It is an interesting bunch. A pressure group if you like. One of the strange things I have found is the collective view of news feeds.
Many group owners see news feeds as interlopers cutting into the market they have spent a long time trying to set up. Some of the groups have even disabled them and the discussion features! (Why anyone would want to belong to a group like that is beyond me)
For me - I see it differently. Our group is a place for the members to network, not for me to advertise.
I have gone to great lengths to make sure that the news feeds in there are of high quality. Feeds that I myself subscribe to and RSS feeds that offer a lot of value.
Feeds like:
- Seth Godins blog. (Of course)
- Dan Roams blog - Digital Roam (Essential reading)
- The Long Tail
- A Topix feed on news subjects related to consulting
- A couple of feeds from Business Week
- A feed from the ChangeThis.com website, to get the regular update of their manifestos.
- And a feed from the Australian online magazine Smart Company. (Great magazine by the way)
And the members seem to get a lot of use from them. They are regularly read, they seem to check them out when the daily updates go out. And hopefully they are getting positive benefits from them.
Why not? Why would I choose to close it up and subject them to me telling them all about what I can sell them only? Time will tell, but I am pretty convinced that this is going to be one of the things that sets our group out as different among the many groups for consultants/marketers and sales people.
