I recently took over managing a group on LinkedIn. What is a group? It’s a bunch of people who have specific, definable interests around which they can coalesce and interact. Any LI member can create a group and anyone can join groups that interest them. Some are open and some require an application to join to be approved. These tips are about the latter. Here are 8 tips to successfully manage a group, ensuring it’s well-functioning for everyone’s benefit:
- Encourage useful discussions and topics, beginning with examples of your own. Look at the most popular discussions and rotate them through the Manager’s Choice carousel.
- Initiate good discussions, comment meaningfully on other’s discussions and strive to be a top contributor without abusing your manager position.
- Make sensible rules and communicate them–what is open for discussion and what is a promotion; don’t let spam annoy the group members.
- Don’t tolerate way off topic discussions or comments–delete them. Put repeat offenders in the moderation queue–meaning nothing they post goes up in the group without your or another manager/moderator’s approval.
- Don’t tolerate abusive, profane or threatening comments. Put offenders in moderation or if especially egregious, block and delete them from the group.
- Don’t use auto-join; review requests to join if yours is not an open group. Do use auto-send welcome messages that include specifics about the group, as well as do’s and don’ts. Do use auto-send messages for those member requests you decline.
- Stay active; visit the group every day, even if only for a short time, so that items in moderation don’t stay there too long or requests to join languish either.
- If the group is too big to handle on your own, recruit some moderator’s or another manager from among the most active members.