Seemingly out of nowhere, LinkedIn removed groups from the core features and banished them to a difficult-to-find back page on the site. Now, mostly abandoned by the users and group owners, they have become virtual ghost towns where only the most desperate spammers roam. But now LinkedIn is thinking to resurrect this feature once again.
And here’s why:
Long back in the history of the dawn of social media, LinkedIn groups were flourishing communities of professionals who yielded mutual business gains. There was utterly no better place to go on the Internet for the industry-related conversations and networking.
Last month, LinkedIn began notifying group owners by sending them a message announcing a renewed focus on their decision to resurrect groups and putting them into the core user experience during 2018.
Groups will be accessible from the homepage on both desktop and mobile, and content shared in groups will begin appearing in the main news feed.
The new groups on LinkedIn will feature improved communication tools including the ability to @mention other members in conversations. Whether group owners and admins will have expanded capabilities to monitor conversations remains to be seen.
Expanded content options in groups will also become available, including video.
It is exciting to see LinkedIn bring groups back to life on the site. In the past, people made some of the most valuable connections that they had ever made in business from networking in LinkedIn groups.
What they found the key to networking within groups on LinkedIn and more recently on Facebook is to provide a ton of value to the discussions where other users are expressing pain points within their business. Doing so helps you come across as a solutions expert within your niche.
LinkedIn is using the age-old tactic of bringing back a legacy product that was popular with customers and giving a sleek new look to try bring users back to the platform. Some of the experts I’ve talked to are saying that the ones who left LinkedIn’s professional groups have found homes on other platforms like Facebook.
And, it is evident that there are enough professionals out there who believe that using Facebook groups for networking is less than ideal.
If LinkedIn delivers on its promise of an enhanced user experience within groups, it will once again become the prominent place for targeted professional networking on social media.
