It would appear that LinkedIn has a problem.
Some LinkedIn group moderators are refusing to approve content from an awful lot of people. Having contributed to a variety of different LinkedIn groups over the past year or so, in the last 3 months i’ve noticed that none of the posts or comments that I made were actually seeing the light of day, so I decided to dig a little deeper.
The content published in LinkedIn groups is completely at the whim of moderators
When I reached out on Google Plus I was contacted by several other people for whom the exact same thing had happened. They are respected professionals, curating high quality content and yet they are also routinely finding that their posts are blocked and never get past the moderators.
If it is happening to me and to them – how many people is this really affecting?
The first thing you will be thinking when I state my posts are blocked is that I am spamming. I’m not. I pride myself on my integrity and have no interest in continually self promoting myself or bombarding any site with posts. I am active in supporting many other marketing and social media professionals and always post content from a broad range of sources.
Consider this scenario. I am part of a social media marketing group, after a 2 week gap I visit the group, read some articles, comment on a couple to thank the author and give some additional input, I share an article and like 3 or 4 others. I then post a recent article i’d enjoyed reading from Social Media Today, about – social media. 3 weeks on and the post still hasn’t been approved (and neither have the 4 others i’ve posted in the last 3 months).
Why should I take time to read, comment and share group content when i’m not afforded the same opportunity back?
Now, that alone doesn’t sound like too much, but when I returned to the group a few hours later I saw a lot of new content had been approved and was live on the Group page. One article caught my eye in particular as it was about how to get your own back on a cheating husband. It had nothing at all to do with social media and read like a personal blog post more suited to a women’s gossip magazine. The thing that angered me however wasn’t the fact that a totally off-topic post had been approved, it was the fact the article dominated the front page as it had been posted multiple times one after the other.
Now that is pretty poor moderation by anyone’s standards.
- As far as I am aware, I adhere to all the LinkedIn groups laid out rules and guidelines
- I post approximately once every 2-3 weeks
- The content I post is always bang on topic
- I share a variety of content from a wide variety of quality sources
- I always visit the groups more frequently than I attempt to post in order to actively contribute by liking, sharing and commenting on other content i’ve read and found useful
- The articles of my own that I share have always been positively received on my own blog and on other social networks
- Contacting moderators has given me no joy and they’ve not contacted me back to let me know what I am doing wrong (which I suspect is nothing)
- Many of these groups approve content that is low quality, totally off topic and extremely spammy
So why is this happening? So called LinkedIn ‘influences’ are clearly being given top priority whilst the content from would-be influencers is actively hidden. How does one hope to become an influencer if their content is never approved and published? If someone is breaking rules that are leading to their posts not being approved, then fair enough, but when that clearly isn’t the case and your attempts to contact a group moderator is ignored – what then?
LinkedIn groups are the absolute antithesis of freedom of speech
It has also been theorised by others who are current victims of this kind of group moderation, that LinkedIn moderators clearly have their own agendas and aren’t putting content live from individuals who they see as a threat or competition. It’s just a theory but does seem entirely plausible, I really don’t understand why quality content from authoritative sources would be routinely suppressed. This makes me question the quality and authenticity of the content on LinkedIn.
As a direct result of this I have made the decision to simply remove myself from these groups and continue doing what I do in the far superior Google Plus communities I am a part of. LinkedIn groups do not allow freedom of speech and they seem to be letting the views of only a select few be known.
What is your experience of LinkedIn groups? Perhaps you’ve experienced similar or you are a LinkedIn group moderator wanting to put your side of the story across? If so, I’d love to hear from you!
