Avoiding Linkedin group fatigue

Once the first destination for job seekers, Linkedin has fast developed its abilIty to cater for the needs of the modern business professional. In part a response to the phenomenal viral uptake of Facebook, the Linkedin boffins factored in a range of specific functionality to draw professionals into spending more time on the site.

More recently this has included blog plug-ins, news digests (Linkedin Today) and Status Updates, but it is the older ones that work the best.

Recent research suggests that over half of registered users now frequent one of the many thousand groups. Most lurk, watching and listening whilst a small, vocal minority set the agenda and contribute to the discussion. As you might expect, there is a group covering everything – as my current list below shows.

But there is creep. As groups are increasingly seen as the gateway to influence, more are springing up. People are starting more groups, which means more digests, more alerts, more email. Unless you opt out, you’re signing yourself up to the daily or weekly digest of activity – and if you join a discussion, you risk receiving an email every time a single subsequent response is posted thereafter.

If like me, you are a member of a large number of geographical, sector, job specific and special interest groups, your inbox can pretty quickly start to look like this. Information brings knowledge, but everyday, this can become overpowering.

When it comes to Linkedin matters, most users forget the settings they activated when they joined. For groups. it is as simple as switching the activation of daily to weekly email alerts to avoid the level of email above every day if you don’t want it.

Or not being in so many groups!

How often do you check the relevance of the groups you are a member of? Chances are you rely on only a handful.

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