[Editors Note: This is the start of a biweekly series of tips & tricks for collaborating more effectively with other professionals through LinkedIn groups.]

Millions of our members join their first groups to associate themselves with a university, company alumni group, trade organization, or professional interest. (Or Red Sox Nation.) Having the logos of these groups on your profile adds depth and color to your professional identity on the Web. But the logo is only the start of the story.

Here are 5 ways to get the most out of your groups memberships:

1. Commit to a couple of groups focused on your key professional interests. LinkedIn groups provide the opportunity to collaborate with professionals you would otherwise never meet – and with current and former coworkers, all in the same professional environment. Pick a couple of interests about which you’re most passionate and jump into the action of groups focused on those interests. Many of our most active members find their participation in the right groups directly enriches what they do at work.

2. Follow other groups. Groups provide a great way to keep track of what your fellow professionals have on their mind and what news they think is notable. Subscribe to the digest emails summarizing the activity of the group. Use our new tools for “Following” to keep an eye on the specific discussions you care about most. I use this a lot myself to monitor the flow of key discussions from my work email so I can jump in quickly at the right moment.

3. Use the news. Posting news is one of the best ways to participate in groups – it takes less thought and work up front than starting a discussion, and groups provide an easy way to get your fellow professionals’ take on an article or blog post… or to gain additional reputation for your take. Post a couple of articles a week that catches your interest while browsing the Web, the newsletters you get, your RSS reader, your Facebook feed, or Twitter. Now that managers can add RSS feeds to their groups, suggest they include your favorite news source or your own brilliant blog.

4. Involve your coworkers. You’ve invested a lot of time building up professional trust with your coworkers, both past and present. Invite four (or more) coworkers with whom you usually discuss your favorite professional interests to join you in the broader collaboration in your LinkedIn group.

5. Learn about your fellow LinkedIn members. LinkedIn groups are unique because they’re special contexts within the world’s largest professional network. Take full advantage of that by clicking through to the profiles of fellow members, sparking conversations about what they’re working on, and as relationships develop – inviting them to become connections.

LinkedIn groups are powerful ways to get noticed and enrich your professional network in these difficult economic times. One of our favorite success stories is this one from the Wall Street Journal blog we mentioned before.

Got a LinkedIn Groups success story? Please share it in the comments.

Since we launched news sharing in groups, users have shared nearly a million articles with professional colleagues.

The obvious desire for people to share and discuss news with their peers begged for us to develop more ways for people to collaborate on the numerous streams of news intelligence coming from publishers and bloggers.

This week we are launching a feature that will allow group owners and managers to create a custom news stream composed of RSS or Atom feeds that will be relevant for the group.  By adding an RSS feed, Atom feed, or just web site URL, managers will be able to create a feed tailored specifically for their group.

Group members will benefit by having a comprehensive news digest readily available to them on LinkedIn.  It can be a great way to discover new blogs and sources because they were shared in to the group and last, but not least, group members can discuss hot topics that are a result of this stream.

If your group manager has enabled news and discussions, you can find this feature under news tab in  “Latest News”.  If your group manager has not added a feed that you think would be a valuable inclusion for the group, send them a message with your suggestion.

We hope you enjoy the latest news feature that will allow you to consume, discuss, and collaborate on news within your groups.  As always, we are looking forward to your feedback and comments on this blog post as you consume news in a whole new way on the web.

Do your groups have this functionality turned on?

Being a member of different groups on LinkedIn (one on corporate blogging, one on conferences I’d like to be at – SXSW, etc.) I’ve always had the challenge of not being able to keep on top of the numerous conversations that are brewing across these different groups.

Wouldn’t it be helpful if you were informed when someone has either started or participated in a discussion on any of those numerous group threads?

LinkedIn's Follow function in Groups

Well now you can, simply click the “follow” link and anytime there is new comment in the conversation thread you’ll receive an email update. Previously this was available only to those who initiated the Q&A thread by asking the question.

Check out the groups you’re following and “follow” interesting conversations

One of our key focus areas on the blog this past year has been to share with you how different professionals use LinkedIn to advance their career. Here are five videos we picked from a slew of LinkedIn user success stories we featured this year. Feel free to leave a comment on how you’ve used LinkedIn this past year to advance your career:

1. How LinkedIn Referrals can help you find new business and talent

Sasha Strauss (Innovation Protocol), describes how he has leveraged his trusted referral network on LinkedIn to not only to hire every employee in his firm but also to find most of his valued clientele.

I do business with people that are pre-qualified, and the only way that they are pre-qualified is that they have a robust profile that showcases who is willing to support what they claim! It really is an authenticity protocol!

Edit your LinkedIn Profile now

2. How LinkedIn Answers can help you build client relationships

Steven Shimek (Ruder Finn), used LinkedIn to build client relationships in over 20 leads that led to business worth over a quarter of a million dollars! He uses LinkedIn as a litmus test to qualify leads for his business development practice and explains his philosophy of digital karma in the below video.

LinkedIn isn’t just about networking. It’s about your friends, clients, and associates being a resource to you. I like helping people because they’ve all helped me!

Ask or Answer questions from your network

3. How LinkedIn Jobs can help you find your dream job

Evan Gotlib (Travel Zoo) describes how LinkedIn helped him find a dream job that he wasn’t looking for! Evan started seeing the power of LinkedIn right after he hit 50 connections on LinkedIn and calls it the tipping point for him!

Using job search, I stumbled upon a dream job opening in the travel industry. This is the first job I proactively went after and it wouldn’t have happened without LinkedIn!

Find your dream job using your LinkedIn Network

4. How LinkedIn Search can help you find the right candidate for the right job

Lenny Bourdeau (Stephen James Assoc.) faced the same challenge that recruiters and executives face these days, a dearth of talent with specific skill sets that they are looking for. Lenny was looking for somebody with a specific skill set in “revenue recognition”. His Search yielded three candidates whom he contacted via InMail and soon one of them was hired yielding a placement fee of $20K!

This person wasn’t on the job boards. So LinkedIn tremendously increased my candidate pool within that niche segment that I was specifically looking for!

Try LinkedIn’s new Advanced People Search

5. How LinkedIn Groups can help corporations can find unique value

Mark Kvamme (Sequoia Capital), describes his LinkedIn Aha moment when he was able to reach out to Ross Levinsohn (Velocity Interactive Group) through a trusted referral from Marc Andreessen (Ning). Watch more in the short video below.

I can really see how corporations and individuals can get some unique value from LinkedIn that they could not get in any other place.

Manage your Groups on LinkedIn

Stay tuned as we bring you many more examples of how professionals utilize LinkedIn and leverage the power of their professional network. If you have a LinkedIn success story you’d like to share with us, please leave a comment.

A couple of months ago, we announced the ability for groups to have discussions on LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is now hosting hundreds of thousands of interesting discussions. We continue to build on the promise of allowing a richer experience within groups this week by launching a feature that allows you to share and discuss news articles within LinkedIn groups.

To share a news article with your LinkedIn Groups, click on “Submit a new article” and enter the URL you would like to share.

After submitting the article you will land on a discussion page that we have for the group to talk about what you just shared.

Stay tuned to more features that will help you make it easier to share articles with your group in the coming months.

Additionally, blog and other publishers can add the share badge to their site to encourage sharing with groups.  To get information on how to do this, please visit our widgets page.

Share News articles within your LinkedIn Groups

The LinkedIn blog is broken down into two broad categories: Using LinkedIn (Features, Answers, and Users) and LinkedIn News (Press, People and Events). Our primary focus is to bring you breaking news on every features that maximizes your LinkedIn experience. In addition, we’ll also be covering some of the recent press mentions we’ve received under the Press category.

Let’s start off with a post on the business of productivity (USA Today) written by Jon Swartz, which references LinkedIn’s presence in that space.

(Dan Nye, CEO, LinkedIn. Photo: Dave Getzschman)

The article quotes our CEO, Dan Nye, on the future of business productivity and how every professional’s network could help them get more done in less time. See below.

Practically, corporate social networks also cut down on unnecessary e-mail and instant messages among co-workers, says Dan Nye, CEO of LinkedIn, a social network of more than 28 million people, most of them business professionals. Private social networks let “people choose what they want to read and discuss, based on their participation, without being intrusive and annoying,” he says.

LinkedIn’s new service, Company Groups, digitally gathers into a single, private Web forum all of a company’s employees. There, they can talk to one another, share ideas and ask company-related questions. So far, 1,000 companies have signed up for the service.

Read the rest of the article on USA Today.

LinkedIn Tips & Tricks:

Make yourself more productive on LinkedIn – today! Here’s a quick tip:

LinkedIn Groups:

LinkedIn Groups is your destination to find and join communities of professionals based on common interest, experience, affiliation, and goals. Stay in touch with organizations, schools, and companies that you are and were a part of, network with professionals with similar interests and goals, and collaborate in a professional community online.

Learn more about LinkedIn Groups here

The above tips are just the “tip of an iceberg” that’ll help you reduce the time spent finding that next client or that dream job of yours. (Source: LinkedIn Learning Center)

In July this year, we announced LinkedIn Groups’ searchable directory to make it easier for you to find the groups you’ll derive the most benefit from. In August, we turned on the discussions feature and just last month Monica Rogati blogged about “Groups you might Like” that makes it easier for you to stumble upon – (yes, you guessed right) – groups you might like!

I’m glad to be back with more Groups enhancements, which provide you ways to share, customize and organize the groups that you’ve now become a part of.

1. Sharing your Groups with your professional network

How many times have you wanted to share your favorite new LinkedIn group with other members of your professional network? Starting today, you should be able to share that group with select connections in your group from the Group Profile page.

2. Customize your Group Discussions

Also, for those of you who’ve been wondering how to edit or delete either a discussion or comments  in a discussion thread, we’ve now included features that should make those possible.

3. Easier organization of your groups

For members of multiple groups who’d like better tools to organize and prioritize so that the most important groups (for you) show up on the left hand navigation bar on your homepage (see the highlighted portion below), check out our new “Groups Order and Display” page.

Comments, feedback and suggestions are always welcome.