LinkedIn Disables API Support For Groups... Now What?

In an effort to strengthen the legitimacy, the exclusivity, and the value of LinkedIn Groups, the company has been cracking down on the privacy of them.

The latest addition to this effort is the announcement that "you will no longer be able to access content from, or share content to, a LinkedIn Group through external platforms." (via the official LinkedIn announcement here).

The news was frustrating to marketers who liked tailoring and posting content to specific groups that they knew their audiences hung out in.

However, "link blasting" was becoming prevalent in many of the groups, which lessened the value and appeal of joining them for LinkedIn members.

There was already a mass exodus going on from LinkedIn Groups because of the more stringent moderation policy, and that trend continued with marketers abusing the API accessbility by blasting links to every group they belonged to.

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What do we do now?

For now, if you're dedicated to LinkedIn Groups it looks like the only true workaround is to manually post in groups via a personal account.

While the manuality of that process is tedious, perhaps it will help marketers put more thought into the content they are curating in the groups. It will decrease the width of your reach, but it could help increase the depth.

This brings up a larger issue of content saturation on the internet. LinkedIn Groups were a great way to push content when correctly targeted, as evidenced by the high amount of traction we received from a specific LinkedIn Group with a blog post we wrote for a client:

365 clicks and 12 interactions in less than two weeks, for one blog post, in one group, for a small insurance company. We were stoked, but our faces fell a bit when LinkedIn released their announcement.

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The message here is simple: consumers don't want content blasts, they want thoughtfully curated content in the right places.

Moving forward, take this advice and apply it to the channels that you still can post to via an API. It's a convenient way to post, but it shouldn't be a lazy one.

Need any more advice on current happenings in the marketing world, or about your digital presence? Ask us, we don't bite.