Happy 2010 to everyone – let’s start the year out with some practical advice.
After the LIPSO post, the last of 2009, a reader asked if I would drop article summaries into their LinkedIn Group. With a bit of investigating, I decided I couldn’t commit to that, but did suggest that the reader just add this site’s RSS feed to the Group’s News site – and then the short opening to an article would appear automatically.
Her response – could I outline how to do that;-)
LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups make a great way to connect without committing to knowing each other.
You don’t know every member of your graduating class of 1997, but you do know that you were all there together – and would be happy to take a quick message from a fellow classmate.
The Groups section of LinkedIn allows you to communicate individually with messages and publicly through the discussions area.
You can post any web article under the news section, and a group owner or manager can add an RSS “feed” that posts whenever the target site releases an update.
RSS – Really Simple Syndication
So – if you’re wondering – what the heck does this RSS thing mean – you’re in luck. While I can’t go into it right here, I wrote about it a couple years ago in this article: “Would you like that web site delivered“. It explains a bit about RSS.
For our purposes here, understand that RSS “feeds” contain a mini-announcement of changes to a web site so that a tool or reader can follow along and when updates are released, they can be presented to the user – or in this case, the LinkedIn group.
Yes, but how?
Ok – with the background of groups and news and RSS, you’re getting anxious about this whole thing – relax, it really is easy to do;-)
First – you have to be the owner or manager of the group. With the awesome power of inflicting a stream of articles on group members, LinkedIn has set it so that not anyone can activate this feature.
Navigate to your “Groups” tab and select the specific group that you’d like to add a feed for.
Select the “News” sub-tab, and then “Manage news feeds” (with the + sign off to the left)
To add a feed, copy and paste the RSS feed link into the box and continue through the process. As an example, the RSS link for The LinkedIn Personal Trainer web site is http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheLinkedinPersonalTrainer – if you hover your cursor over “Subscribe by RSS” in the “READ THE FEED” box on the right column at the top, you’ll see this link.
There’s an unsubscribe button to remove feeds that have outworn their welcome.
That’s it!
Ok – you don’t need anything more from me, so go out there and sign up some news feeds;-)
As with all things – please remember to keep your common sense about you. Group members are generally interested in the topic surrounding the group. Don’t sign up Disney news feeds for your Better Cars audience;-)
If you have questions on this, please just drop them in below.
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock
RSS Feeds are really very helpful and you could get site and news updates from it.
Thanks, this is a very useful article. I will add our RSS feed to gotogulf group in linkedin.
Happy to be of help.
steve
Your feed, http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheLinkedinPersonalT, will not work either. I constantly get the “The URL you entered is not a valid RSS or Atom feed. Please check the URL and try again” I have tried online to find the problem and everyone says what you say, yet I cannot subscribe to any feeds. I did in the beginning get a few but no more.
michael
Michael,
I’m not sure – I will say that what you put in the comment is not quite accurate. The RSS feed is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheLinkedinPersonalTrainer
Any mis-typing will invalidate the feed.
steve
Hi Steve,
Great little post, I am setting up a feed for a clients group.
I am running a test one to make sure it works however I have done everything above, the feed is accepted, but nothing is showing on the groups page?
Do I have to do anything to have the RSS show?
Sorry to hassle you but I just cant find any info on this.
THANKS
Dave
Dave,
Give the setup 24 hrs – others have reported a large delay between the time they setup the feed and when it actually flows through.
steve
does not work, error messages all the time
sn,
It would appear you are correct.
In the 2+ years since I wrote this, the feature seems to have fallen by the wayside and no longer works properly.
That’s too bad.
steve
The images in the RSS feed do not show in linkedin? any ideas how to fix that?. is there a way to associate a default company icon on the feed settings at least?
steven,
I’m afraid I have no means for fixing or suggesting a work-around for the image thing. I’d expect that the developer(s) involved know what would have to happen to fix that but administration is unwilling to put forth the effort.
Setting an icon on the feed – that’s just crazy talk;-)
Really – you’re pulling the RSS feed into the “update” field of the group. It isn’t another means of publicizing the regular feed.
The first might get addressed, the second unlikely.
(IMHO)
steve
FYI: I contacted LinkedIn about the error message on trying to add an RSS Feed to a Group, and they did reply agreeing that there is a fault and that they are looking into it, although it may take some time.
That was a month ago, though, so who knows if anything will be done. Is a shame as I have an older Group with an RSS feed attached and it’s brilliant for stimulating conversation and debate.
Lynn,
Thanks for giving us some feedback on this issue – and hearing about a response from LinkedIn;-)
steve
Have run a LI group for about 2 years and have 1000s of members, many of which joined LI and pay for just this group. Thru all of LinkedIn’s issues: horrible customer support, tweaks that only benefit LI unpaid users, high membership prices, ads to paid members, Group Job discussions that have become more and more hidden so paid posts can get prominence, RSS feeds that don’t work properly in groups…
Now I see the final straw while trying to add a new RSS feed to my group:
“Linkedin Groups no longer supports the addition of new RSS feeds.”
This is craziness! LI is destroying its own groups. Who can we write to get this changed. This is honestly horrible.
Jake,
Thank you for pointing me in this direction.
Yes, LinkedIn is killing off the RSS feature.
RSS appears to be useful enough to offer to let people watch their updates with, but not useful enough to bring in material to be followed. One seems to be required to re-post each and every item.
Sorry about that – and I’m not going to suggest it’s worth spending any more of your time on.
Read more bout it on today’s post:
And LinkedIn Taketh Away…
steve