users are currently finding groups to be significantly less helpful, the users who consider LinkedIn to be very important to their business and career success are still joining lots of groups and attributing some of their success to group membership.
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Simple ways LinkedIn groups can help you be more successful

Some of these suggestions may seem fairly obvious, but others relate to more advanced concepts or features that are difficult for the average LinkedIn user to find.
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• Groups enable you to virtually network with people in your target audience without leaving your home or office. Engaging with people in the right groups can easily be your most productive LinkedIn activity.
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• You can share your industry expertise by commenting and sharing information on the latest trends, products and happenings. Positioning yourself and your company can be easy in industry-related groups if you concentrate on helping people rather than simply trying to get fellow members to visit your website or buy your products.
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• You can post job openings for free or announce that you're looking for employment in the Jobs section of each group. This is especially helpful when the group relates specifically to your industry.
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• Each calendar month you can direct message (for free) up to fifteen fellow group members who are not part of your first-level network. Typically you'd have to use a $10 InMail to message a fellow group member to whom you're not connected.
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• Your individual search ranking will improve when you and the searcher are members of the same group. LinkedIn's search algorithm is a highly kept secret, but some experts have speculated that fellow group members are equivalent to second-degree connections.
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• People may be more likely to accept your invitation to connect on LinkedIn if you belong to the same group(s). If you have a free LinkedIn membership, you can do an advanced people search and filter for a specific LinkedIn group. If you have a premium membership, you can search for people who belong to multiple groups.
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• Based on LinkedIn research, you will increase your number of profile views by four times if you're active in groups. More profile views typically leads to good things, especially if those viewers are members of a group related to your industry.

LinkedIn groups have lots of potential, and most of the users I talk to hope the latest revisions will mean brighter days ahead for this once highly coveted LinkedIn feature. Why not join me in testing the waters by becoming active in a couple groups--and hopefully the results will be a welcome surprise.

To help you get started, download my free worksheet LinkedIn Groups: Ca$h in on This Powerful Tool.

Download (PDF, 345KB)

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