CME Group builds impact on LinkedIn using exclusive groups

Futures exchange group focuses on quality rather than quantity on LinkedIn, Digg, Stumbleupon.

If you’re having trouble spurring interest in your LinkedIn group, you might want to try what futures and options trading company CME Group did: Lock it down.

“This wouldn’t have been successful unless it was private,” says Associate Director of Corporate Communications Michael Shore.

If the group had been open, Shore says, it may have had more members, but nobody but marketers and consultants would be talking.

And CME Group didn’t want that.

Instead, Chicago-based CME Group now operates six private LinkedIn groups, the largest of which is the interest-rate group, at about 270 members.

Taking the counterintuitive step of closing off the groups—along with focused submissions to social bookmarking sites—has led the right sets of eyes to CME Group’s website and encouraged discussion among traditionally tight-lipped traders.

Closing the gates

In June 2009, CME Group began looking toward LinkedIn as a way to communicate in a different way from what they were doing on Facebook and Twitter, where it’s hard to know exactly who it is you’re talking to.

“One of the things we thought was, LinkedIn really provides you with a different avenue of communicating with people more specifically,” Shore says. “We know that our customers are there.”

To read the full story, log in.
Become a Ragan Insider member to read this article and all other archived content.
Sign up today

Already a member? Log in here.
Learn more about Ragan Insider.