Building Better Networks With LinkedIn Groups
EI’s Social Media Vision and Goals
• Paper presented to Senior Management Jan ‘10– Help grow our clients’ exports– Create a more transparent organisation for clients– Build increased credibility with clients and the wider community– Make existing industry networks more effective using social tools
• by encouraging clients to contribute content, in line with their own and our objectives. Promote a dialogue with clients and community on EI managed sites and foster the development of online groups around niche industry and sector issues where it is appropriate to do so
• In essence, better management of offline networks, and make it easier to do business with EI
Why LinkedIn?• Close to 500K Irish profiles, 2nd highest penetration globally
• Strong chance that our target audience (clients/partners/academia) are active on the site
• We don’t have to do the heavy lifting to build a community
• 145M+ users globally, marketing benefit to clients by being active on the platform
• Jan 2010 we had c. 600+ EI staff profiles– plenty of enthusiasm & awareness of capability - pushing an open
door
As things stand…
• 14 Groups > c. 5,500 members (definitely duplication between Groups, both clients and EI staff)
• 2 distinct types of group– industry/sector cluster (e.g. Space Industry Ireland)– region (e.g. Irish Professionals Nordic Network)
• Using Groups for– disseminating EI information (manual and automated)– client self-service– peer-to-peer support
Varying degrees of success
• “It would have been great if we got a buyer who browsed the [MedInIreland] group, found an interesting [client] company and then contacted them and bought a pallet of stents or catheters from them - but I don't think that was ever a realistic goal”
– for events, opportunity for pre-networking– certainly easier than maintaining an email list!
• IPNN: crowd-sourcing market validation from targeted community members– Reaching out and gaining support from diaspora, has led to deals! (IBN)
• Anecdotal story of the two companies who identified a potential collaboration on a LinkedIn Group to discover that they were next door to each other
– When tracking success, important to remember that members aren’t obliged to inform you through the community itself – you may never know!
Lessons learned• Groups are great for building new relationships
– crystalising “informal” networks, gives them an identity– platform for promoting successes (both EI and clients’) and (hopefully)
inspiring other companies
• The hard part is actually making a community work– Too easy to join (and create!) a Group…
• Group can't be all things to all people: will not replace your CRM, email, phone and offline events
• Think about resources…– Members slow to share content (content mix also important, IPNN/IBN)– Managing the membership to maintain the original focus
• need moderator(s) who actually finds the Group useful themselves!• otherwise, they won't really invest...don't leave it to an admin!
Lessons learned (cont.)
• Segment membership using subgroups to refine conversations, reduces irrelevant content
• May be an education piece to get members involved, some sectors may be not be among early adopters...
• Lack of monitoring/alerting feature
@TheCR
Irish People in the Public Sector Grouphttp://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=717317
Thank You
• [email protected]• http://www.linkedin.com/in/davescanlon• @ei_dscanlon
• Groups mentioned during presentation– Space Industry Ireland
• http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2455720– Irish Professionals Nordic Network
• http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2002118– Irish Business Network in Germany, Switzerland and Austria
• http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1689007
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