If you rely on LinkedIn Groups to communicate with members, it might be time to re-evaluate. LinkedIn announced it is relaunching Groups and rolling it into its main app with new features in tow, while also nixing previous capabilities.

“Being a standalone app, Groups was not able to take advantage of the overall LinkedIn ecosystem,” explained Mitali Pattnaik, the product manager for Groups, in an interview with TechCrunch. “Everything from the news feed to notifications to search, these things move at a fast pace, and the minute the apps got separated, the main app innovated at a much faster pace and became more advanced than the standalone Groups app.”

Let’s break down some of the changes.

What’s leaving LinkedIn Groups: the ability for Group administrators to pre-moderate comments; sending Group posts or announcements as emails to the entire community

What’s coming to Groups: threaded replies; Group conversations that will appear in-stream on your newsfeed; the ability to post media, such as videos and gifs; pinned notifications to members’ feeds

But is the trade-off worth it? Maggie McGary, CEO and chief community strategist at McGary Associates, says no, arguing on her Mizz Information blog that the removal of features over a short period of time highlights the lack of say community managers have when they don’t control the platform.

“This is what you get when you–and your community members–are the product and you build your home on borrowed land,” she writes.

Creating Data Consistency

New #Blog for #Associations: Never Put the AMS Cart before the Data Governance Horse. #Nonprofits #Governance. https://t.co/c5LYGMGOzl

— xScion Solutions (@xScion) August 16, 2018

An association management system is the backbone of any association. It’s at the core of everyday operations—and it also holds the key to some of the most important data and insights associations rely on. How this data is used will depend on the organization, but it’s likely that the information will be handled differently by different people, depending on its intended use.

And this variation in data handling can lead to miscommunication and misinformation. The solution? A solid data governance plan, says Mike Hoke on the xScion blog.

Although “data governance” might sound like a big task, it really means creating consistency, trust, and reliability for data across the board. And combined together with your AMS, a data governance strategy can provide the foundation for a system that maximizes value for your association.

Other Links of Note

Refresh your conference setup. Endless Events offers tips on creative staging ideas.

Marketing to generation Z? You’ll need to tweak your strategy to get their attention. Here are eight tips, from Forbes.

Get your creativity flowing. If you’ve hit a creative block, Inc. offers strategies to refresh and dive in.

(minachan/Pixabay)