Reid Garrett Hoffman (center), the founder of LinkedIn, applauds from the bell balcony after the opening bell during the company’s initial public offering at the New York Stock Exchange.
On Friday, our significant LinkedIn group of Channel Marketing & Sales Professionals crossed over the important 4000 member mark. I’m awaiting a congratulations phone call of from one of my heroes, Reid Hoffman, the Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of LinkedIn. Perhaps if he’s too busy, I’ll hear from LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Wiener?
Ok, I’m not going to hold my breath but I do anticipate meeting with both someday!
Today I want to talk about how we measure the success of our Group at Move the Channel Group. In contrast I will first share what you’ll see when you go to LinkedIn Groups’ “Today’s Highlights”:
Yes, LinkedIn will spotlight the gargantuan Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Network Group and highlight their 222 new conversations today. They have over 217,000 members.
Impressive & impactful, or is it? Have you ever actually entered into a group like this? If not, STOP! Let me save you a head ache and share with you what’d likely see… 218- of-the-222 new conversations will have no comments and no “likes”. In other words, few members are reading this mass dumping of conversations and certainly even fewer are engaged in real conversation.
Now, let’s look at Move the Channel Group which is nowhere on the “YOUR MOST ACTIVE GROUPS” board. I admit 4000 member is a relatively small group when you look at the rest of the LinkedIn Group universe. But how many Channel Pros are there? I’m not exactly sure. But thanks to Move the Channel now there are 4000+ of us connected in a way we’ve never been before.
Let’s face it, the most impressive number is not the 4000 active members. The real striking number is 8… as in it took 8 years for us to reach 4000! Move the Channel’s gradual growth came consistently and carefully by only accepting request-to-join from true channel marketing and sales professionals. At Move the Channel we value quality, not quantity.
The other area we are especially passionate about is our small in number yet very active & engaging conversations. We only have a few conversations going at any given time and maybe a dozen a week. Almost all of our conversations are thoughtful and relevant questions/content that is meaningful to the membership at large. The other thing we’ve noticed is Move the Channel’s conversations are actually authentic dialog. We like engagement and interaction between fellow members.
Move the Channel’s Secret Sauce:
- Clear and simple rules…. And we inforce them.
- Members… the best in the Channel. We focus on quality members, not quantity. Move the Channel Club is an exclusive club.
- MTC Board of known Channel thought-leaders. Each Board member has a unique channel area of focus and provides executive level direction for the Group. You’ll see the Board members asking questions and providing thought-starters around their area of channel expertise.
- Conversations that are meaningful, consistent, and relevant. In addition to our members’ contributions, our Board of Channel thought-leaders serves up the “MTC Convo” each week.
- Most of our Conversation come in the form of questions. If we had all the answers, we would have never joined this group.
- Transforming Channel Marketing & Sales across all Industries. We firmly believe that the conversations we have today are transforming Channel Marketing and Sales for tomorrow.
Here are some of our results and group statistics.
Thanks for being an integral part of Move the Channel. Please provide us your feedback and comments so we can continue our mission to be the best Group in the Channel.
As always, send me an email with questions, comments, or to set up a call.
Move the Channel,
Travis