Recently, I tweeted out to one of members, Frances Leary, that our main social media goal was to have the most interesting groups about Franchising in LinkedIn.

Franchise-Info is a member supported community, which means although we aggregate our member's articles, we never have any display advertising on the website.

Because Franchise-Info is supported by its members, this gives Joe and I the time to actively moderate all our 30+ Franchise LinkedIn groups.

I want to show the difference active moderation makes - the direct result of your support.

Joe and I think of the LinkedIn groups as networking opportunities for everyone.  A chance to chat, sometimes seriously, about important franchise issues.  

We don't want our groups to become the Craigslist for B2B marketers - who throw their blog into the group hoping that someone will go to their website.  

While we recognize that people market their services on LinkedIn, we also want to promote dialogue & discussion.  Thus, our tag line: Creating Intelligent Conversations in Franchising.

Joe and I can afford to spend the time in our groups doing this precisely because Franchise-Info is member supported.  Joe and I thank-you for that support.

Here is the value of moderation - less pitching and more conversation.

Look at the numbers.

Franchise Owners/Franchisee is our top group right now - with close to 10,000 members.

Here is last week's ratio of comments/discussions & promotions/discussions.

Last week 69 people wanted to post in this group.  

Apart from our member posts, 10, we let in only 5 others.  The 15 posts generated 21 comments.  

And each one of those comments triggers a special LinkedIn action - LinkedIn emails out the thread to everyone in the Group.  

So active posts are seen by the 10,000 members over and over - depending on how many comments the discussion creates.

Now consider the 5 groups with more members than the Franchise Owner/Franchisee group.

1st Group- Franchise Networking

Let's take it from the top and start with Franchise Networking.  

Ok, despite their 25,000+ members, they had 63 people wanting to post a discussion.  

They let 54 in, which generated 2 comments. And you can see that -because the orange dominates the graph- this is usual.  

Franchise Networking is drop-off -people drop off their posts, never to return to talk and engage people.

3rd Group= International Franchise Association

What about the International Franchise Association's LinkedIn group?  Surely that must be much better - they have an entire staff to throw at the problem.  

In fact, they are worse.  Their orange line dominates the blue line - nobody is discussing any of the articles in the group.

Again, it is the Craigslist of B2B marketing.  People throw articles at you and yell: "Read my Stuff!"  But nobody is listening.

The numbers for Franchise Professionals, Franchise Executives and the Franchising Industry are similar.  

None of these LinkedIn groups are member-supported.

There may be many reasons other than discussion to join a group.  

But, when you want your discussion to be read, thought about, and commented on there is simply no better groups than the Franchise-Info LinkedIn groups.  And it is all because of your support -which Joe and I thank you for.