Keyword Libraries for LinkedIn — A User-Centric Feature!
(Glossary: MAU- Monthly Active Users, B2B- Business to Business, B2C- Business to Consumer)
When it comes to social networking sites, LinkedIn is one of my favourite platforms. Over the years, it has figured out the perfect blend of Network Building + Job Hunting + Recruiting + Advertising for Marketers/Organizations.
LinkedIn is the market leader in professional networking and job hunting. It has a broad user base generating much content. Let’s look at some of the numbers.
- LinkedIn has a 760M+ user base with 300M+ MAU.
- Over 40M people use LinkedIn to search for jobs each week.
- Over 3M users post content on LinkedIn generating 9B+ impressions, which is 15X than that of the job postings.
That’s a plethora of content, making it difficult for users to get exposure to laser-focused content as per their current needs/purpose.
One can summarize the LinkedIn user base in the following manner:
- Professionals who want to build their ‘Network.’
- College grads/professionals who are looking out for job opportunities.
- Recruiters looking out for talented professionals.
- B2B & B2C marketers who are targeting the relevant audience.
- Professional bloggers.
I have been using LinkedIn for the last 5–6 years, and I have observed the following points as user behaviour:
- Initial days — Great excitement in updating the profile, curiosity-driven network building. After a point, reached saturation in this.
- Later, I was driven to LinkedIn by the exciting blog posts, articles, user experience stories, info-graphics.
- From time to time, the purpose of the user changes towards the platform (Today, I could be using it for job hunting, but I might use it purely to read blog posts and connect with people a few months from now.
User Pain Points:
- After a point of time, I realized there’s massive content on LinkedIn, and many times I am not able to come across the relevant one.
- One has to scroll too much to find relevant content, which is frustrating at times.
- Although LinkedIn has a dedicated job portal, many recruiters/employees write posts about job openings. Many candidates either miss such content or discover it when it’s too late.
Feature Suggestion: Keyword Libraries
As the user’s purpose from using LinkedIn changes from time to time, LinkedIn can design a new feature that will enable users to control the content they get exposed to on a granular level.
Let’s call it Keyword Libraries.
A keyword library can be formed by inserting keywords related to a particular topic/domain.
How Can It Be Done?
Let’s say a user wants to explore content related to Cryptocurrency.
- First of all, the user should form a library by inserting relevant keywords like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain.
- The user must get access to turn ON that specific library, which will allow the relevant content to appear on his feed whenever it’s published.
- Push notifications would do the work more efficiently.
- By following the above steps, the user would get notified when someone like Elon Musk is posting about Bitcoin on LinkedIn.
- User should be able to form such multiple libraries catering to various topics.
Below are a few use case scenarios that I have considered:
Impact -
For Users:
- Increased probability of coming across relevant content/opportunities.
- Better impressions and engagement on blog posts and articles.
- Timely exposure to posts by various recruiters and employees looking to hire a suitable candidate.
For Business:
- Better user engagement will naturally pull more traffic on the platform, benefiting the business.
- This feature can be added exclusively for the premium membership, contributing directly to the revenue.
Challenges:
Suppose a specific keyword is present in hundreds of articles. In that case, the user feed or notification tab can get crowded at times.
To deal with this, LinkedIn can give access to limit the amount of content by setting an upward limit/day or /week, e.g., ten content pieces/day as an upward limit for Cryptocurrency.
P.S. LinkedIn allows users to follow various hashtags too. If we consider hashtags, the Keyword library feature might look ineffective. The hashtags can be limited, and customized keywords will always be more in number than the hashtags, so I think this feature would do a more laser-focused job.
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