In today’s edition of Sunday Skills I want to cover a little-used source of information for Compensation & Benefits professionals.
With over 150 million members, LinkedIn is a great repository of knowledge and goodwill. An obvious source of information and expertise is to browse the Answers section and look if anyone has asked a question relevant to your needs today. Or simply use your 10 questions per month to see what your peers have to say on your request.
There is another source of good information for you, though a bit less direct.
Once you have completed your profile and connected with relevant people, you have surely joined one or more Groups, related to HR, Compensation & Benefits, Emiratisation, Employee Engagement, Global Mobility, Performance Management, the country you are in, the countries you cover or will enter into etc.
Once you are a member, you can see and search all discussions, or create one if you wish. The advantage of Groups over Answers is that yes, they are smaller and the discussions are not visible to all LinkedIn members, but they are more targeted and a good question therefore has an increased chance of receiving relevant answers – or for you to browse these relevant discussions.
The one section which is widely under-used though is not the Discussions, as these are the prominent feature of any Group.
It is the options you find under the More tab of the Group. There, you can see all recent updates in the Group, or those only of people you follow. You can also go to Your Activity and get an update on all the Discussions that you follow, have participated to, or initiated. Or you can get to the people you follow through this path as well.
Why do I focus on this ? Following specific Group members is a great way of getting a passive flux of information about what your selected peers are involved in, and can open the door to a deeper relationship once you get to connect with them directly.
So who could you decide to follow ? By default, all your first degree connections (you can decide to unfollow them, it’s a simple as the click of a button – and they won’t be notified). But also, from the Groups you belong to, you could decide to follow a whole range of people :
- Influencers, the ones that participate actively to the Group
- The people asking questions on topics of specific interest to you
- Journalists, writers etc
- Providers
- Peers in your industry or your country
- Your competitors if you are a provider….
They are not notified that you follow (or unfollow) them. But what you get can prove to be a superb source of information, which you control :
- You see their activities displayed on the stream of Updates on your LinkedIn home page (and can decide to hide them if you want)
- You can choose to receive an email for all their activity (not recommended if they are very active or if you follow a lot of people).
- You can see their recent activity from your list of all people you follow.
I have included a quick Powerpoint to show you the visuals.
In short, as a complement to Alerts and RSS feeds, use the Discussions and More sections of the Groups on LinkedIn. You will get information on topics relevant to you, be able to establish relationship, ask for advice and get invaluable free support.
Liked this post ? Why don’t you share it on LinkedIn or Facebook ? Simply click on the link below and help your friends and connections benefit from it too !
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That is really attention-grabbing, You’re a very professional blogger. I have joined your feed and look ahead to looking for more of your fantastic post. Also, I’ve shared your site in my social networks
Sandrine,
Great post. I agree that LinkedIn Groups are a terrific way to stay up-to-date or get answers and referrals. In fact, I have helped many folks with suggestions, and of course, gained so clients in the process!
I invite your readers to join the Developing Markets Compensation and Benefits Group, the LinkedIn Group sponsored by Birches Group. Here is a link: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2201013. Join the discussion!
An outstanding share! I have just forwarded this onto a friend who has been conducting a little homework on this. And he in fact bought me lunch simply because I discovered it for him…lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending some time to discuss this issue here on your internet site.