Comments on: Six Ways to Ignite a LinkedIn Discussion

By: Determining Blog and Discussion Popularity | seowizardry.ca

Determining Blog and Discussion Popularity | seowizardry.ca — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:24:40 +0000

[...] in Social Media Share I recently read a Blog Post by Amy Dean of Keyword Communication titled Six Ways to Ignite a LinkedIn Discussion which hit the [...]

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 01:46:38 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by amyjdean: New blog: Six Ways to Ignite a LinkedIn Discussion. What has worked for you? http://bit.ly/bJwOlF...

By: amyjdean

amyjdean — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:36:47 +0000

Great point Melinda. Thanks for making it. BTW, I love your catchy url…clickwinningcontent!

By: Melinda

Melinda — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:28:41 +0000

Hi Amy

I like your list but I also think that lack of use of compelling headlines prevents a lot of discussions even being viewed.

Many people still use just a word or two as their headline.

For example, if you had called this “LinkedIn Discussions” rather than “6 Ways to Ignite a LinkedIn discussion” I wouldn’t have stopped and read it.

Nice headline by the way:)

Melinda

By: Gail Sussman Miller

Gail Sussman Miller — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:14:12 +0000

You obviously asked a question that is stimulating discussion and the key element in the posts I see gaining huge replies is just what you demonstrated… asking people for the opinion works.

It can be open ended, like your question, or asking the comparison on 2 sides of an issue (think “tastes great” vs. “less filling” or whatever that beer commercial’s messages were).

I believe the quotes work because they do inspire. I’m in the inspiration business and they invigorate me to use them and share them.

thanks for stimulating a great discussion!
gail

P.S. love your use of the Yiddish word Maven!

By: Pete Hollier

Pete Hollier — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:35:48 +0000

Hi Amy and Eric

I agree with the concept that targeting your discussions is important however, I think we do need to remember that within the Social Media environment the majority of the community are consumers rather than contributors.

With this being the case, although a Blog Post or discussion appears to have little response it does not necessarily mean the post is not hitting the target.

Some additional reading on this is available at:
http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2008/11/reconciling-soc.html

http://socialmediainfluence.com/2010/03/12/bursting-the-90-9-1-rule-of-online-community/

By: amyjdean

amyjdean — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:28:46 +0000

Thanks for your reply Eric. Great point about the importance of targeting the topic to the particular group. I agree that most people are ignoring that piece of valuable insight. I wonder if group managers will become like traditional news reporters complaining that people don’t take time to read the group’s content before they post.

By: Eric Goldman

Eric Goldman — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:01:39 +0000

A great article, Amy, thanks for posting it and the discussion on LinkedIn which brought me here.
I’ve explored this concept myself twice now, in posts which asked the question of, “What Makes Content Royal?” In other words, what kind of post generates a lot of comments and links?
The posts generated comments and links and based on the feedback, it seems that what gets people going is a level of personal interest. That sounds obvious, but it ties in to what Jon says above: that it’s something of a hit and miss adventure because there’s no real way of knowing how someone is going to view one’s post or discussion topic. Sort of…
Because if you post a discussion topic in a LinkedIn group which is bang on target for that group, your odds of starting a great discussion are much higher than if you post every topic to every group you belong to. Again, sounds obvious, but if you look at the various topics posted on the various groups, you will see that this last piece of advice is often ignored.

By: amyjdean

amyjdean — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:30:32 +0000

Jon, Thank you for your response. I love your phrase about fur flying. I completely agree with you. It seems pretty hit or miss. It was difficult trying to find patterns.

By: Jon Jacobs

Jon Jacobs — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:27:51 +0000

There was on in Linked:HR whose opening question was “Who am I?”, that got 5,000 comments and counting.

My feeling after observing hundreds of LinkedIn conversations over the past 18 months is, this is simply hit-or-miss. And if there is some specific feature that “ignites” the discussion, I’ll bet more often than not it’s injected by a later comment that happens to hit a nerve, rather than the initial post.

That said, I have noticed a few Linked:HR discussions that clearly did spring from an initial post that raised “hot-button” issues, like how to treat overqualified candidates. But that’s just my point: some initial posts that seem destined to get the fur flying do in fact accomplish that, while others that begin with similar or equally compelling topics end up getting no comments at all, and yet others get thousands of comments from a foundation of pure air (“Who am I?”)

It would be interesting to see some kind of statistical study that attempted to quantify just what does “fly” on LinkedIn and/or other social media sites.