How to Leave a Group on LinkedIn

You’ve joined several groups on LinkedIn and you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with all the email you’re getting from LinkedIn Groups, in addition to your already overflowing inbox.

Have you ever wondered how to leave a group?  It’s not totally intuitive right off the bat, so here’s a quick step by step guide:

  1. When logged into LinkedIn, choose Groups and then Your Groups from the options under Groups.
  2. Select the group you wish to remove yourself from
  3. Look for the More… tab at the top of the Groups page
  4. Click on More… and choose My Settings
  5. At the bottom right hand side of this page is a “Leave Group” button
  6. Click on that button to unsubscribe from the group.  Note that this will immediately remove you from the group.  You may of course join back again right away, but remember that you also may need to be accepted by the group administrator again if there is moderation on the group.

Also note that on the My Settings page you may adjust all the settings for how much email you receive from the group and how often you receive a digest

What are your favorite groups?  Would you care to share what you’ve learned and/or experienced by being part of a LinkedIn Group?

3 Reasons Why LinkedIn Polls are Useless

I’m not usually one to complain publicly about issues, but I think LinkedIn is missing a huge opportunity to improve user experience here.

Why LinkedIn Polls are Useless:

  1. There is no way to share the poll to get feedback from your own network.
  2. There is no way to share the poll on other social networks to solicit feedback
  3. LinkedIn is not interested in fixing the issue.

Linked In Poll

So you have a business and you’re doing your due diligence and collecting feedback about your product or industry. LinkedIn seems like a good place to ask people for feedback because you’ve started building you network and there are people in it who may offer valuable opinions to your questions. You see a link to a poll that someone in your network has posted and because you’re like me and enjoy experimenting and learning by experience, you’re intrigued by the idea of creating your own poll on LinkedIn to see what kind of response you can get. So you set up the poll, which is really simple. Great job, LinkedIn, no problems there.

However, when you try to link to your handy dandy new poll to share it, you find you that the only share link that LinkedIn provides is one to the poll results. Well what good is that if no-one can find your poll and you can’t share it via Twitter, Facebook, your blog or other favorite social network? That’s right, a big fat zero! Thanks LinkedIn, you just lost my interest in this application.

So I wrote to LinkedIn customer support explaining that they are a little behind the times in this share economy that we live in today and suggested that they create a way for people to share the poll question screen with their network and provide a link to share this on other networks and here’s the response I received in return:
—-
Thread Response
(LinkedIn – Katie)
03/01/2010 02:04 PM
Dear Susan,

Thank you for contacting LinkedIn Customer Support.

The functionality described is not available.

Have a great day and thank you for being a valued member of our LinkedIn community!

Katie
LinkedIn Customer Support

Auto-Response
02/26/2010 02:11 PM
LinkedIn has received your question. A service professional will review and respond to your inquiry as quickly as possible. Thank you!

Check out our free Learning Center (http://learn.linkedin.com/training) offering learn at your own pace e-learning modules and free classes.
Search our online Customer Service Center (http://linkedin.custhelp.com) for LinkedIn FAQ topics.

Customer (Susan Barnes)
02/26/2010 02:11 PM
I would love to be able to share a poll that I create on LinkedIn with my other social networks so that I can get maximum reach and responses on the poll. Why don’t you make this easy?
I see the link to the results, but there is no link to share the actual poll.

Thanks,
Susan

In order to create a poll and share it with my LinkedIn network and other social communities, I am going to use something like Poll Daddy instead.

What do you think LinkedIn should do?

For Best Results in Social Media, Think L.O.V.E.

On Sunday, I gave a presentation on Social Media for Market Research in Michaela Hayes‘ Market Research class for the Green MBA Program students at Dominican University of California.

In working on the deck, I came up with a new way to remember your what your social media plan should include.  And it’s so easy to remember, because it spells the word LOVE.  We all love to be loved, to be in love, to give love and to get love and that’s what social media is all about.  It’s about LOVE.

L = Listen
O = Offer
V = Visit
E = Engage

Listen
Listening is one of the best ways to show your love for someone.  You can’t have a conversation unless you are listening to the other person, (think your ideal audience) and asking them questions about how they are and what makes them happy.  If you haven’t started listening in the social media space, a good place to start is with Google Alerts.  Simply enter the name of your product, business, favorite person or project, and alerts will send you emails detailing any mentions of your interest on the web.

Twitter’s search allows you to see what peeps are tweeting about in the Twittersphere. Enter a few keyword phrases into search.twitter.com and see who is talking about it in on Twitter.  Find the people you want to follow and join the global conversation.

Collecta.com is another way to get real time results and listen to the buzz about your product or industry online.

And a little out of the box, but still part of listening, is asking questions of your network:  On Facebook, I dare you to ask your friends their opinion of __________ and on LinkedIn, pose a question to one of the groups you are a member of.  You’ll be amazed at the number and quality of responses.

Offer
Having something to offer the love of your life is always a good thing, so think about what you can offer your ideal audience in your social networks as well.  Are you sharing links to valuable content with them?  Are you posting humorous videos, inspirational quotes, or even just quippy remarks.  Whatever you are offering keeps you top of mind for the people that see your posts and that is always a good thing, because when they are thinking of referring a friend to an expert in your field, hello, you’re it.

Visit
What would a relationship be without visits?  You have to spend time with someone in order to get to know them, silly.  So go and visit some blogs about your favorite product, or topic.  Post a comment or two and join the conversation.  It may not lead to your next million right now, but it will make you feel good and allow you to practice sharing the love.

Engage
Yes, you’ve reached that point in the relationship when it’s time to pop the question.  Is this a relationship with long term potential or mutual benefit?  To engage your ideal audience, you need to add value, spark their attention, keep them informed and be top of mind.  You want your ideal audience to think of you as an expert, a friend, a confident and someone with whom having a long term relationship will be good, so treat them with respect and show them some love.

Contests and giveaways work well for engaging as does plain old GOOD CONTENT!

So, my friends, here’s my advice to you:  For best results in social media, think L.O.V.E.
Susan

P.S.  I love you.

An Introduction to Social Networking Presentation in Oakland

Save the date:  September 25, 2009 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

I am honored to have been invited and excited to be giving a presentation titled “An Introduction to Social Networking:  Tools to Grow Your Business, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn…what works for you?” The presentation is to women entrepreneurs as part of  a joint effort by Honorable Jane Brunner, Oakland City Council President and the East Bay Community Foundation.  It is one of many presentations in Councilperson Jane Brunner’s “Women In Business” Brownbag Lunch Series – Informative workshops targeted at women entrepreneurs.

It should be a great way to personally network with some cool women in business as well.  Please share this flyer with your friends and colleagues.

To attend, please RSVP by September 21, 2009 to Luis Aguilar via email at laguilar@eastbaycf.org or phone at (510) 208-0845.