Are Linkedin Groups Still Useful for Marketing?

Are Linkedin Groups Useful?

I still read in posts from Linkedin ‘experts’ and various social media sites that LinkedIn Groups are one of the best ways to get in front of prospects and demonstrate your expertise.

Unfortunately LinkedIn groups seem dead to me.

I dropped out of LinkedIn groups a few years ago because, while they were active with discussion the discussion was:

• of very poor quality
• highly opinionated without justification
• incredibly argumentative without ‘listening’ to the other side

And I just became tired of reading it, and being on the receiving end of “that won’t work” opinions’ despite posting factual success experiences.
But, since I’m trying to figure out how to use LinkedIn for marketing I’ve gone back through the groups I subscribe to.

I evaluated my groups for value

I adopted the following strategy to evaluate linkedin groups:

• for each group I am in:
  • does it give value to me? i.e. looking over the last 50 or so posts, did they add value?
  • are my prospects in this group?

If they answer to either is “No” then leave the group.

Most were full of spam posts and no discussion

Most of the groups were filled with ‘peers’ rather than ‘prospects’ and so many of the groups were actually filled with the same ‘posts’. I went from group to group seeing the same promotional posts from people in each group.
Perhaps that marketing strategy works - publish the same post in each group, regardless of its relevance to the group. But to me it seems like spam.

• I could find no group that had any real discussion.
• I could find no group that had ‘prospects’ in it.
• I left many of the groups I was subscribed to.

How to find new groups?

I’m going to start searching for ‘prospects’ and seeing what groups they have joined.
And then, once I gain access to the groups, I can evaluate them using the ‘value’ strategy I listed above.
I remain to be convinced if LinkedIn groups will add value to my marketing strategy.