Content Promotion: Black Plague Spreading Through LinkedIn Groups
An epidemic has hit the Groups of LinkedIn and it could result in the death of many once resourceful focused discussions happening. If you are or ever have been active in a LinkedIn group you probably know what I’m talking about. The surge of content promotions in the discussion area of groups is drowning out the very valuable discussions that once prospered. I recorded a 6 minute screencast video illustrating the problem with some groups that were once full of great discussion and also an example of a group I’m active in that has managed to fight off the plague.
Is There a Solution to LinkedIn Group Content Promotion Spam?
Yes. Well, kind of. As shown in the video I recently watch before my eyes a group be resurrected from being flooded with the type of content promotion. It took the commitment of group members working with a group moderator to ‘crack down’ on these blatent content promotions that encourage no discussion. Some members of the group had to be booted even because they had blog post syndication software automatically feeding their posts into the group. With a combined effort the particular group I am talking about has been restored to only valuable conversations as far as you can scroll for the most part. The group moderator said he spent half a day cleaning it up after a few members expressed what I’ve said above.
Automated Syndication Software Being Used Improperly
I have a feeling it is often the case that people are using software like HubSpot and HootSuite to just auto syndicate their content to what they think is relevant groups but it’s not going into the promotion section but rather the discussion section. Some auto-posters build in some strategy by posing their content promotion as a question to the group. Often nobody responds. This is a shortfall of their content syndication strategy where they are using automation in all the wrong ways. The one LinkedIn group I use in the video ‘Content Marketing Professionals Association’ is a painful example for me because how can these people call themselves content marketing professionals yet they have no idea how their strategy falls short and is actually hurting their reputation in my opinion. A seek and assist strategy would be much more appropriate than what they are doing now push push pushing their content without encouraging discussion or adding relevance.
The Outlook
I am optimistic about this issue and I do think that one day LinkedIn will step in and do something about this. It’s been getting worse and worse so I expect the powers at LinkedIn are starting to take notice and looking at solutions to help.
Back in early 2013 LinkedIn released some updates to help fight these promotional posts. Good to see them taking action but the problem has not been yet resolved.
Jeremy Miller of Sticky Branding wrote a great post about the LinkedIn Group spam issue last year also highlighting many of the same points I make here.
Do you have any thoughts, experiences or opinions on this matter? Leave them in the comments section below and maybe together we can do something to fight this plague to these once healthy communities.
Raleigh Leslie
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I noticed when you click a “Inshare” button like the one at the bottom of this blog post that it give you a checkbox option: ‘share with group’ seems like that could be greatly contributing to the blasting of content in groups. I wonder if it goes strait to the discussion area… I think yes nd am guessing that is where 90% of the junk is coming from in groups.