LinkedIn group to promote industry and events

For B2B and promoting industrial events, LinkedIn is probably one of the more focused social media tools an event organizer can leverage on, but what exactly makes it so good?

I'm helping a friend who is running an event management company that promotes the use of new sustainable energy for vehicles. A group was started before the event next month and got slightly more than 50 members now.

After getting used to the different arsenals you can leverage on LinkedIn, I have some observations.

In LinkedIn, the people that join your group are usually from the industry, and most of them have a lot of knowledge. There is sometimes no replies, even in big groups if the topic is not interactive enough, simply because a lot of people who join the groups are just "readers" and not a lot of them will be active enough to post discussions.

Compared to Facebook, many users do not check their LinkedIn everyday. Many people I connect with check LinkedIn once a week. In terms of going into groups and reading or posting discussions, people check even less.

Suggested from fellow social media enthusiasts, I started a Facebook group on the same topic and cross promoted the groups on both LinkedIn and Facebook. And testing some links posted, I find that people are much more active on Facebook than LinkedIn. However, many people may still feel uncomfortable to join groups in Facebook, and they are more likely to participate in discussions on a LinkedIn group.

The idea sort of worked as whenever there is new information, I post on LinkedIn and Facebook, providing multiple touchpoints for group members, and members do get involved slightly more as there are multiple places to get to the discussions and news.

I hope to get more data on this new hybrid way of using a Facebook Group to draw people to the LinkedIn group for discussions, will provide more information soon.

-- Robin Low