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February Net2 Think Tank: Using Linkedin for Change
Linkedin is much more than just a site for building your resume and your recommendations from previous employers. While over 90 million people have Linkedin accounts, few seem to be talking about it's utility for social change anymore. An important player in the online community arena, we wonder if Linkedin still has potential as a space for change. This month, we're hoping to re-start the dialogue about Linkedin, and learn how organizations and individuals can use it to engage supporters.
How are you using Linkedin to support the efforts of your nonprofit or social enterprise? Which tactics seem to be working for your community - and which aren't? Tell us about how you're using Linkedin and all of the hints and tricks to curate and moderate that space for maximum impact.
Share your best practices with the NetSquared Community as part of this month's Net2 Think Tank!
Topic:
How are you using Linkedin to support the efforts of your nonprofit or social enterprise? Which tactics seem to be working for your community - and which aren't? Tell us about how you're using Linkedin and all of the hints and tricks to curate and moderate that space for maximum impact.
Deadline: Saturday, February 19th
How to contribute:
- Post your response online: Leave a comment below, write on your own blog or website, post on the NetSquared Community Blog, or share your feedback on Facebook or Linkedin.
- Tag your post, comment, or tweet with net2thinktank.
- Email Claire Sale the link to your post.
- Have you written about this topic in the past? Great! Simply add the net2thinktank tag to your post and email us the link.
Be sure to get your submission in by emailing Claire the link to your post by Saturday, February 19th.
The roundup of contributions will be posted on the NetSquared blog on Monday, February 21st.
About Net2 Think Tank:
Net2 Think Tank is a monthly blogging/social networking event open to anyone and is a great way to participate in an exchange of ideas. We post a question or topic to the NetSquared community and participants submit responses either on their own blogs, the NetSquared Community Blog, or using social media. Tag your post with "net2thinktank" and email a link to us to be included. At the end of the month, the entries get pulled together in the Net2 Think Tank Round-Up.
- Claire Sale's blog
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Check out the round-up!
This Think Tank is now closed. Here's the round-up of community responses: http://netsquared.org/blog/claire-sale/february-net2-think-tank-round-using-lin
LinkedIn as community platform, not just a social network
I have found that the groups functionality in LinkedIn is more powerful than most email lists I belong to. There are many nonprofit groups to choose from and you can find them in the groups directory.
The have a graphical email push, so you don't need to remember to visit them, and you don't need to click in and log in (unless you want to respond). The added benefit is that joining a LinkedIn group allows you to have access to the profiles of hundreds of thousands of other group members, via the groups directory, that share your interests.
The groups are member-generated, and the member directory will inform you of group members in your network, so you know, before you join, if some of your peeps are involved.
Your profile summary will appear next to your posts in groups and members will get an email alerting them of your post, so it's a great way to build a network, based on your knowledge.
TechSoup Linkedin Group
Hi Megan and Susan - thanks for sharing your feedback from moderating the TechSoup group and others on Linkedin. I'll be posting the Round-up of responses on Monday -- looking forward to sharing your submissions!
How TechSoup is using LinkedIn
Great topic! Just wanted to weigh in here with my experience moderating the TechSoup LinkedIn group. LinkedIn recently changed their group options to allow for open groups. We opted to make our group open which is helpful as it lets people who are not group members see the discussions. With an open group, discussions are also indexed by Google which opens up the coversation to a wider audience.
We use LinkedIn to promote events and post jobs at TechSoup (and allow members to post other nonprofit tech jobs). This is a great free way to advertise jobs & events. I also use the question and answers feature to cross-pollinate discussions from our group to the TechSoup forums. Our biggest obstacle to date is the lack of sharing--still looking for a better way to integrate different discussions from various platforms. And LinkedIn, could you get RSS feeds for groups already?!?
Using LinkedIn for Change
Thanks Netsquared for featuring this a discussion and thank you Tobias for a great blob post. I recently joined LinkedIn and am responsible for developing our LinkedIn for Good strategy. Would love to hear all of your thoughts on what is working, what isn't working, and any "wishes" for features. Again, really appreciate your input.
Meg Garlinghouse
LinkedIn for Good
Hi Meg,
Thanks for checking in. I'm glad you liked my blog post and think it's great that LinkedIn has representatives visiting blogs like this to get feedback from the conversations happening about your platform.
I'm intrigued by LinkedIn for Good, which I found via a keyword search - it seems to be about promoting and supporting a selection of charities. This is great - and the selection you made is quite strong. How did you choose those charities and is it possible to recommend others, like Kabissa? We are sort of a TakingITGlobal for Africa. :)
Meanwhile, the questions and answers feature you have on the LinkedIn for Good page is a little confusing - it doesn't have anything to do with the page and doesn't help find answers to questions that people might have about what is on that specific page.
Generally speaking, does LinkedIn have a structured forum for suggesting and discussing LinkedIn.com features and bugs? I like the one for the LinkedIn Resume Builder at IdeaScale? I haven't gotten any feedback from the Resume Builder developer yet on my suggested improvements to the resume builder, but at least they provide the forum and link to it prominently.
Cheers,
Tobias
Linkedin is Listening!
Hi Meg - so good to connect here and to know that Linkedin is listening to the community feedback! Looking forward to sharing ideas and helping to shape the future of the site. Thanks for being in touch!
LinkedIn and Kabissa
Hi Claire,
Great post - and great topic. I look forward to seeing what others are doing. Having written a little blog post about my personal experiences with LinkedIn this past month, I am realizing that while perhaps the inspiration for this topic I am still fairly fresh on the LinkedIn platform and not so sure yet how it will be of use to Kabissa and the organizations in our network.
I look forward to insights from others and will be happy to share with the Kabissa network.
Warm regards,
Tobias
Thanks for sharing your feedback!
So glad you took the time to share your initial thoughts, Tobias! Looking forward to sharing them in the Round-up at the end of the month!