I am the founder/moderator of two small niche LinkedIn groups in the data quality and Master Data Management (MDM) realm:
- The Data Matching group that has just passed 1,000 members
- The Multi-Domain MDM group that is now closing in at 500 members
As a moderator I feel responsible for keeping the discussions in the group on target.
I guess my challenges in doing so resemble what nearly every other moderator on LinkedIn groups are faced with.
The postings that keep creating trouble are related to:
- Jobs
- Promotions
LinkedIn does have a facility to place entries into these two alternative tabs. But people seldom do that voluntary.
Jobs
In fact I’m pleased when a job is posted in one of the groups. But I also know that many people don’t like job postings coming up among the “normal” discussions in the groups.
I’m not so naive that I think recruiters forget to post as a job or don’t know how to do it. Many recruiters don’t respect the rules even if reminded. And some recruiters keep on entering the same job over and over again.
Therefore I have to mark recruiters, who twice “forget”, as subject to indulgent moderation. As said, I like job postings, so until now I haven’t practiced ruthless termination apart from deleting double entries – but that is also a destination of data matching anyway.
Promotions
With the relative small number of members in the groups in question, and recognising that most participants are tool vendors and service providers, I find it refreshing and informative with entries with promotional content, however most pleased when it’s done with limited marketing triviality.
My indulgence may be explained by that I’m interconnected with tool makers and service providers myself. So these promotions are great ready-made competitor monitoring.
However, my indulgence has its limits when it comes to off topic promotion.
A special case here is outsourcing promotions. I find it peculiar that those people practicing this trade don’t target the message for the group where posted. It shouldn’t be too hard to make an angle with data matching or Multi-Domain MDM for your services. But I find that most out-sourcing people copy-paste their usual stuff.
So, in this area I mostly am the ruthless terminator. And there is seldom any hasta la vista, baby.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 