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LinkedIn Doesn't Get The Social Media World

LinkedIn has experienced HUGE growth -- particularly in the business/professional sector of the social media space.  But recent experiences with LinkedIn have led me to believe that they are accidental recipients of that growth, and don't really get (nor are they interested in) the social media world and space.  There are things that made LinkedIn a great place for business and professional networking -- distinct from Facebook, MySpace or the other social media sites, and now I'm certain that they have no idea what made them a great fit for the business world.

Last March (2008), I started a Group at Linked in, called the B2B Online Marketing group.  I had a designer develop a logo for it (because back then, you could only have a little logo that would display on a user's profile, and your group could link to an outside URL -- there was no other ability for group members to participate with one another).  Because we wanted to foster conversation with other B2B Marketers specifically about online marketing and what was working, etc., we started the microsite called B2B Online Marketing Pros (http://www.b2bonlinemarketingpros.com) - and associated that with the URL for the group.  Each month (or every other month) we would aggregate topics from around the Net, relevant to B2B Online Marketers and send a newsletter out to our group membership.

LinkedIn made the name and email address available to Group Owners -- and tells the users who are joining a group that this will happen.  LinkedIn also provided a CSV download of those members or those requesting membership to the group owner.  So it was really easy to export that list, and import it into the tools we used to communicate and measure responses, so we could gauge how well we were hitting the needs of the group with the content we were featuring and aggregating -- because we're interested in providing relevant content that helps B2B Online Marketers put together winning strategies.

The group is growing at about 240 members a month -- which is a pretty good clip, and new members get a nicely formed welcome message that includes the last email newsletter subject (and link to the site).

Then, 2 weeks ago, LinkedIn moved out "new" functionality for Group Owners -- called an Announcement feature, and at the same time removed the ability to export group member information.  Never mind that the group owners have grown their groups using LinkedIn, that many of them brought their offline groups to LinkedIn to make the management of the groups easier and provide a more "social" framework for interaction of the folks in their group.  So being able to send a monthly newsletter out, and export all of the current email addresses of your group membership, is something that many of LinkedIn groups were built around.  LinkedIn's response was "now that we've given you the announcement feature, you don't need to export members information." 

Point #1:  Their announcement feature provides ZERO ability to format the email, removes all the formatting so it gets delivered in a big text blob that isn't readable at all -- it's NOTHING I would ever send to my membership -- here's a clip of what it looks like:

Note: it is sent from a "noreply" email at LinkedIn, so no one could just hit reply and type a message that would be received by anyone, and there are zero statistics provided about open, clickthrough, etc.

Point #2:  LinkedIn has it's own group called the LinkedIn Products Forum that has a lot of group owners in it, and we have provided feedback to LinkedIn re: their products, features, and capabilities consistently.  When this "upgrade" was released, there were immediate discussions that were started, and to-date, there have been 117 comments in all -- making this subject THE MOST talked about, with some group owners imploring LinkedIn to put the export capability back in place. 

What has been LinkedIn's response?  NOTHING.  NADA.  They are absent.  I think they figure they have the market on the professional social media space, or that the venture money they received has VC's pushing that they need to be more like Facebook -- so they are blindly going forward trying to somehow "catch up" with what's offered by the Facebook crowd, with no understanding or willingness to engage with those who have helped build LinkedIn as the professional social space that it is.

I'm reminded of how Dell treated the social media space, and got nailed -- and now they have a very social strategy.  But I expect more from LinkedIn.  The social media realm is where they live, isn't it?  Or are they just a traditional, lucky company that doesn't really understand the success they've achieved? (unfortunately, I now believe it's the latter).

Here's the email I send out (and it has a way for folks to unsubscribe -- or reply to the email so we can read it), and it has a way for us to understand what happened with that email -- BASIC marketing tools to help grow interest and provide more relevant content (i.e. GROW THE GROUP AND IT'S VALUE TO THE GROUP MEMBERSHIP).

 

Further, we have extensive metrics so we can gauge how the content was received, and if it provided value to our group membership:

Suffice it to say, our latest email, that went out with our focus on Social Media Marketing, got a 33% open rate and a 48% click-through rate, which is very high based on standard email metrics.

So, besides being inept at providing functionality, LinkedIn makes unilateral decisions about it's functionality without regard to the "free" labor they get by way of people organizing their groups (which LinkedIn sells targeted advertising for their group pages).  And when we do raise up and sound the alarm, and at times even plead with LinkedIn to respond and join the conversation, and engage with us, they remain silent. 

The only thing I can think to do is take it to the blogosphere -- and see what we can accomplish here.

Please post your comments!

Kim

Use Social Media to Gain PR Traction

I was at a coffee gathering for the local Business Marketing Association as a follow-up to a social media panel presentation that I was unable to attend the previous week.  It was a great conversation -- but there was this one idea that caught my attention, and I'm wondering who else out there is doing this as part of your online marketing strategy:

Get the editorial calendars for the trade publications in your industry or for your target markets, and plan your editorial calendar ahead of theirs, so you can have blog posts, videos, eBooks, etc., on topics that they will be covering, so they have a chance of getting picked up by the pubs when they're pulling together their content.

Given that we don't have a lot of time on our hands, it seems to me that this is an easy way to help establish the editorial calendar and schedule within your organization for specific target markets, to get out in front of those audiences, and help augment your search engine optimization for them as well.

What do you think?

Social Nets and Blogs More Popular Than E-Mail

Pulled right from eMarketer: "according to Nielsen Online, more people in the US and other leading digital countries worldwide are using social networks and blogs than e-mail."  This is interesting, because while I was in San Diego at the Online Marketing Summit in February, there was a terrific panel discussion about this very topic -- well sort of -- the question was, "Will Social Media take over email in effectiveness?" -- which is how some people might read the headline above.

The answer from the panel throughout the discussion was, No.  Think about it -- what is the ONE thing that all social media sites ask for when you set up an account?  Yep, email address.  How do you know that someone has asked to be in your network?  Yep, you get an email.

Just like in previous times, when people thought the TV was the demise of radio, it wasn't.  The uses are just different.  In terms of online marketing in a B2B world, email still provides the best ROI of the online media.  Targeted email and drip campaigns can increase those returns significantly, and can be measured through the sales cycle as leads convert to customers.

So don't go throwing the baby out with the bathwater!  We might be using social media more to connect and keep up with groups of friends and colleagues, but email is still hugely effective, and in many ways keeps us alerted to things happening within our social networks.

Here's the article at eMarketer: Social Nets and Blogs more popular than e-mail.