online conversation :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

So how did my LinkedIn search go for groups of home based professionals?

This is a follow-on from my post yesterday, on looking for relevant online conversations, starting with the professional-focused networking site LinkedIn.

On my first attempt to find groups via (as I recall) the search term “home based professionals” the result was some fifty pages of groups. With ten a page, that made around 500 groups.

The listings included:

The first of these was of general interest, but I wasn’t sure that at this point I wanted to get into discussions about starting a home based business.

The second – Consultants Network – looked interesting, especially as it had a big membership at 118,911, and what looked like a busy discussion space, with 85 discussions listed, far more than I had seen for other groups.

The Consultants Network group describes itself as:

A group that unites all strategy, marketing, finance, business, IT consultants & freelancers. With over 100,000+ global members the largest consultancy community on LinkedIn. (consulting, management, business, interim, freelance, advisory, consultant, recruitment, network, professionals)

I had to submit a request to join. That did not bother me, because I like the idea that there is some process of vetting going on. Although I’m wondering what’s happening. It’s about three days since I submitted that request and I’ve since sent a follow-up. No reply of any kind yet. (Update: three weeks on – April 6 – there is still no response – I have also sent messages, via LinkedIn connections, to the nominated owner and nominated manager of the group, neither of whom has replied.)

By way of a footnote to this post, as I started writing I thought, why just LinkedIn? Why not Yahoo!? Why not other networks and forums?

Why not, indeed! Especially as, at this writing, this area of professionals working from home is not looking a likely area for discussion on LinkedIn.

So I’ve decided to do a series on various social networking platforms, under the general heading of Looking for Conversations. Next I might have a look at Yahoo! Groups.

In the meantime, have you had any interesting, useful or curious experiences with LinkedIn Groups and if so would you like to share them? I hope you will leave a comment.

G’day all!

What do you mean, g’day all? Where’ve you been? Haven’t seen you round here for a couple of weeks, at least.

Erm, I’ve been doing some social networking.

Social networking?

Yes, on Twitter.

On Twitter? So blogging doesn’t count anymore for social networking? And anyway, what do you think we are, your loyal readers and subscribers over all these years on Thinking Home Business, chopped liver?

Well, no. I really enjoy being in contact with you all.

I just got a bit distracted.

Yeah, we know. They’re more fun, that lot, aren’t they? What do you call them, your tweeps? Really. All those followers, probably gone to your head. But seriously, do you think they actually take any notice of you? Think they’re not just adding you to their list so they can say ‘Look how many followers I’ve got?’

Maybe. But I do have some really interesting conversations there.

Conversations! In 140 character messages? As in “Thks, I think ur rlly onto smthng there…”? Give us a break!

Think about it. Here on the blog you actually write in sentences, with some paragraphs, even subordinate clauses. OK, so sometimes (maybe a lot, come to think of it) you rattle on a bit, overdosing on the subordinate clauses. But we think you do make a bit of an effort, most of the time.

Well, ok, maybe with Twitter it’s just the ease of it. There’s no effort there. You know, I don’t have to think about whether I have a picture to go with the post, as I try to make sure I do here – because all the gurus tell me you get better Google rankings if you have a picture with a blog post.

And maybe it’s because on Twitter I often get people re-tweeting something I’ve tweeted. Or commenting on what I’ve done.