I am often asked about integrating LinkedIn into a social media strategy. Should I do it? How much time should I spend on it? Will I get results?

While these are frequent questions, it’s not the top question and perhaps knowing that will provide the answer to the others. The number one question I get about LinkedIn: How do I use it?

Here are a few things you should know about LinkedIn. With 532 million users as of January 2018, it is a fantastic social media platform for some.

Who is on LinkedIn?

Primarily, human resources professionals, job seekers, and business development folks. Are you a job-seeker, human resources professional or recruiter? LinkedIn should be a top priority. If you are in business development, then like with any marketing tactic, you should consider your audience.

If the typical title for the people you want to do business with is store-owner, developer, or property manager, then you may be spending your time posting to a room full of people that are not going to make a difference to your primary objective.

LinkedIn has changed.

Last year, LinkedIn made a huge commitment to update their platform. The strategy was to make it more user-friendly – a little more like Facebook if you will. Here is what happened. Instead of fulfilling their niche of being a “social media platform for professional use,” we started seeing more cats and political posts which is counter to what LinkedIn has been known for.

One specific change that LinkedIn made was how the Groups functioned. Groups were probably the best social aspect of Facebook. Prior to its reinvention, it was the space where people with common interests could exchange ideas. This made it easier to find the sub-sets of people that didn’t fit into the typical “human resources professionals, job seekers, and business development folks” mold and connect with professionals with other interests such as real estate, property management, executive suite operations, retail management, etc.

After the platform changes, the Group functions a bit outside of the regular platform (kind of like the proverbial red-headed stepchild) making it less user-friendly. It seemed that LinkedIn took away all of the good reasons to be on their platform. I believe that Facebook realized the gap that LinkedIn’s changes made because I noticed that Facebook has been promoting the use of groups far more frequently to business pages.

Here is the good news.

LinkedIn has come to the realization that it needs to go back to what worked and they are now backpedaling on some of its changes. I received a notification from them today and here is what it said:

“Groups is at the heart of what makes LinkedIn a trusted place for professionals to help and support one another, and the changes we’re planning will make Groups a bigger part of the main LinkedIn experience.”

I, for one, am looking forward to the return of the Group experience within the primary LinkedIn application and I am glad they are putting their focus on improving that functionality. I look forward to the updates and the improvements and will keep you posted as I notice changes as well.

What you need to know about the transition

If you had been using the standalone iOS app for Groups, LinkedIn will no longer support it as focuses on re-integrating Groups back into the core LinkedIn experience. That app will stop working as of February 15, 2018. Existing group memberships and contributions will not be affected as part of these change.

Are you interested in making the most out of your social media strategy? The answer is not always the formula you read on some guru’s blog. Feel free to schedule a consultation and we’ll talk about your specific situation and how we can make the most of your resources.

Now, about those cats…