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

• david.scanlon@enterprise-ireland.com• 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