Contents
Introduction
LinkedIn super sized groups offer the chance to broaden your network very quickly especially if you have less than 500 connections.
Students will do well if they join a group which is aligned or close to their studies.
It gives them a chance to view future employees online, to understand the sector of future employment and to network in advance of their graduation or job search.
I requested to join all on the same day and Telecoms Professionals were the first to accept my request to join.
LinkedIn groups with over 350,000 members
Software & Technology Professionals: Managers | HR | Blockchain | Investors
(1.8 million members) – A tech group which morphed into Blockchain as its focus. A good number of connections of mine are members through their interest in the topic and casual management.
(1.6 million members) is well managed and has a very diverse membership. It has an active anti-spam policy and is worth joining.
(970,000 members) is actively managed and for bankers, insurance or those interested in crypto currencies, it is worth considering being a member.
( 900,000 members) is not accepting new members unless you are senior HR and all posts are restricted to English only. Listed but not worth joining.
(860,000 members) is a group managed and run by recruiter.com, it has a number of managers supporting the owner and is similar to many owned by recruiting or staffing companies on LinkedIn.
(833,000 members) is a sister group to the group above. It could be a group worth considering if you want to reach out to a variety of members who are not all recruiters.
(700,000 members) is an interesting group which is managed by the team from Marketing Tech News and Encore Events. Its rules are quite simple and they have a good number of managers.
(634,000 members) owned by the CTO of Hubspot but limited in terms of management and it has an outdated write-up of the group. One to look at and investigate, then decide.
(617,000 members) is a nicely managed group which has been known to me for many years. If you have an interest in IoT, 5G or similar topics then you should be a member.
Pete Asmus’ Real Estate Networking
(575,000 members) is the biggest group focussed on property investment and other related realtor roles, technology and people who are interested in this sector. It would be a good group to join if you were seeking some interesting global projects and worked in finance or a family office.
Retail Industry Professionals Group
(551,000 members) is run and managed by the team at Retail Dive. They offer a choice of newsletters to keep you informed and the group is worth consideration if you are in hospitality, call center or networking, a retail or supply chain technology supplier.
Cloud Computing, SaaS & Virtualization
(480,000 members) is run and managed by TechForge, an established independent publishing company with more than 3.3 million readers. Clients include some of the top names in the industry and the group membership mirrors this making it a good group for CTO and CIOs.
Information Security Community
(399,000 members) is an interesting group and it has a diverse membership including those in Blockchain, compliance and ethical hacking.
Event Planning & Event Management
(379,000 members) is the top group for events, hotel F&B or MICE. The posts and advice are interesting and if you have to plan a corporate event, there is a good resource for you to look at trends and to reach out to event management professionals for their advice.
(391,000 members) is run by Paul who adopts a “open networking” management style for his group. He maintains a rule based post management policy and you would do well to read the rules before you join to avoid making a “newbie” mistake.
(367,000 members) is strictly managed and topic posts should be SAP related. Members ask questions related to products, interfaces whilst addressing problems or giving answers. It has a diverse membership representing users, customers and SAP suppliers or consultancies.
(399,000 members) is run by John Backer a lifelong IT professional and ex-IBM employee. It is well represented with recruiters and John is approachable if you have any questions.
Super-sized groups need a strategy if you join today
The member search results will only list 3000 members total (no matter which lower level Premium – sales or recruiter subscription you have).
This means in a group of close to 500,000 members, you will only ever see 0.6% of the total on a view member click.
An idea given to me which has actually got me trapped into doing this as a reader new to a group is the strategy of concentrating on the active members (assume 10% maximum of the group membership).
Just like Reddit, Quora or elsewhere you need to engage and add to the discussion threads.
When you do, always call out people in the discussion using @first name second name and make your comment.
Remember to double check the list LinkedIn auto-generate to make sure that you have the right person (a group so large is bound to have same name members).
Plan to do this every few days for a couple of weeks. Why?
Here is the strategy I was given:
When you post for the next or first time, you will have a few reference beacons who can be used as a callout for yourself and included in the post text. It also means you are on group topic and appear to know what you are doing and have been in the group for a long time.
Why is this important?
A casual observer will log-in, not see much except for one or three posts with an active discussion.
More impressive, it is your post as a new member and if we assume the group has 5% of its total reading the comments or title and viewing the image, it means your early or first post has 25,000 views.
This also fits the LinkedIn algorithm pattern as well making them think you have a “top” post as you continue your conversation with fellow group members.
It takes time to do this, yet it is very worthwhile longer-term.
Group Acceptances Within 24Hrs
I mentioned earlier that I would “request to join” all the groups in the list.
More importantly is the time it takes to “get in” and be accepted. Only four groups accepted my request within the first 24hrs, they were (no order):
First impressions of being in the group
Cloud Computing, SaaS & Virtualization – tidy, a number of IT training offers and a very active group with multiple posts every hour. The owner and managers have a job on keeping this managed. An article I would read reference Walmart and Blockchain is easily found in the scroll down. This is a useful group to be aware of and active and I would mark it as a category 2 group (visit every two weeks and take time to get to know it on first proper visit).
Marketing Communication: It clearly has lower quality posts in the stream of posts at the time of first joining. There are weird affiliate type posts including one for compressed air, another for braces. These happen when people seem to be following the YouTube videos of how to earn click through revenue using LinkedIn. Later in the scroll down there are better aligned content posts. We may be in a gap between moderator checks. It is a category 3 group (visit twice a month) check-in. My problem with what I saw is that I have other groups which are smaller which seem to offer me more.
Telecoms Professionals – I know this group and I am not surprised they accepted me into the group first. The landscape is tidy, posts are moderated in my European time zone I think which helps. A mix of course offers, technology, schematics and general posts which seem to be aligned to the group title and rules. It is a category 1 group. There is so much fluff and huff about 5G, I do use this group as a reference point regularly.
Procurement Professionals – Best in class – last of the 4 to let me join but by only 1hr. Paul the group owner clearly runs a tight ship based on the initial viewing of the posts. There seems to be a lot less clutter compared to other groups and posts are 2-3 in a working day hour. There was the expected post on PPAP and a great one asking to buy as much warehouse racking as you have for their warehouse project in India. It was good to see a nice document posted by someone seeking a new job. I am ranking this a category 1 as it is worth a weekly visit and a more detailed future browsing of the members.
LinkedIn Group additional acceptances after 5 days
I left the groups acceptances check alone for a few days. Upon my return I discovered I had been accepted to the following LinkedIn groups:
First impressions of being in the group
Finance Club – A mix of posts and not as frequent as I would expect for a group so large. India related posts seem to dominate. There is clearly a morning rush to post and a variety of finance related software or non-bank sector content. The option trader and finance for your future posts are why I mark this a category 3 – to return later group.
Lean Six Sigma: It clearly has lower quality posts in the stream of content from relieving your constipation issues to yoga for calm days. It is an odd one to be joining at first glance and of little value because I see similar posts from members who are in other “LinkedIn Super Groups.” It is my first group where I have marked for a future visit to review to leave. A category 3 as soon as I logged in to it.
Information Security Community – The stream of posts are a mish-mash of content and some love the idea of posting a Microsoft article and with no write-up and 20 #hashtags. A group with potential but suffering from the few who post hourly and make reading any good content difficult. Not as wild in post variation as the group above. One to watch and to track as a once a month visit to check for the odd article. A category 2 for personal interest reasons.
Pete Asmus’ Real Estate Networking Group (Investor Strategies) – It would not be a group I would normally join. It is a free for anyone to post space and the only investment project was for a housing project in India in the first 30 posts. The balance included promotional and computer software projects which were not property related, apps and Microsoft for example. Marked on to leave after a future review. Category 3 as I cannot search or see too many members I would network or connect with for the future as I have no USA property interests based on the first membership pages I reviewed. Category 3 – low potential for me personally.
Harvard Business Review – Clean and posts with discussions numbering 100+ comments. It is clearly a well managed and on brand group with a variety of posts. There were no junk posts and all the comments I read seemed to have relevancy and respect for others in the discussion thread. It is unlikely that there are many if any other groups on LinkedIn with such quality of content available. LinkedIn themselves will see this is an asset requiring effort and support. A category 1 group worth a weekly visit.
Result after 1 week - Only 9 LinkedIn Super Group acceptances
1st June 2020 - Update - Finished and Some Group Managers Disappoint
I did not get accepted to all groups even after 6 months of waiting.
You can remove your request to joins from the groups you are still waiting to join.
Would I normally wait 6 months – no. This exercise needed to be completed.
To not be accepted into a group and to be left hanging for 6 months for 5 groups is no great loss. Normally I would leave after 6 weeks.
It is important to clean up your membership requests. LinkedIn limit you to a total number of groups and if you do not manage them, a group manager will try to accept you and get a “this member is already a member of the maximum number of groups” message.
A few and I do mean a few will tell you of your limit problem.
Most will simply deny you because the choices for a manager are accept member or deny request.
To learn more:
To withdraw your LinkedIn Group Membership request visit LinkedIn help
To conclude:
I was denied with no message to a few groups, no idea why, nor do I care.
More importantly having visited some groups more frequently than others the experience has provided a few group management learning points and a few companies worth tracking away from the group.
A few managers make it worthwhile sticking around in their group. The posts and content are well managed.
I also realised not all groups are run for the same motives.
As suspected at the start I needed to leave a few.
I have, I also bumped into a well known problem that LinkedIn and Microsoft still have to address.
One example:
SocialMediopolis.com – New Home of Social Media Marketing Group with
1,993,879 members
Why?
There has been nothing of note posted in the last 6 months.
All post history has been removed except for the standard sales pitch content for the managers co-operative of the group.
The clean-up is done weekly – monthly so the posts are repetitive to say the least.
It is a clear monetisation sales pipeline funnel.
They have every right to do it and have revised the group rules to include the activity.
I have left today, it serves no purpose compared to how it used to be in the past when named differently.
Am I likely to rejoin, no, like all group members reading this, we know there are better social media and LinkedIn marketing groups with smaller membership numbers out there.
Ones where you have a voice and in many have real B2B lead generation or SEO discussions, not be sold a course or a software platform CRM or similar.
If you did not read the group post on how to get the most from LinkedIn groups, it may help.
If you did not, it is a 10 minute read here
(remember you have a download in your member`s area)