What Do I Do If I Was Kicked Out of a LinkedIn Group?

If you are like me and are maxxed out at 50 LinkedIn Groups and do a monthly check on your group membership as I recommend, you may notice that your 50 groups are now down to 49 or 48.  What happened?  And what should you do?

I keep my membership information on an excel spreadsheet, so I always know when I have been removed from a group, and this has happened to me a few times.  Hey, I am not a spammer nor am doing anything bad  Here are some reasons why this happens, based on my own actual experience:

• The group is no longer in existence.  LinkedIn could have removed it for whatever reason, or the manager could have cancelled it.  I actually started a group that I cancelled when I realized that it wasn’t going to get enough members to provide much value to everyone.
• The group is still in existence, but for some reason you were removed.  If this is the case, it could very well have happened by accident.  I would recommend that you try to rejoin.  This has happened to me and I was able to rejoin without any issues.  If you are unable to rejoin the message saying that you are blocked, you will need to contact the Group Manager.  I have once been removed because they were merging two groups into one and it was really an administrative issue of why I couldn’t join back in.
• There is also the case that the Group Manager decided that you did not meet the qualifications for the group and you were specifically removed.  Remember, LinkedIn Groups are run by real people with specific guidelines for who can and can’t join their community.  If you don’t meet the guidelines move on.  If you do meet the guidelines, there may have been a misunderstanding and thus you should point this out in your communication with the Group Manager.

LinkedIn Groups are a great resource to join to expand your network and meet similar-minded people.  A vast majority of them are very open to receiving new members.  But beware there are some that do require qualifications…as there are more than enough LinkedIn Groups that exist (over 225,000!!!) move on to the next one and don’t lose any sleep over it!

One thing to point out: membership in LinkedIn Groups is 100% controlled by the Manager.  There are some groups that are competing with each other for membership, and some that will even request you to drop membership in others in order to be “qualified” to join theirs.  This is probably happening because LinkedIn has restricted membership to 50 and there are always new and competitive communities springing up.

There should be no reason to have to leave a group to join another one, as LinkedIn is based upon open social networking.  Any type of this behavior should be immediately reported to LinkedIn Customer Service and rectified.  I have had firsthand experience of this, so this should be taken seriously and hopefully is not a sign of things to come…